ise is at least a writer of remarkable vigour and
ability, and that he cannot lay claim to these qualities; but he
has confidence in the power of truth--whatever that truth may be--
to assert itself in the end. An open and fair field and full and
free criticism are all that is needed to eliminate the effects of
individual strength or weakness. 'The opinions of good men are but
knowledge in the making'--especially where they are based upon a
survey of the original facts. Mistakes will be made and have
currency for a time. But little by little truth emerges; it
receives the suffrages of those who are competent to judge;
gradually the controversy narrows; parts of it are closed up
entirely, and a solid and permanent advance is made.

* * * * *

The author of 'Supernatural Religion' starts from a rigid and
somewhat antiquated view of Revelation--Revelation is 'a direct
and external communication by God to man of truths undiscoverable
by human reason. The divine origin of this communication is proved
by miracles. Miracles are proved by the record of Scripture,
which, in its turn, is attested by the history of the Canon.--This
is certainly the kind of theory which was in favour at the end of
the last century, and found expression in works like Paley's
Evidences. It belongs to a time of vigorous and clear but
mechanical and narrow culture, when the philosophy of religion was
made up of abrupt and violent contrasts; when Christianity
(including under that name the Old Testament as well as the New)
was thought to be simply true and all other religions simply
false; when the revelation of divine truth was thought to be as
sudden and complete as the act of creation; and when the presence
of any local and temporary elements in the Christian documents or
society was ignored.

The world has undergone a great change since then. A new and far-
reaching philosophy is gradually displacing the old. The Christian
sees that evolution is as much a law of religion as of nature. The
Ethnic, or non-Christian, religions are no longer treated as
outside the pale of the Divine government. Each falls into its
place as part of a vast divinely appointed scheme, of the character
of which we are beginning to have some faint glimmerings. Other
religions are seen to be correlated to Christianity much as the
other tentative efforts of nature are correlated to man. A divine
operation, and what from our limited human poin