are fundamental differences. The volume of critical work published
in Germany is so considerable as to foster the illusion that it
constitutes a self-sufficing world. Thus it is possible for Dr.
Schweitzer in his brilliant survey of research into the life of Jesus,
to represent the whole inquiry as the work of German genius and as the
endeavour of German liberalism to picture Jesus in accordance with its
own half-unconscious bias. Yet even so the cloven-hoof of international
interdependence makes its appearance, for he has to devote one
unsympathetic chapter to Renan, even if he contrives to ignore Seeley's
_Ecce Homo_. But the debt of English scholarship to Germany is
undeniable, and must not be repudiated in war-time. Nor is the debt
entirely on one side. It is worth recalling that Adolph Harnack, perhaps
the greatest living German scholar in the realm of New Testament
criticism and Church History, derived no little inspiration from the
work of Edwin Hatch. At any rate the acceptance of the critical method
associates scholars in all lands, produces International Congresses for
the study of Religions, and fosters personal friendships which even war
will not destroy.

Beyond the internationalism of scholarship, we must remember the
reaction of criticism on popular religious thought. Slowly but surely
the judgements of believers, lay and clerical, are being permeated with
some sense of historical perspective. The mere attempt to recognize the
literary character of the various books of the Bible has effected a
liberation. The variation of the different parts of the Bible in
literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual
significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and
the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of
legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is
leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view
of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development
favours a more modest assertion of one's own beliefs and a more
charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ,
we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we
differ.

It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the
critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of
authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that
the psychological