find that most of those who were against us have come over, and have been firing their guns at the fortress in which they themselves were once intrenched, until its walls are battered down. The Wesleyan movement marked a distinct advance in theology. Who dare say that in the future there will come no clear-headed, warm-hearted, candid seer of God to lead men to a larger understanding of the truth-one who, though receiving no fresh revelation, will see more clearly the relations of the thousand messages of God already spoken, and will interpret them more fully?

It is simply a question of interpretation. A truer exegesis will bring us truer views. Exegesis is a garment of the crazyquilt pattern. It has been made to cover a multitude of sins and sinners. Those charlatans who have added times and times together, and then glibly told us when the world would end, have not been the only grotesque exegetes. Origen was the chief offender in his age, and his methods are poisoning the minds of men to this very day. All Scripture, he thought, had three senses. The first was the apparent, purposely full of imperfections, like the body. The second was the moral sense, as superior to the first as the soul is superior to the body. Then there was the mystic sense, hidden from all but the few, and superior to the other two as the spirit is superior to the body and soul. Ever since his time men have carried mysticism into the study when they have gone to examine the Bible, and into the pulpit when they have gone to preach it. The Bible is best read through the eyes of common sense. But it has taken the world a long time to find this out. So it has happened that the man who knew no Greek, but did know God and good old Anglo-Saxon, has sometimes come nearer the truth than his learned neighbor. The new exegesis is one of candor and common sense. This kind of exegesis is rubbing many human thumb marks from the sacred page. Christian scholarship, as it ripens, tends toward unity, because it works away from personal and sectarian bias.

Progress in theology does not imply errancy in the Scripture. We must believe in an infallible word. Many supposed errors have disappeared in the light of thorough investigation. Archæological research has cleared up many a doubt. Progress in theology, instead of involving the errancy of Scripture, has

diminished the belief in such fallibility. Why may not the creed of to-day be found faulty? It is but a human symbol. Each of the historic creeds is colored by the controversies of the times in which it was born, and controversies always emphasize extremes. Some things have been established. If true to-day they will be true forever. But the advancing mind may find a lack of room in present formularies. It will be necessary to expand at some points. The restlessness of Christian thinkers, the certainly incomplete character of human knowledge, the presence in the world of a leavening truth which has not yet wrought its complete work, and the manifest evolution of doctrine throughout the history of the Church, make it sure that the demand may come for at least a partial restatement of Christian doctrine. The new statement will be both Calvinistic and Arminian. It will magnify grace and the divine sovereignty, but will not minify man's free agency. It will proclaim salvation through the atonement of Christ, but with no added theory to explain the mystery of redemption. It will declare faith in God's mercy, but will not minify his justice. The office and work of the Paraclete will be more emphasized. Eschatology will be less materialistic. For men to pause where they are would be to conclude that differences are contradictories. The human mind has apprehended differentiations of truth, but has not yet reached unification. Antithesis precedes synthesis. The drift of thought is toward deeper and broader views, by which different particulars will be seen to be but different phases of the same theological truth.

Richard G. Hobbo

ART. VII.-CONSCIOUSNESS AND CHRISTIAN FAITH. CURRENT literature still doggedly asks, Is Christian faith grounded in reason? This question is seemingly legitimate; but it is really an affront against Plato and an assault on the validity of all knowledge. Why interrogate the ground of Christian faith, in distinction from faith of any kind? Evidently the problem is raised by certain preconceptions. These disclose at once that peculiar egotism which makes one man's subjectivity the basis for agnosticism, while relegating that of another to the region of delusion. Credas quia absurdum est. The question implies, at the outset, opposition between faith and reason. But definitions should be determined by received thought. Such antagonism ejects from faith its most vital element-belief founded on facts. Faith issues from correct belief. Belief is correct only when grounded in reason. Christian faith and faith of any genuine sort differ merely in subjects. The subject in one case may be God, in another meteorological predictions. In origin and process the acts are one. The last resort of the analysis is mind. Both phases are legitimate contents of consciousness. If not, why not?

Beyond itself mind knows nothing in greater certainty than that of indubitable probability.

Knowledge is the certainty that our conceptions correspond to reality or to truth. By reality we mean any matter of fact, whether of the outer or inner world. By truth we mean rational principles. By certainty it is plain that we cannot mean any thoughtless assurance, but only that which results from the necessity of the admission.*

But how be sure of the certainty? We can know nothing to the degree that its opposite shall be impossible (for how determine the grounds of the impossibility?), except the reality of consciousness. This is true, in a sense, of such primal forms of knowledge as space and time, inasmuch as mind knows these only because it first knows itself. The "vasty deeps" outside of consciousness are accepted as they appear rational. Sanity demands belief in what lies in consciousness as, at least, formal actuality.

* Bowne.

But indubitable probability has the highest value. Sanity demands belief in externals as realities because of the laws of testimony. Mind knows itself. It believes in a universe. This belief is grounded on facts. The facts are assured by the laws of testimony. Evidently that testimony which certifies to the thinker his own personality, the existence and general trustworthiness of his senses and mental faculties, and the correctness of his perceptions and judgments may be valid with the religionist, no less than with the scientist. If not, why not? That this was as true in Plato's case as in Paul's argues nothing except an appeal to the facts. Nor can it be good discussion to urge the difference between the so-called facts of revelation and the so-called facts of nonreligious knowledge, or to set up the methods of physics as more rational than the methods of theology. There is here no question as to kind of facts; the sole question concerns the relation which any fact sustains to consciousness. How is any fact known? Mind knows directly no visible fact. The visible is only an inference. Every conclusion of thought is the result of a previous separation of the visible from the invisible. Of the invisible there is what is in consciousness and what is not in consciousness. What is in consciousness is known directly. All the certainty that can attach to the term knowledge obtains here. But such certainty obtains nowhere else. The visible and the invisible outside of consciousness are matters of inference. They are believed in on evidence. And this is true whether religion or physics be the field of thought. The last resort of all investigation is a place "dark with excessive bright;" yet it is in the laws and phenomena of this region that the problems of the schools and of Christianity must find their classification and solution.

Meanwhile, language is ultimately only a convenience. Below all definitions lies truth, incapable, whatever its name, of being entirely precipitated, or at all of being dissolved away, and serenely undisturbed by academic addresses and knightly tilting of reviews. It is a pity that men mistake their dictionaries for revelations and their egotisin for inspiration. The consistency and authority of thinking and its results demand for consciousness a scope wide and genuine enough to admit religious facts and their evidences, and a testimony so unhampered by theories as to place belief in those facts and evidences

by the side of belief in the facts and evidences of the schools. Otherwise, every man is his own encyclopedia, and uniformity in reasoning merely a caprice. For, whatever the subjects appealing, consciousness can only be one in the same individual; and this unity must declare, tentatively at least, for the legitimacy of the contents of Genesis, the gospels, and epistles, no less than of geology or philosophy. Suppose the appeal be to a "believer." The facts, on both sides, are arrayed, the testimony "finds" consciousness, the issue is belief; for the evidences "find" one indivisible court, and the processes giving conclusions are absolutely identical. In the sense of this paragraph I am unable to reach belief in Christ in any other way than that in which I reach belief, say, in evolution. If the mind knows anything at all it knows all facts not of itself in the same way.

Religious belief is, therefore, thus far, legitimate, or both reason and belief are wholly arbitrary and inextricably blended with "personal equations." But the nature of mind ought to go for something; whether material or iminaterial is here indifferent. In either case, it is not anything outside itself. But the outside is a composite of facts. No one has yet discovered its boundaries. It is evidently impossible to catalogue its qualities and kinds of facts. And it is sheer egotism to deny any fact because of its kind. Religious facts are possible. Consciousness is one; the rise of belief is one process; facts vary; all facts must have a standing in court. Otherwise, mere denials of any facts are equivalent to proof. But this is intellectual suicide.

Two things now come forth: will, and its deposits outside of consciousness. From the watchtower of will mind discerns what are called cause and effect, say, in friction and heat. We play with words when we say "invariable antecedence." For what originates that phrase? The attempt to explain the effect. This "attempt" is only another putting for "seeking the cause." Hume sought to do away with cause because his mind demanded an explanation of effect. The phrase "invariable antecedence" simply veiled the demand; friction and heat observed, it leads to friction willed, producing heat. This is contingent, for wherever will exists it is free. Experience tears the veil "invariable antecedence" away, and dis