New Estimate of Archbishop Leighton.
In Dr. King Hewison’s Covenanters, which has recently appeared, the author is rather severe on Leighton; certainly his estimate is not the popular one. Here is how he describes him:—”A passionless, a miserable invertebrate, whom ill-health, largely due to his own habits, kept shivering on the boundary line between what he styled ‘this weary, weary wretched life’ and death—a mere reed piping with every wind over the bog he could not purify.” This criticism is severe, but if it errs on the one side the popular estimate errs on the other side. Leighton’s ecclesiastical career is the enigma of the stirring Covenant times, though Dr. Butler has helped to throw much light on his character and career in his Life and Letters of Robert Leighton.
Hopeful Signs.
In a brief notice of the cheap edition of Dr. Orr’s Problem of the Old Testament, the Scotsman reviewer speaks of Dr. Orr’s conclusions as “in the main, conservative,” adding the significant sentence, “they suggest and reflect a certain reaction against the extreme dogmatism of the Higher Criticism that is gathering strength every day.” It is also of interest to notice that Dr. Bossuet of Göttingen, at one time a disciple of Ritschl, in his recent work, What is Religion? has rejected the favourite higher critical position that the religion of the Jews was derived from Babylonish sources. The Babylonian religion he, along with other distinguished scholars, asserts was purely polytheistic, while that of the Jews was monotheistic from its very beginning. The favourite epigram of the German critics, Babel and Bibel (implying the derivation of the Old Testament religion from Babylonian sources), is evidently going the way of many of their theories, to a well-merited and unregretted oblivion.
Modernism in the Protestant Churches.
Under this title Dr. Herkless recently contributed what we may be allowed to term an ill-natured article to the Scottish Review. In it he offers a plea for higher critical methods in the Protestant Churches as in keeping with the very genius of Protestantism. Dr. Herkless is very severe on such writers as Sir Robert Anderson and Dr. Reiche, and refers to them with unconcealed contempt. He quotes a famous reply of Knox to Queen Mary:—”My conscience says not so,” said the Queen: “Conscience, madam,” replies Knox, “requires knowledge”; and from Dr. Herkless’s dissertation on Knox’s reply we infer that the question of knowledge is much more important than that of conscience. He insinuates that while men who prosecute heretics are strong on the side of conscience, they are weak on that of learning. Rightly or wrongly, we have always been under the impression that the question of conscience does not weigh very heavily on the minds of those who belong to Dr. Hekkless’s school. The Professor of Church History at St. Andrew’s might read with advantage O’Conor’s Ethics of Moderate Criticism, from which he may glean that men with higher critical views who have signed such a well defined document as the Westminster Confession, have to face a question of ethics that is much more serious and important than that of acquiring great stores of erudition.
Cheap Reprints.
In recent times there has been a great revolution in the issue of cheap books. The ruling powers of infidelity were quick to recognise the significance of the change and were not slow in flooding the country with cheap reprints of an atheistic tendency. Fortunately the new methods of book production have come to the aid of lovers of good literature, though it is to be acknowledged that among the cheap reprints issued fiction occupies a very prominent place. Our main interest, however, in the matter is to call attention to one or two highly interesting and instructive reprints recently issued for the small sum of sixpence. These include Life of Dr. John G. Paton, published by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, and Dr. Adolph Saphir’s Christ and the Scriptures. Messrs. Nelson have also issued recently a sixpenny edition of the Pilgrim’s Progress, cloth bound.
Free Church Ministers and Objections to Admission of Ministers, etc., Overture.
We have received a letter per solicitors from Revs. Dr. M’Fadden, Dumbarton, and W. S. Heron, Partick, complaining of the last paragraph in the criticism of Free Church proceedings, which appears in the March number, and assuming among other things, that we suggest that they are unsound on the infallibility and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures and purity of worship. Their assumption is entirely unwarranted. We took our report from the F.C. Record, in which it was stated without qualification that Dr. M’Fadden moved, and Mr. Heron seconded, the disapproval of an “Overture anent Admission of Ministers and Probationers and Repeal of Diverse Acts of Assembly.” In order to show the gravity of the Overture, we wrote:—”This Overture provides, among other things, that candidates for admission be believers in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, and in purity of worship—to the exclusion of uninspired hymns and instrumental music;” and we then added in another sentence, “One would like to know—and the people of the Free Church ought to know—what are the objections of such men as Dr. M’Fadden and Mr. Heron to this Overture.” We did not insinuate they were unsound on the points specified, but left absolute room for the opinion that their objections to the Overture might bear on some other points. All that was expressed was a desire for information, and Dr. M’Fadden and Mr. Heron are altogether too hasty in their present charges and conclusions. In the letter we have received they have given us their special objections to the Overture in question, and it is only in line with our already expressed desire that we now publish these objections. They state that “the questions of the infallibility and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures and ‘purity of worship—to the exclusion of uninspired hymns’ were not once mentioned in the discussion on the Overture at the meeting referred to,” and that their “objections were on other grounds altogether and were as follows:—(1) That they could not conscientiously vote on an Overture the full terms of which they had not before them, and were not acquainted with; (2) That the Overture proposed to annul legislation bearing on the reception of Ministers from other Churches, much of which had been passed shortly after the Disruption, and the proposal to annul such legislation seemed to be a high-handed action; and (3) Because the effect of the Overture would be to make it impossible for ministers of the Irish Presbyterian Church—men who had been gladly received by the Free Church in the hour of her need—to enter the Free Church except by application.” These are the objections of Dr. M’Fadden and Mr. Heron, but whether the attitude expressed in them is fitted to make for the purity of the present Free Church is another question. Personally we believe that the Overture under discussion is altogether in the right direction. It has been approved by all the Presbyteries of the Church, but there have been dissenting minorities in, at least, three Presbyteries.
Notice of Death.
We are requested by Mrs. Christina M’Donald or Clarkson, Gillibrand River, Victoria, to intimate that her sister, Flora (daughter of the late Angus M’Donald, Snizort, Skye) died at Glengarry, in the above Colony, on the 25th February. The deceased, who was an invalid for over 20 years, is survived by her husband, who has reached the advanced age of 85 years. There is also a family to mourn her loss.
Decline of Fiction Reading at Edinburgh Public Library.
Treasurer Harrison, presiding at a meeting of the Edinburgh Public Library Committee, called attention to the annual report given in by the Librarian, Dr. Hew Morrison, C.C. Turning to the lending department, he said there had been a great falling off in the libraries, taking them as a whole. Last year they distributed for home reading from their six different libraries over 944,000 volumes; this year they had fallen off nearly 100,000—from 944,000 to 847,000, which was a tremendous falling off. They would find that the big falling off had been in the reading of fiction and the reading of children’s books. The reading of fiction had fallen from 599,000 in 1906 to 538,000 in 1907, a falling off of 10 per cent. The falling off in the reading of juvenile literature had been from 186,000 in 1906 to 162,000 in 1907. This decline in the amount of home reading was very remarkable. He was not going to attempt to explain it—it was to a certain extent explained by the great number of cheap novels which were now published, but he did not think that was a sufficient explanation. He showed from statistics that the number of novels published in the United Kingdom had fallen off very much this year too. One can only hope that the decrease will continue, for it is one of the worst features of the Carnegie Libraries that they make it so easy for vast multitudes to indulge in works of fiction to the neglect of the more serious and edifying works in literature and the sciences.