To understand the new

This whole field is now explored by a new school. psychology, nothing more is needed than physiology and physics. In it sensation becomes a question of mere molecular physics, a form of motion, vibration, extension. And there is some excuse for this. The matter which goes to build up our living body has not put off any of its necessary qualities in doing so. It is extended, ponderable, divisible, movable. There are vibrations in the cells and nerves; there is a mechanical response to external action in the reaction of the great mass of matter which constitutes the body. But it is one thing that a living body should not be found without mechanical movement and other physical qualities; and it is quite another thing that itself or its sensitive life should consist only of mechanical motion, or the manifestation of physical attributes. The functions of a live subject are of two classes. One regards the nourishment, growth, and reproduction of the body; another regards the life of relation. It is the same soul which, acting spiritually in its own conscious intellect, will, and memory, actuates also the animal body as a principle of life united with matter.

In all this department of philosophy we owe to modern physiology a debt or two; but no amount of experimentation on the things of nature or on ourselves need make us mere experimentalists or empiricists, who will accept only that which is tested by physical experiment or is observed by the physiologist's eye.

The expounder of modern psychology indicates that, in spite of Kant's prediction to the contrary, psychology has become an "exact science," that is to say, involving mathematical measurements. Three great proofs are offered us to establish a conviction in our minds that experimental psychology has grown, has followed methods of its own, and has achieved much. (1) There is Weber's law. (2) There are Fechner's measures for psychical phenomena. (3) There is Wundt's foundation of a psychological laboratory. To these may be added subordinate proofs. (4) The general harmony of the new psychology with evolution. (5) The need of emancipation on the part of psychology, or its right to "autonomy." (6) The perfectly obvious fact that the old peripatetic or scholastic philosophy about the soul passed out of existence somewhere in the sixteenth century. These so-called proofs are subjected to severe criticism by the author of this article.

What becomes of pedagogics, or the science of education, in a philosophical system which knows no ideas, no intellect, no spiritual emotion of a higher will, not even sense, which admits only sound-waves or light-waves as coming from without and playing on nerves, which understands nothing but the stimulation of ganglia, chiefly that which is called the brain, and considers the irritation of tissue from some undefined activities without to be the whole contribution of knowledge to what it denominates "consciousness" within?

Now, what degree of utility attaches to this psychology from the teacher's point of view? A commissioner of education writes thus: "I do not mean to discourage or disparage physiological psychology; for it is certainly the best part of physiology, and will bring with it stores of important knowledge useful in hygiene and the pathology of education." Three classes of works on psychology are before the public. 1. Works written from the so-called standpoint of common sense. 2. Works written by physiologists and physiological psychologists. 3. Works on rational psychology from the school of Aristotle or of Kant. The commissioner gives his opinion on the second class. Their treatises include two sub-classes. "(1) Those which make the senses the source of all our knowledge. (2) Those that seek in the study of the brain and nervous system the explanation of the phenomena of mind. Both of these subclasses agree in making mental action something organic-a function of the physical

...

organism-instead of placing it in a soul transcending the physical body, and controlling the same. . . . The entire drift of their thought is negative to the aggregate of ethical and religious convictions which the age holds in its 'common sense,' which regards man as made up of an immortal soul, transcendent of matter, and charged with the ethical mandate to subdue the body, and use it only as an instrument for transcendent purpose, namely, for the knowing and willing of what is Divine. . . . Now, since education is simply the means of initiating youth into the forms and convictions of our civilization, we can see how negative is the attitude of all forms of materialism. Its study by the teacher, unless he is able to escape its implications, will be injurious. The only cure is to hold firmly to the dogmatic basis (of common sense), or to move forward to the psychology founded on philosophical insight. Without this resort to the first or third basis, agnosticism is the only result of studying physiological psychology, or materialism."

"Need more be said about this modern psychology as applied in the schoolroom, in connexion with which it is said so sententiously that 'to train the mind without a knowledge of the mind is absurd'? If so, this pedagogical psychology must be extravagantly absurd. For it 'titillates and tattoos' a ganglion called the brain, and, as to mind, that it neither knows of nor cares to use. For our part, we prefer a psychology that includes mind and soul. And if, thanks to the beneficence of Him who hath given wisdom to mankind, such psychology is old, we do not object to it on that account. Oftentimes the old wine is best."

CURRENT

GERMAN THOUGHT.

HOLY SCRIPTURE AND CRITICISM. By Dr. VOLCK, Dorpat (Neue kirchl. Zeitschr., 1894, No. 12).—Dr. Volck, as a Lutheran, endeavours to maintain a middle position between the extreme which on critical grounds rejects the inspiration and authority of Scripture altogether, and the extreme which denies the existence of error of any kind in Scripture. A few writers, both Lutheran and Reformed, still take the latter ground as the only security against the attacks of advanced criticism-as Dr. Volck thinks, unwisely. The Lutheran Church has always taken a freer attitude to Scripture than the Reformed. The seventeenth-century divines of both Churches, but especially the latter, held the most rigid views of literal inspiration and absolute inerrancy. Luther took a very free line. His test of canonicity was exceedingly subjective, namely, the extent to which any book of Scripture treated of Jesus Christ. He rejected James, Jude, 2 Peter, as failing to meet this test. He was doubtful also of the apostolic origin of Hebrews and Revelation. While Lutheran divines have no adopted all these opinions of Luther, they have been greatly influenced by his general attitude.

In the first place, Dr. Volck maintains the right and necessity of criticism in regard both to the text and canon of Scripture. We may appeal to the extreme care and accuracy of the Massorete editors of the text; but that care for rigid uniformity was by no means characteristic of earlier editors, as may be seen in the different forms of parallel passages (Isa. xxxvi.-xxxix. = 2 Kings xviii. 13-xx. 19; Ps. xviii. = 2 Sam. xxii.). We have an example of the different versions of the text in the tikkune sopherim (corrections of the learned), which Jewish tradition has brought down to us. The Massoretic text itself cannot be traced further back than the first centuries after Christ. The Hebrew text used by the translators of the LXX. was different from and sometimes better than ours. In face of these facts, how can we speak of a

fixed form of the text above the need of critical revision? As to the question of a canon, there are some modern writers (Haug, Die Autorität der heil. Schrift u. die Kritik, 1891; and the school of the Theol. Lit.-Zeitung) who describe the very idea of a canon as a mistake, the product of a degenerate religious age. As long, it is said, as the living sense of religion was powerful in the Church, either Jewish or Christian, no need of a written authority was felt or thought of. And yet these writers ascribe even to the Old Testament some sort of authority for the Christian Church. If so, is not an authoritative record of the primal revelation necessary? Certainly the question of the canon is not closed by decisions of synagogues and councils; inquiry is still necessary and free. But such inquiry will always proceed under two conditions-first with reverence and due regard to ancient investigations and decisions, and secondly with a clear understanding of what Scripture is and is not. The latter point is of special importance. Scripture is more than a testimony to Christ and a making known of God's will for our salvation. It is this in the form of historical transactions between

God and man. Its very doctrine rests on historical conditions. Scripture contains much more than what is necessary to individual salvation. Its first message is to the Church, to which it gives an authentic account of the origin, growth, and consummation of the union and fellowship which it is God's aim to establish between Himself and mankind. The Church is the realization of that fellowship. To the Church, Scripture is God's Word, i.e. its law; to the individual, Scripture contains God's Word, i.e. for his salvation. The question of the canon involves two points-the historical circumstances in which the several parts of Scripture arose, and the organic unity of the whole.

That the Old Testament has any authority at all for Christians is strenuously denied by writers like those already mentioned, and advanced critics like Smend, who says that we do violence to the historical meaning of the Old Testament religion, and mistake its nature, when we regard it as a designed preparation for Christ's perfect revelation. This position cannot be reconciled with the attitude of Christ and the apostles (see Matt. v. 17). What Christ does in this passage is to bring out the full meaning of the ancient Law, and impose it anew on the Church. He uses the Old Testament in His own conflicts with Satanic temptation. Scripture governs His acts; Scripture governs His words. In His teaching, His suffering, His death, He has recourse to it. He Himself is the import of Old Testament Scripture (Luke xxiv. 27, 44; John v. 39). The same is true of the apostles, who find references to Christ in the narratives of Hagar and Ishmael (Gal. iv. 24, ff.); of the rock which Moses smote (1 Cor. x. 4); Isaiah's vision (John xii. 41). Modern criticism, indeed, condemns such use of the Old Testament by the apostles as irreconcilable with its "scientific conscience." But this use is right, because it is the consequence of the right view of Scripture as the testimony, arising out of the sacred history, to Him to whom that history pointed. The critical condemnation often appeals to Gal. iv. 21–30, which is described as a specimen of rabbinical exegesis. "But the exegesis is just as right as that of Matt. ii. 15 and Heb. ii. 12, ff. In the relation of Hagar and Sarah, and the antithesis of Ishmael and Isaac, Paul shows the relation of the legal to the evangelical order of things, and the antithesis of the Church of Jesus to the hostile Jewish nation; and he is right in this. That antithesis is the same for the beginning of God's Church in Abraham's days, as that in the New Testament between Law and faith, Judaism and Christianity. If this is rabbinical exegesis, it only shows that rabbinical and false are not one and the same." Not only in the New Testament, but in the earliest Church, the Old Testament was regarded as God's Word. At the same time, the difference between the two must not be overlooked-the difference between

prophecy and fulfilment. Salvation in Christ is the import of both here is their unity. But in the Old Testament this salvation is still future, growing; in the New it has become fact: here is their difference. "The consideration of this unity and difference will keep the expositor in his right attitude to the Old Testament. It will preserve him from carrying over the Old Testament into the New, and also from merging its essential meaning in its historical conditions. Observing the gradual way in which Christ's coming is prepared for in the Old Testament, he will give their right value to the different stages through which the preparation runs, while not overlooking their living relation to their one subject, Christ; for He is the unity of the Old and New Testaments." The importance of the Old Testament even to systematic theology is seen in such doctrines as those of atonement and justification. The true meaning of Christ's Passion and death can only be fully discovered when it is considered in the light of Old Testament prophecy-sacrifice, prophetic teaching, and typical history. As to justification by faith, it is the Apostle Paul himself who takes the teaching of the Old Testament as his guide.

The New Testament bears testimony to the Old. In 2 Tim. iii. 16 "every Scripture "—an expression limited by the context to the Old Testament—is spoken of as useful for instruction as, or because, God-inspired. Where the Old Testament is quoted it is said, "God says," or "The Holy Ghost says," instead of "Scripture says.” This may seem to justify the inspiration theory of the seventeenth century, but it does The human factor could not appear more emphatically than it does in the Psalms and prophets. There was no need to call attention to this aspect of the case.

not.

error.

The error of the old inspiration theory was in confounding Scripture and revelation. Scripture is not revelation, but the witness to the history of revelation, or the record of that history. If so, it stands in close connexion with the history, justas every record forms an integral part of the occurrences it narrates. It owes its origin to the same Divine Spirit who controlled the history. At the same time, human activity is seen both in the history and the record, human activity with its liability to There is abundant evidence that, as to matters of natural science, the writers stood on the level of their age. What about Matt. xxiii. 35, where the evangelist calls Zechariah "son of Berechiah," whereas, according to 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, he was son of Jehoiada; or Matt. xxvii. 9, where a citation from Zechariah is ascribed to Jeremiah; or Acts vii. 4 and Gen. xi. 39; or vii. 16 and others? It is no use to shut one's eyes to facts. Yet, despite such differences and mistakes, Scripture remains to us the Divine record of the sacred history; for such errors, however they arise, do not prejudice saving truth. It is only necessary to define the limits of possible error in Scripture, or of its essential contents. These limits must be drawn more closely than is done by those to whom Scripture is simply a testimony to Christ. It is evident what consequences such a view has for the historical contents of Scripture, especially of the Old Testament, which is regarded as non-essential, or a shell from which the essential truth has to be extracted. When we regard Scripture as the record of the sacred history, i.e. of the history having for its subject the restoration of fellowship between God and man in Christ Jesus, we judge every detail by its relation to the salvation described in the history. It then becomes clear in what field the possibility of error is to be conceded, namely, wherever things are treated of which either do not affect or do not materially affect the substance of the sacred story. Details of science, history, geography, numbers, belong to this neutral ground. "Holy Scripture is God's work, but a work carried out by human intervention. The Divine message becomes just as completely human as the Word became flesh in Christ. Because it is so, the servant's form is to be seen in Scripture also. But through it shines the glory of God,

to whom human language was not too mean for Him to reveal His gracious will in." Hamann says, “It is part of the unity of Divine revelation that the Spirit of God humbles and empties Himself by the pen of the holy men whom He inspired, just as the Son of God did by His human form, and as the whole creation is a work of the highest humility. When the Divine penmanship chooses the common and poor to shame the strength and genius of all profane writers, the enlightened, inspired eyes of a friend and lover, sharpened by jealousy, easily discern rays of heavenly glory in such a garb."

Many nowadays regard the presence of the miraculous in Scripture as demonstrative evidence of its unhistorical character. But the Christian is conscious of a change in himself, not to be explained by natural causes. This experience helps to render Scripture miracles credible. The believer is reproached with bringing certain presuppositions to Scripture. But the absence of presuppositions of some kind is incredible. "The spirit of the expositor is never a tabula rasa, on which Scripture writes its teaching, but occupies a definite standpoint. Whoever has come to Christ by the ministry of the Church knows not only an order of creation, but also an order of redemption; he knows also of a history in which redemption was worked out-a history of the revelation of the living God for the world's salvation, within Israel, the chosen people, and aiming at Christ the Redeemer. As he knows the difference of this history from that of other nations outside Israel, so he knows the difference of the record of this history from other historical works. He shares the faith of the, Church, by whose ministry he became a Christian, in Scripture. He sees in it the original record of Christianity, given once for all, and therewith the rule of the Church's faith and life. And so he knows himself, as a member of the Church, a true Christian in the degree that his Christianity is in unison with Scripture. In this attitude to Scripture, when he makes it the subject of scientific investigation, he approaches it with the confidence that it will attest itself to be what the Church sees in it, and what he himself believes of it."

We now proceed to consider some special questions as further illustrating the right attitude to Old Testament criticism. We read in Smend's Lehrbuch d. A. T. Religionsgeschichte, "The history of the Old Testament religion begins, according to the Pentateuch, in a certain sense with the patriarchs. Yahveh bears relations to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, like those in which He stood later to Israel, and the piety of the patriarchs corresponds to Israel's attitude to Yahveh. But the narrative of Genesis is altogether legendary; historical recollection just as little goes back to the progenitors in Israel as in any other nation. The patriarchal history is merely an ideal example of the history of Israel, and Yahveh's intercourse with the patriarchs is merely an expression of the faith that His grace was already watching over the first beginnings of Israel." (Similarly, Bäntsch, in Die moderne Bibelkritik.) But just in this lies all the emphasis in Old Testament history, that the nation chosen by God to receive His revelation came into being in a different way from other nations, that it took its rise from an act of the living God, who called the Semite Abraham to be its progenitor. Therefore, in distinction from all other nations, in Israel historical recollection reaches back to the progenitors; and it is an offence against the very spirit of the history of Israel, as it is found in the Old Testament, to treat all the names between Arpaxad and Joseph inclusive, as even Ewald did, as names of tribes, not of persons. If Abraham was not the man he appears to be in Gen. xii. 1, ff., the entire Old Testament history loses the essential peculiarity by which it is distinguished from the history of all other nations. Whoever does not wish to see that history destroyed will not allow Abraham to be dissolved into a mythical figure, and just as