704 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to all enjoyments. There have been 

 times when men, to save their souls, 

 would go forth into the wilderness 

 or the desert. Such sacrifices are 

 not needed in the present day; there 

 is a very respectable measure of sal- 

 vation to be won in cultivating a 

 garden. 



THE TROUBLES OF ORTEODOXT. 



The thought of the age has now 

 reached a point of development at 

 which it has become almost impos- 

 sible for any man of trained intel- 

 lect to say that he receives on author- 

 ity pure and simple any statement 

 which admits or should admit of di- 

 rect verification — for example, any 

 statement dealing with matters of 

 a historical or scientific character. 

 This, if we mistake not, is the true 

 secret of the troubles over doctri- 

 nal questions which have lately bro- 

 ken out in more than one division 

 of the Christian Church. It is not 

 so much that there has been a revolt 

 against doctrines as such, as that a 

 need is felt by thinking and culti- 

 vated men to seek for higher grounds 

 of belief than those hitherto deemed 

 sufficient. This has led to a certain 

 generalization of belief, if we may so 

 call it, which to less cultivated minds 

 looks almost like an abandonment of 

 the most essential doctrines of the 

 Christian faith. Such a view of the 

 matter, ho\\'ever, we hold to be en- 

 tirely erroneous. The men we are 

 thinking of — and Dr. Briggs and 

 Bishop Potter may be taken as con- 

 spicuous examples — have the inter- 

 ests of religion and of their fellow- 

 men at heart. They do not wish to 

 force upon others a mode of looking 

 at religious questions for which they 

 are not prepared ; but, for their own 

 part, they find it necessary to restate 

 the articles of their religious faith in 

 terms which do not absolutely con- 

 flict with the principles of reason. 

 This rectification of terms is im- 

 posed in part by the conditions of 

 thought in the modern world, but to 



an equal extent at least by what may 

 be called an inward expansion of 

 the doctrines themselves. Who that 

 holds any truth, scientific or other, 

 does not feel impelled to seek for it 

 continually a wider interpretation 

 and application? Not otherwise is 

 it, we hold, with religious doctrines; 

 they have their own law of growth 

 and development, and he who would 

 arrest the process condemns them to 

 atrophy and decay. 



It is charged against both the 

 scholars we have mentioned that they 

 speak of the Bible as literature, and 

 say that in determining its meaning 

 we must keep in view the same class 

 of considerations which would guide 

 us in dealing with other literary 

 monuments. There is nothing in 

 this Avhich need alarm any thought- 

 ful person. It Avould be doing less 

 than justice to the Bible to deny 

 that many parts of it are literature 

 of a very high order; and it would 

 be doing less than justice to our own 

 intellects to deny that the concep- 

 tion of the Bible as literature is a 

 great help to its correct interpreta- 

 tion. Religion, in the view of such 

 men as we have mentioned, does not 

 depend upon the meaning given to a 

 text or the acceptance or rejection 

 of any specific statement of fact. 

 There is nothing specially " reli- 

 gious " in believing that the Epistle 

 to the Hebrews was written by St. 

 Paul, or that the adventures of Jo- 

 nah were precisely as described in 

 the book that bears his name. Grant 

 that the organ of religious appre- 

 hension is faith, yet each age must 

 settle for itself the question as to 

 what is the proper scope of faith and 

 what of reason. In the present day 

 reason can deal with many things 

 which at one time were thought to 

 be entirely within the domain of 

 faith, and it -rt-ould be rash to say 

 that the frontier has even yet re- 

 ceived its final rectification. If we 

 rightly understand the position of 

 Dr. Briggs and Bishop Potter, they 



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