But the Curia were not to be thwarted, and, having to deal with an old man of seventy-four, they wrung from him at last both his submission of himself and his retraction of "whatever in his books is contrary to the faith, morals, discipline, and rights of the Church." Even so; since the veteran controversialist has ever maintained that he has written nothing that can properly be so regarded, it is difficult to see on what ground the Curia can feel that they have gained a real victory.

Concerning this singular career much has been written and said that is utterly illogical. At each of these publications Protestants have taken it of granted that Padre Curci was about to leave the Roman Church, - nay, had in that act virtually done so; that he must be about either to join some other religious communion or to originate one for himself; and, at each submission they have regarded him as proving weakly false to his own words.

To those to whom the organic Church is little more than the accident or the outward expression of agreement in certain theological views or of concurrence in a certain ecclesiastical life, it is incomprehensible that Curci should, if sincere in his invectives and charges, remain in the Church of Rome; and, of course, his submissions are still more incomprehensible. Such persons rarely realize how widely different is the position of those to whom the Church, as a divine institution, is something far greater than the mere aggregate of its individual members, to whom it is an authority having a right to their spiritual allegiance, having a historic faith wholly independent of the concurrence of their personal opinions, and having its standards of truth and right to which either individuals or majorities are alike bound to conform their course and teachings.

Padre Curci has never written one word against the claims of the Church of Rome upon his allegiance, or even against that of the Roman Pontiff to be the head of the Church on earth. He has given no one any ground to think of him as other than a faithful and obedient son of that Church and a conscientious adherent of the papacy. The force of his indictments is largely due to the fact that they come from one known to be such. He has been, he is, and he is here cited as being, not a destroyer, but a representative would-be reformer of the papacy.

However greatly, therefore, some may be disappointed that Curci has not gone on to separate himself from his Church and wholly to break with the Pope, as some others have done, these four books, as indictments, gain rather than lose by the final per

sonal submission of their author to the authorities of the Church; for such a submission on his part neither alters the significance of his statements nor renders his logic fallacious. It cannot unwrite the volumes themselves, nor stop Italian thinkers from reading them. They remain a leaven of reform teaching, which will and which must continue to work all the more powerfully for the fact that they came, not from one who had renounced the Church and become her open enemy, but from one who ever remained her submissive son, even to the point of yielding himself to her extremest sentence, to virtual incarceration. But that exacted and enforced submission, — which is only self-submission, not an admission that his words were untrue, that submission added to those written words the most telling lesson of all, a lesson that Italy ought to have learned from him, that the reformation of the Church must be sought, not in the reformation, but in the transformation, or rather in the extrusion of the papal system.1

BEDFORD, PA.

Wm. Chauncy Langdon.

1 Since this article was not only written but in type, information has been received, in the first place, to the effect that Padre Curci denies that his Declaration concerning his polemic writings are to be regarded as a retraction of their leading principles; and, in the second place, of still another work, — Of Christian Socialism, — which gives splendid account of his employment of the time of his "retirement." In this, perhaps the most valuable volume of this remarkable series of writings, the venerable author does not, indeed, in form return to the polemical discussion of the conditions to which the Christianity of the Latin Churches has been brought by the Curialism with which it is corrupted; but he does so scarcely the less effectively in the exalted standards of practical Christianity which he maintains and commends to Christian people, and which, moreover, he makes the basis of a most powerful discussion of the relations between such Christianity and the tremendous problems into the presence of which modern society and the political world have been brought. Who shall tell the value of the work which, in the good providence of God, this wonderful old man has been raised up to do, not for his own Italy and his own Italian church alone, but for all Christendom?

EDITORIAL.

THE BIBLE A THEME FOR THE PULPIT.

THE Conception of the Scriptures associated with modern Biblical culture suggests a new task for the pulpit, and in making this suggestion presents a practical problem to the preacher.

On the one hand, the stimulus and comfort which he receives from his new notion of the Bible make him eager to see it taking possession of the mind of his people. Besides, full sympathy of belief between minister and congregation is felt to imply a fellowship of opinion regarding a subject so much in the minds of both. If the people fully entered into the minister's thought of the Bible, he could have partnership with them in the Biblical study which takes shape under that conception, and could give Biblical truth to them fresh and vivid from his own mind. The loss of naturalness and freedom, if not of sincerity, involved in the endeavor to interpret the Scriptures to hearers not in perfect agreement with the speaker as to what the Bible is would be avoided.

On the other hand, the minister knows that his conception of the Bible differs considerably from that which holds some, perhaps many, of his people, and those by no means the least vigorous or earnest among them. And he apprehends that the divergence of his view from theirs, if clearly seen by them, would seem greater and more serious to them than it does to him. The idea of divine revelation is in their minds so firmly associated with that of immediate divine utterance, perfect both in content and in form, that any attempt to show that the Bible is not a book of oracles would, he thinks, be likely to wound religious feeling.

Therefore, he asks himself whether it be worth while to risk the loss of influence with some, perhaps among the most valuable members of his congregation, which would be likely to result from an attempt to teach a way of looking at Scripture which would seem to them prejudicial to its sacredness and authority.

In view of these adverse considerations, might not frankness in regard to this point of Christian belief be indiscretion? It is not one of the essentials of orthodoxy. Evangelical faith can thrive where the verbal inspiration and the literal perfection of the Scriptures are held; perhaps a faith which has grown in connection with such a view of the Bible would be weakened by an endeavor to substitute another for it. Besides, the main work of the preacher is to give his hearers spiritual truths drawn out of the Bible, not discussions concerning the nature of the Bible. Many of our intelligent and open-minded ministers find difficulty in deciding between these opposing considerations. They are in a state of suspended judgment, which is a temporary commitment to one of the two courses, and may result through sheer inertia in its permanent adop

tion.

It is not, we trust, disrespectful to suggest that the considerations in favor of the prudential course are nearer than those which support its opposite, and therefore likely to assume excessive prominence, and that they are supported by motives which might exaggerate their importance to any but the most disinterested among mankind. Perhaps when the action to which they lead is viewed on all sides, they will lose some of the force they have carried. It is suggested that a minister keep back his thought about what the Bible is lest he may wound, possibly alienate, some of his people who hold a different view. The matter about which divergent opinions are held is confessedly an important one. The preacher regards it as such. He knows that his view of Scripture has freed him from painful questions concerning its inspiration, and made it to him a richer and more stimulating book. Hence his desire to give this view to his people. And those who hold the other conception regard their view as essential to Christian faith, or else they would not be disturbed by the presentation of one differing from it. If, now, the preacher is unwilling to speak his mind to his people regarding a matter deeply interesting to both, and one holding a large place in the common religious life, is he not refusing to do for them as regards an important matter the work of a Christian minister? For what is that work but a ministration of religious truth by a life giving to others what it finds precious in its own experience? And what do the divine sanctions under which that work is done imply if not a right and an obligation to give the truth won and possessed its full scope; to give it the best opportunity to enter all minds, those indisposed as well as those willing to receive it? Surely, then, a minister can only justify himself in withholding from his people his view of what the Bible is by persuading himself that it is of little consequence to them what they regard it to be so long as they bow before its authority. But those ministers who owe much to their having gained a better view (as they believe) of Scripture cannot think their hearers' conception of it a thing of small moment, unless, indeed, they put the religious life of their hearers, in its appreciation of truth, upon a plane much below that on which they themselves stand.

When we find Rothe saying in his "Zur Dogmatik" that the Bible in its relation to divine revelation is not a theme for the pulpit, we recognize an assumption of a great gulf between the capacity of pastor and people common in Germany, but happily foreign to the religious life of America. A preacher whose preaching was, as a whole, shaped by that assumption would not do a minister's full work for one of our more intelligent congregations, if, indeed, he could hold its attention. It is mutually agreed here by pastor and people that satisfactory preaching, in point of impression, implies intellectual as well as moral fellowship between speaker and hearer.

It may be assumed, then, that the American minister believes that it is desirable for his people to gain those views of Scripture which are so helpful to himself. He can hardly take so narrow a view of his work as

not to believe that it includes supplying this want. Ministering to a people's religious needs surely implies helping them take those ways of finding God which the minister has proved in his own experience. Does he claim that his work consists simply in expounding and enforcing the explicit doctrinal and practical teaching of the Old and New Testaments? Upon what ground does he base a conception of his work, so much narrower and more formal than that of the first preachers, who taught Christianity according to their perception of spiritual truth and the immediate wants of their hearers before the Christian Scriptures had come into being? But even if the preacher take this view of his work, he will find himself obliged in doing it to answer the question, "What is the Bible?" For the New Testament tells of a divine word, a communication from God of revealing and supernatural fact, and to show clearly what this is is to show its relation to the Scripture in which it is enshrined.

But the failure to teach on one important subject is not the only evil implied in a minister's withholding from his people his view of the Bible. It is likely to lessen the effect of such teaching as he is willing to give. For some of his people are probably conscious of the want which he shrinks from supplying. They have enough scientific culture to know that neither history nor geology give acceptance to all the statements found in the Biblical narrative. Moreover, they find on the face of Scripture blemishes apparently incompatible with a verbal inspiration. The introduction of the Revised Version has very likely set them questioning as to the original perfection of a book which must become imperfect in transmission to distant ages and foreign peoples. They wish fairly to face the questions thus raised, and to decide in view of the answers obtained what Christianity claims for the Bible as regards sanctity and separateness from other literature. They expect help from the pulpit in making the decision. If they wait in vain for it, if they are put off with vague assertions that the Bible is not like other books, and that Christian teaching finds here its source and its authority, they are likely to conclude either that their minister is unwilling to face the question which is pressing itself upon them, or that he has faced it, and is unwilling to inform his people of the conclusions to which he has come. The effect of either conclusion will be not only that of discrediting with them their pastor's exoteric teaching regarding Scripture, but also that of causing his other doctrinal teaching to lose the influence belonging to the utterances of a mind supposed fully and frankly to state its beliefs. We say this, arguing from manifest probabilities. We may go farther and say that we draw from observation the belief that the result pointed out has in many cases actually happened, and that the teaching of not a few thoughtful and intelligent ministers is considerably weakened in effect by their unwillingness to give in the pulpit a full answer to the question, "What is the Bible?"

It is due, we may say in passing, in no small degree to the exclusion