blasphemous to suppose that God would answer prayer in order to get rid of wearisome suppliants. The reason why importunity is encouraged is simply that it serves as a test of sincerity and earnestness. It was for this reason our Lord dealt so strangely with the Syrophenician woman; for when her faith proved itself strong enough to bear the test, her reward was complete: "O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt."

The parable of the Pharisee and the publican is not designed so much to enforce the duty, as to illustrate the spirit, of prayer. The Pharisee knows nothing of the self-abasement of a sinful heart, has no consciousness of unworthiness, and dwells complacently on his virtues, which though in some measure due to God, reflect great credit on himself, and place him in a much higher category than the wretched publican at his side. The publican's frame of mind is precisely the opposite. His sin is for ever before him. It so fills his vision that he can think of nothing else. No vestige of a plea can he derive from anything that he is or has done; he must be a debtor, pure and simple, to the mercy of God. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." Nothing is more fragrant than genuine contrition : "Blessed are they that mourn." That very much of what is most vital in our Lord's teaching, both on prayer and the Christian life generally, is contained in this parable, the Church has felt instinctively and profoundly in every age.

4. The great pattern prayer. To enlarge on the Lord's Prayer would obviously be impossible at the very close of a paper. We remark, however, the obvious illustration which its opening word affords of the filial attitude and spirit in which we ought to draw near to God-" Our Father, which art in heaven." We note likewise the relative place of the two great subjects of supplication, God's glory and man's good, just as in the angels' song, "Glory to God in the highest" goes before "peace on earth, good will to man." Further, we observe the combination of the temporal and the spiritual in the part that bears on the good of man, "Give us this day our daily [or, our necessary] bread"—a single petition without variation or amplification; whereas the petitions that deal with man as a sinner are more in number and fuller in scope, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." But what most impresses us in the structure of the whole prayer is its wonderful combination of brevity and comprehensiveness, and of simplicity and profundity. What a genius it must have been, if we may use such a phrase, that in six short lines gave the Church a prayer which in every age and every country of the world has been found to express, in the simplest possible language, the profoundest desires of every exercised heart! Let any intelligent and spiritual man try to sound the depths of these petitions, he will find it impossible. However much matter he may think of them as containing, he gets glimpses of

NO. VI.-VOL. VII.-THE THINKER.

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untold applications beyond, and he has the profound conviction that nothing more than the fulfilment of these petitions is needed to turn earth into heaven, to bring to pass the glory of the latter day.

Such are the chief forms in which our Lord has given us lessons on the subject of prayer. Still the question may be raised-Did He teach nothing more? Did He lay down no conditions of acceptable and prevailing prayer? Did He not recognize the fact that prayer is not always effectual? Certainly He recognized this fact most emphatically in one class of cases-prayers that are offered too late, after the door is shut, and the cry, "Lord, Lord, open unto us," meet with no other response than "I know you not." But other conditions, if not expressly stated, are implied in His teaching on the efficacy of prayer. There must be a measure of spiritual sympathy with Jesus Himself, arising from the study of His words. "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (John xv. 7). Our wills must be brought into some sort of harmony with His will. We must in some measure be able to apprehend what the things are which the Lord deems most suitable for us, most essential for our welfare. This is substantially the purport of St. John's teaching (1 John iv. 22): "Whatsoever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in His sight." So also (1 John v. 14), “This is the confidence we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us." Moreover, we must draw near in the filial spirit, placing trust in the wisdom, the faithfulness, and the love of our Father. We are to set a value, too, on union in prayer; the union even of two hearts longing for some good thing affords a presumption that He is willing to grant it. "If two of you shall agree on earth, as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven."

Thus we get an important bird's-eye view of our Lord's teaching concerning prayer. Unlike some other subjects of deep importance which were reserved for the apostles to expound fully, prayer was dealt with copiously by our Lord Himself. It was one of the subjects which had the benefit of His personal exposition, and which therefore demand on our part the more earnest consideration. What He taught has been substantially the doctrine of the Church in all her more enlightened and healthy periods. Prayer is not a mere form, à string of sacred words devoutly uttered. It is not a talisman, unlocking the doors of the Divine storehouse by a magical key. It is not a mere spiritual gymnastic suggesting holy thoughts to the soul, and bringing it into an elevated frame, although that is included in its benefits when it is real prayer. Essentially, it is the communing of the spirit of man with the Spirit of God; it is the simple asking of little children what they need from their Father; it is the utterance of souls enlightened to apprehend in the main what is best for them, and what God is willing to grant; and it

breathes the atmosphere of contrition, reverence, trust, and love, because it is guided by the sense of grievous sin on the part of man, and most generous mercy on the part of God.

THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT.

THE LOGIC OF CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY.

No. IV.

BY R. M. WENLEY, M.A., D.Sc.

No matter how deep and fundamental our disagreement with the Ritschlian doctrines may be, they are facts which merit attention. Many able men adhere to them, many others find a refuge in them. Or, to be brief, they are possessed of significance and authority. In the first place, there seems to be little doubt that the Ritschlian theology has met a certain need. Agnostic, it yet shows a path round agnosticism; empirical, it yet supplies a defence against empiricism; historical in method, it nevertheless refuses the evidence of history; socialistic, it yet furnishes the individual with a species of mission; rationalistic, it nevertheless is supremely fiducial. No wonder, then, that many, smitten by the varied ailments of modern culture, should fly to it, and find satisfaction for the religious instinct uncrossed by any conflict with history or criticism, with the sciences or with metaphysic. The specific advantages are but particular cases of these. For, once more, the Ritschlian insistence upon the Jewish element in Christianity and upon the Hebrew ideals which Christ fulfilled, has a certain timeliness-it chimes in with the higher criticism. This, even although the tendency be to see a breach of ordinary historical development in the apparition of Christ. For, notwithstanding the embargo laid upon inquiry into God's moral government of the universe, Judaistic conceptions, rather than Hellenic, are taken as the tests of New Testament trustworthiness. No doubt these notions have been purified by a recent view of the ideals immanent in Judaism. The fact remains that the direction in which Ritschl points is the quarter where an important truth lies. Further, the doctrine of the kingdom of God bears many fruitful lessons. "The precious idea of the kingdom of God is not a dream of the imagination, an illusion; it is a Divine force; it reveals itself in the Church, it seizes hold upon us, it penetrates us, it gives the will a decisive impulse towards the most elevated ideal, towards eternal life." In this organism man can find rest in activity, self-realization in social effort, salvation for himself with others, a visible crown of Christ's work in an invisible community to which all Christians belong. Yet again, the unique kind of Christ's mission receives recognition. His Spirit is a source of authoritative 1 Thikötter, Darstellung der Theol. A. Ritschls, p. 58.

impressions in every age. It seems to furnish the one positive fact to which, be social and intellectual changes what they may, sinful man can cling in full assurance of safety. The affectionate warmth that inspires the Ritschlian teaching on this point, the religious halo that surrounds the shadowy figure of the Master, the enthusiasm with which His origination and realization of the kingdom of God are treated,-all these serve to attract and to generate new hope in an era sick of a speculation barren in belief, and doubtful of itself in all spheres. Finally, the implied protest against intellectualism pleases many, who feel their own mental shortcomings, and flatters more, who have neither the desire nor the leisure to reflect on religion. The evidences of Christianity appear to be brought back once again to the level of the average man. “That ideals exist which authoritatively appeal to the instincts of the human soul; that these ideals were, historically, in their fulness introduced by Jesus Christ; that He claimed to be the channel through whom God could permanently speak to the world, and act upon it in grace; that, in point of fact, it is through faith in Christ, and in the God of Christ, that men are led to the fulfilment of the human ideal-such are the evidences of Christianity. They afford no complete logical proof. God did not mean that they should. Intellectual proof would fall outside the region of the Spirit and of conscience."1 For these reasons, among others, the adaptability of Ritschlianism and its exaltation of Christ have appealed to men of widely differing endowments. Clamant questions have, in some instances, been stayed for the moment. Whether the demands themselves were altogether reasonable, and whether satisfaction thus achieved can prove altogether final, are other questions, both of which I should incline to answer strongly in the negative.

The plain fact is that the Ritschlian position does not stand critical examination. No doubt its imposing outlines and its systematic plan might easily lead one to judge otherwise. Nevertheless, the foundation is essentially insecure. To begin with, the principle of construction bears many traces of being no more than a reaction against prevalent ideas. The theory might be termed both eclectic and non-eclectic. But, although piecing together bits culled from his predecessors, Ritschl was led to do so by his antagonism to certain contemporary tendencies. Absolute idealism had been far too confident, and had, as he believed, proved a great failure in theology. While blank materialism was in much the same case. The act of knowledge that referred ultimate reality to spirit, like that which referred it to matter, stood self-condemned. And, by an extreme reaction, the method proposed was to bring knowledge to its senses, as it were, by showing that it could not know anything ultimately. It had too long been a mischievous disturber of the peace, too long an arrant impostor, and needed incarceration. Theories, whether psychic or materialistic, had professed to explain everything. So, by a common 1 Mackintosh, Essays towards a New Theology, p. 99.

enough swing of the pendulum, the new theory was to be fundamentally incapable of explaining anything. Ritschl does not differ from Hegel on the importance of religion, but he holds, contrary to his quondam guide, that the objects of religion lie beyond the range of human knowledge. So, to castigate an arrogant intellectualism and yet retain a spiritual universe, the separation between philosophy and theology was proposed.

On this arrangement, theology is to have a sphere peculiar to itself and above knowledge, while metaphysic is to be content with the illusions of knowledge. This reminds one of the family tree said to have belonged to an ancient Irish house. The document covered several large sheets of parchment, and conspicuously lettered about the middle of the third was the striking annotation, "About this time the world was created." The independence of theology is analogous to that of the remoter scions of this sept. The objects discussed by theology and by metaphysics are to all intents identical. Both by their very nature concern themselves with the Absolute and its implications. The Ritschlian value-judgments, if not pure inventions by isolated individuals, depend upon judgments of reality. It is impossible to frame even an elementary conception of a theological object, not to mention a system, wholly without reference to its existence. It must, at least, be an object of thought. But thought has been condemned already, and man finds himself in the extraordinary position of being able, by means of sentiment, to attach absolute value to things from which his thinking is debarred. This is no mere subjective idealism, in which experience fashions itself "within" and leaves "without" well alone. On the contrary, man's inner nature has been riven asunder. In the interest of some vaguely defined faculty, negatively known to us as different from thought, thought has been snubbed. The impasse thus reached may be overcome, but only in one of two ways. Either absolute scepticism must ensue, wherein experience is clearly seen to yield no valid conclusions; or an equally absolute dogmatism, wherein thought, having swallowed the snub, retires, so to speak, in favour of the unknown, and confident, sentiment, or faith, or elaborative feeling, or whatever it may be. The former alternative is self-contradictory; the latter is merely absurd. The Ritschlian procedure is illogical, because it accepts neither, supposing that somehow experience may be divided into hermetically sealed compartments. From Monday to Saturday, knowledge dances among its phenomena, which it knows are not knowledge; on Sunday, the other power moons among its realities, which cannot fail to impress it, but which may or may not exist. The knower of the lawful days doubts and cannot dream; the dreamer of the sabbath believes, and can never know. There is no possible appeal from Philip sober to Philip drunk. For this classical gentleman is now so constituted that he cannot but be always drunk and always sober at one and the same time. When he meets a policeman, he knows, because the officer is a phenomenon ; when he sees the originals of the gargoyle, he is impressed,-they are among the mighty