serving God by being caught up into the sweep of his immanent creative power. But, on the other hand, the conformity of the spirit to the will of the transcendent God issues in self-judgment according to a holy standard, in penitence and reconciliation through divine forgiveness, in the spiritual study of God's works and his word, in worship or adoration of his perfections. The God of religion is the transcendent, or judging and forgiving God; and that human sanctification which is a conforming to his essential being as it rises in its ineffable glory above the universe is the holiness for whose development the day of sacred rest gives a special opportunity.

It appears, therefore, that the notion of a divine rest has a place in the purest and most intelligent theism. It is the basis of the distinction between sacred and secular time. If to the highest apprehension that distinction seems unworthy and temporary in its nature, this is because in our purest aspirations we lay hold of the conditions of an unseen eternal world. The setting apart of sacred time, and with it the notion of divine activity and repose, will, in the glorified future, be done away. But while earthly life is encompassed with its necessity of labor this cannot be. While the creative process is going on, and man, in proportion as he knows God, enters into that work along with Him, there must be, to spiritual apprehension, the divine periods of repose, that man may find God in the unchangeableness of his holy Self. The opportunity to celebrate that repose he rescues from the grasp of his toil by religiously setting apart one day in seven for rest and worship.

SUFFIELD, CONNECTICUT.

George F. Genung.

EDITORIAL.

THE ORTHODOX EDITOR'S REJOINDER.

FOR the benefit of those who read the article in our December number on "The Summer Excursion of an Orthodox Editor," but who may not see the "Methodist Review," we quote in full the comments of the editor on our sketch of his interesting journey. It will be noticed that he employs the same chastened style, and has the same fondness for tracing actions to their motives, as in the paragraphs we quoted in December: — "The Andover Review' for December is remarkable neither for its contributions nor its editorial products. Among the latter is an article - whether written by one of its editorial staff or by a literary mercenary it is difficult to tell on 'The Summer Excursion of an Orthodox Editor,' in which our article on 'The Crime of the Higher Criticism,' in our November-December number, is the subject, not of candid, scholarly review, but of studied personality and of flagrant ridicule. It was doubtless written in revenge for our article last year on Andover Errata,' in which we exposed some of the iniquities of Andoverism, and also because its management is in sympathy with the heresies we oppose. The editorial, so-called, sympathizes with the theories of Wellhausen, betrays great anxiety because, with the large majority of Christian scholars, we affirm our faith in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and exhibits total bewilderment, if not alarm, because we presumed to interview some German scholars with whom its writer is evidently not acquainted. It regards our achievement as 'marvelous,' our courage as stupendous, and the results of our investigation as prodigious. It recklessly runs up our interviews into the hundred, theorizes on the fabulous extent of our labors, trembles at the possibilities of our discoveries, and intimates in its suspension of ridicule 'for the present' that it is preparing for a tremendous attack on our positions in the future. It describes our interviews in a dramatic fashion, employing for the purpose a reckless and untrained imagination, and undertakes to construct out of gross literalism a tableau that should rival the masterpieces of the most conspicuous artists of the Old World. Lacking knowledge in all these things, it makes up in invention, all the time exposing its insincerity and dishonorable spirit. Rarely have we written anything that has so convulsed, alarmned, and tormented our critics as this introductory article. What shall be the effect of the revelations and arguments that shall follow? Surely, if the only answer to grave orthodoxy, based on the logic of history, is ridicule, the 'cause' for which it is employed must be in the last stages of anarchy, and its supporters must be wanting in those ethical and courteous considerations that fit disputants for honorable controversy. For the want of space in this number, we suspend further reply to the light artillery of Andover, except to say that so soon as the uproar of battle shall again be heard we shall be found in our place, doing as wholesome orthodox duty as the condition of things may suggest."

Lest the editor should be suspecting some innocent person of having written the objectionable editorial, we hasten to assure him that no "literary mercenary was employed, but that one of our editorial board wrote every word of it, with the full approval of his colleagues.

We must also acknowledge that, by some oversight on our part, the article entitled "Andover Errata" entirely escaped our notice at the time it appeared, and we had no knowledge of its existence till we read the paragraph quoted above.

We are at a loss to understand how the editor learned so soon that his introductory article "convulsed, alarmed, and tormented" his critics, as we have seen no published comments on it, except our own; and so far as we are concerned, we have been neither alarmed nor tormented, although we are willing to admit that we have been convulsed.

We evidently did not make it quite clear in what sense we used the words "for the present." We intended to refer, not to future articles of our own, but to the remaining articles in the series promised by the editor of the "Methodist Review." A tableau was presented in his introductory paper, and upon this tableau, which was a kind of pictorial conclusion of that article, we remarked that the curtain for the present falls. It depends upon the editor, not upon us, when the curtain shall rise again. We should, indeed, deem it a hopeless task to follow a discussion in which it is stated that the Epistles of Paul come chronologically after the Synoptic Gospels, in which the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is assumed, and which counts Professor Harnack among conservative critics, although he thinks the Fourth Gospel was written as late as A. D. 135, and rejects the concluding portions of the Synoptics, because they narrate the resurrection of Jesus. We certainly could not argue seriously with a writer who is so fascinated by the word “conservative" as to identify himself with those who happen to bear the name anywhere, who forgets that the conservatism of one country may be the radicalism of another, who attacks as rationalists certain Yale professors who are orthodoxy unalloyed compared with some German critics to whom he exultantly commits the future of the Bible, who might as reasonably expect those Unitarians who are called " conservative" to defend the doctrine of the Trinity as to expect, as he does, his new-found friends, because he has been told they are conservative, to agree with his opinions concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch and the date of the Book of Daniel. Therefore we do not intend to make an attack of any kind, "tremendous" or otherwise, upon the uncritical arguments which the editor of the "Methodist Review" employs in the discussion of Biblical criticism.

We apparently need to explain to the editor, although probably not to any one else, that our comments on his excursion had no reference whatever to the opinions he advocates, and were not intended to express any sympathy with the views he opposes, but were directed solely to a very singular method of gaining information on subjects which require the most careful investigation through months and years of intellectual toil, and to his naive conviction that the brief interviews of a summer vacation had put him in possession of a mass of new and valuable material, of

which the scholars and writers of America were ignorant, like the modest conviction of Mark Twain that he was fully competent to reform the German language after having devoted nine full weeks to a careful and critical study of it. We should have been quite as ready to smile with our readers at an extreme rationalistic critic who had returned from his vacation bubbling over with confidence, and believing that he was competent to pronounce the decisive word in behalf of some theory of Higher Criticism. We took up our parable simply to show that in the present stage of inquiry concerning the structure of the Bible it is not enough to have a high and reverent esteem for the holy Scripture, and an unshaken confidence that it contains the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever, and that it will not do to resort to hasty and superficial generalizations, nor to go about breathing out threatenings and slaughter. There is a work of long-continued, thorough, candid investigation to be carried on, and argument is worth the while only with such as have true scholarship and the historic sense, as well as piety, zeal, and defiance of all enemies of the faith.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT? ]

THE question is often asked by ministers in real perplexity. It is a practical question of great importance to the church, and they are, by their calling, responsible for the answer. But it is beset by difficulties. Recent criticism and interpretation of the testimony of the Old Testament itself have led to a reconstruction of the history of the people of Israel, its literature, and its religion, which inverts the order we used to think established. And if these results stand, a far-reaching reconstruction of the theological conceptions of sacred Scripture and inspiration must follow. The new wine cannot be put away in the old bottles. The new views are as yet far from universally accepted. Some eminent Biblical scholars oppose them as the outcome of false premises and a false method in criticism. Others attack the premises from the theological side as "rationalistic or "naturalistic," and the conclusions as subversive of religion, resulting in a "spent Bible," in the destruction of faith in divine revelation, and the authority of Christ himself. This last "easy way" with the critics is, we think, more likely to beget suspicion than conviction in the minds of modern men, who will find it difficult to understand how questions of fact in natural science or history can be settled by showing how inconvenient it would be to have to recast your most cherished opinions if the fact should be established, and who will naturally see in the resort to an irrelevant argument an unintentional confession of the weakness of the cause.

Under these circumstances the course which probably first suggests itself to most ministers, when the question presses them, is to say, adhuc sub judice lis est. It is not for me to decide where doctors disagree; I

must wait till scholars have come to something like unanimity. Whatever opinion I may myself incline to, being of no authority, I am not bound I have, indeed, no right- - to teach. A little reflection, however, will show that this disposition of the matter is inadmissible. It is not so clear that the minister has the right to take, in such a question, the attitude of the expectant layman pending a scientific controversy. He is by his calling a teacher of the Christian religion. This religion is founded on a revelation made in history, whose documents are the books of the Old and New Testaments. In order that he should be fitted for the teaching office, most Protestant churches insist that he shall have a liberal education, in which history, its materials, methods, and results, fill a large place. This historical training has been continued at the seminary, where he has studied the history of the church, in which the "Higher Criticism" has found some of its knottiest problems and achieved some of its most conspicuous successes, and where he has also investigated the original sources of Biblical history. Granted that there are in Old Testament criticism, as everywhere else, many points which must be left to the decision of experts, the grounds on which the proposed reconstruction of the Old Testament history rest are such as every educated man can understand and appreciate. They are, in the main, as intelligible to the reader of the English Bible as in the Hebrew. To plead the right to no opinion is to confess that a man's education, whether through his own fault or that of his teachers, has not fitted him for his calling. Moreover, if the teacher be content to wait for the end of the controversy, his hearers may not be. The views of the new school have been disseminated in the lucid, and in the best sense popular, writings of W. Robertson Smith, in the brilliant sketch of Wellhausen, in the " Encyclopædia Britannica," and in many other forms. There are few intelligent men or women in our congregations who have not, directly or indirectly, some knowledge of these theories. And whatever other result acquaintance with them may have, it has at least made the impression that the Bible is not the Koran it has often been taken for, coming down miraculously out of heaven, but a product as well as a factor of human history; that the divine in it has been revealed not only to men, but through men, who had this treasure in earthen vessels. The eternal truth it contains was not enounced sub specie æternitatis, but as a lesson adapted to the needs and limitations of the men of a certain time and a certain stage of religious culture, by which it is to be interpreted. This is of itself a change of greater significance than any particular theories about the stratification of the Old Testament literature. It is impossible for the preacher to ignore all this, and to go on treating the Old Testament in the old, unhistorical way, as if it were a collection of theologumena. In this embarrassment he is tempted to avoid the Old Testament altogether, and confine himself to the use of the immediately Christian Scriptures. More or less consciously many ministers, among not a few