No other doctrine of Christian theology has been regarded as more important than the doctrine that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It has often been affirmed that upon this doctrine the church was founded; that it is the one great fact which binds together the life of Jesus in the flesh and his eternal life at the right hand of God; which confirms his teaching and his high claims; which gives to men the right to love and worship him with a supreme devotion, to believe in his continued ministration to his people, to anticipate his return to perfect and govern his kingdom in the earth, and to rest in the assurance of their own immortal life with him. It is not strange, therefore, that in the flux of modern thought many should turn their attention to this significant doctrine. It is, moreover, not only an important article of the Christian faith, but it is also one in the support and interpretation of which various lines of investigation are involved. It is, first of all, a historical question, which demands a careful examination of witnesses and testing of evidence; it has come to be, of late at least, a psychological question, demanding careful analysis of the state of mind of the early witnesses, the accumulation and comparison of other cases in which men and women have believed that they saw the forms and heard the voices of the departed. The hypotheses suggested by the experiments of psychical research have been thought by some to throw at least a dim and uncertain light upon this doctrine; and, further, the question whether there is a vital and necessary connection between a firm conviction of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and a confident and aggressive Christian faith has come to seem to some an open question, demanding careful and discriminating examination. It is not surprising, therefore, that the literature upon this subject should have much increased during the last fifteen or twenty years, nor that the methods of discussion and the conclusions reached by able and sincere men should differ widely. It is the purpose of this article to give some account of these recent discussions, without attempting to review or criticise in detail the individual books and monographs and the articles in various English and German periodicals which have been published in such large numbers.

It has commonly been taken for granted that Christianity must have had a great and beneficent influence upon the Roman Empire, within which it had its origin and whose official religion it finally became. This not unnatural assumption is, however, very difficult to substantiate. One may recognize that the religion of Christ was a great advance upon the paganism of antiquity, and that its final victory was a blessing to the world, and yet find it far from easy to show how and to what extent the Roman world was benefited by it. It is simple enough to point to individual lives within the Christian church that were purified and helped. But to prove that the common level of life within the Empire was raised, that society at large was bettered, that the general moral standard was elevated, that political principles and civil institutions and economic ideals were improved by its influence, is altogether another matter. It is not enough to content ourselves with the assumption that Christianity being in itself a good thing must have been good for the Roman world; it is incumbent upon us to show that it actually proved so.

The most important contribution of this generation to Biblical interpretation has been made, beyond question, through the appreciation and analysis of New Testament eschatology. Round the teaching of the Gospels, like an atmosphere which even though unconscious of it they breathe, lies, according to this view, a circle of apocalyptic expectation, with its literature, its vocabulary, and its inextinguishable hopes. Though Rabbinical orthodoxy might regard this literature as heretical, it may well have had a peculiar fascination for contemplative or poetic minds. When, therefore, after solitary reflection on his mission, Jesus came into Galilee ‘preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,’ it might be anticipated that he, like John the Baptist, would apply to that kingdom the language of apocalyptic hope, and would announce its approach as heralded by a catastrophic end of the world-age. This key of interpretation, once in the hands of German learning, has been applied with extraordinary ingenuity to many obscurities and perplexities of the Gospels, and has unlocked some of them with dramatic success. The strange phenomenon, for example, of reserve and privacy in the teaching of Jesus, becomes, in this view, an evidence of his esoteric consciousness of Messiahship, which none but a chosen few were permitted to know. ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’ The cardinal phrases of the teaching, ‘Kingdom of Heaven,’ ‘Son of God,’ and ‘Son of Man,’ all point, it is urged, not to a normal, human or social regeneration, but to a supernatural, revolutionary, and catastrophic change.

Not the least significant fact of this great scientific age is its deep interest in religion. On the one hand, in spite of serious protests from the conservatives, science has established its right to apply the same method to the study of religion which has been of such great service in reducing the facts of other fields from chaos to order; and thus we have Comparative Religion, Higher Criticism, and the Psychology of Religion. On the other hand, attempts have been made from the philosophical side to furnish the same rationale for the ultimate religious concepts as for the scientific. The import of this has been, not to show that both sorts of ideas are ultimately equally invalid, equally lose themselves in the unknowable, as in the dark all cows are gray; but to show the legitimacy and importance of both in steering us in the direction of the real. What I am concerned with in this paper is to inquire into the validity of our religious ideals; but to do this I shall have to inquire first how any ideals become valid. If this seems a roundabout way, I still feel that it is the shortest way to reach the end in view.

In its bearings on the preparation for the work of the ministry the question, Is Hebrew worth while? is a live one. Like most questions, it has more than one side. I may declare at the outset my own conviction. In the practical work of the ministry Hebrew is not only worth while, but in these times comes near being essential if the work is to be done in a thorough way. Hebrew should, therefore, not only be a part of every seminary curriculum, but should be required for graduation.

It is difficult to think of Robert Louis Stevenson as other than the creator of delightful and weird romances. His name always calls up Treasure Island—not to mention the other progeny of his fruitful imagination—Treasure Island and the higher geography. Stevenson will always stand forth as master of the finest artistry and as a modern symbol of the imagination. And it seems nothing short of sheer prose to turn from the fairy world flung into space by the deftness and swiftness of this man's fancy to our gray world of every day.

Yet Dr. Japp and Mr. Zangwill both insist that he will finally be remembered as an essayist and not as a romancer. We must all of us agree, I think, that whatever comes of Stevenson the fictionist, Stevenson the essayist has enriched the world by his half-dozen slim volumes of comment on life and men. If we think of the essay as a bit of preachment, we may still think of Stevenson as an essayist. He seems to like the rôle of preacher; and whatever our own homiletical notions may be, we must admit that his preaching is always fresh, human, and in good spirit; his truths stay with us and his disclosures send us afield for more truth,—qualities all preaching does not possess. “To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family the happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.” This is commonplace truth put with such finality and authority that, if it has not become scripture, it has at least served as a text for not a few preachers.

Whatever title to intellectual distinction the future historian may deny to our time, its right to be called the age of encyclopaedias will hardly be challenged. We have general encyclopaedias on a scale almost Chinese and special encyclopaedias of every branch of learning, science, and art. No generation has put so much of its time—profitably or unprofitably—into co-operative enterprises for alphabetizing all knowledge. We have had within the last few years two large Bible dictionaries—one of them with two supplements; a Jewish Encyclopedia in twelve volumes; new editions of the standard Protestant encyclopaedia of Herzog-Plitt-Hauck and of the Catholic encyclopaedia of Wetzer and Welte-Hergenröther-Kaulen; the beginning of a great Catholic Encyclopaedia in English and of an encyclopaedia of Islam; and now the first instalment of an Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, which will extend to at least ten volumes.

The ruins of the ancient capital of Israel lie on a large, detached hill about six miles northwest of Nablus and twenty miles from the Mediterranean. The hill rises about three hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding valleys, and about fourteen hundred and fifty feet above the sea. It is enclosed by mountains, some of which reach a much greater height. At its base the hill has the appearance of being between four and five miles in circuit. The ascent is everywhere steep, but, owing to a saddle connecting with the mountains on the east, is less steep on that side than on the others. Like all the mountains about it, the hill is covered with large artificial terraces, constructed to prevent the washing away of the soil and to make cultivation easier. The surface of these terraces has a gentle slope, but their sides are in many places so steep as to be climbed only with great difficulty. The entire hill is under cultivation, and there are extensive olive orchards, interspersed with fig and pomegranate trees.