think he must have spent more time at school kneeling than sitting and that if he be now alive he must still have callous places upon his knees like those fanatical Mahometans who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca on all fours. Oh, proud, indomitable soul! Receive, wherever thou art, this tardy acknowledgment of the admiration of thy former comrades in humiliation and slavery!

Number two was the oldest boy in the class, a sturdy fellow with a precocious expression of gravity on his face, intimate with none of his associates, a native of Saluzzo, if I remember rightly, living with an aunt of his, an easy-going soul, who gave him free rein and never bothered him about trifles. We all felt a certain admiration for him because they said that he abused the liberty allowed him. We seemed to see him surrounded by a kind of Satanic glory like one of Byron's heroes. He confided in none of us, but only let drop rare and covert allusions to his escapades; whereby we gave to his enigmatical phrases a hundred fanciful interpretations far bolder and deeper, doubtless, than any thought of his. I still recall the emotions of one solemn morning-scene, when the professor, having heard rumors of our friend's irregular conduct, summoned him before his desk in the presence of the whole school and with the aspect and intonation of a Chief Justice addressed him thus:- "Terrible things have come to my knowledge concerning you, Master So and So."

Then after a funereal pause, "You go round nights." And, after a still longer pause, "You consort with the dregs of the civic community." After a protracted silence in a stifled voice, "You drink."

Finally, with the explosion of a cannon-ball, "Contemptible scoundrel!"

A shiver ran from bench to bench; all held their breath. The deathlike

silence lasted a full minute and it was in truth a tragic scene. The insignificant object of these fulminations, who stood there, mute and immovable, seemed to us the incarnation of all the corruption and crime of the Roman decadence. I cannot quote the discourse which the professor poured forth on this occasion. I only remember that "Divine and Human Justice" found a place there, and "eternal infamy" and the "gallows" and similar compliments,-all uttered in a cavernous voice while the eyes of the speaker rolled in a manner to give one a tertian ague, and when class was over it was due to no mean shrinking from the victim, but to abject terror of the tyrant, that we all avoided the unlucky malefactor, as though he had borne the brand of Cain upon his forehead.

Number Three was a pleasant little body, quite emaciated, with the face of an old notary,-the son of a widowed stay-maker. He had a high opinion of his own proficiency in Latin, and his Latin themes consisted of a sort of mosaic-work, made up of phrases picked up here and there with the patience of a saint, and pieced together in the most bungling manner, arbitrarily, and with small regard either for logic or common-sense. For these things he cared little, provided only that language and style were, as he put it, "unalloyed gold." I can still see him as he stood one day, reading to the professor one of his most intricate periods, on which he said that he had worked all night.

"But I don't understand it," said the master.

And he persisted in his defense for some time, but finally returned discouraged to his seat, with a shake of the head, which seemed to say, "My time has been wasted! Good Latin is no longer understood."

Of my own doings I recall an Italian composition, which was, I believe, my first literary effort. We chose our own topics and I described "A Contest Between a Lion and a Tiger," a theme in perfect harmony with my character, as will be perceived. Its opening words "As the heavens reddened," still linger in my mind and I know that all through there was a rush of highsounding words, chosen from those which had the greatest number of "r's” and "s's," a demon's chorus of howls and growls, an infuriated breaking of bones and of syntactical rules and, at the end, a deluge of gore. I expected a triumph when I should be called on to read. I made a perfect fiasco. It was the only time, I fancy, that master and pupils laughed in unison, joined Nuova Antologia.

perhaps by the invisible shade of Padre Corticelli, who was our grammatical authority. This failure by which I was then deeply humiliated is now a pleasant recollection, because it was this incident which procured for my companions in servitude and terror the sole quarter of an hour of collective hilarity, which they enjoyed in that dolorous school.

Especially was it dolorous for me because I was not yet old enough to stand the strain imposed on me and what with intellectual effort and perpetual worry, which sometimes made me spring out of bed in the middle of the night and rage round like a lunatic, my health began to suffer. As soon as my parents realized this they decided to take me out of school for the rest of the year that I might recover spirits and strength; and before the winter was over I had received my pardon and been discharged from hard labor.

Our desire in this paper is not so much to enter into an exhaustive examination of the important book with which Dr. Fairbairn has favored us on the "Philosophy of the Christian Religion," as rather to look behind the book to the large and difficult problems it raises, which spring from the conditions of the thought of the age, and to ask what help it affords in stating, and above all in solving, these problems. There is one supreme qualification which Dr. Fairbairn has for

"The Philosophy of the Christian Religion," by A. M. Fairbairn, D.D., LL.D., Principal of LIVING AGE. VOL. XVII. 898

dealing with his great subject, namely, the perhaps unrivalled range of his knowledge in the fields of philosophy. theology, history, and religions, and the breadth and sympathy of his power of historical generalization. His generalizations may not always convince, but they are always felt to be large, luminous, and instructive,formed in full view of the world of facts to be interpreted. The danger that besets so many thinkers of seeking a solution of their problem through

Mansfield College, Oxford. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902.

over-simplification of its elements, is not one to which he is likely to succumb. It is always the largest aspects of a subject that fill his mind; the horizons beyond horizons it opens up; the relation of particulars to the general; the multitude and intricacy of the factors that go to the comprehension of the simplest fact, character, or movement. This very fulness of his thought, in combination with his singular gift of eloquent and pictorial expression, his devices of rhetorical anthithesis and tendency to amplification in detail, the warmth and coloring of his exposition, has frequently the effect of overloading his pages with good things, and of detracting from the clearness and precision of the idea he wishes to convey. The wrappages of the idea may have to be stripped off before the kernel of the thought can be securely grasped. But the reader never loses the sense of being under the guidance of a mind of extraordinary comprehensiveness, searching vision, and exceptional powers of both analysis and synthesis. This of itself is a guarantee against one-sidedness and partiality of treatment, and affords ground for believing that the questions at issue will be rightly put and wisely answered.

It is, indeed, a notable sign of the broader phases on which Christiau thought is entering, that a volume of this kind should be given us by one who will probably be allowed to rank as the ablest of living English Nonconformist theologians. The book will be recognized as in some sense a sequel to and completion of its author's former work on "The Place of Christ in Modern Theology." In that work, at a time when systematic theology seemed in danger of becoming a lost art, Dr. Fairbairn undertook the consideration of the reconstruction rendered necessary in theology by modern philosophical, literary and historical criti

cism. Many of the results of that earlier discussion have to be carried forward into the study of the present treatise, many of its ideas reappear in a new setting. But it is essentially a new problem that is now dealt with.

Dr. Fairbairn tells us in his Preface of the profound impression made on his mind by actual contact with modern Hinduism during his visit to India as Haskell lecturer. What he saw there made him feel as he had not done before, that Christianity, to be adequately understood, must be considered in a yet wider context-that of the general religious history of mankind. This necessitated an inquiry into the nature and ground of the religious endowment generally. What is religion? Whence and how does it originate? What are its essential and abiding characteristics, and how does it come to assume the bewildering variety of forms it presents in history? Deeper still, how does religion-and especially a religion like Christianitystand to the general philosophy of nature and of man? What place, for example, is there in the universe, as construed by modern thought, for the idea of the supernatural-or is there any? All questions which have been asked a thousand times, and to which answers of one kind and another are abundant; but which still stand in clamant need of an answer from one who believes, as our author avows himself to do, that "the Son of God holds in His pierced hands the keys of all the religions, explains all the factors of their being, and all the persons through whom they have been realized," and that the Incarnation "is the very truth which turns nature and man, and history and religion into the luminous dwelling place of God." An answer to these questions, if it can be got, will yield us a "philosophy" of the Chris

A very vital initial question in this inquiry is-What is the Christian religion, whose place and value in the history of man and of religion we are to seek to appraise? It is not to be concealed that it is precisely on this seemingly simple question of what constitutes the essence of Christianity that wide differences of opinion are certain to be encountered. But waiving this for the moment, some useful light may perhaps be thrown on the character of the problem Dr. Fairbairn sets before him from comparison of his views with those enunciated a year ago by the distinguished Berlin Professor, Dr. Harnack, in an interesting Rectoral address,1 which bears somewhat on the same point. The question discussed in this address is whether there is longer any justification for a separate Faculty of Christian Theology in Universities, or whether this should not now be merged (as has happened in Holland) in a Faculty of the general science and history of religion. The ground, of course, on which the change is advocated is that Christianity cannot be dissevered from the study of religion in its whole compass, and that there exists no peculiar method of studying the Christian religion in distinction from others. Harnack, however, strenuously upholds the rights of a Faculty of Theology specifically Christian-partly for the reason that the study of the religion of a people cannot be divorced from the study of its whole history, language and literature;

1 "Die Aufgabe der theologischen Facultaten und die allgemeine Religionsgeschichte." 1901.

2 So Dr. Fairbairn says of history: "The true method of interpretation is to proceed from man

partly because of the unique place held by the Bible in religion (“What signifies Homer, what the Vedas, what the Koran, alongside of the Bible?"), of the unbroken duration of the history of the Old and New Testament religion for a period of over 3,000 years, and of the fact that Christianity can be studied to-day as a living religion. But his main reason is that "Christianity in its pure form is not one religion along with others, but the religion."

It is the religion, because Jesus Christ is not a Master along with others, but the Master, and because His Gospel answers to the inborn capacity of man as history discovers it. I have argued above that it is the Bible that is the centre of all the studies of the theological Faculties. More correctly, I must say: this centre is Jesus Christ. What the first disciples received from Him goes far beyond the particular words and the preaching they heard from Him; and therefore what they have said about Him, and their mode of apprehending Him, exceeds His own selfwitness. It could not be otherwise: these disciples were conscious that they possessed in Christ not only a Teacher. . . . they knew themselves as redeemed, new men, redeemed through Him (pp. 16, 17).

Harnack's contention, in brief, is that Christianity, as the absolute religion, has a pre-eminence of its own, which lifts it above dependence on the study of other religions, and makes the understanding of other religions rather dependent upon it. This is true even of the Old Testament religion (pp. 12, 13); it is specially true of Christianity. The religion of Christ, in other words, admits of being comprehended from within itself; has its principle of development

to nature, for the highest holds and knows the secret of the lowest, while the lowest neither holds nor knows the secret of the highest." (p. 171.)

within itself; is the illuminator of the field of religion, instead of borrowing illumination from it. In such utterances a much-needed corrective is afforded to the tendency of the new historico-critical school, as represented, for example, in Old Testament study, by Gunkel, who thinks it the fault of Wellhausen and his following that they believe it possible to explain the history of Israel from itself, and ignore its connection with the general world-process, of whose elements, in their view, it is largely a coalescence and combination."

One now asks with interest, How does this compare with Principal Fairbairn's treatment? Does it not do away with the necessity for that long preliminary philosophical inquiry by which we are led up in his volume to the view and comprehension of the Christian religion? Not quite. It would do so only on the assumption that the object of the author was to explain Christianity out of these antecedent factors, to ground belief in it on philosophical considerations, to reduce it in some way to dependence on the study of religions outside itself. But that is certainly not Dr. Fairbairn's idea or aim. Christianity retains for him an independence and self-sufficiency as complete as any which Professor Harnack claims for it. It is the very object of his work, as above indicated, to show that in the religion of the Incarnation lies the key to all religion and to all history. If doubt on this were possible-and it is a conceivable misapprehension from the remarks in the Preface about construing Christianity through religion, and from the elaboration bestowed in the first part of the book on the philosophy of nature, of history, and of religion-it should be dissipated by the second part, which deals directly with the Person of Christ and 3 Cf. his "Genesis," Introd. p. 41.

the making of the Christian religion. What must strike-perhaps will surprise the observant reader is, how entirely independent practically this second division of the book is, after all, of the long train of recondite inquiries carried on in the first,-how Christianity is derived from its own principle, finds its materials of creation within itself, goes along, as it were, upon its own feet,-even while the end is to show, as is done in the concluding sections, how the ideals of all religions are embraced, and carried to their perfection in the religion of Christ, so that it alone is fitted to be the really universal religion. Nay, for the very purpose of this argument it was indispensable to establish that Christianity was not, what the historical-critical people would make it, a syncretism, but was "a living organism, carrying within itself the principle of life" (p. 518). But this in no way disproves, in fact only makes clear, the place and need for a philosophy of the Christian religion in its largest relations such as Principal Fairbairn here undertakes. Professor Harnack would not deny this either, though it is not obvious what place he would find for this discipline in his arrangement of University studies. For granting, as he does, that religion is not something accidental and transitory in the history of mankind, but that there comes to light in it an elementary and fundamental relation, without which man would not be man (p. 7); further, that Christianity is the religion in which this universal religious need, aspiration or ideal, finds its perfect satisfaction: then it is evident that no explanation of Christianity can be adequate which does not take account of this original endowment of humanity, as its operations and demands are illustrated on the field of history; nor is it possible that Christianity should be set in its