The Reformed Faith.—Dr. Warfield’s vacant place in Princeton Theological Seminary has been filled by Dr. Caspar Wistar Hodge, who had acted as assistant prior to his appointment. It is interesting to know that the honoured name of Hodge is still connected with this noted Seminary, and that the new professor fills the chair commemorating his illustrious forbear. In his inaugural address, “The Significance of the Reformed Theology To-day,” Dr. Hodge says:—”What other hope have we than that which this Reformed faith gives us? The forces of evil are powerful in the world to-day in the sphere of human life. In the realm of religious thought sinister shapes arise before us, threatening our most sacred possessions. And if we look within our own hearts, often we find there treachery from the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, when we would fain keep our eye single for the glory of God. With foes on every hand around us and within, with dark clouds of yet unknown potency for harm forming on the horizon, we dare not put our trust in human help or in the human will, but only in the grace and power of God. We must take the standpoint of the Reformed Faith, and say, with the Psalmist:—”My soul wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defence; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength and my refuge is in God.”
The Professor’s Pastor.—A professor of theology in speaking of the minister whose church he attended, bore this striking testimony to his preaching:—”He knows little of logic; his exegesis is not always to be depended upon; he violates the laws of homiletics; his oratory is in no way remarkable, and yet I never heard him preach a sermon that did not make me feel like saying, ‘I would like to be a better man.'”
The Apocrypha.—The non-canonical books which are embraced under this common designation are still read as lessons in the Church of England “for example of life and instruction of manners.” They were never quoted by Christ or His Apostles as canonical, and the teaching in some of the books is directly anti-scriptural. Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., has for long been, and is still, making a strenuous and praiseworthy effort to have them excluded from the place so prominently given them. He singles out the Book of Tobit, and terms it a “book full of fiction,” and though the verses chosen from it in public reading are unobjectionable, he rightly maintains that “they are far inferior to verses that are found in abundance in the Scriptures, which we love and like to hear.” The Apocrypha should not have such a place of honour in the sanctuary, which should be reserved for the divine oracles alone.
Hard on the Scottish Critics.—Time and again we have been assured that those who are attacking the Old Testament Scriptures are believing scholars. The Germans, to whom they own allegiance, adopted, as in war, more ruthless methods, and made no effort to deny that they were unbelievers. This is very pertinently brought out in an alleged saying of Wellhausen, the bad leader of a bad army, which Harold Wiener, who has been doing battle with the critics for years, quotes with approval in the Jewish Chronicle. “I know,” says this learned infidel, with the daring irreverence which characterises all his class, “that the Old Testament was a fraud, but I never dreamt, as those Scottish fellows do, of making God a party to the fraud.” This is hard on the Scottish critics, who have bowed the knee to the Baal of destructive and infidel criticism. But lovers of the Word of God will readily grant that the caustic irony of the German is not misdirected.
The Thoroughness of the Scottish Reformation.—In no country was the work of the Reformation more thorough than in Scotland. So thorough was it, indeed, that the Continental Reformers were afraid it was being carried too far. John Knox indicates this anxiety in his account of the matter. “The Churches of Geneva, Berne, and Basel,” he says, “with other Reformed Churches of Germany and France, sent to the whole Church of Scotland the sum of the confession of their faith, desiring to know if they agreed in uniformity of doctrine, alleging that the Church of Scotland was dissonant in some articles from them amongst them. Wherefore the Superintendents, with a great part of the other most qualified ministers, convened in September in St. Andrews in the year of our Lord 1566, and, reading the said letters, made answer, and sent word again that they agreed in all points with these Churches and differed in nothing from them, albeit in the keeping of some festival days our Church assented not, for only the Sabbath day was kept in Scotland.” The trend in modern times to return to the observance of Christmas and Easter would find scant favour at the hands of the great Scottish Reformer.
Glasgow University Critics of the Reformation.—Glasgow University has recently obtained an unenviable notoriety through the utterances of two of its teachers—Prof. Phillimore and Mr. W. E. Brown, Lecturer in British History. These learned gentlemen have taken upon themselves an attempt to change the verdict of the Scottish people on one of the most beneficent movements in our history. It is not too much to say that these teachers are taking too much upon themselves in a Scottish University to use their position in attacking the Reformation. The Glasgow Herald has done good service in dealing in a masterly way with these attacks, and its happy hit in admonishing Mr. Brown that his attempt to shake the confidence of the Scottish people in the Reformation is as likely to be successful as the attempt to sweep back the Atlantic.