walked around through it as a man walks through a familiar street risking no hurt because he knows the way so well. Shakespeare knows no impediments. All roads are open to him. "As You Like It," while some preachers might think the forest of Arden and Rosalind and Jacques beneath them and their study, is worth more than some dry course of lectures on theology or economics. You get to know womanhood and manhood in Shakespeare. You cannot go from him, in my belief, and not be something of a savant in human nature. He shows the thing rather than tells it. Coarseness of nature, fineness of nature, intense thought, lack of any thought, honor of dubitative cast and honor which has no lack, the simpleton, the maniac, the conceited donkey of two legs, the assininity of drunkenness, the nemesis of courses of sin, the hellishness of sin-mixed genius, the dolt and the genius, the gentleman and the libidinous beast miscalled a man, the differentiations of vice in individual make-up, the clarity of virtue especially in women-this and more make Shakespeare the preacher's schoolmaster in psychology.

The poet is creative. Giving this matter thought, that is a distinguished credential. God is chief creator as he is chief of everything good. His versatility is our amazement and his glory. He is the maker, the poet. He is to make all things His leaves and fruits and

new and has made all things new. ferns and cliffs are creations which make words poor in telling their grace and beauty. Poets emulate God in their limits. They are men. He is God. But what they have created is a fabulous wealth. "The Faerie Queen" is as certainly a creation as a star is, and its light as gentle and enduring. In poets is creative genius as above all other artisans. They are making so that even their rehabilitations are creations as one may know by noting Shakespeare's historical characters and studies. Who shall say that Mark Antony is not as original a person as Rosalind? Life leaps in the veins of what the poets do, and their poems and stratagems and characters are fresh contributions to the thought of men. The preacher is creative. Every sermon is not a work of art which is a hewed

thing whether from marble, wood, or words, but a formed thing, a life which grew with urgency like the willows by the stream. To feel that a sermon is as certainly a creation as a telescope or a poem or a book is for a preacher to find himself, among the rubbish of the world's camp. Men who hear should feel that whom they hear is a creator and what they hear a fresh thing filled with life like a trailing arbutus. For a preacher to feel so is to kill the drudgery of sermon making and to lift it into the realm of music and sculpture.

The poets breed inspiration in a life as sunrise breeds morning. And do I need to adduce illustrations of this? I wot not. "Abide With Me" was like a first sight of the sea to me. I recall its dawn on my heart as if that were not years ago in college days, but last night. Preachers ought to give off inspiration as central suns give light, heat, power. A preacher who does not inspire is not worth his keep. To inspire means to keep close to inspirations. Nor is it to the point to say that a preacher has all inspiration in his Master. That is quite true, but it is also true that Christ is the poet's Master and set the fire a-glowing in the poet's heart; and as Jesus gladdened his eyes by looking on flower fields and fields of stars and on the sweet faces of little children while and because he was God's son and fellowshiped with his Father knowing that God ought to exclude nothing from us but include all things for us, so preachers are to get inspirations from everywhere and by being in Christ and for him are qualified to get the most out which Christ has put in; just as a musician can best understand the music of a master. Poets are one of our Master's ways of saying his say to our souls.

Therefore, of all folks preachers and poets may well be the best of friends. The poet is he who stands above us nigher to the dawn and calls down like the old watchers from the temple's citadel, "The morning breaketh: day is here."

ART. IV. THE THEOLOGY OF RITSCHL.

THERE have been a few men, in the history of theology, who, by their strong personalities and forceful thought, have succeeded in dividing the Christian world into two opposing parties. Such were Athanasius, Augustine, Calvin. The problems which they raised and discussed were so fundamental and the theories which they advocated so sharply defined and thoroughly wrought out, that thinking men were almost compelled to decide for or against them. More than any other theologian of recent times, Albrecht Ritschl belongs to this class of men. He so combined the elements of previous systems and wrought them up into a compact whole as to force theological thought to the decision of certain questions of method and of fact so fundamental and far-reaching as to affect every problem of theology. This is the secret of the great stir which the views of Ritschl are making in the theological world of to-day. One might almost say that there is nothing new in them except the combination. There is probably no principle of his system which had not found expression and application in the work of others. Yet no one else had succeeded in so fusing these elements together and so impressing the result upon the theological world as to give rise to a school of thought. It will be the object of the present paper to explain Ritschl's leading principles and to indicate their bearing and effect upon theological method and opinion. But, first of all, a few words about Ritschl personally. He was born in 1822 in Berlin, and after completing his studies began teaching theology at Bonn in 1846. In 1864 he was called to Göttingen, where he labored till his death in 1889. In 1870-74 he published the first edition of his great work on Justification and Reconciliation, which contains an historical, biblical, and constructive study of the subject in all its various relations. Of great importance, also, for the study of Ritschl's method is the small treatise, published in 1881, on Theology and Metaphysics.

For the past thirty years the views presented in these writings have excited vigorous and constant discussion in Germany. Scores of books and pamphlets have appeared in criticism or in defense of Ritschl's positions. Alike from the side of orthodoxy or confessionalism and from that of the speculative or critical school have his opinions been attacked. Meantime, however, the tendency which he represented has steadily gained ground-especially in the universities. Not since the days of the mediating school in the first half of the last century-the school which included Nitzsch, Twesten, Müller, and Dorner-has there been such a brilliant galaxy of theologians united in the defense of a theological position. Kaftan and Harnack in Berlin, Herrmann in Marburg, Wendt in Jena, Loofs and Reischle in Halle, Schultz and Schürer in Göttingen, and Kattenbusch in Giessen are among those who represent, in general, the Ritschlian standpoint. There are no more brilliant names among the representatives of German dogmatic, historical, and exegetical theology than these. Echoes of the Ritschlian controversy have been occasionally heard in England and America during all this period, but it is only within the past decade that the knowledge of Ritschl has been popularized among English-speaking people. Until very recently none of his works had been translated into English, and only the most patient and persistent student of German theology would be likely to persevere in the reading of works which are so heavy in style and so abstruse in matter. It was in 1889 that the first book in English on the Ritschlian theology appeared. In that year Principal D. W. Simon published a translation of Stählin's Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl. It was a vehement attack on all three thinkers, so extreme and extravagant as largely to defeat its own end. It probably had some effect, however, in prejudicing English and American readers. Next appeared, in 1897, Professor Orr's able little work, The Ritschlian Theology. It is the work of a most competent critic, but the whole subject is regarded from the standpoint of a fixed adherence to traditional dogma. During these years (1889-97), then, Ritschl was presented to English read

ers chiefly by his critics. Most of the magazine articles and incidental discussions of his positions, such as those of Professors Denney, Scott, and Wenley, were adverse. In 1899, however, appeared Mr. Garvie's The Ritschlian Theology-a work based upon a careful first-hand study of Ritschl and at once critical and sympathetic in temper. Garvie sought to avoid the attitude of an advocate and to assume that of an impartial judge. He has rendered a valuable service to the students of the subject.

But at length the English reader is no longer dependent upon the expositor, but can, if he wishes, read Ritschl for himself. In 1900 the third or constructive part of his work on Justification and Reconciliation was published in English, and in 1901 Professor Swing, of Oberlin, published a translation of his Instruction in the Christian Religion, to which he prefixed an elaborate essay on Ritschl's system which is strongly sympathetic in spirit. The same may be said of President King's references to Ritschl in Reconstruction in Theology, while in the American Journal of Theology for January, 1901, Rev. L. H. Schwab enters "A Plea for Ritschl." Thus at last we have the matter presented on all sides and have the means of reading and judging for ourselves.

What, now, are all this debate and disputation about? Let me try to answer as clearly and simply as I can.

In the first place, they are about the question, What can be known and what cannot be known by the theologian? More comprehensively stated: They are about the relations of the ology to philosophy. Regarding many of the propositions of orthodoxy Ritschl and his school were agnostic. They admit that they do not know so much as the creeds assert because, they think, those assertions exceed the limits of human knowledge. It is common to assume that speculative philosophy must first lay the foundations for theology. By its means we must establish the existence of God and a general theory of the nature and meaning of the universe, and then theology may begin its work. The theologian must first adopt a system