To the student of differing methods of education the chief interest of a comparison between English, Continental, and American methods is that the first two represent entirely different views as to objects and methods, while American education is a compromise between them. It is therefore perhaps desirable before proceeding to discuss theological education in particular to develop a little more fully the general characteristics of the three forms.

Dr. Torrey has produced a work which, though contained in a little treatise of seventy-two pages, may well be an epoch-making contribution to our knowledge of Acts. He has undertaken to demonstrate two things: first, that Acts 1–15 35 is directly traceable to an Aramaic source which Luke translated; secondly, that the rest of the book is the work of one author.

About six o'clock on the morning of Oct. 12th, 1914, the Porto di Rodi dropped anchor off Jaffa. No one with a particle of historical imagination can look for the first time without a thrill on the scene that spread itself out before us in the long luxurious roll of the Mediterranean and the easy flowing lines of the distant hills. The little city stood opposite us black against the morning sunshine, which came pouring over the mountains and into the Philistine plain. On such a day some two thousand years ago a man had gone up to a house-top in that city. It was also at the sixth hour, though, being Jewish reckoning, this meant the dazzle of the noon. The man did not notice the sky effects. His attention was concentrated upon a curious phenomenon. An object like a great sheet seemed to be descending out of the sky. As it reached the level of the house-top and he was enabled to look into it, he found it full of all sorts of squirming things, every one of them unclean and very offensive. Disgusted at the sight, he was about to turn away when a command came from somewhere: “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” “But I cannot,” the man said. “I have never eaten anything common or unclean.” “What God hath cleansed make not thou common,” replied the voice. While the man stood wondering at the strange experience, there was a loud knocking at the door, and he was informed that a certain Cornelius, centurion of the Italian cohort, wished to speak to him about a matter touching the welfare of his soul!

In the midst of dusty records in long-forgotten corners of history one sometimes comes pleasantly upon personalities which have all the freshness and charm of present-day acquaintances. At once they become such real friends that one wonders how they have escaped more general notice. One feels that it must have been untoward circumstances only which veiled their light and kept its radiance from shining down the centuries to reveal them at least to their spiritual kin of later times.

Such a one was John Hales of Eton College, called curiously enough by his own generation and that following the “ever memorable.”

The most generally acknowledged mode of apprehending God or argument for his existence, is the Moral. The argument has various forms, of which the more commonly accepted and influential, in its main principles, is that of Kant. Kant emphatically rejected the traditional arguments for the existence of God — the Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological — as inadequate and invalid. More generally, he rejected or greatly subordinated the theoretical reason in the sphere of religion, and gave primacy to the practical or moral reason. He went far in teaching that the sphere of science and the sphere of religion are separate and independent of each other.

The problem of the One and the Many is a problem essentially Platonic. Characteristically Platonic is the saying of Socrates in the Phaedrus: “If I find any man who is able to see a ‘One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’” The problem of the One and the Many may indeed be said to be the point around which Plato's deepest concerns center. It occurs in most of his dialogues. It appears in different formulations, and it receives a variety of emphasis. It is certainly at the root of his morals. “Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued,” is Plato's fundamental teaching. And the good life is a life of law, order, justice. The diverse elements of the soul must be set in order; they must submit to one organizing principle; they must become a well-ordered unity.