controversy, or concerning which the creed of the Church has undergone more frequent change or more serious modification. It is not, however, in respect to the fact of the atonement, but in respect to the theories that have been invented by human ingenuity to explain the fact, that this diversity of view exists. The early fathers breathed the spirit of Holy Scripture, and generally confined themselves to that. There was no attempt to invent a theory of the Atonement. Some of the theories subsequently adopted, even by the greatest thinkers, appear very strange to us: e.g., the theory of Origen, which was substantially adopted by Marcion and Irenæus, that the human soul of Jesus was given to Satan as a ransom for the souls of men in his power. But they are hardly stranger than some of the hypotheses invented by the scientists of the past to explain the phenomena of nature. Such theories served a valuable purpose as working hypotheses, and even by their very failure to explain all the facts, served to limit the field of investigation.

In the early period we find no trace of the idea of a satisfaction to justice. Irenæus grasped the idea of satisfaction to law in the perfect obedience of Christ. But in Justin Martyr seems to be found the first trace of satisfaction rendered by Christ through suffering. The author of the letter to Diognetus appears to have apprehended, with more or less clearness, the profound conception of God Himself vindicating the claims of law, maintaining the moral order of the universe, and at the same time rescuing men from the consequences of transgression, by bearing the penalty Himself in the person of His Son.

The doctrine of Justification, by faith alone, never entered the creed of Christendom until Luther defined it. The doctrine of Regeneration never received the recognition it deserved until it was defined by Wesley, and brought into prominence by Methodism.

It is evident, then, that human creed, even when derived from Holy Scripture, has been progressive. The progress of knowledge in the domain of theology has conformed to the same laws as in every other department of science. The theory of evolution has grown in a similar way. "Lamark contributes two factors, (1) Pressure of changing environments, and (2) Use and disuse of organs. Darwin contributes two, (3) Natural selection, leading to survival of the fittest, and (4) Sexual selection of the strongest or most attractive; while another factor, physiological selection, is composed of the segregate fecundity of Gulick, and Homogamy of Romanes; and just now another factor is coming to the front, and bids fair to claim a place in the theory, viz., conscious voluntary co-operation, of course to be limited to evolution in the case of man." In philosophy the same growth is discernible. Its pathway through the ages is strewn with the wrecks of discarded systems.

Is the process of development likely to continue? Has perfection been found? Does any existing creed contain unmixed truth, and at the same time such an evenbalanced statement that every phase of truth receives precisely the degree of prominence that is due to it, so as to form together a complete and harmonious whole? Where is such a creed to be found? While we believe the great and fundamental doctrines to be unchangeable and eternal, this cannot be affirmed of their statement and illustration. We must welcome more scholarly and accurate statement of the things that we believe, even though it may sound unfamiliar and harsh in our ears. We need the help of more perfect culture. There are two sources from which we have a right to expect much, from Biblical criticism, and from the progress of science. No particular species of truth can be other than helpful to all others. It is not light, but darkness that is to be dreaded. It is not breadth and liberality, but narrowness and bigotry that can injure the sacred cause.

PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF PRESENT-DAY SOCIALISM. By Rev. W. FRIZZELL (Canadian Methodist Quarterly).-The term "Socialism" is now used in three senses: (1) In the widest sense of the word, it is a scheme which has in view the more equal distribution of wealth, or the preventing too great inequalities between man and man. (2) In a narrower sense, the word is used to indicate efforts on the part of the State to remove inequalities, and better the condition of society. (3) In the third and more important sense, Socialism is a system in which the production and distribution of wealth are carried on solely by the State instead of by private capitalists or companies. The word is now generally used in this third sense. It is called State Socialism, sometimes also "collectivism," as opposed to "individualism,” and "monopolism." It asserts that the State should own all the land. No private property in land. It should own all the mines. No ring of miners may buy a mining district and fix prices. The State should own all the factories, all the railroads, telegraphs, telephones, and such like inventions. The State must keep the fruits of the earth in her storehouses, as well as the products of labour, and distribute them where they are needed. All callings or professions are to be classified, and the government will be administered through these classes. Under State-Socialism every citizen would be directly in the employ of the State or Government. The civil service would include the whole population. As its fundamental aim is the reconstruction of the economic order of society it need not concern itself much with questions of morality or religion.

Another practical phase of Socialism is Anarchism, or Nihilism. It is the very antipodes of State-Socialism; it is opposed to the State. For want of a better name it might be called "Anti-State Socialism." It is said of these extremists, "They aim at the complete overthrow of the State, even if dynamite is needed. They aim at blowing the whole social fabric into fragments, and out of the chaos thus produced they expect to evolve a new heaven and a new earth, in which every man shall do that which is right in his own eyes."

There is another aspect of Socialism. There are many able and good men inside the Church who are Christian Socialists. With this view Maurice and Kingsley warmly sympathized in their day, and it finds many advocates in the present day. Christian Socialists do not propose to reduce society to any one ideal system; they believe in variety, in freedom, in progress. They welcome what is good in the present century, but believe there are better things in the coming centuries, socially. The future, they believe, lies in the direction of association or co-operation. While they sympathize with the poor they do not assault the rich. They say the rich are not to blame for being rich any more than the poor are to blame for being poor. What to blame is the wretched competitive system that makes it possible for the one to grow rich and the other to grow poor. Christian Socialism is what its advocates all applied Christianity; Christianity applied to economic affairs. It is religion first. It does not believe that society can be regenerated by arrangements. It believes that it is to be made new, as Maurice says, by finding the law and ground of its order and harmony, the only secret of its existence, in God. All Christian Socialists believe that, in some way, we must apply the Sermon on the Mount and the spirit of the cross to the construction of society. They would work in a gradual way, putting their main reliance upon character, upon conscience, upon religion. They would appeal to the ethical in man, they would show the rationality of Socialism, and in this way bring the Church more and more into touch with the masses. If we can comprehend what is implied in State Socialism, in Revolutionary Socialism, and in Christian Socialism, we get an idea of the whole movement.

It

What should be the attitude of Christian ministers towards the movement? certainly demands serious consideration. There is much prejudice against it, as associated with wild views on marriage, religion, ethical and political economy; but we must carefully distinguish between the essence of a movement and its accidents. Some regard Socialism as hostile to Christianity, and identified with Secularism; some suppose that Socialism aims at an equal division of property, but socialists are not communistic; and some regard Socialists as hostile to capital, but they only propose its transference from the hands of a competing few to the systematic management of the State, for the good of the whole. Exact knowledge of the movement would correct many of these prejudices. As a movement for the deliverance of the poor and downtrodden from their unfavourable surroundings, it should command our thought and sympathy, even if we cannot endorse all the methods adopted. Canon Westcott says, "The problems which the coming generation will have to face are problems of wealth and poverty, of luxury and want, of capital and labour. We are suffering on all sides from a tyrannical individualism."

"Our public schools and libraries, our State universities, hospitals, asylums, reformatories, our postal service, every court of justice, the signal service, lighting and heating of cities, labour bureaus, municipal fire departments, every Factory Act, every municipal health regulation-these, and a hundred other things, are forms of State Socialism. The Socialist says they are good so far, but why not extend the principle, and make it apply to all production and distribution of wealth. Instead of so many business men in the city running opposition stores, bleeding one another, and sweating their employees, let the State take control, and establish a store in each ward, as it is needed, and run it in the interests of society. Of course this would mean a complete shifting of the business base, and no one knows how the experiment would result. But this is the programme.”

We are now face to face with this great Socialistic movement. It is growing; it is throwing out its roots farther and farther. Instead of looking on it with the paralysis of despair, let us study, let us investigate, and, if possible, apply the right remedies to existing social inequalities.

CURRENT

GERMAN

THOUGHT.

STATE OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN GREAT BRITAIN. By Dr. CARL CLEMEN (Theol. Stud. u. Kritiken, 1892, No. 4). The second instalment of Dr. Clemen's article is much longer and much more elaborate than the first (see THINKER, June). The writer is evidently fond of triple divisions. The three main heads are Church Dogmatics, Anti-religious Polemic, and Philosophical Apologetic. Each of these is subdivided into three parts, and each part again into three sections. The first part of the paper dealt with the first portion of Church Dogmatics, the second and third portions dealing with Broad-Church Universalism and Critical Liberalism. We can only refer here to Broad-Church Universalism, which is summed up in three tenets, Mutual Toleration, Universal Salvation, and the Realization of God's kingdom on earth. Reference to the other features of Religious Thought in Great Britain would lead us too far afield.

Broad-Churchism is rightly enough credited with having done much to promote

The

mutual toleration, which may almost be regarded as its fundamental article of faith. Maurice was the founder of the school. His singular saying is quoted to the effect, that thoughtful people are usually right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. The succession is continued in Kingsley, Robertson, Stanley, Farrar. effect of the various controversies from Hampden to Lur Mundi has been generally to widen the area left open to debate. It is doubtful whether in the present changed state of feeling either Newman or Maurice would have been treated now as they were once. Newman only pleaded for his interpretation of the Articles as a possible one, and so in a sense pleaded for the principle of toleration. No Anglican school adheres to the Prayer Book in every point. If this were universally required, said Dean Stanley, all clergymen must be declared heterodox from the two archbishops downward. No one takes the Athanasian Creed literally. Archdeacon Wilson claims the right to distinguish between the divine and the human in Scripture. Mr. Haweis holds that the secession of Voysey and Stopford Brooke was 66 an anachronism."

The presence of divergent views on some points among Baptists, Independents, Presbyterians, Methodists, is adduced as evidence of a similar spirit among the Dissenters, who are described as "less broad-minded because of their poorer theological training." The treatment of Thomas Erskine, McLeod Campbell, Robertson Smith, Dods, and Bruce, and the result of the treatment, are of course referred to. Prof. Mivart's large concessions to natural science were approved by high Catholic dignitaries.

The growing recognition of other Churches is also noticed in the same connexion. It seems that a special committee of the Lambeth Conference, in 1888, recommended the recognition of the Orders of non-Episcopal Churches; but "the English prelates did not venture to publish the proposal." The centripetal tendency of the Churches is shown in the various amalgamations of Presbyterian and Methodist bodies. The "United" Presbyterian Church signalizes one of these unions. "By common labour in the field of practical philanthropy, the different Churches, as hitherto, may come closer and closer together. Strong Evangelicals like Spurgeon, and strict Catholics like Manning, have not scorned to co-operate with other creeds and with those of no creed."

The modern tendency to Universalism is traced to Erskine's and Campbell's doctrine of universal pardon as already an accomplished fact, and only needing to be recognized by the individual. The teaching of Robertson and Maurice led up to Farrar's "Eternal Hope" of 1877. Like Maurice, Farrar disputed the meaning of aionios, and questioned the physical character of future punishment, its extension to the majority of men, and its decision at death. Still, he did and does not absolutely reject the eternity of future punishment. His controversy with Pusey brought about some curious results. One was as far from asserting that all would be saved as the other was from asserting that the majority would be lost. Pusey declared that the damnation of the majority of mankind is "no catholic doctrine," and that “ faith in actual torment is an individual opinion." Farrar closes by saying, "The final deliverance of all is my fervent hope, but to cherish hope is an altogether different thing from asserting a doctrine." The extension of such "hope" is perceptible in many quarters. The conceptions of the nature of the future life have also undergone change. Work rather than rest is emphasized, work that is also rest. Maurice said, at the end of life, "If I can no longer preach here, I shall do so in the other world."

As to the third point, the Broad Church was, perhaps, the first to raise the cry

of social reform. The speculative Maurice was a practical worker at Working Men's Institutes and Colleges. Kingsley, Dr. Arnold, Hughes (of Tom Brown fame) prepared the way for the movements that have grown out of The Bitter Cry. Toynbee Halls and University Settlements now abound in East London. There is a race between the Churches in every work of Christian philanthropy. The Broad Church anticipated the Salvation Army. The intelligent sympathy shown to the labour movement in its early stages by Broad Churchmen saved it from the excesses which have marked its progress in other countries. Westcott and High Churchmen follow in the same line. Dr. Clemen adds, "The daily press stands in England altogether higher than in other European countries. Even in the last Parnell crisis, it showed on the whole a moral feeling, which must have seemed strange to the foreigner."

We have touched on three out of twenty-four sections. The entire article, while packed full of the results of wide reading in the religious and philosophical literature of England, will scarcely give Germans a just conception of the state of "religious thought in Great Britain." Too much importance is assigned to such isolated phenomena as Pessimism, Empiricism, Theosophism, Religious Positivism, which are mere eddies in the broad stream of religious thought. Sound, healthy thought, as represented in ordinary writers, is scarcely noticed. The exceptional and startling figures too prominently.

Dr. Clemen thinks that Germany has much to learn from England in regard to the active Christian work which brings different social classes together, in regard to the interest taken by the Church in public questions, and also in regard to the popular exposition of religious questions by professed theologians. In Germany such questions are discussed only in learned treatises by and for a select circle, in a peculiar language. In England they are discussed in the light of day. If some harm is done, the good done is still greater. Truth holds its own in the arena of public debate.

PROF. SCHÜRER ON THE CONCORDANCE TO THE SEPTUAGINT. BY HATCH & REDPATH (Theolog. Literaturzeitung, July 23).—" How indispensable a Concordance to the Septuagint is to New Testament exegetes in our day is felt more strongly than it was a generation ago. For we are rightly penetrated by the conviction that the language of the New Testament is to be explained in the first instance, not out of Plato and Sophocles, but out of the Greek version of the Old Testament. Thus it will be welcome news to very many that English theologians are giving us a new Concordance to the LXX. equal to the requirements of the day. The only one we have hitherto possessed is, as is well known, the work of Trommius (2 vols., fol. 1718), a highly estimable work which has hitherto satisfied the most pressing needs. But revision and supplement were in the highest degree desirable, in harmony with presentday materials. In the days of Trommius scarcely anything had been done in criticising the LXX., the most important manuscripts were as yet unknown or used inadequately. Trommius also did not use the existing material as fully as was to be wished.

The execution of the new great work was planned and taken vigorously in hand by the late Dr. Hatch. He was qualified for it as few are, and his sudden removal in the midst of his toil is a heavy loss. He had gathered round him a number of young scholars who helped him in the arranging of the mass of material, and other preliminary toil. A great part of the labour was already done; about half was in manuscript, although unrevised, when death all too early snatched him away from science. The carrying on and completion has been undertaken by one of his coadjutors, Mr. Redpath. The first part, embracing the letters a and P, makes the