Old Testament prophecies we must receive His interpretation 'I have called my son out of Egypt' and 'Rachael weeping for her children' might be adaptations rather than prophecies, but Christ and His apostles interpreted many things. from the old prophets as referring to the gospel.

The fourth Essay dealt with ideology and subscription. The writer was F. C. Cook, Prebendary of St Paul's. Ideology means that narratives which are not true literally, may yet be true ideally, so that while the narrative is rejected, the spiritual truth at its basis is accepted. Subscription was defended as necessary to preserve definiteness of doctrine. St Paul would not have authorised anyone to preach who denied the resurrection. Alexander over to Satan.

He delivered Hymenæus and

The fifth Essay was on the Mosaic Record of Creation,' Dr McCaul was the writer. He defended the literal interpretation, and controverted the conclusions of modern critics of the Old Testament. The distinction between the Elohistic' and 'Jehovistic' is founded on the assumption that Elohim, and Jehovah mean the same. But in reality Elohim is God, and Jehovah is the name of God. The difference is like that between Deus and Jupiter. Genesis ii to 4, is not a summary of what is to follow, but of what has gone before. The second chapter does not give a cosmogony, nor even a geogeny. In the beginning' is the duration of time preceding creation. Something new was created out of nothing, or, it may have been, out of something already existing. The waters covering the earth agrees with the Neptunic origin of the globe as taught by geologists. Recent discoveries show that there may be light independently of the sun. The scientific accuracy of Moses is so remarkable as to lead to the inference that he must have been guided by a supernatural hand. To make the seven days of creation poetry as some have done, and not literal history, is not to defend the ark of, God but to abandon it to the enemy.

Professor Rawlinson who wrote the sixth Essay, which was on the Pentateuch, also found no discrepancy between science and the Mosaic record. When a book is handed down to us bearing a certain name, it should be taken as

genuine till the contrary is proved. The Pentateuch has internal evidence of Mosaic authorship. The style, the archaicisms, the close acquaintance with Egypt, all point to the time of Moses. The chapter which mentions the kings of Edom1 before there was any king over the children of Israel, may have been written prophetically, or inserted by a later hand. Bunsen distorts the lists of Manetho to make them fit his theory. By the help of some ingenious conjectures, it is shown that the seventy who went down into Egypt might have been two millions by the time of the Exodus.

Edward Harold Browne, Norrisian Professor of Divinity, afterwards Bishop of Ely and then of Winchester, wrote on 'Inspiration.' He held by the old distinction between supernatural illumination and the inspiration of good men. Fathers, Schoolmen and Reformers, all distinguish between what we may know of ourselves and what is revealed. Inspiration is of the nature of a miracle, and is questioned only by those who have doubts about miracles. Luther subjected the New Testament to the criticism of his own intuitions. It is the error of Pietists and Illuminists to compare the light of nature with the light of revelation. Coleridge and his disciple Maurice confused the inspiration of saints with that of Apostles.

'Scripture and its interpretation' by Dr Ellicott, Dean of Exeter, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, was intended for an answer to Jowett. The great reformation proposed by the 'Seven Champions' was spoken of ironically and categorised under the description of St Paul: 'Knowledge puffeth up.' Arranged in new combinations, and disguised in new trappings the old quibbles were mustered up again. Antichrist was coming, and the Seven Essayists were his prophets sent to prepare the way before him. That Scripture is capable of various interpretations and applications shows the manifold Wisdom of God. These are not more than the nature and importance of the subject matter would lead us to expect. The difference between the ancient and the modern interpretation of Scripture had been greatly exaggerated. The literal and the historical method had from the earliest

ages been regarded as the true one, and many traditional interpretations would bear the test of Lirinensis-believed always everywhere and by all.'

The other volume called,' Replies to Essays and Reviews was edited by Bishop Wilberforce, The astute Bishop took the precaution to write his preface before he read the replies, but he described the object as not so much to refute error as to establish truth. The Bishop's orthodoxy was not more prominent than his supreme contempt for the intellect, learning and moral purpose of the Essayists. The arguments were neither new nor powerful, and the questions discussed were of a kind which should not be raised among Christians. The Essays had been evoked in the way of reaction by the 'renewed assertion of the importance of dogmatic truth, and primitive Christian practice.' This eloquent circumlocution probably meant the Oxford movement. The Bishop also saw in the Essays the preparation for Antichrist. Their doctrine was grandiosely described as a 'tricked out Pantheism.'

Edward Meyrick Goulburn criticised the Essay on the 'Education of the Human Race.' Our present condition, he said, is that of discipline of humility of mind. We must be brought to faith in God's word and then acquiesce in all difficulties and obscurities. In the education of the mind of the Church there is no substantial accession of knowledge, only the development of what was originally in the rudiments. Progress in civilisation is not the same as progress in divine knowledge. The mental culture of Greece and Rome was different in kind from development in truth and holiness. Christ came in the fulness of time. That is admitted, but Dr Temple had said that if He had come later it would have been hard to believe His divinity, as the faculty of faith was turned inwards and could not accept an outward manifestation of the truth, which is interpreted to mean that 'the world had now become too wise to accept miracles as the credentials of a message from God.'

Не

Hugh James Rose answered Rowland Williams. argued that the question of the truth of Bible histories, and chronologies affected the foundations of Christianity. It was no indifferent matter whether or not we are to believe the

self-confident, even beyond the example of his countrymen who are now giving up the Rationalism which is being imported into England. Even such scholars as Gesenius and Ewald have to be watched. Their statements about the Elohistic and Jehovistic passages are not to be trusted. Bishop Butler had been quoted as saying that prophecies may have had their fulfilment in contemporary history, but he expressly refutes what is thus ascribed to him. Bishop Chandler is said to have reckoned only twelve Messianic prophecies, and Paley ventured to quote just one, but Chandler's twelve are given as specimens, and Paley's one was the clearest and sufficient for his argument. Jerome's preference for 'worship purely' instead of 'kiss ye the son,' was made merely to avoid calumnies from the Jews. Isaiah liii had long been understood by the Jews as referring to the Messiah. They applied it to Jeremiah to escape its application to Jesus, but this is now abandoned.

Baden Powell's Essay on 'The Study of the Evidences' was answered by C. A. Heurtley, Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford. He said that such was the credulity of unbelief that Darwin's self-evolving process of nature was made to over-ride the Mosaic account of creation. Miracles were moral forces which may keep the physical in check without violating the laws of nature. The miracles of Jesus rest on the testimony of eye witnesses and they are such as had been foretold would be wrought by the Messiah.

The Essay on the National Church was answered by Dr William Josiah Irons. The Church, he said, before the Reformation was really national. The Act of Toleration formally registered the fact that it was so no longer. The idea that the National Church was an organ of the national life, that speculative doctrines were to be left to philosophers, while the Church concerns itself with the ethical development of its members, alarmingly corresponds with the facts of our religious life as a nation; a Church without supernatural claims, depending on the Bible alone, but a Bible deprived of the supernatural. It is a generalised Christianity, very different from that of the Apostles, who put doctrine above morals. They said a man that is a heretic reject. Primitive Christianity was very exclu

The Essay on 'The Mosaic Cosmogony' was answered by Gilbert Rorison, an Episcopal minister in the north of Scotland. He made the record in Genesis an inspired psalm of creation.' The writer on that subject in Aids to Faith,' said that the man who did not take the record literally but made it poetry was a traitor, who gave up 'the sacred ark to the enemy.'

A. C. Haddon's Essay on Rationalism was intended as an answer to Pattison. It lauded the principles of the Oxford movement under Newman and Pusey, which was the proper remedy for the divinity of the eighteenth century. Toleration was a sceptical spirit based on indifference. Against this, individualising Methodism was a reaction. The Oxford men had protested in good time against the attempts to deal with religious truth, through the instrumentality of reason and the misuse of private judgment by Methodists and Evangelicals. We did not want new creeds. The Rationalists of the school of Tillotson paid too little attention to the authority of the Church, but they were not so far gone as to speak of a verifying faculty. The Hanoverian divines did not all tend to Rationalism. Butler's Analogy is an elaborate depreciation of the supremacy of

reason.

The reply to Jowett was made by Christopher Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln. He exposed the ignorance of the Greek Professor. It was like that of a benighted person, and it was not credible that it could be found in one holding a position in a University. Jowett had said that the Elzevir edition of the Greek Testament had been invested with authority as a pièce de resistance, against innovation. This was so far from being true that in the last half century, scarcely a Biblical scholar among those who had put forth annotated editions of the Greek Testament had made a stand for the Elzevir. That the Professor's mode of interpreting Scripture is vicious, has its evidence in the fact that he can find in the New Testament neither infant baptism nor Episcopal government. Our best divines have found them there. The Apostles' command is, Baptise all nations,' and infants are part of nations.