572 NEW TESTAMENT 



and Hellenistic religious thought. It gave us for the first time a 

 succession of great Lives of Jesus and of Paul. 



The very fact that in this World's Congress of Arts and Science 

 we are gathered, not in connection with the Division of " Social 

 Culture," as a sub-department under the head of "Religion," but 

 under the Division "Historical Science," as a branch of the "His- 

 tory of Religion," shows appreciation of the facts. 



The group of canonized writings to which we apply the processes 

 of criticism and interpretation are an emanation of the religious 

 thought and life of the race in the period of its greatest manifestation. 

 It presents both direct and indirect reflections of this life, but it is 

 impossible that we should understand either the direct reflection 

 attempted in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, or the unintended 

 reflection which lends to the Epistles, Apocalypse, and Johannine 

 writings their highest value, if we study them apart from the broad 

 stream of contemporary religious development, both Jewish and 

 Gentile. For, as we well know, in that great age of the humanities, 

 when national barriers had broken down, Oriental religion, Greek 

 philosophy, art and literature, and Roman government had become 

 the common property of a united race, religious thought and practice 

 were also intermingled as never before. It is the distinctive feature 

 of New Testament science in our time that it recognizes this inter- 

 connection of Christianity in its origins with contemporary religious 

 life and literature, as has not been the case since the great church 

 historian of the fourth century gave us, as a pendent to his critical 

 review of Christian literature, the Preparatio Evangelica. 



I might mention as symptoms of the wider outlook here at home 

 the new chair of the History of Religions, by which Harvard has 

 created a meeting-point for its two departments of religious literatures 

 and of divinity. Harvard has wisely placed in it a Yale man, the fore- 

 most biblical scholar of America, and first speaker of this Depart- 

 ment. Had the means been forthcoming, Yale would probably have 

 anticipated her elder sister; for the aim is identical in both univers- 

 ities. Nor is it exceptional. The joint establishment, by cooperation 

 of our greater universities in East and West, of an annual intercol- 

 legiate lectureship on the history of religions bears witness to the 

 same. 



Once for all New Testament science has become a branch of the 

 history of religion; its canonical books are no longer an end, but 

 a means. We employ them as sources to comprehend the life and 

 thought which produced them. Is this disloyalty to Christian prin- 

 ciple? Far from it. It is only what might have been done eighteen 

 centuries ago if the church had appreciated as clearly as our Fourth 

 Evangelist the true attitude of Jesus toward the bibliolatry of the 

 synagogue : " Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them 



