C URRENT LITERAT URE.
THE TEACHING OF CHRIST.
The .Authority of Christ. By David W. Forrest, D.D. (T. and T. Clark. 6s.)—Dr. Forrest is careful to give a logical complete- ness to his treatment of his subject. The Authority of Christ as the rule of human life depends, so to speak, on the Incarnation —God has committed all judgment to the Son—and we must therefore review our conceptions of this doctrine. What is it that compels us to recognise Him as the Supreme Teacher or Ruler? There is certainly some vague thinking on this point. We may even venture to say that much of the current exposition of Christian doctrine on this subject is practically Docetism. The Christ of popular theology is often not a true man. We are not prepared to accept all the statements of Dr. Forrest's second chapter, "The Illegitimate Extension of Christ's Authority," a chapter which may be briefly described as an exposition of Kenotic teaching. We are reminded of the saying of some eminent divine who, speaking about the "Age of the Councils," said : "In ills diebus ingeniosa res erat esse Christianum." Dr. Forrest boldly impugns the famous derail- tion of the Personality of Christ which was formulated at Chalcedon, though he points out that neither Eutyches nor Apollinaris propounded theories that were other than "provisional and imperfect." The subject has a direct bearing on the great critical controversy of the day. If Christ was always consciously omniscient, it is difficult to resist the inference that His utterances on Daniel, on Jonah, on the 110th Psalm (as the work of David), must be accepted as barring all criticism of these, or indeed any, Old Testament Scriptures. If we have to believe that Jonah was actually "three days and three nights in the whale's belly," cadit quaestio. But our readers should judge of Dr. Forrest's teaching for themselves. They will certainly be repaid for their trouble as regards both this and what we may call the practical sections of his treatise. The two chapters on "Indi- vidual Duty " and " Corporate Duty" are excellent. Now and then we are disposed to differ. Dr. Forrest quotes a highly favourable judgment passed by Mr. Bryce on the practical influence of Christianity in the United States, and sees in it a confirmation of his objection to Established Churches. We cannot but recall, as telling the other way, a remarkable statement made some years ago by a Christian minister, without any reference to the State Church question, to the effect that there were large districts in the Eastern States where private effort absolutely failed to provide any kind of public worship or pastoral care. This, of course, is what we have to think of here. What would our rural districts, impoverished as they are, do without the Establishment as it now exists?—Mr. Hanks in his volume of thoughtful and able discourses—The Eternal Witness, by W. P. Hanks, MA. (Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, 2s. 6d. net)—naturally does not follow the method of the book just noticed. He is more rhetorical than logical, the epithet "rhetorical" being used, it must be under- stood, honoris cause. But we find in the fine sermon from which the book takes its title an interesting point of contact between the two volumes. "The main results of the labours [of the critics] as regards ordinary Christians has been to lay great stress upon the Kenotic theory and the whole teaching of the Incarnation." Commonly, however, the preacher is distinctly practical, though his practicality is not inconsistent with a certain tendency to mysticism. We may give an excellent specimen of the happy combination of what may seem opposing habits of thought :—
" Some men and women are always longing to be young again; but to long for the life of youth to return is to prove that we have never lived it. The forces of youth in us, perverted to mere enjoyment, never having found their true work, and so never satisfied, survive as disruptive elements of a stage of life for whose duties we are still unfitted. It was expedient for us that youth should go away. From the death of its life should have come forth a Comforter, a Paradise to lead us into the fuller life and the wider range of being. Would that instead of bewailing life's swift flight, we could understand that in its transitoriness is the 'promise and potency' of its eternity. It is the un- changing in us that chafes against the change."
There is a certain boldness of imagery here, but it is no common utterance. As such, it is characteristic of the whole volume.
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