A well-known Roman Catholic review recently observed that modernism is not merely an internal difficulty of the Catholic church, but that the Protestant and Jewish bodies are likewise tormented and undermined by it. And the remark is certainly correct. For if, on the one hand, modernism tends to apply to the internal discipline and rites of the Roman church many of those reforms which the Protestants adopted from the beginning of the Reformation,—reforms rendered necessary by the changed conditions of the times, and today even more necessary than ever, —on the other hand it is profoundly modifying the very concept of revelation and making more and more difficult every kind of stability of doctrine and every regula fidei; so that Christianity itself, and the Jewish religion from which it comes, are to a large extent challenged by it and are in a measure associated with the church of Rome in one common defence. This defence, so far as it has any probability of success, thus tends to change not only the relation of these religions to the spirit of contemporary thought, but even their inter-relations, constraining them to abandon one or another of those positions which caused dissension and associating them under the protection of their common spiritual inheritance. Hence it will be worth while to consider briefly what conclusions are suggested by the most recent experience in this controversy, and what forecast we can make, not so much for the future of the individual churches as for a future of much greater interest, that, namely, of Christianity itself and of the religious consciousness among the nations of western civilization.

“What with Winckler, Jeremias, and Cheyne, and now Eerdmans, Old Testament scholars have a good many new eras dawning on them just now. Whether any of them will shine unto the perfect day, time will show.” With these gently sarcastic words Dr. Skinner describes the situation which a commentator on Genesis must be prepared to face at the present time. But the dawn is the waking-up time. The reveille sounded by these various scholars is exhilarating. The war to which they challenge Old Testament investigators may not prove to be a world-war, the critical map of the Old Testament may not be materially altered; but it is a good thing that the dominant school of criticism which follows Wellhausen should be compelled to meet antagonists equipped with all the resources of modern warfare. So long as their opponents were armed only with the weapons of the old apologetics, these critics had an easy time of it. After the publication of the great Prolegomena it seemed as if the last word had been spoken. Canaan had been conquered anew. All that remained for the victors to do was to settle down in the land, appropriate the high-places to themselves, and reduce the ancient inhabitants to Nethinim. But no sooner had they entered into possession than the temptation of the settled life began to beset them as it beset the Hebrews of old. They had driven out the traditions that had occupied the land for millenniums, but the ancient inhabitants, as is so often the case, soon threatened to conquer the conquerors.

The German mysticism of the fourteenth century was one of the most remarkable manifestations of that individualistic trend of thought and feeling which set in during the thirteenth century with the height of chivalric culture, developed under the influence of the growth of civic independence in the great municipal republics, and finally, in the religious Reformation of the sixteenth century, overturned the whole corporate system of the mediaeval church and state.

In no other respect, perhaps, are the unity and kinship of the human race more apparent than in the development of the religious rites and beliefs of the various peoples. Even in the case of their myths, where interpretation is so difficult, where there appears to be so much chaos and so little law, and where we seem at times to have merely the product of imaginative spontaneity and of the play of fancy, there is nevertheless striking similarity. Just because of the contrasts and differences that often impress one at a surface reading, the identity of the spiritual life that shimmers through these diverse manifestations becomes the more significant. As a result, added significance is reflected back to the differences themselves. Not only are these seen from the point of view of their connection with those characteristics and temperamental peculiarities which have influenced particular interpretations of life and of the world, but this knowledge in turn sheds light on the principles that are universally operative in the minds and lives of all peoples. We are thus enabled to gain a clue for the interpretation of facts which, considered by themselves, might have remained quite unintelligible.

Most readers of this article have sung, and many have learned by heart, a noble Christmas hymn whose music is now heard in more than one continent:—

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old;

but few of those who sing and love it know that it was written by a country minister who graduated from the Harvard Divinity School. Fewer still are aware that a series of men have proceeded from this department of Harvard University who, for now almost a hundred years, have maintained this succession in sacred song. What may properly be called a school of religious poetry constitutes a worthy part of the contribution to literary culture which Harvard has made and which through many generations formed the peculiar and greatest distinction of New England.