law without rejecting it-fulfils it by including it in His own higher and truer precepts. He 'never attributes it to God, but always either to Moses or them of old time,' and His own command so widely oversteps it as to bear the character of a repeal. But why, it may be asked, did our Lord never deliberately teach the people in what sense their sacred books contained the word of God? It would have caused utter confusion and bewilderment if He had. Those minds to which the law itself had been a schoolmaster to bring them to God were prepared for the higher moral lesson which the Lord delivered. The law in its practical operation had taught both its own power and its own imperfection to those who had best tried to practise it. But these very people would have been puzzled and perplexed had they been led into abstract questions of inspiration and authority. 'Nothing,' says Mr. Latham, 'in our Lord's wisdom strikes me more than His moderation with regard to error.' We are complex beings, and if the tares be too rudely rooted out of our minds some truth will go with them. 'Take away from an Italian woman her belief in the Virgin, or from a Scotch peasant that in the sacred obligation of the Sabbath, and a great deal of what is best in them will go too' (p. 208).

When Mr. Latham adds that our Lord's way of proceeding is always positive,' he names the necessary antidote to the danger of these thoughts. For if without firm belief in positive truth upon our own part, and a decided will to teach it to others, we begin to ask ourselves whether partial error must not always adhere to the form in which the multitude apprehend the truth, there is no knowing how far we may be led. Our charity may run into cynical acquiescence for selfish ends; and as some continue in sin that grace may abound others content themselves with uncorrected error under pretence of Christian largeness of mind.

But we have filled our space, though we have given but a slight account of less than half the passages we had marked in this interesting book. We trust we have said enough to tempt the thoughtful reader into studying it for himself.

ART. VIII.-WATKINS'S BAMPTON LECTURES.

Modern Criticism Considered in its Relation to the Fourth Gospel: being the Bampton Lectures for 1890. By HENRY WILLIAM WATKINS, M.A., D.D., Archdeacon and Canon of Durham. (London, 1890.)

ARCHDEACON WATKINS is careful to inform us that the subject of his lectures is limited to the consideration of the Gospel of St. John. In his able and well-filled volume there are no doubt many arguments and considerations which have a bearing on other books of Scripture; but, in justice to the author, it is right to keep this limitation in view. It is the object of the lectures to determine how far the boast so frequently put forward, that modern criticism has cancelled the judgment of the ages in favour of the genuineness of St. John's Gospel, has real ground. The answer is not doubtful. It may safely be affirmed that all the attacks made upon the Gospel have been repelled, and that at the present moment it stands upon firmer and surer ground than it did before.

Such assertions are, indeed, easily made; but they are not the mere assertions of an anonymous reviewer. Almost the last earthly act of Bishop Lightfoot was again to challenge a verdict on the subject of St. John. Nor is this all. A scholar equally distinguished-we mean Ewald, who cannot be suspected of an undue bias in favour of orthodoxy-so long ago as 1863, wrote in the following terms:

'Those who since the first discussion of this question have been really conversant with it never could have had, and never have had, a moment's doubt. As the attack on St. John has become fiercer and fiercer, the truth during the last ten or twelve years has been

1 For another reason the touching words of Bishop Lightfoot deserve to be given. He says: 'Whatever consequences may follow from it we are compelled on critical grounds to accept this Fourth Gospel as the genuine work of John, the son of Zebedee. . . . As a critical question I wish to take a verdict upon it. But as I could not have you think that I am blind to the theological issues directly or indirectly connected with it, I will close with this brief confession of faith. I believe from my heart that the truth which this Gospel more especially enshrines-the truth that Jesus Christ is the very Word incarnate, the manifestation of the Father to mankind-is the one lesson which, duly apprehended, will do more than all our feeble efforts to purify and elevate human life here by imparting to it hope and light and strength, the one study which alone can fitly prepare us for a joyful immortality hereafter' (Expositor, March 1890, p. 188, quoted by Watkins, Lectures, p. 165).

more and more solidly established, error has been pursued into its last hiding-places, and at this moment the facts before us are such that no man who does not will knowingly to choose error and to reject truth can dare to say that the fourth Gospel is not the work of the Apostle John.'1

If such words could be used then, how much more applicable are they now. Since Ewald wrote, the controversy has been enriched by the labours of many distinguished scholars. We have had the essays of Lightfoot in reply to the author of Supernatural Religion, in which he exploded innumerable fallacies; but, above all, we have had his splendid vindication of the Epistles of Ignatius, a work which, it may safely be said, administered the death-blow to the Tübingen theory. Then, in addition to this, we have had on St. John the labours of Professor Sanday and Bishop Westcott, and the deep learning, powerful common-sense, and calm judgment of Dr. Salmon, not to speak of the valuable work of many other scholars outside our Church. Nay, it may even be said-if with reverence we may venture to do so-that Providence itself has mingled in the fray. Since the controversy began we have had a series of discoveries of ancient documents, all of which have contributed somewhat in favour of the Gospel of St. John. Through the works of Hippolytus recently brought to light we can trace back the Gospel to the reign of Trajan, and into the heart of the school of St. John. We can see that it was then accepted as a Aóytov or inspired oracle, both by heretics and orthodox. Let the reader weigh well what that means. It means that at the period when this fugitive ray of light impinges on the Church, every native Christian at Ephesus and the surrounding cities, who, like Polycarp, was then from forty to fifty years old, must have seen and heard and venerated for many years of their lives the blessed apostle. How is it conceivable that they could have received and reverenced a document professing to come from him unless they were well assured that such was the case? That they did so receive and reverence the Gospel is plain from St. Ignatius, whose mind, so to speak, is saturated with its doctrine.

And yet in spite of all this we have the frequent assertion that modern criticism has disproved the genuineness of St.

1

Quoted by Watkins, p. 251. Quoted also, with approval, by Liddon, Bampton Lectures, 1886, p. 220, ed. 13. Regarding similar words of Ewald, Bishop Westcott remarks: "For the rest Ewald's calm and decisive words are, I believe, simply true' (Introduction to the Gospels, p. x, ed. 3).

John's Gospel. We hardly think that anyone who has taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the facts could at the present moment make the assertion. But it must be borne in mind that this question of criticism is intimately bound up with other issues. A man may be convinced on other grounds that the miracles and teaching of our Gospel are delusive; and from idiosyncrasy, or other cause, he may even be fanatical in his advocacy of this view. If such is the case he will find it hard to believe that the Gospel really came from an apostle and eyewitness. He will naturally lay stress on every argument which is advanced on his own side; and notwithstanding the reasoning of opponents, of which perhaps he has an imperfect knowledge, may still believe that his cause is the truth. But, however this may be, it is certain that much pains have been taken by sceptical writers to instil into the public mind the idea that the victory is on their side. Nor are such efforts confined to the higher walks of literature; they are equally visible in the sphere of novels and light literature. As a specimen of the sort of ideas that are propagated in popular works, Archdeacon Watkins has quoted the following from Robert Elsmere :

'He paused, and then very simply, and so as to be understood by those who heard him, he gave a rapid sketch of that great operation worked by the best intellect of Europe during the last halfcentury-broadly speaking on the facts and documents of primitive Christianity. From all sides and by the help of every conceivable instrument those facts have been investigated, and now at last the great result the revivified, reconceived truth-seems ready to emerge.'

These words are put in the mouth of a fictitious personage, who is characterized by the Archdeacon as a 'weak and certainly ill-informed young clergyman.' The Archdeacon can easily picture the man and take an accurate survey of his intellectual furniture. Unhappily many of the readers of this popular novel are unable to do so; and we know not how far they may be impressed by this confident assertion of the conclusion at which the best intellect of Europe,' working 'on the facts and documents of primitive Christianity,' has arrived.

If this were a question of science, or of some point in mere history, such assertions, so far beside the mark, might be safely left to fall by their own weight. Unhappily the case

1 Mrs. Humphry Ward, Robert Elsmere, iii. 206. Quoted in Watkins's Bampton Lectures, p. 170.

is very different here. The claims of Divine revelation on the soul are very great; and most of us, especially the young, find it very difficult to satisfy them. How much will that difficulty be increased if the idea is suggested that, after all, those claims are baseless. We can picture the struggle in many a young heart, and we can imagine how the reading of such assertions may form a turning-point in their lives. They have no means of testing their truth, and chiming in, as they do, with natural inclination, they may be accepted as fact. The consequence is that they are alienated from God and the claims of God, and, spiritually speaking, their life is ruined. They have lost for ever all that they might have been, and are only brought back, if they are brought back, through bitter suffering. It is plain we cannot stand aside in presence of such an evil without trying to do something by way of abatement; and it appears to have been some such feeling that suggested the present course of Bampton Lectures.

Archdeacon Watkins tells us how, walking one day with Bishop Lightfoot when it was hoped the Bishop was regaining strength, he put to him the question, how he accounted for the fact of the frequent assertion that the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel had been disproved by modern criticism, in the presence of the strong and accumulating evidence in its favour? The Bishop did not directly reply, but the suggestion was made that the subject might be treated in a course of Bampton Lectures. Subsequently the Archdeacon drew up a scheme, and it obtained the sanction of the Bishop in the following terms:

'I have read your scheme and entirely approve of it. No subject could be more useful at the present day, and I think the time has arrived when it could be effectively treated. Of course it will take much time, but it will be worth the expenditure.

'J. B. DUNELM.'

The Bishop did not live to see the completion of the work, and he is therefore responsible for no more than a general approval. But we can sincerely congratulate the Archdeacon on what he has accomplished. What we especially admire in his book is the clearness of the divisions of the subject, together with the multitude of valuable materials that he has assembled within these divisions. Many will be surprised at the extent and accuracy of his learning; and, owing to the multitude of the references, we can imagine no book that will be more useful to the young student who wishes to master the subject.