is the power of God, as prevenient grace and sacramental grace. Grace that goes before and grace that follows after. Thus, before a man can breathe the air, the air must be there to breathe: The air is always there waiting on life; but before a man can appropriate the air, he must have a breathing-apparatus, and his lungs are that device; they take in the air and transform it into blood. The air goes before and follows after the act of breathing. This is an analogy of the theological doctrine of grace, prevenient and sacramental.

When it came to the doctrine of the Incarnation, I used the analogy of the thought and brain. The thought is purely spiritual; it has neither form nor colour; neither length, breadth nor thickness; it is soundless. It is not until this spiritual essence incarnates itself in the fleshly matter of the brain that it can make itself known and do its work in the universe of sight and sound.

During all these mornings, as I was speaking from my chair, I noticed that Professor Clark was restless in his seat; he twisted and turned. I was fascinated by fear as I watched him. When I came to my explanation of the dogma of the Incarnation he could stand it no longer; he rose to his feet, his face red with anger, and said, "Gentlemen, I can no longer sit still and listen to such teaching as we have been obliged to hear from the chair of dogmatics."

Of course, I was taken aback as any teacher would be if a scholar were to rise up and challenge his teaching. In an ordinary school the teacher could send this audacious scholar to the dark room and ferule him after school; but I could not do this to a grave professor of theology who was my senior by ten years. I was flabbergasted. I could see all the members of the class grinning at me. So I meekly said, "I'm sorry, Professor. What's wrong with my teaching?"

"What's wrong? what's wrong?" he cried, anger ringing in his voice and flashing from his eyes; "what's wrong? It's all wrong!"

"Professor, pardon my ignorance, but just what is wrong?"

"It's all wrong, all wrong; you are not basing your dogma on the infallible authority of the Church, but on your own fallible reason. I was told that you were a HighChurchman, a ritualist, but you are not a High-Churchman, you are not a ritualist; you are a rationalist. You are rationalizing theology."

At this I could hear all my class snicker and I was red with shame; and I said, my voice charged with fear and anger, "I beg pardon, Professor; but if the human brain must appropriate Christian dogma, must not the human mind explain it?"

"Sir," he cried, "such teaching as yours has no place in the Church! You are worse than a Ritschlian."

Now all the class roared with laughter; but I could not laugh. I was alarmed: I had never heard of a Ritschlian before; I did not know the beast. I humbled myself before my ignorance and I said, "I beg pardon, Professor, but what is a Ritschlian? I never heard of it before"; and all the class rocked in its seats and roared with laughter. "It, it, it -" cried the raging professor. "Do you mean to tell me that you sit in that chair of dogmatic theology and do not know what a Ritschlian is, and call him 'it'?"

"I'm awfully sorry, Professor; I know I have no right to sit in this seat and to dare to instruct such wisdom as yours. Won't you pardon me and pity my ignorance and tell me what a Ritschlian is?" And all the class stamped its feet and shouted with glee, and the professor went away in a rage. I offered then and there to resign my chair of

dogmatic theology but the class would not have it so, and they pushed me back in my seat, saying of all the professors they had ever had I was the most amusing, and an amusing professor was too rare a bird to be killed. I will not say that this description is an exact reproduction of this scene, but it is as it reproduces itself in my memory. And now, dear reader, what is a Ritschlian? It is not, as I feared, some antediluvian dragon with wings and claws; it was only a new species of Christian heretic. It seems that on the 21st of March, 1822, in the town of Breslau there was born to one Papa Ritschl and to one Mama Ritschl a man-child and they called his name Albrecht. And Albrecht grew up as German men-children will until he came to man's estate. In the process of growing up, this German man-child was sent to the Real-school, the Gymnasium and the University. In the University this Albrecht specialized in theology, and, running true to type, he became a man of vast theological learning; he mastered all the theologies of all the theologians, and, like the true German that he was, he could find none to his mind and must needs make a theology of his own and upon that theology found a school. And it seems that I, without even so much as having heard his name, was a member of his school; I was a Ritschlian. These were hard lines: To this day I have not so much as seen one of his books, nor read a line therein. All that I know of Ritschl I have gotten from an article in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and this is what I read: "His [Ritschl's] limitation of Theological knowledge to the bounds of human need might, if logically pressed run perilously near to phenomenalism, and his Epistomology [we only know things in their activities] does not cover this weakness. In seeking ultimate reality in the circle of active consciousness, he rules out all metaphysic [Thank God for Ritschl!], indeed much that is a part of normal Christian faith, i.e., the Eternity of the

Son is passed over as beyond the range of Method." ("Encyclopædia Britannica," Vol. XXII, tenth edition, page 248).

After reading this account of Ritschlianism I made the startling discovery that I was a Ritschlian. Like this learned German I had come to think that all the theology of worth to man was theology brought down to human need. Whether Jesus were the Eternal Son of God or not was of no consequence; it was the human Jesus, with His human insight into human life, that mattered. Thus it came to pass that I, who in my callow youth had despised rationalism, had all along been myself a rationalist. And of this the ritualistic school in the Church was always suspicious; it never trusted me. But to this day I cannot see why a rationalist may not also be a ritualist. Is not the master mind of the universe both rational and ritualistic? it not order the movement of the earth in its annual journey round the sun according to the strictest law of reason? Is it not all mathematical, a matter of weight and line, of square and distance, and yet is not this rationalism the cause of the most wonderfully beautiful ritualism? Does it not give us the ritual of the rising and the setting of the sun and the ritual of the rotation of the seasons? Because of this I have come to think of the war between the rationalist and ritualist within the Church as a useless war; wasteful of spiritual energy; destructive of Christian charity.

Does

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE RATIONALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY

W

HEN I reached the middle period of my ministry, I came to have a depressing sense of the failure, not only of my own ministry, but also of the ministry of the Christian Church as a whole. I gave expression to this depression in a sermon which I preached in the Third Presbyterian Church in the city of Rochester. My preaching in this church was a breach of church discipline and significant of the fact that I was no longer a High-Churchman, holding that the Episcopal Church was the only church, the Episcopal ministry the only ministry of Christ in the city of Rochester. I was beginning to blush in my heart that I had ever held so presumptuous, so absurd a position. But this is the position held, practically, to this day by the clergy of the Episcopal Church. They will fellowship neither with the ancient Catholic Church nor with the modern Protestant denominations: They look upon the Catholic Church as hopelessly corrupt and the Protestant denominations as schismatical and heretical.

When it came to the ears of my bishop that I was purposing to preach in a Presbyterian church, he made posthaste to my rectory to forbid such profanation of my ministry. But I told the bishop that the Third Presbyterian Church was within the confines of my parish and if these, my parishioners, were in the darkness of error it was my duty to dispel that darkness by the light of truth. I did not convince my bishop, but I preached my sermon in spite of his command forbidding such action.