The unknown apostle who wrote the wholesome letter to Titus, “his own son after the common faith,” re-enforces his general doctrine of Christian ethics by a special application to the circumstances in which Titus finds himself at Crete. The Christian life, the apostle writes, is practicable even there. The Cretans, where Titus had been left “to set in order the things that are wanting,” were, as one of themselves had said, “liars, beasts, and gluttoners.” “This witness,” the writer agrees, “is true”; but this truth is precisely what gives an opportunity for Titus to teach the Cretans a “sound” or “healthful” doctrine of chastity, discretion, and gravity. “The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men.” Crete was a good place for a Christian “to adorn the doctrine of God.” The problem of the Christian life was not to run away from a bad place, but to serve it and save it. We should live “soberly, righteously, and godly,” not in a world of our own choosing, but “in this present world.” Soberly as concerns one's self, righteously as concerns one's neighbor, piously in one's relation to God,—these three laws made, according to the Apostle, a practicable rule of conduct for a young man of the first century in a vicious and pleasure-loving world.

What the supernatural is depends on what nature is. And nature is regarded from two widely different points of view. The first of these is shown in Richard Watson Gilder's sonnet:—

THE CELESTIAL PASSION

O white and midnight sky! O starry bath!

Wash me in thy pure, heavenly, crystal flood;

Cleanse me, ye stars, from earthly soil and scath;

Let not one taint remain in spirit or blood!

Receive my soul, ye burning, awful deeps;

Touch and baptize me with the mighty power

That in ye thrills, while the dark planet sleeps;

Make me all yours for one blest secret hour!

O glittering host! O high angelic choir!

Silence each tone that with thy music jars;

Fill me even as an urn with thy white fire

Till all I am is kindred to the stars!

Make me thy child, thou infinite, holy night—

So shall my days be full of heavenly light!

The second attitude is expressed in Matthew Arnold's

IN HARMONY WITH NATURE

To a Preacher

“In harmony with Nature?” Restless fool,

Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,

When true, the last impossibility—

To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,

And in that more lie all his hopes of good,

Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;

Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;

Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;

Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;

Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.

Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;

Nature and man can never be fast friends.

Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!

Do we live in an intrinsically rent and warring world? or is the schism only apparent, veiling a fundamental and all-pervasive harmony? or is the universe of such a nature as to admit of a conflict which, though it has sprung up within it, is not of it?

These three possibilities offer themselves to the mind that is trying to push through the world of appearances into the world of reality. The first is the conclusion of Dualism. The second is the conclusion of Monism. The third is an undifferentiated, but long prevalent and well-grounded, conviction, sometimes wrongly identified with dualism, sometimes with monism, but in reality independent of both. For want of a better term we may call it the principle of Duality.

No field of theological study surpasses in interest or in importance the history of the Christian Church. Here is a great complex of institutions and beliefs. Where have these come from? What was it that gave them birth? What is the secret of their persistence and power? What are they worth to mankind? Is there to be found beneath the variant, shifting forms of institution and life, of organization and creed, as they appear in Christian history, any underlying, unifying principle, which can account for their rise and explain their right to be? These questions must be answered. They involve the fundamental problems of the unity of Christian history and of the rationality and worth of institutions and confessions and rituals, which, unless they can thus justify themselves, cannot permanently survive.

It is the purpose of this article to show that there is such a unifying principle of interpretation, and that this principle is to be found in the reality of the Christian experience itself. Behind every movement in the history of the church, behind every institution which she has developed for the expression and perpetuation of her life, behind every doctrine and creed, there stands a human soul which has met God, and in the great silence, unbroken save by the cry of penitence or the exultant note of spiritual conquest, has found the path to peace.

Human progress depends on the discovery of the forces which are active in the universe and of the way to use them so as to accomplish desired ends. Power is in itself non-moral, and may be used for either moral or immoral purposes. All experience proves that conservatism is an immense power in human nature, and in religion probably more than in any other sphere of human life. It seems strange, then, that more attention has not been given to the nature and source of this power, and to the methods by which it may be so employed as to help and build up rather than obstruct and destroy the spiritual life of men.

The power of conservatism affects doctrine, ethics, ceremonial and liturgical forms, and polity in unequal degrees, although it affects them all very greatly. This essay, however, is concerned only with conservatism in doctrine, and leaves the other fields to other students.

There is no subject about which popular psychology just now has so much to say as the “subconscious.” Since the name came into wide use a dozen years ago, it has come to be regarded as something so definite and well understood as to be itself the explanation of many other things. Its bearing upon questions of religious experience has been particularly emphasized, and, in fact, it is largely on this account that it has aroused so much popular interest. In short, the word “subconscious” is spoken so glibly and taken to be the self-evident solution of so many spiritual problems that it will be worth our while to consider what we really know about it, and especially what its actual relation to religion may be. For, though often misused, there can be no doubt that the term stands for something very fundamental in our mental life, and that its connection with religion is in one way or another extremely important.

The current essays to disentangle the literary history of the material which now forms our Gospel of Mark were described in an article by Professor Moulton in a recent number of this Review. Of the attempts to solve the problem there mentioned two seem plausible enough to warrant fuller exposition in these pages. They are the reconstructions by which Professor Hermann von Soden, of Berlin, and Professor Emil Wendling, of Zabern, have tried to resolve our Gospel into its constituent elements.