revealing power of his experience ; to the whole man in action and passion the inner meaning of things comes nearest.
Under the above mentioned impulses the modern mind has passed through the realms of nature, history, personal experi- ence to a more complete mastery of knowledge. The effort has brought great gain to theology.
(3) Its influence on theological method. — Con- temporary theological aims illustrate the direct effect of the foregoing forces in at least four direc- tions : (a) towards a more scientific system of theology ; {b) towards a better appreciation of the nature of religious exjjerience ; (c) towards insist- ence on moral personality as the determining principle in theological construction ; (d) towards recognition of the 'social consciousness' as con- tributory to theological truth.
' Scientific ' applied to theology signifies a new method. The motive here is to vindicate for theology a sphere of knowledge of its own, precisely as for any other science ; and to assert and defend the right of theology to employ a method peculiar to its own facts, appropriate to Its own sphere. The vindication successful, it follows at once that both theology and natural science may pursue each its own independent path, limited only by its own law, yet both moving in real harmony. The antagonism between science and theology vanishes. The vulgar conception of the supernatural, indeed, vanishes too ; but simply because the richer idea has taken its place of an inherent Divine Spirit in nature and in man, both of which are moments within the Spirit of the Divine Being. The facts alluded to in the ethical and social constituents of theological truth reveal the partial character of the sources from which in the past doctrinal construction has drawn. They were chiefly two, the intellect of Greece, the polity of Rome. Greek philos- ophy and Roman jurisprudence, working on the Christian facts, yielded the orthodox formulas. The genius of Northern Europe had later to enter in and infect the conscience of the Church with its own deep feeling. The temper of the present age is its fruit. It offers a wide contrast to the earlier age. It is an age less of intellect than of feeling ; it is less objective, precise, actual, but more inward, refined, wistful. Ultimate explanations take with us a touch of what is subjective and personal. Personality is one of the dominant categories of the hour. It is just what may be looked for that theology should seek to interpret its problems in terms of personality. The new method is a radical departure from the old. It begins with religion as actually experienced in personal life, and from that reaches, so far as it can, the thought of God and the nature of Christ ; whereas the dogmatic method begins with the thought of God authoritatively given and passes on from that to religion. The new method can never reax;h belief in any attribute of the Divine Nature which is not involved in religious experience. Merely metaphysical conceptions of Divine truth in terms of ' substance ' or ' essence,' as these are commonly taught, fail to satisfy. A sufficient self-revelation of God can be given only in a full personal life. Fresh grace is discovered in the conscience. What the higher nature of man, his Moral Reason, witnesses to, that is the sure guide to the apprehension of Divine reality and the true foundation of religious feeling. For in that nature man is at his best ; there relation to God finds place. His revelation is received and His life shared. With the ethical goes pari passu the social. Society arises where the mutual intercourse of moral spirits is possible. The conviction has grown, in a degree unknawn to earlier times, that such intercourse, realized in a true brotherhood of mutual service, may minister untold blessing to men. The 'social consciousness' is simply the growing sense of the power, the worth, the obligations of our intercourse with one another. From the intercourse of man with man, the communion of God with man is known. Growth in religious knowledge follows the laws of a deepening friendship.
The working motive here is worthy of .special remark. It is that man has discovered within himself the starting-point and the test of religious verity. His deepest assurance comes to him as the outcome of his experience in life, as a person, active and patient, growing stronger as faculty springs up vidthin him at life's stern challenge. Finite human experi- ence, imperfect though it be, affords real if limited knowledge of the Infinite. And this knowledge is to be gained, not by putting ourselves outside of experience and by way of contrast constructing a Being with qualities diametrically opposed to the human, but rather by seeking to understand experience, and to determine which alone of the qualities and purposes it contains have permanent meaning and worth. The religious transition of the last four centuries has been a slow but con- tinuous passage from the Aristotelian principle, that there is no ' proportio ' between the finite and the infinite, to the principle first adopted by the Lutheran divines, that the finite is capax inflniti.
2. Modern conceptions of Christ. — Modern con- ceptions of Christ vary according as one or another of the characteristic forces of the modern spirit predominates. We may range them in a threefold order: (1) the Christ of Speculation or the Ideal Christ, (2) the Christ of Exi^erience or