Butler published his "Analogy," in 1736, he says in the preface: "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious; and, accordingly, they treat it as if nothing remained but to set it up as a subject of mirth and ridicule as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." This, after more than forty annual volumes of Boyle Lectures had been read by the English public. A half century later all is changed. The names and writings of the deists were well-nigh forgotten. The huge volumes of Boyle Lectures lay undisturbed on library shelves. John Wesley, one of the English Church's best gifts to mankind, had arisen. What cared he for the disputes of deist or atheist ? He spoke from experience. He smote the rock and the water flowed. Wesley had the conscious experience of the forgivenness of sins and of divine sonship. He believed that his was not an exceptional experience, inaccessible to other men. His heart had been "strangely warmed," and so might the heart of every Englishman be "strangely warmed." His religious experience, or much of it, might be the experience of all men. Hear ye, O hear! that ceaseless, pleading voice Which storm, nor suffering, nor age could still. Chief prophet voice through nigh a century's span!

And gladly was he heard; and rich the fruit

While still the harvest ripens round the earth.

There is much in the rant and cant of revivals which has no part in universal religious experience, and therefore, according to my contention, does not argue reality. Instantaneous conversion was necessary for Paul, but not for John; for Wesley, but not for Bishop Butler. It can never be insisted upon! But no candid person would deny that the source of power in the Wesleyan movement, which now numbers twenty-five million adherents, was the value which they placed on the evidence of religious experience; and my assertion that the evidence of experience is worth tons of syllogistic

reasoning in freeing men from sin and doubt is here verified on a large and imposing scale.

VI.

I beg now to cite one case in the value of experience in the life of a man of finest culture. No man was more typical of the intellectual life of the last half of the nineteenth century than George John Romanes. A man of singular sweetness, purity and honesty, surounded from childhood by wealth and refinement and love, he was one of the most original of the young scientists who followed the lead of Darwin and Huxley. He had great interest in theology.

In 1878, he published a "Candid Examination of Theism" -a book of subtle intellectual power and moral earnestness. He examines the theistic arguments based on the world of external nature. If you read his book you agree with his conclusions, that these arguments are worthless except as a field for intellectual gymnastics. His investigations led him into the mood of atheism. The book closes with a frank statement that his intellectual doubt has led him into sadness and despair: "I must confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe has lost to me its soul of loveliness. When I think of the hallowed glory of the faith which once was mine, and the mystery of existence as I now find it, I cannot avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible." And this burden of intellectual doubt he carried for years—a heavy load. Many perplexing questions arose. Should he attend public worship? Should his children, whom he dearly loved, be educated in the Christian faith which he had renounced? And the load became heavier and heavier. Should he allow the needs of his heart, his instinctive longing, the deepening experience of his life to draw him back to the peace of that early, hallowed faith? In 1885, he moved to Oxford. Here he constantly saw his old friend, Dr. Paget, then Dean of Christ Church; and he came to know intimately Gore, Moberley and Aubrey Moore.

But there was no discussion or argumentation.

Gradually

his friends noticed a return toward faith. He writes Dr. Paget: "I have begun to discover the truth of what you once wrote about logical processes not being the only means of research in regions transcendental." Returning from a Whitsuntide Communion, he said, "I feel the service of this morning is a means of grace. At last the burden of doubt was lifted, but he could not tell the exact moment when he found it gone, and himself standing like the Pilgrim of old at the foot of the Cross.

His life was early cut off; but before he died he made notes of a "Candid Examination of Religion." After his death, these notes came to Dr. Gore, who published them, enriched with many notes, with the title, "Thoughts on Religion." The book is of great interest, especially the confessional part. "The modifications of my views are not so much due to purely logical processes of the intellect," he writes, as to the ripening experience of life and the sobering caution which advancing age exercises on the mind. In my first book I placed undue confidence in merely syllogistic conclusions." And at the last he said he could reproach himself only for what he called sins of the intellect-mental arrogance, undue regard for intellectual supremacy. Romanes' return

to faith was due to the value which he placed on experience, his own, his friends and that of the ages.*

*

VII.

Let us now ask, in conclusion, what we have tried to establish.

First. The discoveries in science and criticism do not disturb faith; because the source of religion is in feeling, or experience, and not in the intellect.

Second. The function of the intellect is to interpret experience; to classify and compare the facts of experience, to

*"Life and Letters of George John Romanes." Fifth Edition. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1902.

exhibit them as truth, and thus to discover the universal elements of religious experience.

Third. Universal experience argues and proves a corresponding reality and truth. It is, therefore, of supreme value in an evidential statement of religion.

Fourth. When examined as to its content, universal religious experience establishes these articles of faith: Jesus is my Divine Saviour.

God is my Father.

The Holy Spirit comforts and guides me.

The grace of God works in human life as a Transforming Power.

Jesus' teachings are Ultimate Truth.

Fifth. These truths proclaimed by men who know them in experience will make men everywhere experience them, and so lift men from doubt and sin.

✓

IV.

THE LINGUISTIC PROBLEM IN JAPAN.

BY REV. CHRISTOPHER NOSS.

Ulphilas, to whom we owe the preservation of the oldest specimen of the speech of our barbarian ancestors, and Luther, whose translation of the Bible into good Saxon colloquial forms the basis of modern German literature, are classic illustrations of the influence of Christianity on the development of language. The annals of modern missionary effort tell of many enterprises which may be compared with those of Ulphilas and Luther. But never before in the history of the Church have Christian missionaries had to face a more complicated linguistic problem than that which confronts them to-day in Japan.

The Japanese type of civilization is the most elaborate that has been developed independently of Christian influences since the age of the Roman Empire. For the study of the conflict between Christianity and that civilization we find no adequate analogy on this side of the apostolic age. Roughly speaking, there are three great barriers in the way of the missionary, namely, race-prejudice, the difficulty of the language, and the effect of perverted religious ideas on the minds of the people.

The racial differences which appear so conspicuously in physiognomy and complexion do profoundly affect missionary work. They keep alive instinctive prejudices which belong properly to the age of savagery, but persist, at least latently, in the minds of the best of us. That which makes or unmakes a missionary in a country like Japan is the degree of ability to eliminate race-prejudice from his own mind, while constantly aware of its presence in the minds of the people before him. We may go so far as to say that the question of race