earthly system of life.' It is the organism of the higher world, in which is God's throne, in which God's will is eternally done by angels, and which in Christ descends from heaven to earth. The kingdom of God is truly the kingdom of heaven. 'Since the appearing of Jesus Christ, and through Him, this supra-earthly system, with its peculiar organs, powers, and gifts, is incorporated with the earthly organism, and thus in the present world asserts itself as God's kingdom' (Beck). Whether, therefore, Jesus appears in the Synoptic Gospels as the personal bearer of the kingdom, or in John's Gospel as the incarnate Logos according to the Apostle's teaching, or as the Son of God come from heaven according to His own testimony-in both cases the common thought is this, that in Jesus Christ heaven has come down to earth, the eternal, Divine life of heaven has entered into human history (1 John i. 2). . . . . Where this kingdom of God is accepted by religious receptiveness, there it supplies the fulness of Divine gifts as the supreme good in a unique sense. For so far as it reaches―reaches also, of course, God's condescending love in Christ—therefore also His grace and mercy and forgiveness of sins. Whoever enters this kingdom by faith in its Head, not only receives forgiveness, but is assimilated to the kingdom in nature, becomes a child of light, learns to pray for the Holy Spirit, until he is endued with power from on high by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit."

Christ's rejection of an earthly reign or kingdom was decisive. The Jewish notions, akin to those of the Book of Henoch and the Solomonic Psalms, found no favour in His eyes. The kingdom does not come with observation; its existence and sway are within (Luke xvii. 20, 21). "It is wasted labour to try to set aside Luther's correct exposition of Luke xvii. 20, 'within you,' because its mysticism is an offence to Ritschlianism. For John iii. gives just the same idea. The coming of the kingdom of God is inward, and takes place by a new birth from above. Apart from such a birth none can see or enter into it. The kingdom of heaven is a reality only to one who, by a new birth from above, has received a new endowment of power, a new Godoriginated life, a spiritual nature from the Spirit Himself (John iii. 7). Whether Ritschlianism is wroth against these ideas or not matters little in view of the fact that they are Scripture ideas, and that according to Holy Scripture there is no partaking in God's kingdom apart from a new birth of incorruptible seed (1 Peter i. 23). Everything said about God's kingdom' apart from that birth corresponds to the preChristian, Judaic standpoint of the Pharisee, Nicodemus, who boasted of being 'the teacher of Israel,' and yet had no mind for 'heavenly things.'"

Reception into the kingdom through faith in its Founder is merely the initial entrance; full entrance is only after this life. Fidelity, watchfulness, unworldliness, devotion to the higher spiritual life, are necessary. Christ's demands on His

disciples of self-denial and sacrifice are severe. "Renunciation of the world in the sense of complete inner severance from the world and full surrender to the kingdom of heaven is the characteristic of the disciple of Jesus, and he only has a right to the name who is ready to exercise such self-denial." The spiritual characteristics of the kingdom and its members are well expounded in the essay.

The widest circle

Three circles of disciples around Jesus are distinguished. consisted of those who were baptized and listened to Christ's teaching, and yet were not disciples in the strict sense; a narrower circle of those who really believed in Christ as Messiah, but retained a worldly, self-seeking spirit, and fell away rather than give up self; the narrowest circle of those who were so identified with Jesus that the kingdom of God became their all in all in such a way that in fellowship with Christ their faith grew into love which has for its possession the indwelling of God and Jesus Christ, in other words, the unio mystica with the Father and the Son. So

in the Church now there are three circles-the baptized merely, forming the visible Church; the invisible Church of the really converted; the kingdom of God, i.e., believers born from above, children of God in the real sense by endowment with the Holy Ghost, "spiritual persons," as Beck rightly says in the sense of Scripture, "men of God," as Frank says, or as we may put it, "men of eternity, strangers and pilgrims on earth, and yet citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, having their citizenship in heaven." "That they who in virtue of their spiritual character really belong to the kingdom of heaven enter into it after death, is matter of course; belonging already to 'the world to come,' they must necessarily enter the Jerusalem above, the heavenly city. They are dead even on earth, and their life is hid with Christ in God."

....

The destruction of Jerusalem as foretold by Christ, the overthrow of the Roman Empire depicted in the Book of Revelation, and the final coming of Christ, are referred to as stages in the outward progress of God's kingdom on earth. Its universal character is thus described: "It lies in the nature of this kingdom to be world-embracing; its purpose is the religious organization of the human race. It has a right to all men; for they are all God's creatures, bound to obey Him. The absolutely universal character of this idea, superior in its very nature to all Jewish particularism, is everywhere so clearly expressed in the Gospels that the Judaizing of the teaching of Jesus stamps itself as learned caprice. The 'kingdom of heaven' in the Gospels is an idea of such elevation that earthly limits of human fancy vanish as lying in the clouds far beneath. Embracing God and the world, the kingdom of God draws humanity with its longings for the eternal up towards the light in Him who was the Life and the Light of men."

DISCUSSIONS ON INSPIRATION.-IS Scripture absolutely free from error? Is the existence of error to any extent compatible with Divine Inspiration? These are the questions which are asked as earnestly and answered as variously in Germany as elsewhere. We need not notice the extreme of the negative school, so largely represented there. We have also an extreme wing of the orthodox school, which stands by the definitions of the post-Reformation confessions and meets all argument with a stern non possumus. There is also a large and growing body of orthodox teachers, as able and learned as they are believing and reverent, who do not think the exclusion of the possibility of error on secondary subjects a necessary part of the idea of inspiration. Indeed, they would regard that possibility as involved in the human side of Scripture. We will mention two representatives of this school. First, Dr. Grau, joint-editor of the Beweis des Glaubens. The periodical he edits and the names of his colleagues are guarantee enough of his whole-hearted orthodoxy. In a recent number he protested strongly against the views, referred to recently in this summary, of Dr. Haupt, who, by the way, figures as an editor of the Beweis des Glaubens. In a series of papers under the suggestive title of "The Humility and the Glory of Holy Scripture" he takes the ground just described. In the number for March, Dr. Grau argues that minute accuracy in matters of chronology, astronomy, &c., is needless, and would imply a miracle of a strange kind. "The miracles which Jesus worked, and the miracle of His resurrection, are facts which one must believe; for unbelievers they have no existence. But here there would be a miracle which we should have to prove to unbelievers by means of exact science, whether of physical science or historical criticism. Thus there would be no need of faith." Christ's refusal to act the part of judge in matters of inheritance is applied to the subject. He might also, as the author and subject of Holy Scripture, ask, Who made Me a

cosmologist, astronomer, zoologist, or chronologist? Does not a question of land and brotherly peace lie nearer His province than questions of cosmological and astronomical science? "The very essence of faith and its contents is seen in the fact that Holy Scripture shall bear the shame and lowliness of the cross. The essence of faith is that its teaching, which is all life, and power, and blessing, shall be hidden under weakness and death, suffering and shame. So it was with Christ, the Lord of glory. So it is with the whole of our Christian life up to death and the grave. Luther says, 'If faith is to exist, all that is believed must be concealed; and it cannot be more thoroughly concealed than when the exact opposite appears and is experienced. God makes alive by killing, justifies by counting guilty, raises to heaven by taking to hell. He conceals His eternal mercy under eternal wrath, His righteousness under unrighteousness.' Can it be out of harmony with God's Word that in it also life should be hidden by death, truth by error?" What, it is asked, are the moral and religious defects of the book of Esther, or the scientific and chronological errors of Ecclesiastes, in comparison with the moral faults of the heroes of the Old Testament? "It sounds very religious when Bonaventura asserts a sevenfold sense of Scripture historical, allegorical, tropological, analogical, symbolical, synecdochical, hyperbolical-whereas Lyra retains only the well-known four: Litera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia; and, in our century, Stier is satisfied with the double sense. There is something very suspicious in this human glorifying of Holy Scripture."

Luther's attitude to Scripture is appealed to. He made light of one or two books, and put others in the foreground. "We come back to the question whether the faith of the orthodox Fathers of the seventeenth century and their representatives in the nineteenth was better than Luther's? Luther, the ignoramus and novice; Quenstedt and Calov, the masters and models! Luther looked at the whole of Scripture from the view-point of justification. What agreed with this he saw with perfect clearness; what did not, he overlooked. Is this a fault? For the theorist and scholastic certainly. But the Church and kingdom of God is no school or academy, but a harvest-field, growing from stage to stage; and each stage of growth is not the whole, but only a part, yet a part full of life, and therefore one with the living whole."

What Luther said of justification must be affirmed of Scripture: "Nothing can be given up, though heaven and earth fall. On this everything that we teach and do against Pope, devil, and all the world, hangs. Therefore, we must be certain of this, and not doubt, else all is lost, and Pope and devil carry it over us." Here also his saying applies: "Fides vero si tangitur, tangitur pupilla oculi nostri." What does all this apply to? "Not law and morals, not theology or doctrine, to say nothing of philosophy and speculation; but it is the simple and childlike Bible-history, which our children learn, or ought to learn, in the schools. This simplest and most despised among the subjects of modern days contains heavenly treasure for him whose heart God opens; still, we have this treasure in earthen vessels.' . . . . This fact of the Cross, which the Apostle calls the folly and weakness of God, cannot be understood and prized, unless we get into the line of the history just spoken of. For in distinction from the revelation of the Creator in nature, of His wisdom and power, that history is the revelation of God the Redeemer, of His mercy and lowliness, His self-humbling, nay, sacrifice unto death. This history is the history of true religion. In the sense of the natural man, religion means that man judges himself by God's law, keeps His commands, and lives to His glory. Really it is not so, but man deceives God and himself. But in that history God judges Himself by man's law, condescends like a Father and pities like a Father, and at last lets wickedness and

craft triumph over Him. This is the Divine drama of the sacred history. That is, the Divine folly is wiser than men, and the Divine weakness stronger than men. Only from this drama do we come to know God truly. If thou canst believe in this God, in Him thou hast forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal life."

These extracts show the doctrinal position of the writer. We have not quoted the strongest statements respecting the distinction to be made between the spiritual and the material element in Scripture. The last sentence runs: "The cornerstone, on which we are built as living stones, is no dead, passive stone, nor yet a book, but the living person of our Lord and Saviour, as it meets us in the sacred history of the Old and New Testaments. This living Saviour let no one bind with doctrines or commands of any kind as with graveclothes, even though he professes to take them from Holy Scripture."

Another representative is Dr. Frank, one of the ablest of orthodox Lutherans, author of the System of Christian Certainty. In an article in the Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift (1892, Second Part) he expresses the fear of divisions in the Lutheran Church on this question. The danger arises chiefly from the desire of those who hold the rigid views of the dogmatists of the seventeenth century to make absolute inerrancy a test of orthodoxy, in other words, to make, not inspiration, but a mode and method of inspiration a fundamental question. Such an effort was made at the general Lutheran Conference at Hanover in 1889, though nothing came of it. It was not disputed on any side that, as the confessions say, the writings of the Old and New Testaments are the limpidissimi et purissimi Israeli fontes, the unica regula et norma, by which all teachings and teachers must be judged. But beyond this some wanted to declare that error of any kind is incompatible with the truth of Scripture. Dr. Frank points out that such a decision could only be arrived at after the most patient and minute investigation, such investigation as is now going on, though no one knows when it will at all approach a conclusion. There is also a previous question, viz., to what extent the received text, especially of the Old Testament, has been modified or corrupted? "Who can say definitely that no errors have crept into the numbers of the Old Testament text by the fault of copyists, while we are not in a position to discover them as in the case of the New Testament ? How much uncertainty remains even in the New Testament!" If we argue, as old writers did, on à priori grounds, that God could not permit such corruption in the text, or that since Scripture is God's Word it must be free from error, we might remember the saying, which may also be inspired, "My ways are not your ways, and My thoughts are not your thoughts." "Is it not similar in our own lives? We know God's hand is at work in them, and yet our faith would teach God what He should do. God's plans are certainly right, but they are more intricate than ours. We may be perfectly agreed in accepting the statements of confessions respecting Scripture, and yet may be unable to give a definite judgment on special questions. This or that expert in Scripture study perhaps ventures to do so; others would not go so far, perhaps never would do so. Would it not be prudent to recognize this state of things instead of prematurely forcing a decision, and so occasioning divisions ? "

Dr. Frank criticizes an effort which is being made in certain provinces to establish a new "Lutheran Conference" for the discussion of "doctrinal questions of all sorts" on this basis among others the acceptance of Scripture as "God's Word without error." The proposal decides and assumes one of the questions most in discussion at present. "The Lutherans allied there have, as it seems, the solution of this question behind them; we have it before us. How they have succeeded in

settling it so rapidly, I know not; perhaps it is in the characteristic way of inference from assumed premisses." "Hitherto we have had patience with Luther when he, perhaps wrongly, used expressions which contradict the strict doctrine of Inspiration. It is hard to see why we cannot still bear the contradiction, if there is any, at least until the subject under discussion has been really threshed out. The Church's custom has been to adopt definitions of doctrine only after their truth has been inwardly felt and approved. That this has not yet been sufficiently done I think I can safely assert, and the future will not deceive me if I assert further, that the doctrine of the old Lutheran dogmatists of the seventeenth century, which never became the doctrine of our Church, never will become its doctrine if God's Spirit shall still guide our Church into all truth. It must come to this, that the Church, not merely theologians, will come to see that the affirmation of Holy Scripture as God's Word, of its inspiration and freedom from error, by no means involves the exclusion of mistakes, which, whether original or arising in the lapse of time, do not prejudice saving truth. For the rest, I hold to what I have already said: The wealth of grace and life which the confession of our Church has opened out to us is so abundant and comprehensive, that we have in it enough to meet the needs of our souls and our churches, notwithstanding the ever-advancing process of knowledge. For it can never be that open questions will not occupy theology and the Church; to deny this is to deny that saving truth is inexhaustible, and that the Spirit continually leads us into such truth. The important point is that we have found the right ground from which to carry on this advance, and to which we may return when in danger of going astray."

Dr. Grau refers to the opinions of Beck and Hofmann, two great Biblical theologians of recent days. Both were men of singular originality and independence of thought. Their whole life was given to the study of Scripture, apart from the teaching of theological schools and systems. Beck in particular was a worthy follower of Bengel. Both also are objects of intense dislike to the so-called "modern and critical school. Beck writes: "As in general the spirit obtains by conversion an independent insight into Divine things and into their bearings on the natural relations of men, without therefore being raised above the purely human and outward circumstances of natural learning, so is it with Theopneustia. It applies to the mysteries of God's kingdom, spiritual truth, and to the outward and human only so far as it is essentially connected with the former; it raises its organs in this field to a knowledge of truth transcending all human wisdom, but does not instruct them or preserve them from mistakes in things quite indifferent to spiritual truth and belonging to common knowledge, like chronological, topographical, purely historical subjects. The kingdom comes not and stands not in such outward observations, and they are just as incidental and indifferent to the spiritual inerrancy of the authors who deal with spiritual mysteries as to the genius of the poet or philosopher." Hofmann, in his Hermeneutics, writes: "What belongs to the system of things established by creation is the subject of natural knowledge and perception; only that which is the subject of faith is certain to faith. Holy Scripture is Holy Scripture to us only as the record of that which has the nature of faith. Our certainty of faith, such as we give to Holy Scripture, does not extend equally to that which has and that which has not the nature of faith. Holy Scripture is not an errorless manual of cosmology, anthropology, psychology, &c.; Biblical history is something else than an errorless segment of universal history. This is evident at once in the exposition of the first page of Scripture. Every view of the creation story is erroneous which would make scientific inquiry into creation superfluous or make it depend on the Biblical account. The task of the scientist is quite different from that of Genesis. . . . Holy Scripture is something