right light, or have its full title to supremacy conceded to it, unless it is viewed in its actual context in that history, and has the full play of resemblance and contrast brought to bear upon it from comparison with the other great historical religions of the world. Seeing, moreover, that religion, in all its forms, has as its correlative God, and the perfect religion its principle in the perfect relation between God and man-a relation which, if the Incarnation be assumed, carries us into the region of the supernatural -we are driven back on the yet more fundamental inquiries which occupy the opening chapters of this book. The vastness of the plan cannot be denied; but it is one that cannot be avoided, if the Christian view is to receive its rational grounding and rational vindication. Theology merges into the philosophy of Christianity, and the philosophy of Christianity proves itself to be the most convincing Christian apologetic.

One thing made clear by this bold scheme of Dr. Fairbairn's is that he has no fear of bringing Christianity to the test of rational inquiry, and no sympathy with the claim sometimes made for the divorce of religion from reason--of faith from theoretic thought. His independence and courage of mind are equally conspicuous in his defence of the place and necessity of intellectual interpretation and doctrinal formulations in Christianity. It is refreshing in these days of volatilization of beliefs and the apotheosis of nebulosity in religion generally to find a leader of thought using such words as these:

It does not lie in the power of any man or any society to keep the mysteries of the faith out of the hands of reason. . . . The only condition on which reason could have nothing to do with religion is that religion should have nothing to do with truth. . . .

Here, at least, it may be honestly said that there is no desire to build Faith upon the negation of Reason; where both are sons of God it were sin to seek to make the one legitimate at the expense of the other's legitimacy. . . Clear and sweet as the Galilean vision may be, it would, apart from the severer speculation which translated it from a history into a creed, have faded from human memory like a dreamı which delighted the light slumbers of the morning, though only to be so dissolved before the strenuous will of the day as to be impossible of recall. . . . It is a wholesome thing to remember that the men who elaborated our theologies were at least as rational as their critics, and that we owe it to historical truth to look at their beliefs with their eyes... They (the cecumenical formulæ) may have in many respects done violence to both speculation and logic; but one thing we must confess: if the idea they tried to express as to Christ's Person had not been formulated centuries since, we should have been forced to invent it, or something like it, in order that we might have some reasonable hypothesis explanatory of the course things have taken (cf. pp. 4, 13, 17, 18, 19).

It has already been stated that it is not intended to follow in detail the steps by which Dr. Fairbairn leads up to his great conclusion. That would be impossible within the limits. But a few of the outstanding problems may be briefly touched on. The first, and not least important, is the re lation in which a Supernatural Personality, such as Christ is assumed to be, stands to the philosophy of nature. It is the question that presses on many minds-Is not such a conception as the Incarnation ruled out of court by its radical incompatibility with the scientific doctrine of nature? Dr. Fairbairn meets this by showing, with much wealth of illustration, that nature and supernatural are not opposed ideasthat nature can only be construed in terms of reason, and through relation

to a Supreme Personal Intelligence-that it is, therefore, only rationally conceived, when viewed as "standing in and through the supernatural" (p. 56). It is the idealistic argument, by this time tolerably familiar, which Dr. Rashdall also develops in his Essay on Theism in Contentio Veritatis, that "there is such a correspondence between the mind and the universe, between the intelligible we think and the intellect we think by, that their relation can only be explained by identity of source, i.e., by both being expressions of a single Supreme Intelligence" (p. 37). With such a postulate, the result of the examination of Darwinism in the succeeding sections, both on the "regressive" and the "aggressive" methods, is already anticipated. Personality is at the end because Personality is at the beginning: "matter can not be defined save in terms that imply mind" (p. 49). The conclusion thus reached that nature must be conceived through the supernatural is confirmed by the study of man's ethical nature. With Butler and Kant it is established that an ethical man means an ethical universe; and as from evolution was deduced the reasonableness of the appearance of "creative persons" in history (p. 59), so from the fact that the ethical ideal is only real as it is personalized, there is inferred the possibility and the consonance with man's nature and God's method of working of a perfect Personality as the vehicle of highest good to the race (p. 92).

And if we find the ideal of the Perfect Man realized, must we not conceive Him in whom it is impersonated as essentially supernatural in quality, and in intrinsic worth of being above anything that nature can produce? (p. 92).

This is finely put, and undeniably has truth in it. But language must not conceal from us the fact that this

mode of interpreting the supernatural, however noble, leaves us still a long way from the kind of supernatural implied in the Incarnation as Dr. Fairbairn would have us understand it, or in miracles like those of the evangelical history, as Dr. Fairbairn, in a later chapter (pp. 331-5), defends them. What we have reached so far is the supernatural as a spiritual principle in nature, but not a supernatural which transcends nature, save in the sense in which every man, as personal and ethical, is supernatural. The Perfect Man, on this showing, is the crown of natural development, taking nature in the largest sense (p. 56); is "above anything that nature can produce" only as every higher kingdom of nature is above the powers of the lower -the organic above the inorganic, the personal above the animal. Every vegetable, as Hegel said, is a miracle to the mineral. When, however, we come to the Supernatural Personality of the Gospels and Epistles, and to the miracles of "physical transcendence" ascribed to Him, we are palpably on different ground. The one conception may be a preparation for the other; but it is not the same. Dr. Fairbairn does not shrink from the admission of the full consequences of his assertion of the Incarnation. The Incarnation as he conceives it is essentially the same mystery as the Church has always believed in the actual entrance of the Eternal Son of God into humanity and time. "We confess, indeed, that the Person of Christ is a stupendous miracle, in the proper sense the sole miracle of time" (p. 478). The very sinlessness of Christ, he contends with emphasis, implies miracle in His origin (p. 374). We are here on a quite different plane from the supernatural in the natural; and the formula applicable to the latter, viz., that the supernatural is but the natural viewed under a changed aspect (pp. 56, 307,

etc.) can certainly not be stretched without amphiboly to cover the supernatural of the Gospel and the Creeds. Dr. Fairbairn's idealistic friends will go with him his whole length in the one contention. They would probably not go with him a single step in the other. We are, in truth, in the case of the Incarnate Person, moving along a different line altogether from that of natural development-the line viz., of historical revelation, and this requires to be vindicated on presuppositions and by methods of its own.

There is another problem, however, to which, before proceeding to the direct consideration of religion and its history, Dr. Fairbairn, following closely in the lines of his earlier work, devotes two exceedingly interesting chapters. It is the problem of theodicy, as raised for theism by the existence of natural and moral evil. Here Optimism and Pessimism wage their ceaseless battles; but we may confine ourselves to the problem of moral evil as the really serious obstacle in the way of a theistic and ethical interpretation of the universe. On this crucial question Dr. Fairbairn severs himself absolutely from all theories which regard evil as a necessary strain in the constitution of the universe.

Moral evil is not something which need have been, or ought to have been; no metaphysical reasons justify it. It is not here even by the consent of God, though it is allowed that "we must conceive the Creator as responsible for the system under which it was introduced, which made it possible, which allowed it to become actual, and which now follows it with moral penalties and physical suf

On this question of freedom Dr. Fairbairn does less than justice in another place to the views of Augustine and Calvin. He gives this description of their doctrine: ""His (God's) was affirmed to be the one free will, and He foreordained and executed all things according to His good pleasure. While Freedom reigned in heaven, Necessity governed on earth; and mer

ferings" (p. 133). How then reconcile its appearance with a divine holiness and goodness? Dr. Fairbairn relies mainly on two principles for a solution -the one human freedom, with whose action God could not interfere, without denial of that freedom; the other, the principle enunciated by Augustine, Non sineret bonus fieri male, nisi omnipotens etiam de malo facere posset bene. "To allow evil to become and continue without any purpose of redemption, i.e., to leave it as an ultimate fact and the final state of created existence-were to us an absolutely inconceivable act in a good and holy and gracious God" (p. 168). Thus even the permission of evil points forward to the revelation of the Son of God. There are many profound and far-reaching thoughts in these sections-especially those which connect themselves with the idea of the organic constitution of the race. But there are unsolved problems as well, and parts of the argument move in a scholastic religion foreign to Dr. Fairbairn's usual modes of thought, and do not always convince even there. Take first the human side. (1) Everything is hinged on freedom. But is it so certain that freedom, as Dr. Fairbairn conceives of it-apparently a liberty of indifference is an idea philosophically tenable? Would the idealist, any more than the naturalist, admit it? Grant that will is self-determining, has self-determination not its own laws, according to which choice is made? If self and circumstances were perfectly known, would not every action be calculable? Does Dr. Fairbairn's own expression-“Granted a good man, a bad motive cannot sway

were but pawns in the hands of the Almighty, who moved them whithersoever He willed" (p. 179). This may be Dr. Fairbairn's view of the logical effect of the doctrine of these teachers; but it would be easy to show that it is by no means the view they took themselves of the bearing of their doctrine.

him: granted a bad man, and good motive will not find him" (p. 76)-not concede the point that character in man-which is ultimately self-is the finally determining factor? But (2) the argument seems valueless unless on the assumption that there was actually possible to man, in the exercise of his freedom, and under the original conditions in which he was placed, a sinless development. This agrees well enough with the status integritatis of the older theology, but how is it to be reconciled with the theories of modern anthropology? Was early man ever in such a condition as is postulated? Was a sinless development of the race ever even abstractly possible? We fail to see it, on these presuppositions.

Dr. Fairbairn certainly cannot be held responsible for theories which, in most of their accepted forms, he severely criticises and even ridicules (cf. p. 204). But it is permissible to ask what measure of freedom is left, or what possibility of sinless development remains, if "with science we describe the primitive as a savage state and name the person half-man, halfbrute" (p. 204)? On the side of the Creator the difficulty is hardly less. The plea that sin could not have been prevented save by interference with the free moral decisions of the creature is surely only valid (if one must mount into these transcendent regions) on the assumption that this is the only possible world that could have been created, or these the only free beings, or these the only circumstances in which human beings could have been placed-in short, on the assumption that, after all, sin was an inevitable result of creation. Else why the choice of this world, and not another into which sin would not enter? Our plumb-line, as probably Dr. Fairbairn would admit, fails us in these mysteries.

In no part of his work is Dr. Fairbairn more entirely at home, or more successful, than in his discussion of the idea, origin, and development of religion. The body of religion-the endlessly varied forms it assumes, the beliefs, customs, rites, institutions associated with it-these are due to the stage of culture, to natural and social environment, to local, tribal, national or racial idiosyncrasy: but its soul-religion itself-has its source in the changeless depths of man's rational and moral constitution. It is something, in Harnack's words, without which man would not be man. Empirical or merely psychological theories of the origin of religion-Mr. Spencer's, for example-Dr. Fairbairn decisively rejects. Because man is rational, the consciousness of God is inseparable from himself. Religion has not to do with part of man's being-thought, feeling, will: it involves his whole spiritual nature. "The consciousness which knows itself related to suprasensible Being represents not one faculty, but the whole exercised reasonthe concrete spirit reaching upwards and outwards to a spirit as concrete as itself" (p. 202). We may pass for the present what is said of the historical religions, and of the distinction of spontaneous religions from those founded and personal (in this category Dr. Fairbairn acknowledges only three: Buddhism, Islam, and the religion of Christ), to glance at his remarks on the religion from which Christianity itself sprang-that of Israel, Here it is possible for those who are at one with him in his general standpoint sometimes to agree and sometimes profoundly to disagree with his statements. His general view of the religion of Israel is as high as could be wished, though not higher than that which critics of nearly all schools are now well agreed in taking of it. Israel is described in the words of praise

accorded by Aristotle to Anaxagoras: "he walks amid the ancient peoples like a sober man among the drunkards" (so too Lotze). The note of this Hebrew religion is found to be Monotheism-a Monotheism which persisted, became ethical, and finally triumphed in the universalism of the prophets, despite the "rigorous tribal consciousness" that perpetually wrought to narrow and debase it. Might we not say that there is something still more important and remarkable in the religion of Israel than even its Monotheism: viz., the idea of a Divine purpose of grace unfolding itself in history, of which this people, chosen, instructed, and disciplined of God, is but the instrument for the benefit of mankind? Dr. Fairbairn eloquently recognizes the presence of this idea in the literature (p. 247), but is it not also the true key to the history-its connecting thread, its informing purpose, its very soul? We think it is; hence we cannot but regret that Dr. Fairbairn should lean so heavily as he does on certain modern constructions of the early history of the religion of Israel which ignore these ideas, and really belong, as we take it, to a different scheme of thought from that which finds its culmination in the Supernatural Personality and miraculous history of the second portion of his book. It is no necessary part of a sane critical view of the Old Testament to regard Hebrew Monotheism (if such it can be called) in the age of Moses as simply "a tribal cult," and the God of Israel as "but the strongest-and therefore the most majestic and awful-of the gods, who has selected a people for Himself" (p. 249). It is a very different picture, and very different ideas, we find engrained in the most ancient parts of Israel's literature-the pre

The newest and most radical school in Old Testament criticism, that of Gunkel, seems now to acknowledge thus much. See his "Genesis,"

prophetic histories incorporated in the Book of Genesis-where the Monotheism is already practically absolute." It may be confidently affirmed that there is no period in the history of Israel on which the critic can lay his finger, in which Jehovah is not already known as the Creator of heaven and earth and of man, and the Ruler and Judge of all nations of the earth. In Moses' time Israel is no longer a "tribe" but a nation; and it is Jehovah who has formed that nation, and redeemed it, and taken it into gracious relations with Himself for the highest ethical ends. This is the very antithesis of "a tribal cult." It belongs to Dr. Fairbairn's scheme of thought that he re gards the whole institutional law of Israel-its temple, sacrifices, priesthood, ritual-as really a departure from, and contradiction of, the true idea of God in Israel (pp. 249-50). Is not a higher point of view suggested by his own luminous exposition of the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ as they appear in the writings of the New Testament? (see the section, "The Christian idea as Interpreted through the Levitical Categories," pp. 492-500).

The transition to the full and careful study of the Christian religion is made through the idea of historical religions which have personal founders. These, it was remarked above, are three: Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. It has also been shown that Christianity, in Dr. Fairbairn's view, has its centre in the Supernatural Person-Jesus Christ, the Son of God in humanity. Before asking how this conception is vindicated, and what it means for religion, it is important to notice how it is connected with the idea of a founder of a religion. This will take us by the easiest road into the very heart of Dr. Fairbairn's thought.

The

Introd. p. 63. But it had all along been maintained by many believing scholars who were also critics.