The Nature of Scripture. By A. S. Peake, D.D. (Hodder
and Stoughton. 6s.)—No English scholar has done so much of late years to popularize the Scientia Scripturarum as the author
of these lucid and illuminating lectures, which may be com• mended to students who combine • an acceptance of critical method with an adhesion to Evangelical faith. Their path is at times a hard one ; it is not only in the older Churches that learning is suspect. Professor Peake has other religious bodies
in view when he tells us that " the advocates of traditional theories on -the Bible have been stirred to new efforts ' ; and it must be said, with regret, that these have in some instances been marred by a painful absence of Christian temper and the courtesies of con- troversy, and by a lack of that scruptilousr fairness and accuracy of statement -which is the first essential in debate. Heated language, an acrimonious temper, and reckless misrepresenta- tion, however effective with partisans, will in the long run only recoil on those who indulge in such tactics.' "
Not the least powerful of the influences towards union now at work in the English-speaking Churches is that of scholarship. Knowledge is the same for us all ; and the scholar is the true Pontifex, or Bridge-builder : the points on which Christians differ are fewer and less important (he sees) than those on which they are agreed. Religion has everything to gain by the full recognition of this fact ; and, on the other hand, everything to
lose by insistence on merely human traditions. " In theories of Scripture spun by the human imagination, working under- the
impulse of false reverence, and imposed on the facts rather than drawn from them," says the Professor, " I have long lost all belief."
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