84 QUEEN'S QUARTERLY. 



The critical movement has been going on for centuries but the 

 result of these varied labours has received a fuller application during 

 the last fifty years so that the text-books and lectures dealing with 

 the study of the Bible have been completely changed. For example, 

 let any one compare the " Student's Old Testament History," 1878, 

 Vi^ith the recent histories by Cornill, Wellhausen and Kent. In the 

 former case we find only a slight rearrangement or skilful para- 

 phrase of the Biblical material; in the latter the sources are carefully 

 estimated and an attempt made to trace the real development in 

 thought and life. In a movement of this kind, consisting of contri- 

 butions from the leading scholars of the world, the progress is slow 

 but steady. Personal preferences and sectional extravagances are 

 eliminated and agreement is reached along certain broad line^ ; then 

 the results are defined more clearly or qualified more carefully. A 

 public controversy in any locality, Toronto or elsewhere; a heresy 

 trial, great or small, has little effect upon these general movements. 

 It is a great impersonal movement unaflfected by temporary fancies 

 and uncontrolled by any particular church. This does not mean that 

 our local controversies are unimportant ; they may have considerable 

 effect upon ourselves, upon our church life as well as upon our 

 personal tempers. On the whole, then, we think that the situation, 

 as seen now when the dust of controversy has subsided a little, fur- 

 nishes some causes for thankfulness. The action' of all those con- 

 cerned has tended to vindicate a true Christian liberty without placing 

 the stamp of approval upon merely private speculations. The tem- 

 per of our daily journals in dealing with the subject has been ad- 

 mirable, representing as they do the general intelligence of the 

 community ; they have recognized that churches which reverence the 

 past cannot hastily accept new opinions, but they have at the same 

 time pointed out that the love of truth and the right of untrammelled 

 investigation is an essential thing which the churches must preserve. 

 The public refuses to be thrown into a panic even when stories are 

 told at meetings of the " Bible League " which are meant to make 

 one's flesh creep and which the authors tell us ought to spoil one's 

 sleep for many nights. Popular indifference to these subjects may 

 have something to do with this apathy, but there is also a recognition 

 of the fact that so many honest, faithful Christian men hold the so- 

 called " new views," and thus it is scarcely possible to believe that 

 the perfect truth is possessed by the rigid defenders of the old. 



As to the question of Bible teaching in Toronto University, a 

 full discussion would be out of place here. The present writer may 



