criminately authorities of the highest value and of no value at all, that it quotes now a decision of acknowledged weight and in juxtaposition with it the obiter dictum of an obscure author, that it is loose in its use of expressions whose meaning should be carefully defined, and that with profuse protestations of respect for Christianity it leaves the reader in complete uncertainty what it can be, beyond the barest Deism, which the writer would deem it necessary or possible to uphold.

These strictures are prompted by our keen interest in many of the questions which Dr. White discusses, and by our desire to ascertain exactly what it is that he and those who hold kindred convictions would have us substitute for the 'faith once for all delivered unto the Saints.' So far as his pages are devoted to an accurate record of the struggle through which scientific discovery has gained general recognition we have no cause of controversy with him. We lament as much as he can the folly and shortsightedness of men who, often with sadly inadequate equipment, have ventured upon unfamiliar ground and have erroneously quoted Holy Scripture as decisive of questions which may well be left for science to determine. We should be content to leave many perplexing problems unsolved in the consciousness that our present knowledge is only in part, and that we are surrounded on all sides by the dark shadows of mystery into which the most enlightened modern science has but dimly penetrated, whilst we hold fast as the most certain of all certainties the cardinal truths of the Catholic faith. But this is not Dr. White's position.

'My conviction is,' he writes, 'that Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of "a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," and in the love of God and of our neighbour, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning, but in the world at large. Thus may the declarations of Micah as to the requirements of Jehovah, the definition by St. James of "pure religion and undefiled," and above all the precepts and ideals of the blessed Founder of Christianity himself, be brought to bear more and more effectively upon mankind' (Introduction, p. xii).

The terms of this matured conviction, reached after the long period of study inseparable from the production of Dr. White's two elaborate volumes, deserve the most careful attention, not only because they contain the concentrated

essence of his ripened thought, but because they give shape to a plausible sentiment which at the present time is vaguely floating in many minds, that it is possible to sacrifice dogmatic truth and yet to retain the essential core of Christianity. Let us assure Dr. White that in our examination of his 'conviction' as here formulated we desire to write, not merely without bitterness, but with all kindliness and courtesy, that we give him full credit for being animated by no unworthy motives, and that with him our sole object is to uphold the truth.

Our first remark on the brief extract just quoted is that its terms are singularly obscure. It leaves altogether undecided how much is included in such expressions as 'Dogmatic Theology,' 'ancient modes of thought,' and 'theological control,' or in the precepts and ideals of the blessed Founder of Christianity.' Is the doctrine of the Incarnation to disappear with the dismissal of the first, the belief in the superintendence of a Divine Providence with the second, and the Church's preservation of revealed truth with the third? In view of the terrible power which evil exercises in the world and in the heart of man, and of the effect which experience shows that the love of God, as engendered in man by what we presume we must now call the Christian superstition, can exert in restraining it, does Dr. White really believe that the love of a 'Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness' will be more effective in enabling men to obey the precepts and aim at the ideals of the blessed Founder of Christianity than was the exploded belief which generated that constraining love of Christ which animated St. Paul or St. Augustine or St. Bernard? Is this presentation of a Power not ourselves in the universe which has implanted in nature a blind instinct of selection through whose long-drawn and God-abandoned action humanity has gradually emerged from the level of the brutes, a more attractive, and so more effective, object of love and eager imitation than an Almighty Father of mercies who made us in His own image that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures, and has redeemed us from sin at the priceless sacrifice of His only begotten Son? And, to suggest only one further question, Which of the precepts and ideals of the blessed Founder of Christianity are to be abandoned and which retained? That these queries are not unseasonable will, we think, be but too apparent as we examine the contents of Dr. White's two volumes and become acquainted with his conclusions.

We cannot linger over the chapters devoted to the history

of the transition From Creation to Evolution' and 'From Genesis to Geology.' Dr. White makes merry over the mistakes committed by many Christian apologists who were not in advance of the scientific ignorance of their time; and, without defining in what sense he uses the word 'evolution,' and in spite of the warning of so competent a man of science as Virchow, he asserts that the theory of an evolution process in the formation of the universe and of animated nature is established (i. 86). His view of the value which the Scriptures have for those who dwell in the light of modern scientific knowledge is expressed as follows:

'That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our own most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations of our race, from its childhood through the great turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often are as a record of historical outward fact; recent researches in the East are constantly increasing this value; but it is not for this that we prize them most; they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of truth in human history, and because in form, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the Book of Genesis or in the Psalms, or in the Book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt or Chaldea, or India or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old--the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation-has added, and is steadily adding, a new revelation divinely inspired. In the light of these two evolutions, then-one of the visible universe, the other of a sacred creation legend-science and theology, if the master minds in both are wise, may at last be reconciled. A great step in this reconciliation was recently seen at the main centre of theological thought amongst English-speaking people when, in the collection of essays entitled Lux Mundi, emanating from the college established in these latter days as a fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford, the legendary character of the creation accounts in our sacred books was acknowledged, and when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked, "May not the Holy Spirit at times have made use of myth and legend?" (i. 23-4).

The more we ponder this crucial passage the harder we find it to grasp the writer's meaning, or even to comprehend

We pass by

the sense in which he employs its ruling terms. its allusion to Lux Mundi and the adroit use which here and elsewhere he makes use of the weapons the Keble tutors have forged for him, and we confine ourselves to Dr. White's own definitions. In what intelligible sense can it be said that sacred books conform to the evolution of the highest conceptions and beliefs of our race, or is it only a tortuous mode of stating the self-evident truism that the sacred books of every people express and contain their highest conceptions and beliefs? Are the other bibles' referred to legitimately to be placed on no different plane from that of Holy Scripture, save that the latter 'conforms to the evolution' of some happier guesses at truth than its congeners? Is the highest value of the Christian Bible centred in the fact that it mirrors the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man, and not, according to the conviction of many centuries, that it reveals to us under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost the mind and will of God? Is the evolution of divine truth in Holy Writ only parallel to the evolution of a flower or a tree, so that to speak of its context in terms of praise or blame really involves no more of moral judgment than if one spoke disrespectfully of the equator? Is the inspiration by which men are led to the knowledge of God's moral nature and attributes, and are moved to imitate His holiness and obey His will, so slightly differentiated from the inspiration by which they are moved to study and enabled to understand the method of His working in nature, that both may without confusion of thought and conception be described under the same name in the same breath? Dr. White has, in our judgment, not only singularly failed to distinguish between things that differ, but has absolutely reversed the true order of cause and effect; whilst his dextrous misrepresentation of the Christian position as a 'reign of caprice' shows that he has not fully comprehended the theology whose utter downfall he so triumphantly proclaims.

To take the last point first: Holy Scripture sets forth the Divine Creator as of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the rightful and righteous governor of the world which He has made, Whose actions are only imperfectly understood, but Whose nature excludes the faintest conception of caprice. He does all things according to the counsel of His own will; He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; with Him there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning-such are some of the phrases in which so much of the Divine nature as man can grasp is shadowed forth, and in the light of their

affirmations it is, to our minds, a gross perversion of the truth to speak of theology as establishing 'a reign of caprice,' because the Bible records examples of the exercise of the Divine will which range beyond the limited arena of man's everyday experience. But we must pass from this minor utterance to the central idea of the passage before us.

In our conviction it is an absolute misconception of the chief importance of Holy Scripture to say that it consists in its history of the steady striving of our race (or of a part of it) after higher conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations. We hold firmly, on the contrary, that its inestimable value lies in its record of the gradual revelation to man of the highest ideal, which thenceforth claims his belief and quickens his aspirations. The distinction between the two conceptions is radical and fundamental. Of course we acknowledge a progressive revelation from God with a correspondent evolution and expansion in the heart, mind, and soul of man. As we may trace in Holy Writ the preparation through sundry times and divers manners' to 'the fulness of time,' so we may also see there in Dr. White's phrase, a mirror of man's evolving heart, mind, and soul- an evolving which is still continuing through the influence of the Church, and is, we fondly trust, destined to attain a far higher and wider development. But the priceless core of Holy Scripture lies not in the development of man, but in the revelation of God, and the latter is not to be explained away on any theory of evolution. The Christ of history, the Gospel of St. John, the Epistle to the Ephesians are crucial illustrations of our position. We maintain that they cannot be so accounted for as Dr. White would apparently have us believe. We are irrevocably convinced that they are not the product merely of the evolving mind of man, but of the miraculous revelation of God. The issue between Dr. White and ourselves is clear and essential, and cannot be sublimated by laudatory phrases about the value of the Bible in common with the other 'great sacred books of the world.' So far is it from being true that the highest conceptions and aspirations contained in our sacred books were the inevitable evolution of the preceding ages which culminated naturally in them, there is nothing more startling than the contrast between the moral and spiritual elevation of the New Testament and the general degradation of the age which saw its birth. At the most unlikely period in the world's history the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, as there flashed out upon them an ideal of morality and religion, towards the full

VOL. XLVI.-NO. XCI.

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