MISCELLANEA NOTES AND COMMENTS FR. TRENHOLME's short article on the Revision of the Liturgy is timely and will appeal to all who desire a return to ordered and agreed ways in the Celebration of the Eucharist. Of the reality of that desire, the number of independent and voluntary efforts to bring about agreement among groups of the clergy themselves is sufficient testimony. But the abortiveness of those efforts is also an indication that, if unity of rite is to be secured, the Church as a whole, acting through its proper authorities, must order it. We believe we are right in saying that the "Canterbury Canon," as the 1918 proposals came to be called, was only blocked by the action of a minority of bishops in the Northern Province. Until such obstructive methods are abandoned, no progress can be made. The Convocations, and particularly their Upper Houses, must decide whether they really wish to have a revised Canon which is likely to be accepted by the Catholic movement as a whole. It is an opportunity which may not recur. The fact that the revised Prayer Book is to be optional makes it more than ever vital that the good-will of the Catholicminded clergy should be secured, for otherwise we shall only have one more rite added to those which are already in use. The most recent proposals of Convocation for the revision of the Canon will please none but a few pedants; and it is as well that the fact should be realized. On the other hand, the very simple and moderate changes advocated by Fr. Trenholme would have every chance of serving as a rallying-ground for public opinion among those clergy who have shown themselves most dissatisfied with the defects of our present Canon. TWO NOTES I. IN the April number of THEOLOGY, p. 199, the "Anima Christi" is attributed to S. Ignatius Loyola, who was born in 1491. In addition to the MSS. quoted in the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1605, I believe it occurs in Harl. 2253, dated about 1321. In vol. iv. of Baümker's Das katholische deutsche Kirchenlied, p. 461, the following quotation is given from the Continuatio Tornacensis Sigeberti (Monumenta Germaniae historica, Script. T. vi., p. 444), under the year 1334: Obiit dominus Johannes divina providencia Papa XXII. ... Conposuit quandam orationem que est anima Christi. Quam qui in missa dixerit, 30 dies indulgenciae obtinebit, scil 20 pro peccatis mortalibus et 10 pro venialibus." According to the Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 1605, a similar note as regards Pope John XXII. granting an indulgence appears in Harl. 1260, f. 158 (c. 1370), but apparently nothing is said about the authorship. II. In the C.S.S.S. Leaflet 45 (January, 1911) a list of references is given for the familiar classification, "the world, the flesh, and the devil." To the passages there quoted may be added the following, from hymns in the Aberdeen Breviary: 66 (a) From "O celi sydus lucide" (S. Maurice)— "Tu preces nostras suscipe: Et nos pater piissime: (b) From "Adest dies leticie" (S. Ninian)— "Iesu rector luctancium: Tua nos rege gracia: M. FROST. IN THE STUDY BY REV. W. K. LOWTHER CLARKE, B.D., EDIT. SEC. OF S.P.C.K.. ADVICE ON BOOKS If readers who require advice on courses of theological study or the choice of books care to write to the Editorial Department of S.P.Č.K., an attempt will be made to give them the required information. Sixpence in stamps should be sent to cover the cost of the necessary correspondence. It will frequently be necessary to refer the enquiry to an expert; a number of well-known scholars have consented to help in this way. Sometimes, especially in the summer months, there may be a little delay in answering. The Editor reserves the right to publish answers if they are of sufficient general interest. In such cases the initials of the correspondents will be given. X.-FOREIGN THEOLOGY PROFESSOR EDUARD MEYER of Berlin occupies in the study of classical antiquity a place not unlike that of Mommsen a generation ago. He has lately turned his attention to the New Testament, and two out of three projected volumes on the Beginnings of Christianity have already appeared. The books are brilliant and suggestive, though, as might be expected in one writing outside his own special field of knowledge, not devoid of mistakes. The passage to which I call attention is in the Preface, which is addressed to a fellow-professor. He recalls how they visited the Baltic States in the inspiring days of the spring of 1918. They trusted that these lands were permanently freed from the foreign yoke, but, alas! their hopes were disappointed. It will be recalled that German armies occupied these countries-now Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthoniafor a while after the collapse of Russia. The professor judges that for this brief period only they were free. But the Germans have never been more than a small minority of the population, though owing to their position as landowners their influence was out of proportion to their numbers. The population as a whole was neither German nor Russian, but Lithuanian, Lett, and Esth. The actual proportions are given in works of reference. It appears, then, that great erudition is no security that a man's judgment upon contemporary historical problems will not be completely perverted by national prejudice. But past history is so bound up with the present day that a purely objective treatment of the past is almost impossible of attainment. In the hands of some investigators the Reformation becomes an economic rather than a religious movement: others use the Middle Ages to inculcate gild-socialism. History differs from natural science because it is the judgment of fallible human minds upon past events which cannot be reproduced, whereas in the physical sciences experiments are repeated in the laboratory until certainty is reached. The nationality of the scholar hardly counts in chemistry: in history it is important. We do well to criticize the German professor, but it would be wiser to ask what are the natural prepossessions of English historians which hinder them from seeing the truth? Such considerations apply to theology even more than to history. The issues at stake are so vital that it is impossible to approach fundamental theological problems with complete objectivity. The best we can do is to study them honestly with every available faculty, and check our results with those of investigators who approach the problems with equal honesty but different mental prepossessions. This is a further reason, to be added to the reasons given in the April number of THEOLOGY, for studying foreign books. We have reason to believe that the totality of scholars who are disciples of Christ will eventually be led into all the truth which is possible under earthly conditions, but no grounds for supposing that the scholars of one nation working in isolation can claim the promise. A hint dropped above may be profitably developed. A certain measure of verification of results is possible in theology. Experiments can be reproduced in the laboratory of the Church's pastoral work. Attempts to explain the origins of Christianity on purely academic and literary lines are doomed to failure. The more we know of the work of the Holy Spirit in our own hearts and in the lives of others to-day, the better fitted are we to understand the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, as it has been called. A purely literary critic may find in the Mystery Religions the key to St. Paul. A critic with an experimental knowledge of prayer will recognize that the Apostle was primarily a man of prayer, and the mysteries will become a side-issue of little importance. Undue specialization, always dangerous, is fatal in theology, and the literary criticism of the scholar needs to be tempered by the devotion of the humble Christian and the practical experience of the pastor, and this in the same person. The sanity of British theological scholarship is due to the combination of academic and pastoral pursuits in its leading representatives, and it would be disastrous if any but a small proportion of professed theologians were outside the ministry of the Church. REVIEW THE DOCTRINE OF SIN: A CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE VIEWS OF THE CONCEPT OF SIN HELD IN EARLY CHRISTIAN, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN TIMES. By Reginald Stewart Moxon, B.D., Headmaster of Lincoln School, formerly Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. 1922. Pp. 251. 10s. 6d. net. ALMOST everything, in this question of sin, turns on what one makes of Augustine. Not, of course, in the way of intellectual agreement from point to point. That is impossible, for the weak points in Augustinianism as a system are patent, and it is strange that the person mainly concerned should not have realized that bad defences are worse than none at all when an acute enemy is looking for an opening. But the result of his labours in the Pelagian controversy is not to be judged by any reckonings as to the quantitative adequacy of his dogmatic. Acknowledging that in a unique manner he has impressed himself, not only upon Christian thought, but more deeply upon Christian feeling and Christian spiritual sensitiveness in respect of sin, one asks, "Has he done this for the Church's good, or has he been the great mis-leader?" At the last one must side either with Harnack, who had drastic enough criticism to make and yet was profoundly impressed with the greatness of Augustine's work as "Reformer of Christian Piety," or with Dr. Thomas Allin, whose attack on the great African Father in The Augustinian Revolution in Theology was the more forcible because of the passion for the goodness and love of God which fired his pen. The Pelagian controversy belongs in its form to the age in which it arose; but the issues which it raised belong, like human nature itself, to every age; wherever a religious interpretation of sin, grace, freewill, even predestination, is sought, men will separate from one another after the fashion of Augustine and Pelagius. So it is inevitable that Mr. Moxon should have much to say about the Pelagian controversy in all its bearings and results. Even though he believes that he can find a clue to the meaning of sin, and a definition of original sin, along lines suggested by modern physical and psychological science, and remote in many respects from the assumptions common to both Augustine and Pelagius, as well as from the points in which they differed, he has been well advised to go over the old ground again and to explore it in detail. That it was " perhaps the most interesting and important controversy which the Christian world had yet witnessed" seems to me, even with the initial qualifying word, a curious exaggeration in view of the great struggle against Arianism in the fourth century; but a controversy which concerned itself so intimately with the character of the relationship between man and God and involved the question of the true nature of religion as a moral and spiritual activity of the soul, and engaged as one of its protagonists a man whose personal greatness is hardly to be disputed, has still much to teach us. The groundwork of the book is historical narrative with accompanying discussion. We pass from a survey of Eastern and Western views during the early centuries of the Christian era to a description of the Pelagian controversy. A full account, critical and appreciative, is given of the teaching, first of Pelagius, then of Augustine. To these chapters succeeds one on Semipelagianism, the writing of which may have given Mr. Moxon more satisfaction than anything else in the volume. The most important developments in the doctrine of sin during mediæval and Reformation times are next reviewed, after which a valuable chapter puts the reader in touch with modern writers, not all professed theologians, in whose theories the influence of metaphysical speculation and of the method of natural science is observable. Finally, researches in psychology, especially in connexion with the subconscious and with the power and possible sublimation of natural instincts, are drawn upon with a view to the construction of new concepts of sin, both original and actual. The former is tentatively defined as "the universal tendency in man, inherited by him from his animal ancestors, to gratify the natural instincts and passions and to use them for selfish ends "; the latter as "selfishness resulting from over-individualized personality.' Of this constructive climax, with its roots in psychological investigations, it is hard not to believe that, whatever its suggestiveness and apparent timeliness, in view of the widespread interest in problems concerning the nature of personality, we are a long way from such a settled position in these matters as would enable us to construct a doctrine of sin. Certainly, there is as yet no conclusive agreement as to the relations of instincts and intellect, of imagination and will. Consider, for instance, the question of repression. Mr. Moxon is clearly opposed to it: "Any attempt to repress the instincts, though it is even to this day advocated by many moralists, is doomed to failure, and must be productive of disaster." Now, such a principle as no negative without a positive" may be sound enough, but sublimation is not a short-cut to true ethical practice. In the majority of cases it must be a long and diffi 66 |