342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is with, different feelings from those which Prof. Huxley 

 provokes that I turn for a while to Mrs. Humphrey Ward's article 

 on "The New Keformation." Since he adopts that article as a 

 sufficient confutation of mine, I feel obliged to notice it, though 

 I am sorry to appear in any position of antagonism to its author. 

 Apart from other considerations, I am under much obligation to 

 Mrs. Ward for the valuable series of articles which she contrib- 

 uted to the " Dictionary of Christian Biography " under my editor- 

 ship, upon the obscure but interesting history of the Goths in 

 Spain. I trust that, in her account of the effect upon Robert Els- 

 mere and Merriman of absorption in that barbarian scene, she is 

 not describing her own experience and the source of her own aber- 

 rations. But I feel especially bound to treat her argument with 

 consideration, and to waive any opposition which can be avoided. 

 I am sorry that she, too, questions the possibility in this country 

 of " a scientific, that is to say, an unprejudiced, an unbiased study 

 of theology, under present conditions," and I should have hoped 

 that she would have had too much confidence in her colleagues in 

 the important work to which I refer than to cast this slur upon 

 them. Their labors have, in fact, been received with sufficient 

 appreciation by German scholars of all schools to render their 

 vindication unnecessary; and if Prof. Huxley can extend his 

 study of German theological literature much beyond Zeller's 

 " Vortrage " of " a quarter of a century ago," or RitschFs writings 

 of " nearly forty years ago," he will not find himself countenanced 

 by church historians in Germany in his contempt for the recent 

 contributions of English scholars to early church history. How- 

 ever, it is the more easy for me to waive all differences of this 

 nature with Mrs. Ward, because it is unnecessary for me to look 

 beyond her article for its own refutation. Her main contention, 

 or that at least for which Prof. Huxley appeals to her, seems to 

 be that it is a mistake to suppose that the rationalistic movement 

 of Germany has been defeated in the sphere of New Testament 

 criticism, and she selects more particularly for her protest a recent 

 statement in the " Quarterly Review " that this criticism, and par- 

 ticularly the movement led by Baur, is "an attack which has 

 failed." The Quarterly Reviewer may be left to take care of him- 

 self ; but I would only ask what is the evidence which Mrs. Ward 

 adduces to the contrary ? It may be summed up in two words — 

 a prophecy and a romance. She does not adduce any evidence 

 that the Tubingen school, which is the one we are chiefly con- 

 cerned with, did not fail to establish its specific contentions ; on 

 the contrary, she says that " history protested," and she goes on 

 to prophesy the success of other speculations which arose from 

 that protest, concluding with an imaginary sketch, like that with 

 which " Robert Elsmere " ends, of a " new Reformation preparing, 



