through a Saviour atoning for sin, but by work in the world. Ignore God, but serve man. There is no confession or repentance of sin, no prostration of the soul before the awful holiness of God. The spirit of our time is one of great independence and self-confidence, indifference to questions about the future life, trust in the saving efficacy of good works, confidence that a life "as good as the average" cannot be damned, belief about God that "He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well," and conviction that the evils of the world can be cured by physical remedies (political and educational schemes) without the regeneration of the individual. The soul is able to work out its own salvation. The notion of personal relations with a personal God who comes down in love for man to atone for sin, declare his pardon, and give him new birth is held of little account even by some who favor the Church. The evil spirit of denial is still abroad in the world, not denying the reality of God and a Saviour and a future life and other things spiritual (the period of atheism is past), but denying that man can know anything about these matters with certainty, and that it is of the slightest importance to his life in this world that he should. Not until after Faust's death do we see the "Eternal Love coming down to his aid from above," which Goethe thought put his solution "entirely in harmony with our religious ideas." Faust developed himself, fought the devil, chose to do good deeds; and that is all that is needed, many think. A sense of guilt, and personal trust in a Saviour, are not to be thought of. The love that led Faust onward was love of a woman, and not love of God.

The needed corrective for all this is found in "Job." In the contest of "thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece," which is always being waged on the world's great battlefield of truth-seeking, yearning, striving, aching life, the deepest wisdom will be found with the sons of Zion. There is truth on each side, but the truth of Greece needs to be corrected and regenerated by the truth of Zion. Much of the mischievous error of to-day is involved in a definition of re

ligion that is too narrow. It is regarded as a part of life, and not as including all life. God is held too far off. Holding God afar off, men are content with an effort to be good. The Christian's goal, however, is not goodness, but perfection, and this goal cannot be reached apart from God. The soul of man is to be on fire with a passion for God. We never find in Faust and in the spirit he stands for "such an attitude of self-prostration and self-surrender as is implied in an act of prayer." Regeneration will bring this result, but not education. Sin cannot be taken out of a man by culture. When the desire for the highest good becomes a constant life-passion with a man God's purpose is accomplished in him. But man cannot choose the highest good without God's help. The attainment of perfection is not possible in this world, but the desire for it is. A man's constant attitude and yearning may be toward the good. Thus he may come to "love his own hates and to hate his own loves." There is profound truth in Goethe's teaching that man rises as he strives to possess the Ideal-that he is thus purified. But to have the whole truth Ideal and Beauty must be defined in their highest terms. The Ideal Beauty is God, and God in Christ. The ideals of living and doing for which men should strive are the ideals taught by God. A great duty of man is to help make the ideal become the actual in this world. For what is the Ideal? "Idealism" may be used to mean simply the impossible fictions of the imagination, just as "realism" may be used to mean the moral filth of the gutters of life. But, using the word in its highest sense, the ideal is the real, and the eternally real is the ideal. The things that are ideal to us now are the real things of eternity. To strive for the attainment of the ideal, then, is to strive for the attainment of the things that really are. It is to keep constantly in mind the great ends of life after the fleeting things of this world are gone. It is to look out of the passing show of Vanity Fair to worthiness and reality beyond. The great need of to-day is a passion for the ideal in this sense. Men for the most part live passionless lives,

if we use the word in a large way. It makes one just sick at heart to see the lives that so many of the young are living -the young men who worship no god but their belly, and burn no incense but that which constantly rises from their pipes and cigarettes; the young women who simply live from play to dance and dance to play, and who (if the claim of the theater managers is true, that eighty-five per cent of their patrons are women) must be doing not a little to support the worse than vulgar plays that now disgrace our stage. Here are the great problems of evil and trouble and suffering in the world, of the worth of a soul and its salvation, and of its daily relation to its Maker; and some seek soul-satisfaction in culture, and many seek neither religion nor culture, but ignore the whole matter and seek only pleasure and sensual gratification. The "painless dentistry" idea has got into all our thinking and doing; as if the best living could be without sacrifice, suffering, and pain! O for power to preach stinging prophet-words hot off the bat to rouse the young men and women of to-day to leave the smoke of their cigarettes and the deliciousness of their chocolates long enough to give their brains a chance and to consider their relation to their Creator; to make them willing to sacrifice their swine and to face a great experience with the Christ; to stir them to seek things requiring effort, read things that are difficult, do things that are hard, undertake things requiring sacrifice; to lead them to make Rabbi Ben Ezra's test:

Thy body at its best,

Men need a "Thus saith
great "I Am” in the
The message of Job
This yearning, filling,

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way? Spiritual education is not all play. the Lord" in their lives. There is a world, though many do ignore him. is a message about a passion for God. thrilling, overwhelming passion for God is the characteristic thing about him. The thing we miss in Faust is what we see strongest in Job-a great hungering and thirsting not merely for righteousness, but for God. "Oh that I knew

where I might find him!" Most men believe in God. There is little philosophical atheism. The trouble is that their belief makes little difference to them. When men are roused from indifference and brought to feel a passion for God-a passion for personal possession of him, and a passion for establishing his reign over other lives-then belief will find expression in action, as it ought to do. The American tendency is to sit on the bleachers and see others play. A work for a Prophet is to rouse men to come down and get into the game themselves for God and for humanity, to rush, to mass, to tackle, and to tackle low. A passion for God and his kingdom is needed.

Not so long as the mysteries of trouble and suffering press upon the human heart can the answer of Greece supplant that of Zion, and man cease to need what Job felt the need of a Friend in heaven, an Advocate. Not until the human heart ceases to be what it is now-a breeding place for sinwill it outgrow the need for that which Job grasped at, though never so dimly-a Redeemer. Not until God ceases to give men what they have now-hearts that will not be satisfied without him-will what Job felt cease to be their highest good-a passion for God. The world is eternally in need of a great consciousness of God.

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush aflame with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

Winfred Cheswey Rhrader,

ART. IV. THE THEOLOGY OF WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE.

DR. CLARKE belongs to what might with propriety be called the mediating school of theologians. He follows in the wake of Professor Bruce, and may be classed with Dr. Newman Smyth and President Henry Churchill King. Each of these men is cordial in his acceptance of the main conclusions of modern science and modern biblical criticism. Each of them is agreed that the conditions of modern thought call for a readjustment of theological opinion. This they feel to be especially necessary in order to save those who because of inability to harmonize modern thought and traditional Christianity are in danger of making shipwreck of faith. Though not an avowed reconstructionist, like President King, of Oberlin, the attitude of Dr. Clarke toward modern thought is one of the utmost openness. He is emphatically a man of his time and has a deep human sympathy with the restless throbbing life about him. His windows are open to the light of the present day, and his theology presents us that interpretation of Christianity which he feels that this light requires.

Let us hasten to acknowledge that the present forms the atmosphere in which theology is itself formed. That Christianity seen in the light of the present may be better understood must be the general truth if men are becoming more Christian. Yet in the current of intellectual development powerful eddies may set in against the clear discernment of Christian truth. Hence the need of that historical spirit which, while open to the light of the present day, will not hastily break with the past, but only for the most cogent reasons. The theologian must have such discrimination as, springing out of an accurate tracing of the historical movement in Christianity, will enable him to separate the Christian from the non-Christian elements of that atmosphere, using such only as are in harmony with the former.