should only "cause us to redouble our efforts to be fair to the achievements and virtues of the German people." In pursuance of this charitable aim, the Canon holds up to reprobation an Anglican dignitary, fortunately from over the Atlantic, who dared to speak of "the appalling hollowness of the claim of German supremacy in criticism and theology." Canon Robinson charitably attributes this judgment to ignorance or prejudice, and gives the following example from his own experience, to prove that no one can afford to ignore the work done by German scholars in getting back to "the earliest existing authorities in any branch of history or historical research":

During the last two years the writer of this article has been trying to get into touch, as far as lay within his power, with the earliest existing sources of information that throw light on the missionary efforts to which the conversion of the various countries of Europe was due, and he has had forced upon his attention the good work which has been done by German scholars in every branch of this field, much of which has hardly been touched by English historians.

German scholars whom he compares with Browning's Grammarian :

He settled Hoti's business-let it be !

Properly based Oun―

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,

Dead from the waist down.

The example of Missions is happy like Gratiano, “I thank thee for teaching me that word." "It will be worth while making some slight historical inquiry into "the missionary efforts in these last days of these masters of history, and what kind of conversion of the various countries of Europe " these missionaries have accomplished-a department of research which Canon Robinson expressly wishes us to "free our minds from dwelling

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Let us begin by acknowledging that the Germans are the masters of the letter. Like moles they burrow with infinite patience after every jot and tittle in the dark. For this sleuthhound of the letter, the typical German scholar, the Germans themselves have had to invent a name, the Philolog.

Philolog" [says Hueffer], derived as it is from Greek words meaning "friend of the word," may be exactly understood if it be read in the scriptural sense of "the letter which killeth and the spirit which giveth life." A "Philolog" is a scholar who of set purpose avoids paying attention to the spirit of the work he is criticizing, and who pays, on the other hand, an extremely minute and industrious attention, not only to the philology of the work in its English sense, but to the biography of the producer, to the methods of production, to the punctuation, the syntax, the dialect, variations, and to every possible department of fact connected with the work—

in short, the letter, and the letter only. Applied to the Gospels, this method would dissect the letter until the spirit

was killed. Applied to Missions in Europe, the German scholar would ignore the spirit of missionary effort, the religious results as such his one task is to "settle Hoti's business," to hunt down the minutest fact because it is a fact, the smallest letter because it is a letter. It is the sign of the inferior minds outside of Germany that they lie under the delusion that the value of the letter is to reveal the spirit. The Super-scholar has risen far above this superstition. The writer just quoted gives an instance of this emancipation from the spirit. A candidate for a doctorate in English Literature came to England for research work into the sources of his subject, the influence of The Pilgrim's Progress on contemporary English life and thought. His researches were these he called on London publishers and asked if they had published any editions of the book, and if so, how many they sold annually. The answers he tabulated, presented as his thesis, and received his doctorate. The present writer has heard of a German Super-schoolgirl who knew everything there was to know of the handwriting of Shakespeare, but confessed she had never read one of his plays. He is assured that she is not mythical. Probably she regarded the "thoroughness" of her ignorance of the spirit of Shakespeare as an additional merit.

But let us grant Canon Robinson more than all he claims for his friends. Say that they have spoken the last word on the sources of everything-the Law and the Prophets, the Synoptic Gospels, the missionary efforts to which the conversion of Europe is due. Still, it is surely permissible to ask whether this idolatry of the letter and ignoring of the spirit is a sufficient reason for swearing an eternal friendship with this nation of scholars, and grappling them to our souls with hoops of steel? Some of us have a weakness for the spirit, and like to see how the spirit of those with whom we are to be friends issues into action.

For instance, in the year 1910 a great World Missionary Conference was held in Edinburgh, and five years after, the late Professor Sir Alexander Simpson of Edinburgh University, a man famous throughout the medical world, gave the following reminis

cence:

Among the representatives of the Berlin Missionary Society was Missions-Inspector Axenfeld. He was the guest of one of my medical brethren, who tells me that, in their intercourse at home, Herr Axenfeld freely and frequently talked of the German invasion of Britain. If my friend suggested that our Navy might make a difficulty, he was reminded that Carthage was a great naval power in its time, but had been destroyed. Led up Arthur's Seat on a fine June day, he surveyed the fair scene, and spoke of what a pleasant place it would be to live in when it became German. My friend thought all the time that this was meant to pass for German humour. We know better now, and Herr Axenfeld is the very man who is credited with writing the letter signed by famous philosophers, professors, and preachers, which vainly tries to defend Germany's invasion of Belgium. It is a pain to see some of the names appended to

that egregious epistle. It is a greater pain to think that the spirit of it pervades a whole great people. There they are, class after class, all under the domination of a system that shows how a very perfect material organization can poison and pervert the normal life of the individual organisms under its control. Proud of their success in war and the marvellous increase of wealth from the extension of their commercial industries during two generations, they have been succumbing to a materialism that has let their favourite teachers work with a godless biology at the development of the Super-man till we see the evolution of a kind of Super-brute, possessed with the ambition to subdue the world.

Herr Axenfeld's name stands first of the signatories of the epistle "To the Evangelical Christians Abroad," but that may be mere alphabetical chance. Internal evidence may, however, suggest the hand of the pious Missions-Inspector; for the epistle refers to the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, and solemnly throws all "the responsibility for the terrible crime of this war and all its consequences for the development of the Kingdom of God on earth" upon "those who have long secretly and cunningly been spinning a web of conspiracy against Germany, which now they have flung over us in order to strangle us therein." This passage is italicized in the original. Obviously it comes appropriately from the pen of the man who, at a World Missionary Conference, told his host proudly of the coming invasion of Britain! At the Conference itself he spoke with a beautiful Christian piety of the common task of all Christians in the conversion of the heathen world:

The unity of paganism asks unity of Christianity. May every missionary help every heathen he meets to find his Saviour! May every society do its best to build native churches! But to build the golden bridge of Christian thinking and feeling, Christian literature and education, Christianized art and Christianized science, Christianized law, and Christianized public opinion in the wide world, is our common work.

We may assume that it was in order to build this "golden bridge" that this missionary nation entered Belgium-the golden bridge of Christianized science in its poison gases, of Christianized art in the destruction of cathedrals, of Christianized law in its violation of treaties and the law of nations, and of Christianized public opinion in its defiance of the moral judgment of the whole civilized world. It may be worth Canon Robinson's while, in his studies of the missionary efforts that first converted the countries of Europe, to mark his friends' missionary zeal in the conversion of Europe in these modern days. A sample is seen in Belgium and the North of France. It must be acknowledged that it is more thorough" than the first conversion to Christianity of which German scholars are the learned historians. The modern missionaries come as the apostles of "kultur"; and it is well for all students of German Missions to understand what is this culture" they are so eager to bless the world with. Many of us

thought at first it meant much the same as culture among ourselves -a high education of the mind, a certain cultivation and refinement of æsthetic taste, and such things. The German meaning is much more practical than this. "Kultur" means the training and discipline of every man in the State to be the willing instrument of the State's purposes, even though, as the Kaiser said, it involve the shooting down of his own father and mother. Every man is "cultured to this end, from the university professor to the street scavenger; and the "culture" with which German missionaries are so eager to bless Belgium, France, Britain, and the rest is to discipline the inhabitants of all countries to be the pliant and obedient instruments of the aims and ambitions of the German State.

What, then, are the missionary methods of this new Kingdom of God? We need no German scholars to tell us. The peaceful penetration of their spy-system; the violation of treaties; the atrocities in Belgium and elsewhere which have left a dark trail of blood and horror upon the memory of the human race. The subject is hateful, yet it is well that students of Missions should examine these atrocities with more thoroughness than German historians are likely to bestow upon them. They were not the acts of a man here or there who defied authority. Still less were they the wild lawless outrages of a mob that had thrown off discipline, or had never been under it. They were the outrages of the most highly disciplined army that ever existed, and an army disciplined for the very purpose of outrage as the true method of war. The proof is the German War Book, in which the method is deliberately laid down for the guidance of officers. The book is written with Teutonic cunning. Its peculiar logic, as Professor Morgan writes, "consists for the most part in ostentatiously laying down unimpeachable rules and then quietly destroying them by debilitating exceptions." To compel the peaceful inhabitants of an invaded country to give information about their country's forces; to expose them to the fire of their own troops; to levy supplies beyond their ability to pay; to exact forced labour on works for the injury of their country; to put to death prisoners of war: such things are forbidden. in the War Book, and then immediately allowed--when necessary or expedient. An assassin may be hired, a citizen bribed, an incendiary incited. When a bombardment begins, women and children, the old and feeble, must not be allowed to leave-their presence makes the bombardment more effective. Not merely are the material resources of a country to be destroyed, its very geist, its soul and spirit and intellectual essence, is to be ruined.

Hence [as Professor Morgan says] it may be no accident, but policy which has caused the Germans in Belgium to stable their horses in churches, to destroy municipal palaces,

to defile the hearth, and bombard cathedrals. All this is scientifically calculated “to smash the total spiritual resources" of a people, to humiliate them, to stupefy them— in a word, to break their "spirit."

Doubtless the Germans "saw it differently": it was probably the "golden bridge" which shines so picturesquely throughout Missions-inspektor Axenfeld's address at the World Missionary Conference.

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We naturally ask by what process a nation develops a missionary zeal so fiery that, to bless the world with its heaven-sent culture," it is prepared to destroy the world. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus. We see part of the process in the elementary schools, where "patriotism" is taught with the usual thoroughness of the chosen nation. An American writer who knew Germany well says: At a kindergarten two tots, a boy and a girl, stood at the top of some steps while the rest marched by and saluted. They later descended and went through the motions of reviewing the others. They were playing they were Kaiser and Kaiserin! He adds that he" found this pounding in of patriotism on every side distinctly nauseating"; but "learn young, learn fair." Hueffer tells how he heard one day the children of a country school singing at the pitch of their voices, Fuchs, du hast die Gans gestohlen"-instructions having been issued to teachers to make the children shout in their singing lessons. When it was pointed out to the Minister of Education that this ruined the vocal chords and gave Germany no chance in the vocaloperatic world, his reply was that manliness was much more important than the art of singing. To have a loud voice and to shout from the chest is, according to this gentleman, to be a better soldier.. .. Thus, in such a detail as this does Prussia attend to the warlike character of its people and to the inculcation of a national spirit of belligerence." Imagine this loud-voiced domineering manner carried on through every grade of education to the universities, and we begin to understand the superhuman apostles of "Kultur" in France and Flanders, and their evangelic enthusiasm for the conversion" of Europe. University professors and the pastors of the Church are the docile instruments of the State to produce this evangelic zeal, in which, naturally, they glory when they see it in action.

Among the signatories of the German Epistle to the Evangelical Christians Abroad referred to above was the famous Professor von Harnack of Berlin. Certain theologians on this side who professed themselves deeply indebted to his writings thought that this master in theology must be under some delusion thus to append his signature to such a document, and wrote to him personally to enlighten him. In a bitter and sarcastic reply he turned the charge of ignorance on them