But here in Boston is the Rev. Flavius Josephus Cook, the Monday lecturer, ready to show that Calvinism is in "the nature of things," that evangelical Christianity is philosophical and scientific truth. So his great namesake, the original Flavius Josephus, tried to make it out that Judaism was identical with Greek philosophy. But he did not succeed. Nor will the modern reconciler any better. His trinity is not the orthodox trinity; his atonement is not the orthodox atonement. His reconciliations only satisfy the ignorant and those who merely care for triumph. They do not satisfy the honest and the wise. He is another sign of the receding tide; well out already to lay bare this "rope of sand."

The appeal to reason is a sign that revelation is no longer a sufficient ground of faith. Cardinal Manning has written very recently: "Many who would shrink from affirming that reason is the sole fountain of truth, and that nothing is true which cannot be found in human consciousness or elicited from it, nevertheless maintain that reason is the measure of truth, and that nothing which is incomprehensible is credible. They therefore undertake to demonstrate the doctrines of the trinity and incarnation, which, when they have been reduced to the measure of reason, cease to be the doctrines of revelation." Here is an unconscious but exact description of the Boston Monday lecturer. And Cardinal Manning continues: "This, especially in the last century, was the first momentum which carried many into unbelief of revelation altogether." Let Mr. Cook and all who

pin their faith on him beware. For reason is that camel in the story whose head once in is followed soon by all the rest of his portentous bulk.

In his Last Essays on Church and Religion, Matthew Arnold, one of the most earnest and intelligent defenders, now living, of the Bible and Christianity, as he understands them, moreover one who is no terrorist, but who never puts the telescope to his blind eye, says: "The partisans of traditional religion in this country do not know, I think, how decisively the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion on the Continent has pronounced against the Christian religion. They do not know how surely the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion in this country (i. e., in England) tends to follow, so far as traditional religion is concerned, the opinion of the Continent. They dream of patching up things unmendable, of retaining what can never be retained, of stopping change at a point where it can never be stopped. The undoubted tendency of liberal opinion is to reject the whole anthropomorphic and miraculous religion of tradition as unsound and untenable. On the Continent, such opinion has rejected it already. One cannot,” he continues," blame the rejection. Things are what they are,' and the religion of tradition, Catholic or Protestant, is unsound and untenable. A greater force of tradition in favor of religion is all which now prevents the liberal opinion of England from following the continental opinion. That force is not of a nature to be permanent, and it will not, in fact, hold out long."

For England, say America, and this is just about as true of us as of Mr. Arnold's fellow-countrymen. The partisans of traditional religion in this country realize even less than those of England how decisively the whole force of continental liberal opinion is opposed to their interpretation of the universe. They do not even realize to what an extent the liberal opinion of England and Scotland is divorced from and opposed to their interpretation, nor, for that matter, the liberal opinion of our own country. And where they do approximately, they flatter themselves that the liberalism of England and the Continent is not going to invade this country, just as the traditional religionists of England flatter themselves that the liberalism of the Continent is not going to invade England. But it has invaded it already. The scientific and the literary life of England has succumbed to it already. Its representatives are in the old Cathedral pulpits; in the ancient university chairs. Their names are Stanley and Jowett, and others quite as significant. The last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was an epitome of radical science, natural and theological, at the time of its appearance about twenty years ago. Now, the average cultivated mind of England has got up to it and beyond it. The new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is an epitome of the radical science, natural and theological, of the present time. In twenty years the average cultivated mind of England will be up to this. Prof. Smith's article on the Bible, now so heretical, will then be orthodox enough. Here in America,

it will not be very different. The New Criticism is bound to prevail, and not merely among an esoteric class, who will keep it to themselves. There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed. What is told in the ear will be proclaimed on the house-tops. Science is growing more diffusive every day. There is a telephone in every laboratory and every study communicating with the average life of men. A religion true to all the ignorant, false to all the educated, will be less possible in America than anywhere else. This is the dream of some, I know. But it is not going to come true. Education is too general; culture is too diffused. America is bound to follow England and the Continent in their rejection of "the whole anthropomorphic and miraculous religion of tradition." Here as there, this is to be voted unsound and untenable. A host of obscurantists may delay the inevitable day, but it will surely come. The supernatural Church, the supernatural Bible, the supernatural Christ and Christianity, have lost their hold already on the best intelligence of America as of Europe. Supernaturalism, in a little while, will be synonymous with ignorance. But ignorance, though still its name is legion, is a legion whose ranks are being decimated again and again. The school, the press, and even here and there the pulpit, are pouring into it the grape and canister which do not kill, but make alive with new intelligence.

The tide which is going out is the tide of traditional Christianity, and traditional Christianity means not only the five points of Calvinism, not

only total depravity and eternal hell, not only the vicarious atonement, not only miracles and prophecies, but the Bible as infallibly or specially inspired; Christ as a supernatural, preternatural, or non-natural being; God as a great non-natural man, about whom we can talk "as if he were a man on the next street," who plays fast and loose with his own laws, who can be wearied out with prayers, and who kills off one member after another of a man's family to make him "work for souls." Traditional Christianity means all this and more, and all of this is going out; nor do I know a sweeter music than "its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar." But Matthew Arnold thinks that more is going than all this, and while he is quite willing that all this should go-ay, speeds the. parting guest with many a jeering phrase-he does not want any thing else to go with it. He wants supernatural Christianity to go, but not Christianity; supernatural religion, but not religion. And he sees signs, or thinks he does, that along with supernatural Christianity, Christianity is going; along with supernatural religion, all religion. Liberal opinion on the Continent, and especially among the Latin nations, on whom Protestantism did not lay hold, tends to treat traditional religion and Christianity as identical. Are they identical? Arnold declares that they are not. Christianity, he says, has natural truth for the mind and conscience of men, while the traditional supernatural religion has not natural truth, the only truth which can stand. It must be allowed that there is something almost comical in this