conviction has been growing that the idea of authority is alien to religion, and controversy over the question of the seat of authority must be fruitless, because meaningless. President Mullins does not agree with this tendency, apparently, because he regards the general abandonment of the claim for authority as an unfortunate outcome of the intrusion of the methods and assumptions of natural science into a realm where they are inapplicable (see pp. 126 ff., 267, etc.). Hence the book.

The discussions are distinctly controversial, even polemical, in method. A great number of representative thinkers are called up, their positions ably and clearly summarized, their most vulnerable points exposed and promptly and decisively pronounced upon. The views criticized are rarely presented in the language of their representatives. This is perhaps on account of the want of space but it tends to raise a doubt whether the reader is in possession of the exact doctrine in each case. The author makes abundant use of paradox, metaphor, and epigram. His vocabulary is Anglo-Saxon, his sentences are short and crisp, and his style has a brilliance and dash unusual in books on theology. There is a tendency under such circumstances to make sweeping statements and overstatements, and Mullins has not altogether escaped it. For example, on p. 346 he says: "But the scientific critic, asserting that they [i.e., the Old Testament writers] were men like ourselves without capacity for the infinite and influenced in their views by tradition and environment, alleges that they simply give us one variety of human thought about God and not authoritative truth on the subject." (Italics are mine.) How many scientific critics would agree to the first and third italicized expressions? Would Mullins himself deny the second? On p. 353 we read: "Who and what was Jesus Christ? This is the permanent question of rationalism." Is it specifically the rationalist and not every thoughtful religious man that asks this question? Again, on pp. 356 f., it is said: "The spiritual life behind and underneath, along with the apostolicity of the books, was the guiding principle in the formation of the New Testament canon, not plenary ecclesiastical authority." Granting the truth in the positive portion of this statement, what church historian would accept the negative position? Continuing: "This does not at all make of the Christian consciousness the ultimate authority. It is not as if men apart from God fixed the canon." Waiving the question whether the idea he here negatives is not the precise equivalent of the positive part of his own statement, one might ask: Who is there that means by "the Christian consciousness" "men apart from God"?

This manner of putting a case is rather characteristic. However, these are blemishes that have attached themselves to this very powerful work through the strength of conviction and enthusiasm of the writer and the apparent rapidity of his composition. He never hesitates or doubts; he does not question but affirms; he pronounces judgments and the undertone of authority is always audible. Opinions as to the underlying purport of the book will vary. Some will regard it as a vindication of the traditiontal view of inspiration, others may regard it as an attempt to mediate some modern views to the author's large conservative constituency, others again may see in it an effort to combine the new philosophy of pragmatism with the old theology, and still others may see in it an attack upon a dangerous "subjectivism" of which the author mistakenly thinks Schleiermacher the source. After reading carefully the whole work I am uncertain; but I think that the first and third of these suppositions are the best.

Turning now to the treatment of the subject, we find first a discussion of "the modern ideal of freedom." Remarking that "all philosophic roads naturally lead to individualism, or are made to do so," Mullins accepts "the beneficence of the modern movement" but thinks it must be "combined with the restraint necessary to human welfare." The latter has been carried to the extreme in Roman Catholicism, where "the principle of authority becomes absolute" and cancels individualism. The opposite principle, represented by Schleiermacher and Sabatier, has its roots in the early Christian centuries and has now a "leavening influence on all Protestant countries." It is designated "subjectivism." It affirms the supremacy of the Christian consciousness in religion and its method in theology coincides with the method of physical science. Mullins thinks it is "absolute individualism," that it affirms that "nothing is worthy of belief unless a man has discovered it himself." If this correctly represented the views of modern thinkers then there would seem to be no need of argument. He says it represents the complete intellectualizing of religion. In opposition to the "mobility" which subjectivists ascribe to the religious life as its chief characteristic, Mullins says that, to achieve the progressive realization of the religious ideal, "truth must become static in very large measure." How and where shall this static truth be discovered-rather, made known? is the question the answer to which is the thesis of this book.

The author gives a double answer to the question. The first answer draws attention to the creative power of life and its issue in the erection of standards according to which life is hereafter to be guided and promoted: "All human experience inevitably becomes socialized. Its outward expansions take the form of laws and institutions and traditions and canons, rules of action which inevitably become authoritative for society. The particular form assumed is determined by the sphere in which it arises, and the nature of the resultant authority corresponds. Now it is clear that the same law holds in religion as elsewhere" (p. 40). "There arises, then, an external expression of reality or truth or power which is indispensable and binding." Thus authoritative statements (doctrines) of religious truth arise.

...

Here we reach the author's pragmatism, according to which "knowledge of reality is conceived voluntaristically." It is a very promising phase of the author's thought. In this connecton many noble and exalted utterances are made by him, such as: "Religion is not and never was based on logical deductions from the world about us." "In religious experience we enter a world of new realities." "It is its power to give man this kind of knowledge and experience which is the distinct and magic quality in the Christian religion." "The only [?] method of proof here is that of immediate contact with God, the immediate experience of the power we crave, the exemption from sin and its power we so much need" (pp. 162-64). Here he seems to be in precise agreement with Schleiermacher and Clarke and other "subjectivists" whom he wrongly characterizes as saying, "Nothing is worthy of acceptance in religion save that which the individual can and does intellectually assimilate for himself" (p. 178). I have italicized the word which it was necessary for the author to use if he was not himself to be classed as a subjectivist, but many of the so-called subjectivists would oppose this view as strongly as he.

But this view of the author's does not suffice for him. Pragmatism knows no absolute, and when that is gone final authority, static reality, static truth, abiding norms depart also. Moreover, the canons of truth reached in this way are only "working principles"-too much like the working hypothesis of science, for which authority is only relative or figurative. Hence the author has recourse to another method.

This is to find a realm from which the methods and presuppositions of science are excluded. "Science," in the author's estimation, appears to be identical with the "exact sciences" or those whose inductions can be expressed in mathematical equations. The affirmation of another realm is made possible by showing first that, according to the selfconsciousness of Jesus, "he lived on another plane from ours." Here two important considerations are overlooked-first, that we have no other way of comprehending the self-consciousness of Jesus but through the Christian consciousness of those who gave to us the first reflections of his consciousness, namely, the authors of the New Testament narratives and the epistles; second, that to put Jesus on some other plane than that of the moral and religious consciousness in which men live is not to elevate him but to degrade him, since it puts him in a place in which he cannot truly be God to us, for no being can be God to the Christian if we cannot have moral and religious oneness with him.

The next step is to show that there are "intractable residues of science," or "ultimate essences or forms of reality which lie beyond the sphere of exact science." Science deals with manifestations only, but there are "realities behind the manifestations with which religion is concerned." There is a plus when science has reached its limits. Science depends on continuity. Here continuity is broken. The query rises: Does religion depend on discontinuity? If so, it abandons the normal, its "laws," too, have limited range, and "authority" itself ceases to be absolute. It appears, then, that authority is saved by Mullins only by splitting the world in two. Science has its world, but the intractable residues belong to another world. This dualism is not an inference of the reviewer, it is an affirmation of the author. The dualism must be moral also. We naturally meet at length the affirmation that Jesus opens to men a way of "escape from the prison-house of the cosmos" (p. 316). Here we meet an evidence that authority-religion involves the view of the world and of life held by mysticism and Catholicism.

The views presented as to the nature of authority, and the authority of Christ and the Bible, can easily be inferred from the above. The authority can be tested, it is granted, but only by the "spiritually competent." Others may accept the truths of revelation "simply as the consensus of the spiritually competent." But how shall the rest of us know that these are actually the spiritually competent? Only the spiritually competent can tell. Only the Pope knows that the Pope is infallible. Pure mysticism or pure legalism is the alternative. The author seems to accept the latter-"for the filial is higher than the legal as the apex is higher than the base of the pyramid. But the apex needs the base" (p. 388)-unless the expression be a slip.

It might be said on the other hand that when the author seems to forget his controversy he often rises to a grandeur and impressiveness of utterance on the subject of our human relations to God and to Christ, with all of which the reviewer deeply sympathizes. Disrobed of an inherited ecclesiastical vestment the work would be a worthy contribution to our religious life.

One lays down the book with the feeling that the debate on authority (in any but a figurative sense) in religion, if once begun among Protestants, becomes interminable until we see that it is ultimately meaningless, because it is an attempt to combine two incommensurables.

ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

GEORGE CROSS

"Das Problem der Entstehung des Christentums" (Johannes Weiss in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XVI [1913], 423-515).

At the outset the author states that the "origin" of Christianity, in the historical sense of the word, does not presuppose an absolutely new creation. In history as in nature the "new" is on the whole always a "corralling" of older elements according to a new principle and on the basis of a new experience of reality. Chief attention is given to these elements of newness in Christianity's origin; environmental items receive only secondary consideration. Three main topics are discussed: (1) the messianic movement in Jesus' lifetime; (2) the origin of the primitive community's messianic faith; and (3) the Christ-cult of the heathen communities. Weiss concludes that Jesus had preached his own messiahship, in the eschatological sense, but that he had also found in this realm ample room for the cultivation of a rich religious experience in the present. While by his preaching he had stimulated the disciples to belief in his messiahship, their faith would probably not have survived the shock of his death had not his own personal religious influence upon them been so strong. Thus the messianic faith of the first community goes back to the force of Jesus' own personality. Likewise the gospel of Paul rests upon the conviction that the heavenly Lord and the earthly Jesus are the same person who in unprecedented love and humility gave himself for us on the cross. Paul's Christology, however, is also rich in gnostic mythological traits as well as philosophical conceptions which were prevalent in his environment but which have nothing to do with the earthly Jesus yet Paul is always conscious that the heavenly Son of God, the heavenly Man, could complete his work of redemption only in the form of the earthly and historical Jesus. Paul had no close personal contact with this Jesus, yet he will have derived much from this source at second hand. Likewise the faith of the heathen community, though based upon no personal acquaintance of Jesus, rested upon the enthusiasm of the missionaries and the convincing power of their message. And faith in the heavenly Christ was strengthened by the historical consciousness that this Lord was the Jesus who had died in Jerusalem. Thus he furnished gentile Christians that ideal of suffering and martyrdom which helped to make the new religion a world-conquering faith.

"St. Paul in Arabia" (R. W. Balleine in the Interpreter, X, No. 1 [October, 1913], 81-89).