That sense of Scripture which alone can conflict with science, is not the spirit that giveth life.'

The subject of W. Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, in 1887, was 'The Permanent Elements of Religion.' It was a subject for the present time, facing the difficulties arising from the recent study of religion, and showing the light shed on the subject of religion from that study. We are in a time of transition and that is always a time of doubt. The general impression is that faith is gone from the earth, but religion from its very nature can never die. It has elements that are indestructible. The nature of man is ever the same and that nature is essentially religious. But there are false religions as well as true. That religion is the likeliest to survive, which shows itself capable of meeting the wants of man's nature. Three elements are necessary, Dependence, Fellowship, Progress. In an analysis of what may be called the universal religion, these elements are found in different degrees and in different forms. In Islamism, Dependence is natural and indigenous, Fellowship is of artificial growth, Progress has no natural home. In Buddhism, Dependence is in the later developments, Fellowship is akin with its earliest features, Progress is recognised. Christianity has all the three elements. It is the manifestation of facts, laws and principles which are eternal. It does not deny the brightness and splendour of those beams of light which in all ages shone amongst men, but it points to them as proof of the eternal basis of the kingdom of God. Christianity having the elements of permanence, must be the religion of the future.

Robert Edward Bartlett in 1888, discoursed of 'The Letter and the Spirit.' The object was to discriminate between the form and the essence in Scripture exegesis, in the organisation and constitution of the Church, in the sacraments, in Christian doctrines and ordinances. Inspiration does not guarantee the adequacy and perfection of the prophets' written or spoken utterances. It tends rather the other way, for the spirit is thwarted by the letter and the prophet cannot fully utter the truth that is in him. This and such like things are to be considered when we deal with the sacred books. The danger of allegorical interpretation is very great. Yet the utterances of prophets and psalms may admit of other applications when they turn not on local and temporary but on eternal principles. The popular notion of the Bible has sprung up from preconceived ideas of what a hand-book of religion should be instead of con

perfectly human tone. It is not so much an inspired book as the writing of inspired men. The New Testament writers quote the Old without any reference to the original meaning of what they quote. The Church has not any given form of organisation, but takes organisation from the condition of society. There was no form of government instituted by Christ or His Apostles. Christians were left to organise themselves under the formative guiding and influence of the Spirit. The essence of the Church does not depend on its ministry, for then it would be not of the Spirit but of the letter. Baptism and the Eucharist have been materialised by the same substitution of the letter for the spirit. Allegories and metaphors have been taken literally, till baptism has become a charm by which a mysterious inward change is wrought in an unconscious soul and eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood are a transubstantiation of the sacramental elements into the real body and blood. Christian doctrine like the Church itself is a growth. The creeds of one age are not suitable for another. Theology is progressive. The freedom of the Spirit should be in worship and in the Christian life. The Church of the future will contain all the elements of good that have been evolved out of past experiences.

Dr Thomas Kelly Cheyne, in 1889, lectured on the 'Origin and religious contents of the psalter in the light of the Old Testament criticism and history of religion.' It was the application of modern criticism to the psalms, many of which are shown to have been written after the Babylonian exile.

Henry William Watkins, Archdeacon of Durham, set forth the whole case of 'Modern Criticism considered in its relations to the fourth gospel' in 1890. With the third generation of the second century there is abundant evidence of the existence of this gospel, and that it was accounted the work of St John. With the previous generation there was some difficulty especially as Justin Martyr does not quote from the gospels, only from 'The Memoirs of the Apostles,' but from the conditions under which he wrote, direct references to the Evangelists were not to be expected. Moreover there is good ground for believing that by 'Memoirs' Justin meant the four Gospels. Since the best books were written on the other side discoveries have been made which must have convinced all parties, such as that of a MS. of the Clementine Homilies in 1837, in which the fourth gospel is quoted, and the long lost Diatesseron of Tatian who was the pupil of Justin, and from which it is proved that the fourth gospel had

Charles Gore followed up in his Bampton Lectures in 1891 the subject which had raised an orthodox panic when treated of in Lux Mundi Christianity is defined as faith in the person of Jesus Christ. The vindication or exposition of this faith involves theological or metaphysical propositions. This is a necessary result from the rationality of man, he must and will reason. Hence dogma or doctrine. The Church is not committed to any definite dogma on such questions as the atonement or the inspiration of the Scriptures, but it is committed beyond recall to the doctrines about God and Christ as contained in the Nicene creed. This is said by way of preparation, the lecturer feeling himself bound to accept and defend what is called the Catholic interpretation of Christian doctrine and to identify it with the actual revelation in the Scriptures.

Christ is supernatural yet natural. He is the crown of creation, the completion of that order of creation in which God makes Himself manifest. The term supernatural is purely relative to what at any particular stage of thought, we mean by nature. Any new development may be called supernatural; so miracles are not a violation of nature but the natural phenomena; what we expect from the higher nature. The whole argument is a rational defence of orthodox theology in the sense of orthodoxy as understood by the term Catholic. But it is just this which draws attention to the lecturer's heresies. He makes even the mysteries of the Catholic faith to be rational doctrines. Though reason could not discover them, they are agreeable to reason. The Catholic creeds teach the true and perfect humanity of Jesus Christ. He was truly God, but He was as truly man. Though this is the Catholic faith, Catholics have been afraid of it. They have so leaned to the Divinity as to think that the Humanity of Jesus, from the first moment of His existence, possessed perfect actual knowledge of all reality, past, present, and future. The New Testament is on the side of the Catholic faith that Jesus 'grew in wisdom as He grew in stature,' a real growth in mental apprehension and spiritual capacity as in bodily stature. The human experiences attributed in the New Testament to Jesus are or seem to be inconsistent with practical omniscience. In St Matthew and St Mark, He is reported to have said that of the day and the hour of judgment He knew nothing. In St John, He is spoken of as accomplishing what the Father taught Him, and doing what He saw the Father do. He adds nothing out of His supposed omni

science to our physical or historical knowledge. His exclamation on the cross My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me,' shows that He had a human experience and human passions. St Paul describes the Incarnation as a self-emptying. Jesus emptied Himself of that which, as the Divine Word, He had in the glory of the Father, that He might become man. He was in the form of God but He took the form of a servant. For our sakes He became poor. The Incarnation was 'self-beggary.' The impossibility of reconciling the Divinity with the Humanity of Christ is fully admitted, because of the impossibility of our knowing God in the fulness of His Being. This self-limitation involved in the Incarnation takes away the validity of all arguments for the genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament from their being quoted by Christ. He alluded to them by their recognised names just as men will speak of the Iliad and Odyssey as the poetry of Homer, though they may reckon them as of composite origin. The one hundred and tenth Psalm may not be David's though Jesus quoted it as David's.

In 1893 Dr William Sanday lectured on the 'The Early History and Origin of the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration.' A change he said, had come over the conception of Biblical Inspiration. The Bible had in our time been studied like any other book and we must look at the results. The Bible is to tell its own story and we must not assume beforehand that it has nothing distinctive because it must be studied like other books. The turning point in the history of the canon is at the end of the second century. Many books that had passed as gospels and epistles were now rejected. Those retained as Canonical possessed special properties or attributes, and were considered as inspired by the Holy Ghost. Some regarded this inspiration as extending to the histories and even to the numbers in the sacred books. Others recognised degrees of inspiration. The prophets had visitations of the Spirit, but Christ had perpetual inspiration. The Jews attributed inspiration to books which were not in the canon, but to the Canonical books they ascribed authority. The formation of the canon was a gradual work, and to this there is an analogy in the doctrine of inspiration. The typical idea of inspiration was prophecy, and this was ultimately extended to other writings beside the prophetic About the end of the second century the general view of inspiration was much the same as was common with us fifty years ago. The difference was in the list of books which constituted the Bible. The modern theory of inspiration is arrived at by

what they give us to understand as their notion of inspiration. The conclusion is, that both these ideas of inspiration are admissible. The difference is that in the old view, the Bible is the Word of God, in the modern the Word of God is in the Bible.

In 1894, the lecturer was John Richardson Illingworth. His subject was Personality Human and Divine.' The lectures run out into the question of what is personality, the person of Christ, and the personality of God. They scarcely admit of analysis. The basis is Lotze's metaphysical idea that God is the only person. Person is defined as one who as subject is an object to himself. Personality is the only reality. It distinguishes man from the world of mere animals and things, and relates him to a spiritual order.

HULSEAN LECTURES

A FULL account was given of the Bampton Lectures in the belief that from them might be gathered a general idea of the religious thought of the century. Other lectures may be not less important but they go over the same ground and do not require extended notice. The first is the Hulsean, the object of which in the words of the founder was 'The Evidences of Revealed Religion against notorious Infidels, whether Atheists or Deists, not descending to any particular sects or controversies amongst Christians themselves, except some new and strange error, either of superstition or enthusiasm as Popery or Methodism.' The will of John Hulse was dated 1789, but the revenues were not sufficient to begin the Lectures till 1820. The first lecturer, C. Benson, discoursed of the peculiar office of the different branches of evidence as miracle and prophecy, and the eternal scheme and constitution of the gospel, and in the year following, on evidence drawn from the discourses of Jesus. James Clarke Franks had for his subject in 1823 the preaching and vindication of the gospel to Jews, Samaritans, and devout Gentiles as shown in the Acts, the Epistles of St Peter and in that to the Hebrews. Temple Chevallier in 1826 discoursed of the types of the Old Testament as fulfilled in the New. These were not merely pious and ingenious adaptations but intended by God, and showed unity of plan. The following year the same lecturer argued for Divine Power and Wisdom as evidenced by astronomy.

In a dissertation on the proper understanding of the Mosaic