ight just as well have swept his kitchen with a
broom, and then complained that he could not find God there. God is not
stars, nor dust. God is spirit, and he is not to be apprehended by the
senses. Laplace should have taken man's conscience and will for his
starting-point. And just as physical science can find no God in the
universe by the use of the forceps and the microscope, so this
historical method can find no Christ in the Scriptures, because it looks
there for only human agency. The result is that it finds only a
collection of seemingly contradictory fragments, with no divine Spirit
to harmonize them and bind them together. Its method is purely
inductive, whereas its induction should always be guided by a knowledge
of Christ, gained before investigation begins, and furnishing the basis
for a deductive process as well. Differentiation and not harmonization
is its rule, and this makes its criticism destructive rather than
constructive. Many a passage is set aside, because it will not fit in
with a skeptical interpretation. Christ's own words with regard to his
being "a ransom for many," and with regard to his having "all power
committed to him in heaven and in earth," are held to be later words
attributed to him by his followers. The whole New Testament story comes
to be regarded as a mythical growth, like that which gradually placed
haloes about the heads of the apostles. The Gospel of John is not
accepted as historical, but is said to be a work of the second century.
Jesus, it is said, never himself claimed to be the Messiah, since it is
only John who reports his saying to the woman of Samaria, "I that speak
unto thee am he." Paul is set aside, as being the author of a rabbinical
theology which has no claim upon us; and that, in spite of Christ's own
declaration that there were many things which he could not teach while
he was here in the flesh, but which he would teach, by his Spirit, after
his resurrection, and ascension.

Prof. Kirsopp Lake, in a recent address before the Harvard Divinity
School, deprecated the use of the term "theology." "Theology," he said,
"presupposes divine revelation, which we do not accept." He proposed the
term "philosophy," as expressive of the aim of the Unitarian school.
This is honest and plain. What shall we say of those who speak of the
"new emphasis" needed in modern theology, when they really mean that the
preaching of the old doctrines of sin and salvation must give place to