He is but a superficial observer of the times who can think that the movement of life today is altogether against religion, and that only the denial of religion has the spirit of the age with it.

For, certain as it is that blatant denial still holds the public ear and is more and more permeating the masses, yet in the work of the intellect, and likewise in the depths of men's souls, the case is different. Here, with ever greater vigor, is springing up the feeling that religion is indispensable, the yearning for religion. What is understood by religion is often anything but clear, and often very different from the traditional forms of religion; but the demand is unmistakable for more depth of life and for the establishment of profounder inner connections than our visible existence affords.

Much the most important change in theological opinion which has taken place during the last half-century has reference to an altered conception of God, and, as an inevitable consequence, of his relations to the world of things and of men. This change was originally neither initiated nor approved by theologians themselves. It was rather commended to them, or even forced upon them, by modern science and modern philosophy. The attitude, however, of these two sources, or prime causes, of change toward the questions involved and toward the then reigning theological position on these questions was in certain important respects markedly different. Physical and natural science, proceeding painstakingly but rapidly by means of experimental methods, and making use of the facts discovered by these methods as a basis for induction, arrived at a quite new conception of Nature.

With the dawn of the modern era there came a new interest in nature and the human mind. There was a withdrawal of attention from the supernatural to the natural, from the eternal to the temporal, from the divine to the human. This world with its interests came to its own. The secrets of nature were studied; its facts gathered; its laws formulated; its powers utilized; and its beauties appreciated. And the greater secrets of the human mind, too, were eagerly studied. The ideas of the mind were examined to discover whether they were innate or acquired; the relation of the data of the senses to the structure and the function of the mind was noted that the rise of knowledge might be learned; the legitimacy of the use of the categories of thought to interpret nature and the validity of our knowledge was called in question; and aspects of experience and powers of mind other than the distinctively rational came in for new appraisal.

In its effort to determine the historic sense of the New Testament records, and thus to understand them genetically, modern criticism has developed no instrument more effective than the method of comparison. In former days the aim was harmonization, because the interpreter started with the assumption of a mechanical agreement among the witnesses. Today the aim is distinction, because mechanical coincidence is neither assumed nor desired. On the contrary the broader the contrast in point of view, the surer the ultimate inference. Stars so remote that they give no parallax, their rays seeming to come at precisely the same angle no matter from what point of the earth's orbit the observer takes his measurements, afford small hope of determining their real position. There must be difference of angle when the earth has swung round half its orbit, or there is no basis for measurement. Fortunately for the problem of the historical Jesus, the rays which come to us from him do not travel along precisely parallel lines. On the other hand the problem is enormously complicated by the process of mixture; for the testimony of one witness has visibly affected that of another, detracting from its independent value.

In the old and worn parchment leaves of the baptismal register of Widford Parish in “pleasant Hertfordshire” we find this record:

Anno dm. 1604. John Elliott the sonne of Bennett Elliott was baptized the fifte daye of August in the yeere of our Lord God 1604.

There is also this record:

An° Dm. 1598. Bennett Eliot and Letteye Aggar were married the xxxth of October an° Sup Dicto.

Bennett Eliot had property in several of the neighboring parishes, and about 1608 removed to Nazing, where he died. In his will he directs his executor to pay out of the rents and profits of his lands and tenements, for the space of eight years from 1621, quarterly to his son John Eliot “the sum of eight pounds a yeare of lawful money of England, for and towards his maintenance in the University of Cambridge where he is a scholar.”

The home of Eliot was marked by the best religious influences stirring England in these early days of the Reformation and the dawning of the Puritan controversy, for he speaks of his first years as “seasoned with the fear of God, the word, and prayer.” He became a pensioner of Jesus College in 1619, took his first degree in 1623, and was early distinguished for his talent and proficiency in the study of languages. Upon leaving Cambridge he was a tutor for a time in a school kept by Rev. Thomas Hooker,—afterwards the founder of the state of Connecticut. Here the influences of his own home were deepened, for he wrote: “Here the Lord said unto my dead soul, live! live! and through the grace of God I do live forever! When I came to this blessed family I then saw as never before the power of godliness in its lovely vigour and efficacy.”

It is proposed in this paper to consider, largely from the standpoint of the philosophy of religion, one religious idea: the idea of a power or powers of evil, or, to grasp the whole in one symbol, the idea of the Evil One. Such a discussion should have its interest. The idea of the Evil One, or the Devil as we commonly call him, is perfectly familiar to the average person. There is no need therefore of any elaborate definings. One has only to note that by the Evil One is meant that force or power which is constitutionally—on principle, one might say, if that phrase did not seem a bit out of place—the champion and fosterer of chaos and discord and calamity, of evil and harm and wickedness in general. Or, to put it negatively,—as we perhaps more often think of it,—the Devil is the leader of the opposition as regards the hopeful, the progressive, the divine, with all the meaning which may be packed into that last word.

After the critical proving as by fire to which the Bible has been subjected during recent years, Protestant apologists have succeeded in re-establishing its claim to a position of central importance in our religion. They have achieved this end by abandoning Calvin's vicious logical circle, which based the authority of Scripture upon the approving testimony of the Spirit and tested the Spirit by the standards of Scripture, and by adopting the more powerful lines of argument deduced from the accepted canons of general literary criticism. “I know that the Bible is true because it finds me,” said Coleridge, and thus he achieved in a single sentence what the labored casuistry of centuries had failed to establish. The Bible is true, we say in this generation, because it presents persistent types of profound religious experience which may be verified, “always, everywhere, by all men.”

In particular the critic asserts, and for Christianity at large this is the most reassuring dictum of contemporary scholarship, that the teaching of Jesus, as recorded in the Synoptic Gospels, constitutes a body of truth quite untrammelled by the narrowing circumstances of time and place. In the Sermon on the Mount we stand in a “celestial everywhere and forever.” Occasional dissenting voices have not destroyed the wide-spread conviction that modern scholarship in thus vindicating the universal validity of Jesus' words has achieved, if not its perfect work, at least a signal contribution to contemporary faith.