to inspire rather than in an alleged experience of the writers in the unknown past. To the credit of criticism, comprehensively conceived as the most fundamental, vital prerequisite of interpretation, we must place a revival of interest in the Biblical books for what they are and can do as literature-a revival truly unprecedented. Side by side with an indifference born of growing doubt as to the traditional grounds of Scripture authority— an indifference which our fathers would have met by stern compulsion, enforced hours of secretly hated Bible study," and verses memorized by the score and hundred, but which to-day meets us, even in unexpected quarters, in a really appalling ignorance of the whole contents we have the testimony of other thousands of whom I have spoken already, that the study of Scripture origins has transformed the Bible for them from a fetich into a channel of the water of life.

I have dwelt thus at length upon the higher criticism, historical and literary, partly because it is by far the most important phenomenon in the Scripture study of the last half-century, as the spirit of the age itself has been rightly characterized by Professor Paine as pre-eminently a spirit of historical investigation; but also because, whether for this reason or some other, the science of exegesis seems now to have reached a transition point, the most momentous since the leadership passed over from the Alexandrian school of Clement and Origen, with its insane vagaries of allegory, typology, and symbolism, to the Cappadocian of Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Then, once for all, the Church laid down the grammatico-historical as the only legitimate method of Scripture interpretation. Then, once for all, a bridle of restraint was thrown upon the subjective dogmatism which imposed upon Scripture whatever meaning the fancy of the moment might dictate. Since that time we have been engaged in perfecting this sole legitimate method, which honors the Scripture writers by permitting them to set forth their eternal truths in forms which to us may be obsolete.

But hitherto the emphasis has all been laid upon the first term of the compound. We have been grammatico-historical in our exegesis, until exegesis has seemed to

mean nothing more than a kind of Biblical grammar and philology. Seminary chairs have been endowed under titles which implied that the occupants were expected to engage chiefly in teaching the sacred languages; as if exegesis meant no more than hermeneutics, and the student's highest ideal were to be the making of one more translation or serving on some new revision committee.

I have before expressed my appreciation for the splendid, laborious services of the philological exegetes and textual critics of the past generation. Would that twenty years ago I had appreciated at their true worth the minute and painstaking studies in grammatical and lexical exegesis to which I listened here, with their conscientious system schooling the mind to a stern discipline, almost as if our teacher, with Puritanic asceticism, feared to relax into mere delightful reading and historical discussion, such as made for us the real charm of his instruction! May the laborious work of that generation obtain the meed of praise it deserved but did not seek! Yet it is now clear that the time has come when methods of exegesis must change, or the science itself be choked in the dust of its ponderous tomes. For what else has the study of grammar, vocabulary, construction, use of language, and history of textual variation been carried almost to the last degree of perfec tion, and all the results indexed, shelved, filed away and labeled within easy reach, whensoever decisions taken may be called in question? For what else have meantime the archæologist, historian, and higher critic been feverishly at work, theorizing, disputing, destroying, reconstructing, till out of the chaos, often sneered at as hopeless, begins to rise an edifice of accepted results? For what else has the Scripture study of the closing century been thus characterized, but that the exegesis of to-morrow and the new century might be historico-grammatical that we might begin our study of the sense with a study of the times, the thought, the circumstances, the mind out of which the phrase took form, and, understanding our subject genetically, understand it as never before? This I take to be the vital change which is on the eve of taking place in the science of Scripture interpretation. The change from the exegesis of

to-day to the exegesis of to-morrow will be a change from grammatico-historical to historico-grammatical, with all that the change of emphasis implies.

But some one will say: "The change, even if desirable and practicable, comes too late; this age has outlived the time when the Bible could claim its unique rank. Literature in even the humblest home is abundant, cheap, and sometimes good. The churches are empty, the preacher has lost his influence, or struggles to maintain it by competing with the Sunday newspaper in the extreme recentness of all his themes. If the great quesIf the great question is how to be absolutely up-to-date,' how can Biblical interpretation obtain a hearing? Who wants to hear the Bible expounded?" In my opinion, some of those very men whose absence we most deplore from our churches are they who want it-men who, when they go to church, want the minister to talk his business and not theirs, who want the meaning of the Bible and not of current events, politics, and social science, who want the bread of life and not another bucketful of Sunday newspaper froth. Whether I am right or not in the notion that there still is such a thing as a hunger and thirst after righteousness, not oversupplied with sermons on the mount-whether I am right or not in my notion that the very most "drawing" and "up-to-date" subject that a minister could discover would be such exposition of the Bible as the thoroughly equipped historical critic and exegete could give if he would and dared, I will do you young men the honor to assume that you scorn the idea that the Bible is tending to become obsolete. The The classics of Greek drama, philosophy, history, oratory, of Latin prose and poetry, may. The education of the daily newspaper and novel may produce authors who will cast into the shade not only Shakespeare and Milton, Goethe and Dante, but consign to oblivion the misnamed immortals of Parnassus. It may be that we shall witness this, though just at present the tendency of increasing culture would appear to be rather to add a greater luster to classic fame and a larger influence and greater popularity to the literature of Greece and Rome. But when may we look for the decadence of the Bible? I will tell you when. One of two things

must first occur: Either men, to their everlasting shame, decadence, and ruin, must cease to care for that ideal of a divine humanity regnant over a universe of order, peace, and love, the revelation of which forms the essential organic unity of the Book of books, and which culminates in the portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man and Son of God; or else some other, better way must be found for bringing men into closer, more vital and spiritual, more practical and effective contact and sympathy with it. Some better means of implanting that ideal and that life must be discovered than the appreciative, intelligent reading of the writings which come to us touched with its fire, breathing its aroma, conscious of its presence, impassioned and inspired with the knowledge that in Him they have seen the Father. Until some other literature has appeared which can bring the life of the careworn toiler, the household drudge, the high and the lowly, the poor in spirit, and the intellectually and morally great into touch and sympathy with a "human life divine" and a "victory that has overcome the world," the place of the Bible will be unique and unquestioned. None of us here have any lack of faith in humanity as craving, however blindly, this water of life; nor in the Bible as the one perpetual channel to it. Only its "inspiration " must be of the kind that inspires, and you, who are here to make it subservient to the parched spiritual thirst of the world, must be inspired by it, or your exegesis will never bring its inspiration to bear upon others.

How shall you do it? In one word, learn to sympathize with its characters and writers. Study yourself into the circumstances and thought of the period. Fearlessly discriminate between what is local and temporary in the author's conception, and so belongs but to the garment, and what is eternal principle, and therefore constitutes the essence. You must be able to say, With all my heart amen and amen to what is of the latter, whether in Isaiah, in Amos, in Paul, or in John. Above all, if the life of Jesus himself-the heart of it all-is to be a true ideal to you, not factitious, not good because others have declared it so, but good and absolutely good in your own soul's eyes, you must follow, step by step, His

office, which was small and hot and was filled with cigar-smoke, while shining through was his genial face, and he "was as ready as a phonograph," he said, to talk to me.

"You want to know about Sudermann? Hm! Well, Sudermann was, to

begin with, a newspaper man, who for five long years was supposed to edit Richter's liberal paper, but did nothing in fact except nose around the Berlin stage, where he learned all the tricks that we fellows have to know. When he entered upon his newspaper work, he was

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a Hungerleider' [a poor devil] just

like myself, as you have discovered if you have read his book, Frau Sorge' [Dame Care]. He had written two novels which nobody read, until with 'Die Ehre' [Honor], his first play, he sprang into fame, and I believe into fortune also. With this play he opened a way for all of us, for in it he holds partly to the old ideas of the drama and partly to the new, and our enemies didn't discover, until it was too late, that they had applauded a heretic. In rapid succession followed Sodom's Ende' and 'Die Heimat' [Magda], the latter his most successful play, and every year has brought one or two more."

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"Did he learn anything of Ibsen ?" "Yes, indeed; of Tolstoï also, and Zola." "To what particular thing do you ascribe his phenomenal success and the great opposition to him?"

"I should say to his new setting of the German social life," was the reply, "particularly that of the modern German woman. Take, for instance, 'Honor.' What a picture he gives of the relation

between the front of the house, where the rich manufacturer lives, and the rear of the house, where the poor upholsterer lives. It is a dreadful picture, full of loathsome talk; in

the rear of the house absence of shame and of honor; in the front of the house a wrong conception of honor and a wrong kind of shame. It is dreadful, but it is true, and every officer and clerk who saw the girl of the rear of the house, flippant, careless, stupid, sensuous, said to himself, 'I know that girl myself.'

"More shocking to sensitive peo

ple," continued Mr. Barr, "was his next drama, Sodom's Ende,' which is naturalistic to the core, and portrays the social conditions of the west end of Berlin, its fashionable quarter; and here also is a woman-the woman who has nothing to do but lie on her couch all day and dream about some Don Juan, not because she doesn't care for her husband, but simply because she has nothing else to do. And again, as men saw the play, though they were shocked, and even blushed, they said, We know her also.' The whole thing was declared hideous, a nightmare; but if nightmare it is, it rests upon an indigestible fact in Berlin's West End society.

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"In his third drama, 'Die Heimat' [Magda], Sudermann leaves Berlin and places his scene in a provincial city, the city of Koenigsberg, no doubt, in the house of a pensioned army officer, who has transferred his tyrannical treatment of soldiers to his wife and daughters. There is a skeleton in the closet, for one of his daughters has been driven from home and disowned because she has gone upon the