RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

im Neutestamentlichen

Die Religion des Judenthums Zeitalter. (The Religion of Judaism in the Period of the New Testament). By Wilhelm Bousset. Berlin, 1903, Reuther & Reichard. The period actually covered by this study is that between the Maccabean wars and the emperor Hadrian. One of the most interesting portions of the book is that which deals with the evolution of Jewish piety into a Church. Among the facts which justify him in applying the term Church are that although the people are dispersed, and they do not any longer even possess a common language, still they form a spiritual unity; the formation of a Scripture canon; a specific ecclesiastical ethics; a confession of faith; ecclesiastical sins, such as unbelief; and the promise that the adherents of the system shall be saved by certain definite means. The third division deals with the Jewish religion as conditioned by national conceptions. On the one side there was the national Messianic hope, and on the other a certain universal interest which reached beyond the idea of the nation, and which led to speculations relative to the destruction and renewal of the world. In the fourth division we learn of theology and of individual belief. The individualization of piety was connected with the destruction of the temple service and the rise of the synagogue. One of the chief marks of this individualism was the firm faith in retribution in the next life. It was characterized further by a change in the idea of divine justice, which no longer could depend upon the doctrine of the union of God with his peculiar people. The individual, therefore, made his own score, so to speak, determining for himself his standing with God. As to the faith in God as Father, so strongly marked in the New Testament, there is but little trace of it in the later Jewish literature, although to a certain extent Judaism prepared the way in this particular for Christianity. The sixth division deals with the syncretism which distinguishes the literature of later Judaism. He traces the religious influence upon Judaism of the Egyptians, Parsees, Babylonians, and Hellenes, thereby overthrowing the theory of a distinctively Jewish development, and exhibiting the dualistic view of the world which characterized Judaism as compared with the Hebraic past. It is made clear that in the religion of Zarathustra the dualism is as truly relative as in Judaism, since in both the triumph of the divine is complete. The conclusion is that in so far as Christianity is dependent upon Judaism for its form and content it is not one religion alone but many that have brought their contribution, and yet he rightly concludes also that Christianity cannot be explained by any combination of elements of Judaism and other religions.

Der Logos. Ein Versuch ernennter Wurdigung einer alten Wahrheit (The Logos. An Attempt at a New Appreciation of an

Old Truth). By Theodor Simon. Leipzig, 1902, A. Deichert. The author of this valuable book is a philosopher rather than a theologian. Some years ago he published a work on the psychology of the apostle Paul. He is an independent thinker, and paid little attention to what his predecessors had said. In this book he pursues the same course, though there is reason to suspect that it is for a different reason; for even here he exhibits a striking familiarity with both ancient and modern philosophy, but so far as he refers to theological works at all it is to books published not later than the middle of the nineteenth century. The Scripture utterances relative to the Logos are revelations from God, and aid us in following the divine person of Christ back into eternity. And these utterances are not the final outcome of reflection upon the person of Christ, but they are the very root of the Christian religion itself. To the objection that Jesus does not seem to have made the way of salvation dependent upon the acceptance of certain opinions relative to God and the Logos, he replies that whatever the New Testament may represent Jesus as teaching on this point is learned from the New Testament itself and therefore cannot be used as a proof that some other part of the New Testament is false. The most valuable part of the book is that in which he traces the Logos idea prior to its introduction into Christian writings. He points out that according to the oriental notion the Deity was absolutely exalted above the world, which longed more or less consciously after a personal revelation of him. In Greek philosophy, on the other hand, the Logos represents the reasonable purpose of the world. Both ideas are found in Philo of Alexandria. The doctrine of the Logos commended itself to Philo especially because his syncretistic tendency was satisfied by the double meaning of the Logos as Word and Reason. He was the first to make the attempt to combine the oriental Logos, that is, the principle of divine revelation, with the Greek Logos, that is, the principle of a world purpose. The Christian doctrine of the Logos is next taken up in connection with the prologue of the fourth gospel, and presented first in its relation to purpose, that is, as Life, and next in its relation to cognition (Revelation), that is, as Light. But, true to the peculiarity noted above, it is not an exegesis we have, but a philosophical discussion, covering Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Nietzsche, the theory of knowledge, psychology, natural religion, mysticism, revelation, evolution, sin, death, the wrath of God, demons, and Satan. Thus it will be seen that the author's investigations embrace a remarkably extensive variety of subjects, while they testify to the thoroughness of his acquaintance with the philosophies of many eminent German scholars. According to Simon, there is nothing in all the world that cannot in some manner and degree be brought into relationship, more or less intimate, with the Logos. From the standpoint taken by the author the work is one to be recommended as adapted to awaken thought and stimulate faith in the reader,

RELIGIOUS AND EDUCATIONAL.

The Bible and Babylon Literature. This grows more extensive in Germany as the months go by. Each individual who says anything in public on the subject seems bent on rushing into print if he can find a publisher. Once in a while one finds something on the general subject that really goes to the root of matters. Such is an article by Friedrich Küchler in Die Christliche Welt, 1903, No. 23. He takes up the Mosaic law in comparison with the Code of Hammurabi, and reaches the conclusion that the former was in no sense dependent upon the latter. There are but twenty-three paragraphs of the two hundred and eighty-two that made up the code that could possibly be regarded as the source of Israelitish legislation. This in itself is striking enough. But more striking still is the fact that these are not in the same order with those of the Mosaic law, and that they are scattered throughout the whole code. The contents, too, are only like those in the Mosaic law in appearance, beyond which the similarity does not extend.

Recent

Family Origin of German Theological Students. statistics go to show that in Prussia, out of 1,103 Evangelical students during the year 1899-1900, 400 were sons of college-educated fathers; 300 were sons of pastors, 250 were sons of teachers, 150 were the sons of those engaged in commercial pursuits, while only about 100 sprang from parents engaged in agriculture or industrial pursuits. There were in Prussia in the same academic year 839 Catholic students, whose origin was directly the reverse of the Evangelicals. Of course the pastors' sons had to be counted out entirely in the case of the Catholics. But even the Catholic teachers furnished a very much smaller proportion of sons for the priesthood, which appears to be recruited chiefly from the industrial and agricultural classes. The statistics further show that so far as the Evangelical clergy are concerned the theological students came mostly either from pastors' families or from the families of those who were officially connected with the conduct of the Church.

Stöcker on the Anti-Jesuit Legislation. He is opposed to it, and in a recent speech in the Reichstag openly said so, on the ground that it is inexpedient, helping rather than hindering the cause of the legally ostracised, and on the ground that religious opinions and conduct ought to be perfectly free. He seemed even to favor the absolute separation of Church and State in Germany, claiming that all sects and denominations should have equal rights before the law.

SUMMARY OF THE REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES,

WHAT the University Settlements are to our American cities the Passmore Edwards Settlements (named after their founder) are to London. They are said to be "Emersonian in inception, in purpose, and in activity." Whatever that may mean, it means something which made it seem to Mr. Passmore Edwards proper that busts of Emerson and Martineau should be placed in the Tavistock Place House, at the unveiling of which essays were read by Ambassador Choate and Mrs. Humphry Ward. Those essays formed a center of interest in the September number of The Critic (New York). This is particularly true of Mrs. Ward's brief paper on Martineau, of whom she says that "he devoted his life to the greatest argument that can occupy the human mind, and the vast thought-palaces which he reared on the old bases of self-study and self-interrogation have been a shelter for the faith of multitudes in our generation." She recalls the fine phrase which Martineau used concerning Emerson's essays-"flashes of thought dart from his writings which are as lightning set fast, to gleam forever where it strikes." She thinks that, when all is said, the lasting and embalming element in both Martineau and Emerson, as in Plato, their master, will prove to be the element of poetry-"the flash set fast, to gleam forever where it strikes." Martineau once said that "preaching should be a lyric expression of the soul." In the Endeavors After the Christian Life, and the Hours of Thought, it is the lyrical element, the high, rapt, and rhythmic feeling, which makes them classic in English literature. We feel, as Mrs. Ward says, in his noblest passages the strong and steady rise of a lyrical and ethical enthusiasm dealing with scientific or psychological material as a great wind deals with the sea, fashioning it into forms of splendor or terror. Mrs. Ward thinks that, but for the strong mind behind it, Martineau's lyrical and poetic gift might have led him astray into “that flowery emptiness which so readily besets the preacher." But while his early style was a trifle too Asiatic and bejeweled, his strong Puritan character and keen intellect moderated the excessive splendor and made his power of lovely words and his extraordinary gift for metaphor to be his servants, not his masters. As showing this gift in action, Mrs. Ward refers to the passage in which Martineau describes, with vivid historical imagination, the effect on the mind of young Saul of Tarsus of his own persecuting zeal against the infant Church. The first Christian witnesses have been haled before their judges. Stephen has been stoned. And now in the mind and life of Saul there is a lull, in which memory begins to work upon him. "This triumphant persecutor of gentle and blameless Christians

has long watched the life of those whom he pursued, he has gone from house to house among these people of the new sect and overheard their domestic converse and their social prayer; and though the storm of fury within him drowned all impressions at the time, echoes and memories begin to come to him now of all that he has seen and heard-low and mellow voices of inspired devotion, as of souls confiding all to a God close by-gleams, too, of Christian faces that returned his fiery glance with a gaze most clear and calm and deep, like starlight upon flame." Only a poet of the soul could have conceived that exquisite simile. Martineau's rare gift for phrasing is also in this statement of the preacher's power over the souls before him in the hour of the pulpit's opportunity: "We may touch a sense which was never touched before; we may waken a low sweet music, at which the sleeping soul may turn with wondering face, and gently cross the bridge of dreams, and open at length the living eye, and say, 'What world is this, and wherefore am I here?" A sample of Martineau's wonderful style of expression is in his picture of the religious situation in Europe, just after that great tumult-year of 1848, a year full of the crash of thrones and institutions. In that critical time of change and apprehension he thought he saw the hostile hosts mustering-Catholicism on the one side and a pantheistic socialism on the other, while between them was Protestantism apparently unready and insufficient for its task. This is his picture:

On the one hand the venerable Genius of a Divine Past goes round with cowl and crosier; and from the Halls of Oxford and the Cathedrals of Europe gathers, by the aspect of ancient sanctity and the music of a sweet eloquence and the praises of consecrated Art, a vast multitude of devoted crusaders to fight with him for the ashes of the Fathers and the sepulchers of the first centuries. On the other, the young Genius of a Godless Future, with the serene intensity of metaphysic enthusiasm on his brow, and the burning songs of liberty upon his lips, wanders through the great cities of our world, and in toiling workshops and restless colleges preaches the promise of a golden age, when priests and kings shall be hurled from their oppressive seat, and freed humanity, relieved from the incubus of worship, shall start itself to the proportions of a God. Who shall abide in peace the crash and conflict of this war?

Let us forever

The grave of the historian John Richard Green, on the mountainside at Mentone, is marked as he directed with the words, "Say of me, 'He died learning." Let us forever learn! seek to know the fullness of the truth which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord; let us pray Him to send abroad that Light which enables men to see the solid forms of things, "turning dark hollows into nests of beauty and melting visionary mountains into clouds." Alike through Martineau and John Henry Newman, through Faber and Whittier some truth has shined. And there seems to be some Christianity in these lines which Zangwill, the Jew, addresses to Christ: