reality to those who became conscious of it, and it produced the most astonishing results. It brought men into abnormally close relations with each other. Those who were conscious of the new birth were formed, not only into a society, or sodalitas, secret or open according to circumstances, but they became a veritable brotherhood. It was not an artificially constructed community, but a spontaneous reality-a necessary evolution. It was exposed at once, as every human relationship is, to various corrupting influences, to hypocritical and unreal consociations. Brothers, as we know, can hate as well as love each other. False brethren might creep in with factious spirit and self-assertion, even denying the fundamental principle on which the brotherhood was based. As the genuine bond might arise in individuals previously hostile, and in classes which were hereditarily antithetic and antipathetic with each other, the new emotion, the positive new-made link, might very early suffer rough friction, and mean natures would not at once lose all their native characteristics. The proud Pharisee would find it a bitter draught to drink if he must quaff it from the cup of the Publican. The Roman noble might, and did, inwardly rebel when his slave claimed equal religious privilege with himself. The exaltation of "the man of low degree" did not always secure the smile and co-operation of the rich who had abandoned his wealth and been made low by his exuberant selfabandonment.

The Apostolic Epistles reveal everywhere the traces of colliding interests which had a grievous tendency to lower the new and lofty ideal. The story of the growth of the new institutions which took their origin in this sublime conception is often a very melancholy one. Human nature then, as now, did not rise to the surpassing height of this new life. The idea of the Apostles, as of their Master, was soon practically handled, but as a splendid Utopia; and the sublime conception was allowed to drift into incomplete forms, into premature and artificial organization, into institutions which were sorry simulacra of the great burst of Divine affection that was first originated by a common participation in the Divine humanity of the Son of God.

Nevertheless, from the beginning until now the name of "brethren " has shed an appreciable glow over the whole of the chequered history of the Church. Perhaps, by the very nature of the case, the implicit claims of the common designation led to mutual recrimination and repudiations. Even the law of God proved to have been "weak through the flesh." The material in which the idea of perfect conformity with the Divine will sought embodiment would not bear the strain of so lofty an ideal. As if a great sculptor had proceeded to embody his finest conception in a stone that crumbled to powder under the touch of his chisel, so the unregenerate, damaged nature of man-the flesh-seemed as though it could not submit to the law of God. But what the law could not do, the entrance of the Logos into human flesh accomplished. The Second Man was so personally conscious of having come from heaven and from God as always to do those things which pleased the Father. In His humanity all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt. The Spirit

ness.

was given in inexhaustible, unmeasured abundance. There was no antagonism between His flesh and the Divine Spirit. The very prince of this world found nothing on which he could fasten, even in the hour of darkBut when the process was first extended by the gift of the Holy Spirit to humanity, the flesh soon showed itself contrary to the Spirit; the conflict of the higher with the lower nature began, and the ultimate victory of the new life over the world was postponed. Much remained yet to be done before the true brotherhood of the blessed life, the full powers of holy love can be consummated. Still, the very name is a benediction as well as a prophecy. Though it has been often prostituted, and misapplied, and misconceived, and unnaturally limited to cliques, to sects, and to a part of the great family of God, yet it will, and must, eventually prevail over all delimitation, hostility, and division.

A third name was invested with special force, and took the measure of the new movement from a slightly different angle of vision. These disciples, these brethren, were called BELIEVERS. They gave this term to themselves and to each other. Faith in certain facts, principles, and promises was one of their most striking features. From the first, intellectual and moral surrender to the claims of Jesus was the prime condition of receiving the benefits which the Lord by His essential being and work presented to the world. This was not a magical, not an arbitrary arrangement. Faith is a necessary condition of obtaining a secure advantage from any fact, or truth, or revelation. Doubtless we are always receiving benedictions from God, and from the activities and discoveries of men, whether we will or not. The benediction is infinitesimal by the side of that which rests on one who entirely apprehends and confides in the discovery. The sun shines on all, the rain descends on all, the great laws of nature are entirely independent of us. We are benefited, even in spite of ourselves, by the ordinances of heaven and earth, by the persistence and continuity of the great forces which indicate the will of God, and the laws which reveal His mind. But those, however, who have learned to think God's thoughts and to follow His lead, who have come to surrender themselves to the teaching and order of God in nature, do alone derive the fullest advantage from the revelation of both. The great perfections of the Almighty are practically of no use to us, if we do not accept them as real, trust them and act accordingly. Thus when the most complete revelation of God was made in Jesus, we cannot admit that any arbitrary arrangement was set on foot when men were simply but necessarily called upon to surrender themselves to the fact, i.e., to believe on the name of the Son of God, and to draw life from His life. The saving of the world seemed to be hanging in the balance on the night of the Passion. Humanly speaking, it was dependent not exclusively on the fulfilment by the Lord of the Divine will, but also on the circumstance that at least some souls believed, and were sure that He had come forth from God. When the great confession broke at length from the lips of the eleven Apostles, "Now we believe and are sure," Jesus seemed to say, At length

my human ministry is achieved "It is finished "-"Father, glorify thy name."

The Apostles admitted that their prime function was to induce faith in others. What is Paul, what is Apollos?" (Answer) "Only ministers by whom ye believed." The faith of the humblest child in Corinth or in Antioch was per se an end; nay, the end of the commission. The apostolate of the chiefest Apostles was only a means to effectuate the simple end of the faith of individuals. The matters, the things believed, were indeed of a stupendous kind. I need not now enumerate them. Faith was necessary for these things to exert any moral, or spiritual, or transforming power. Faith had to do with certain events-facts which came under the observation of mankind; but still more with the veritable causes, the underlying realities, the unseen energies, the eternal verities that were hidden from others behind those objective facts. Caiaphas and Barabbas and the impenitent thief in all probability saw Jesus on the cross. Truculence, meanness, political spite, anger, resentment, satisfied malice, and a haughty indifference to unmerited suffering, together with some superstitious fear at the strange darkness, and some languid curiosity over an unexplained accident in the temple, were all the intellectual or emotional result in some of those who witnessed the tragedy of Calvary. A certain centurion saw more deeply into the pity of it. A dying brigand looked farther and deeper still into the mystery and promise of that majestic death. But John and Magdalen, perhaps Peter and Andrew, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, within a few days at least, saw and believed that which has metamorphosed the entire world. So tremendous was the conviction that into it thousands entered day by day, with intellectual and moral consequences to the world that are immeasurable. The believers, not in a few historic events, but in the Divine significance of the events, have veritably turned the world upside down. There was a far-off look in the eyes of these men and women, and a strange magnetic force about their word. They entered so intensely into the new dispensation of things that the first hasty suggestion of the world took this form, "These men are mad, or full of new wine." Such contempt did not last. Thousands looked through the apostolic eyes upon these mysteries. They repented of sin, they believed, they entered into the new world of reconciliation with God. Old things passed away, all things became new to them. We need not at this moment enumerate the articles of their faith. Explicitly, propositionally, the articles of their belief were few and simple; but implicitly they were enormous, and all-comprehensive. That which they believed revolutionized philosophy, ethics and theology, history and politics. Their faith modified their relation to each other and to society, as well as their conception of nationality, of man, of time, and of space. All their outlook into the future was metamorphosed. Some of their desires vanished like a dream. Other and new desires for themselves and others blazed into white heat and consumed them. What seemed "truth and sobriety" to them had the appearance of madness to the scoffing world.

The man who looks on the things unseen and eternal is one who has attained to the mastery of the world, he is victor and king. The unbeliever and the believer in these differ from each other more absolutely than do the prince and the peasant, than the Caucasian and the Negro, than the philosopher and the coxcomb.

Doubtless there are believers in the unseen and eternal who are deteriorated by their faith. Some select a portion only of the new sphere of thought thus opened to them, and have rushed into bare metaphysical speculation without waiting to discover the bearing of some of these transcendent facts and truths on character and duty. Such indeed did find the intellectual stimulus too pungent and potent. Their habit of mind drove them into parallel hypotheses of other emanations from God, as well as that of the perfect image of His substance; and they found themselves plunged into the inexplicable puzzle of the union of the Divine and human and the Infinite and finite, and with settled presuppositions about the source and origin and seat of evil; and so they became rapidly entangled in the mazes of Oriental Gnosis. The mental tendencies which produced the schools of Indian philosophy, and the Buddhist solution of the problem of existence reappeared in association with the intellectual forces of the new belief. Alexandrine and Syrian Gnosis received startling development and impetus from the new experiences which had emerged by faith in the Son of God. In later years the stimulus to mere intellectual conclusions was exaggerated, and the ethical consequences were hardly reached. Extreme dogmatism and passionate desire for intellectual satisfaction made it almost incumbent on believers in Jesus as the Christ that their ideas should be clearly defined; that they should tolerate no looseness of expression which might justify or condone disloyalty to the glory of the Son of God, to the unity of the Godhead, and to the perfect humanity of Jesus. The divers ways in which these three great factors were professed or modified, were compromised or vindicated, constituted the intellectual history of four centuries. Again, mere intellectual originality and alertness working upon the new material supplied to constructive, creative, and encyclopædic minds of later centuries eventuated in the vast scholastic systems that are far enough from being dethroned in the nineteenth century. Many at the present day become so enamoured of accurate thought, so fascinated by theories of their own, that the end of all dogmatic generalizations-viz., the redemption, holiness, and hope, the consecration and service of the soulis utterly overgrown and forgotten. There are many lamentable religious phenomena which appear to be obvious consequences of this arrest of development.

Such results, doubtless, accompanied the first outburst of the new life. The new faith, in many instances, rallied around it intellectual athletes, who were dazzled by its vast capacities, and whose rash deductions and imaginative reconstructions of the universe, and perverse misapplication of the new light, arrested and confused the real end of the young

Church. Reprisals followed; mutual charges of heresy and treason were soon brought forward by those who called themselves Disciples, Brethren, and Believers.

In our next paper we shall discuss the origin and meaning of the distinctive name of Christian.

ARE THERE ERRORS IN THE BIBLE ?1

BY REV. J. McCOSH SMITH, B.D., Naseby, New Zealand. In the March, April, and May numbers of THE THINKER, the Rev. J. J. Lias, M.A., has three papers on the above subject. I am of opinion that, while Mr. Lias is by no means an unfriendly critic, yet his treatment of this subject is misleading. He says, "Our view of the possibility of error in Scripture will depend to a great extent on our view of the nature and limits of Inspiration." My own idea is that the question, "Are there errors in the Bible?" in no way depends upon what view we take of Inspiration. I have always understood that there is a large question concerning these entirely independent of any view we may take of Inspiration. I refer to the large subject of

TEXTUAL CRITICISM.

Here is, indeed, a large subject, much discussed and which still requires. further elucidation. We have no infallible version of the Scriptures; we have neither the original MSS. of the Old nor of the New Testaments. I confine my reference to the New Testament, as I am better acquainted with it, and also because this phase of the subject lends itself more readily. to the treatment I have in view. We have, therefore, no "apostolic originals." Instead, we have a large number of other MSS., uncial and cursive; we have also patristic quotations and also ancient versions. There may be other sources of the text of the New Testament. I do not stay to inquire whether there are or not: it is enough for my purpose to notice that the sources of the texts of New Testament Scripture are various and numerous. The labour expended upon the subject has been enormous, and has continued for many years. The number of various readings is counted by thousands and tens of thousands, and we are by no means certain that we have reached the full extent. If, then, there are errors in the New Testament, may not these be confined within the limits of these various readings? May not therefore the errors in the New Testament have really nothing whatever to do with Inspiration? I have always understood so, and I see nothing in Mr. Lias's papers to make me change my opinion.

But while there is a wide field here for errors, there are really (if any) practically very few. Philip Schaff, in his Introduction to Lange's Commentary says: "All these discrepancies in the few uncial and the more This paper has been delayed by reason of the distant residence of the writer. NO. V.-VOL. II.—THE THINKER.

DD