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THE REV. CANON E. MCCLURE, M.A., M.R.I. A., ON 



successive German thinkers, is already beginning to crumble to 

 pieces. 



The last of the triad with which modern Christian theology 

 must be harmonized is " Scholarship." And here it is necessary 

 to make a few preliminary remarks. The 11 discoveries " of 

 scholars obtain a hearing all the more readily if they traverse 

 prevailing beliefs. Affirmations do not naturally attract as 

 much attention as negations, and the knowledge of this fact 

 is not without its influence on students of theology, whose tem- 

 poral future may largely depend upon their making their mark 

 in the world. Strauss and Baur found a Victorian public to take 

 interest in their destructive criticisms of the then prevailing 

 Christology. Have these critics made a permanent impression 

 on religious thought ( Drews in our own time has found a 

 translator to put into English his myth-theory of Christ, but 

 with no effect. The discussion as to the origins of the Synoptic 

 Gospels, and as to their respective dates, has ended, as Harnack 

 himself admits, in practically establishing the traditional view. 

 So there is not much more to be done by scholarship in this 

 domain. 



It is in the reconstruction of the mental environment of our 

 Lord that recent research claims to have made startling 

 discoveries. 



Weiss and Schweitzer — strange as it may seem to those who 

 have carefully studied their views — have given " Modernists " 

 their chief material for a reconstruction of the Person of Christ, 

 and of the faith of the Apostolic Church. Even Canon Streeter, 

 in FmincUUions.TesaLrds Schweitzer as a factor in modern theology, 

 although he seems to acknowledge that Schweitzer's views are 

 pushed to extremes. " Eresh light," he says, " is always blind- 

 ing, especially to those who see it first, and new views rarely 

 secure attention except when pushed to extremes. That this 

 is the case with the eschatological school, and especially with 

 Schweitzer, its literary genius, few will deny " (p. 78). Canon 

 Streeter even admits (p. 76) that " Eecent researches in the 

 field of what is known as apocalyptic eschatology have shown 

 (those religious hopes and ideasY to have dominated the minds 

 of so many of His (our Lord's) contemporaries" (p. 76). 

 The resuscitation of the Book of Enoch, and of pre-Christian 

 Apocalyptic literature generally, was a God-send for the Ger- 

 man critics. Schweitzer, with a naively patronizing air, says, 

 as quoted by Canon Streeter, " As of old Jacob wrestled with 

 the Angel, so German theology wrestles with Jesus of Nazareth, 

 and will not let Him go until He bless it — that is, until He 



