build it." "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" is a foundation principle as true now as in Hebrew times. But reverence is not the only prime necessity, there is a second just as vital, and in these days more to be prized because more rare clarity of thought. Of all the gifts of God to be desired in matters of religion there is none more urgent than that which seems so often to be conspicuously denied to the theologian-clarity of thought. Clarity of speech, too, is a good gift and a desirable one; but the clear-cut diction is of little use if the thought to be expressed is itself crude or turbid. To-day the study of logic, the study of the necessary laws of thought, is out of fashion. Brilliant paradox and inconsequent specialism have infected our best writers, and the trail of journalism lies on the second best. Pertinent and sober reasoning is flouted by the impertinent corruscations of the smart litterateur. Small help indeed has the twentieth century brought to the earnest seeker after truth.

Of all such vain stuff the truth seeker must purge himself. Likewise must he avoid the wellintentioned but crude divagations of the new school of sentimental philosophers who mix physics and psychics for us in facile and graceful oratory. Because radium emits mysterious corpuscles, or ether-waves are found to be generated by electric sparks, we are not bound to deduce therefrom the probability that our dead friends can speak to us through a planchette, or that the doctrine of the Trinity can be developed from the triple conservation of matter, of energy, and of ether. To the truly spiritual man who is groping after the eternal

truth, these new fashions in philosophy are as unsatisfying as the old atheisms which they have replaced. Not of such confused pabulum will much result, save fits of spiritual indigestion. No, there is needed something much simpler, much more vital and human, much deeper. The human heart —and religion, vital and human, is an affair of the heart-will not be satisfied with vague religiosities. The instinct for worship cries aloud for something that is not an abstraction. And if the foundations of the temple are well and truly laid, faith, the working principle by which the religious instinct emerges, will sooner or later justify a superstructure.

Reverence and clarity of thought are then necessary for any constructive work. Clarity of thought implies indeed a certain degree of intellectual training-enough at least to enable one to be consistent in the right use of words and to be able to deduce a logical consequence from its antecedents without falling into fallacy. To say that the right use of the rules of logic is necessary for any constructive religious thought is not by any means to shut up the kingdom of grace to the logical thinker. On the contrary, the proposition is that in the kingdom of grace only he who is logical can be of permanent use as a pioneer in constructive work. Heaven was never won by bad logic, though it may have been attained in spite of it. But no man's contribution toward the future temple of truth will be permanent if it is supported on the untenable basis of a defective syllogism.' We may, in the tentative

1 Logical accuracy of thought, the process of correctly using the intellect, is a gift to be cultivated, and the more earnestly to be cultivated, because all intellectual power is a divine gift. In religious matters,

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stage, be compelled to accept propositions that rest on no logical basis at all-but on some quite other basis: we may even be obliged on rare occasions to accept temporarily two propositions that are mutually incompatible. But, if we do so, it must be on the frank recognition of their temporary nature, and with an intention to lay one or both of them aside so soon as we shall have adequate data to judge between them. There is such a duty as sacred suspense of judgment. The acceptance, as working hypotheses, of matters which we know to be unproven or even defective, may well be a temporary duty also, at times.

It is necessary, then, for progress that with reverence and intelligence we examine the foundations of faith and see that they be truly laid: that our superstructure shall not be reared on a quicksand or on a foundation of straw or stubble. And here at once we shall be told by those who have never thus exercised their intelligence, and who are possessed by the fixed idea that "the Church" (meaning their particular one) has the sole right to be considered the Church of Christ; that "other foundation can no man lay no man lay" than that of "the Church." Wait a little! We must admit no platitudes which beg the question. Those who have not the patience to pursue the development of the present thesis, and those who have never got so far as to discover that there is a problem as to the foundations of personal religion (and how to face however, the power of logic is always of a negative sort. It can enable the thinker to reject the false if the false be due to inaccurate thinking. But logic can never itself establish the true. To suppose so was the mistake of the Schoolmen. Often, if not always, truth comes to the soul by a totally different process-vision.

that problem?) are requested to lay this book aside. It is not written for those who are spiritually rich and increased with goods, for the satisfied or the self-satisfied. Those who are not satisfied with the orthodox position that whatever "the Church " chooses to put forth is therefore necessarily true, will not be deterred from the quest after truth by being told "other foundation can no man lay than that which has been laid." They will at once ask : What was that foundation? Is it that which orthodoxy now represents as being the foundation?

Let us come to closer quarters in this matter and, accepting the historic ground of the general accuracy of the Synoptic Gospels, simply ask what foundation did Christ lay? Probably theologians of all schools will at once recur to the scene at Cæsarea Philippi, when Peter responding for himself and his fellow disciples said: "Thou art the Christ" (Mark viii. 30); "the Christ of God" (Luke ix. 21); "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the ever-living God" (Matt. xvi. 16). The reply of Jesus was : "Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and that upon this rock will I build my church [καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρα οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν], and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it." What then was "this rock" One has only to look back at the preceding context to ascertain. The spiritual intuition, not revealed by human nature, that the Jesus whom they had been following was indeed "the Christ of God," was the foundation on which the calling into His chosen company was based. We

know that for at least a century the simple baptismal formula required of the convert on his admission to the Church was this: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." This was all. That the term "rock" has also been applied to the Holy Scriptures, to Peter, and to Christ Himself, does not alter the fact. The Church of Christ was by Himself set upon the foundation of the spiritual and intuitive recognition of His Divine Sonship. If any Church to-day regards itself as built on any other foundation, upon it rests the onus of disproving the historic accuracy of the Synoptic narratives. For ourselves, at least for present purposes, we accept that historic accuracy as being adequately established.

When a temple of truth is to be reared, it is just as necessary to test the materials of construction as to look to the foundations. In building a structure that is to be lasting, no materials of doubtful permanency can be used. In an age when men had not learned to discern the perishable from the permanent, to sift hard fact from poetic fancy, nor even saw any use in such discrimination, they builded with such material as seemed to them best suited to adorn the fabric. With simple and reverential piety they accepted as fact much that we know now to be of the nature of myth. With eyes aflame in the enthusiasm of the good news that had come to them, they saw halos of glory around the heads of the saints of God; in pious ardour, and with Oriental wealth of imagery, they handed on by word of mouth the descriptions of events that had been witnessed; and in perfect sincerity they exaggerated, ad majorem Dei gloriam, the features