tions of a Father's love and grace and bring the prodigal from the far country to the homeland. The probability is that Christians, differing as they do by heredity and in environment, will never have the same Christian experience. The essence of Christianity is not to be found in Christian experience but in the facts of revelation in the consciousness and life of Jesus. He lived in the relation of a Son to His Father, of a Brother to his fellowmen and of a Lord over the material world. These are the fundamental relations of the new life which He revealed in the world. Into these relations he brings His followers and from the life thus generated there will come experiences as diversified as human temperaments and nationalities. Yet the bond of fellowship, which binds the saints of all ages and all lands into one communion, is the life of sonship in the presence of a Father God and of brotherhood in the presence of a brother man.

G. W. R.

VII.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THE RECOVERY AND RESTATEMENT OF THE GOSPEL. By Loran David Osborn, Ph.D. Pages 250. The University of Chicago Press. 1903.

The purpose of this volume is to show that the Gospel of Jesus has become obscured during the course of its historical development, that it is therefore necessary to go back of this process in order to recover the Gospel in its purity, and furthermore, that it is necessary for this recovered Gospel to be restated in terms of modern thought and life. The book is true to its title and to its purpose. It deals with results rather than with minute discussions. Learned lumber of every kind has been vigorously excluded. It presents in a plain, broad, compact manner the conclusions reached by the best scholarship. Its view-point is that of the modern interpretation of Christianity. Seldom does one see the necessity for a new theology so convincingly presented, or the simple message of the Gospel so clearly defined as in these pages. Those who claim that the new theology has no evangelical character and force will do well to read the chapter on "the nature and conditions of eternal life." The book is written in a straightforward style that savors of reality. It is a suggestive, stimulating volume for both layman and preacher.

The first part, having for its theme the Recovery of the Gospel, is an attempt to unravel the historic process. The presupposition of course is that the unadulterated Gospel of Jesus is the final religious reality. The second part has to do with the restatement of that Gospel in modern language. It is an attempt at construction on the basis of the New Testament Gospel.

Part one has four chapters. The first shows that the distinctive peculiarity of the modern spirit in the world of nature, of mind and of religion is to gain touch with reality. It will not be satisfied with the hypothetical, the traditional, the imaginative or the speculative. The next chapter treats of the obscuration of the Gospel in the course of its historical development. The writer shows how the adulteration and radical transformation of the Gospel was brought about by Roman and Greek influence. The former caused an ecclesiastical transformation by changing the free company of the disciples into a hard-and-fast institution. The Greek influence up to the time of Origen brought about a theological transformation by chang

ing the simple faith of the New Testament Gospel into a body of philosophical knowledge disguised as Christian theology upon the acceptance of which salvation depended. From the days of Origen to the Reformation we have only the development of the germ planted in those early centuries. The change wrought by Roman influence was disastrous in so far as Christendom lost sight of salvation as a living process and substituted for it a mechanical process conditioned on ceremonialism. But the eclipse of the Gospel due to the Greek influence during the formative period of the Church was "the most radical metamorphosis of Christianity that has ever taken place." It obscured in large part the personal element in the Gospel. The nature of faith was changed from personal trust to intellectual assent. The object of faith ceased to be Christ and became the creed-a body of knowledge about Christ. The personal father of Jesus was changed to a philosophical God. In place of the historic Jesus there came the Logos doctrine. For Christ's personal forgiveness there was substituted a juridical justification, and for a personal atonement wrought by love-which is always personal-there was substituted a legal and governmental one. Then, too, the moral aspect of the Gospel had been obscured. Religion became a matter of intellectual conviction rather than of moral regeneration. Hence the morality of the Middle Ages.

The Historical Recovery of the Gospel begins with the days of the Reformation, we are told in the third chapter. "Just as the obscuration of the Gospel was not a simple and momentary thing, but the result of a long and intricate process of development, so has it been also with the recovery of the Gospel.' Dr. Osborn's discussion of the work done toward the Recovery of the Gospel by the sixteenth century Reformation, and of the work left undone by it, which must be completed by the Protestantism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, constitutes, we think, the finest feature of the book. Nowhere have we seen the idea of the completion of Protestantism so clearly put in an English volume, though the subject is much discussed and written about in Germany. He shows that there are three clearly marked periods in the Recovery of the Gospel, viz., the Reformation, the Post-Reformation and the nineteenth century Reformation. The sixteenth century Reformation was not primarily a theological reformation, but rather a practical reform of ecclesiastical and religious abuses. It was a revolt against the Roman perversion of Christianity. Only a few doctrines were changed then, viz., those which had an immediate bearing on the practical issues involved. The work of the sixteenth century Reformation therefore was limited. It freed the Gospel only from its Roman addition while the older meta

physical Greek obscuration escaped. So in reality Protestant theology became the continuation of Catholic theology as this had perpetuated Greek philosophy. And here, according to Dr. Osborn, was "the insoluble antinomy of Protestantism"; its fundamental principle was that salvation is by faith in Christ alone, and yet it adopted in Post-Reformation theology the persistent idea of Catholicism that there is saving efficacy in a body of knowledge, or that a certain system of dogmatic thought must be accepted if a man is to be an orthodox Christian. The history of Protestantism from that day to this is the story of the attempted solution of this contradiction. The nineteenth century Reformation is as truly a great Reformation as was that of the sixteenth century. It is the completion of that movement; the theological complement of the practical and ecclesiastical Reformation of the sixteenth century. It strikes at the Greek transformation of Christianity, as the sixteenth century Reformation struck at the Roman transformation. "While the sixteenth century Reformation was practical, although with theological implications, the new Reformation is theological but destined to have far-reaching practical results."

What was the original Gospel? is the question answered by the fourth chapter. The recovered Gospel of the New Testament is found to be a religious message, not a new body of knowledge constituting a revealed philosophy. It deals with the historical Jesus and men's trust and allegiance to Him as the one who brings them into vital touch with the forces of the spiritual life that have their source in God, and so assures them of the blessings of salvation. He defines the Gospel as "the glad news of salvation from sin and its consequences, this salvation consisting in eternal life, mediated from God to men by Jesus Christ, and expressing its social relations in a kingdom of God.”

The Restatement of the Gospel is the theme of the last hundred pages of the book. The writer makes a clear distinction between the Gospel and theology. The Gospel is the subjectmatter of theology. It is the life of which theology is the expression in terms of thought. Theology cannot save sinners; it cannot produce spiritual life. Yet it has its value. There is constant need for theological statement. Christianity must express itself fully to thought. The right of theological restatement is as clear and valid as the original right of statement. There is need for such restatement at the present time because theology is being expressed in terms of obsolete culture which are meaningless and unsatisfactory to an increasing number of people; because the scientific study of the New Testament and of Church History has produced a large body

of new knowledge; because many of the old statements fail to do justice to the essential truths of Christianity; and finally because the real great need of religion is a distinctive Protestant theology.

Dr. Osborn ventures a suggested theological restatement. As all writers on the subject he finds the constructive part of the work the more difficult. His outline however is well wrought. His starting point is the governing position of Jesus Christ in theology. The consciousness of Jesus is to furnish the ruling conceptions for theology. "Our business therefore is to find what Jesus' thought is-his thought about God, the world, and man; about sin and salvation; about how we are to live in our social relations; about everything that pertains to human interests." From this view-point he develops in terms of modern thought and culture the idea of the mission and person of Jesus; God as the author and source of eternal life; man the recipient of eternal life; the nature, law, progress and consummation of the Kingdom of God. Such a book returning, as it does, to the first principles of the Gospel will not only stimulate thought but will help its readers religiously.

H. M. J. KLINE.

THE BIBLE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Eight Lectures. By J. Estlin Carpenter, M.A., Lecturer on the History of Religion, Manchester College, Oxford. New York, Longmans, Green & Co. 512 pages. Price, $3.50.

The lectures in this volume were delivered in various English, Scotch and Welsh towns during the years 1900-1903. "Their object was to awaken the interest of Christians of all Churches in the modern study of the sacred books of their religion, by sketching the history of the processes of investigation, and indicating some of the results which have been so far attained." They are presented in a simple and entertaining style, and yet, coming from an Oxford professor, their facts, data, and general statements carry with them the weight of authority. The writer has the faculty of interweaving exact dates and facts without making the narrative dull and lifeless.

The subjects discussed are the following: The Struggle for Freedom of Inquiry; The Revised Version; Changed Views of the Law; Changed Views of Prophecy; The Gospels and the Early History of Christianity; The First Three Gospels; The Fourth Gospel; The Bible and the Church. The first and last lectures are general in their character. In the first lecture we have a rapid survey of the changes in the conceptions of religion during the nineteenth century and of the struggle for a more liberal attitude in regard to biblical study. The views of the Bible in the eighteenth century as held by the Super