need the apostolic fervor, the church mechanism of the first century is little better adapted to the task of energizing modern life with the religious spirit than the curriculum of a Roman school of the same period is suited to the educational needs of twentiethcentury youth.

It is this necessity which men have felt for discovering a Biblical sanction for every innovation in organized church life that has been the greatest curse to its spiritual efficiency and the strongest check upon its adaptability.

The early history of the Sundayschool movement offers a very good illustration and may be regarded as typical. In England, where the movement had its inception, it was condemned in high places as a "dangerous, demoralizing agent of the devil." Sunday-school teachers were persecuted by church prelates when they undertook to teach the Bible to the poor, the Church itself not providing such teaching save in the form of catechetical instruction. A part of the opposition was due to the feeling that it was unsafe to supplement the catechism by the Bible itself. But this feeling in turn grew from the conception of the Bible as a final deposit of revealed truth, the ipsissima verba of which came from the finger-writing of God. On such a theory it was, naturally, of vast importance that the most minute matters should be correctly taught; i.e., in accordance with the catechism. Another source of opposition to the Sunday-schools lay in the conviction that the clergy were, according to Scripture, the only authorized teachers of religion, following in the steps of the apostles and being within their succession. similar period of opposition occurred in America and the reasons for it were similar. But the Sunday-school persisted and the idea spread, because it fulfilled a need and performed a real spiritual ministry. Then, gradually,

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the churches did what they have always done in similar instances. They found Scriptural justification for the Sunday-school in the synagog schools, in the precepts of Jesus concerning little children, and elsewhere; and, adopting the new institution, proceeded to denominationalize it.

Is it not true that practically every innovation in organized church life in the past has had to struggle for recognition and to justify itself in ecclesiastical circles finally by showing itself to be in some manner predestinated or foreshadowed in the written record? The result has not only been a too tardy recognition of many fine movements and the crippling of their usefulness in the meantime; but we behold to-day, as a secondary result, a church of loosely confederated parts and activities, often overlapping each other in the same local society and acting without any proper coordination. In most circles the original organization in its simplicity, sans Bible schools, sans young people's societies, sans women's auxiliaries, boys' clubs, girls' social circles, and all else suborganizational, is thought of as the Church. These other groups are regarded as very good but not integral, very helpful but bearing only a secondary and comparatively unimportant relation to the ecclesia itself. Here, then, in the conception of the Church as an institution wholly prescribed and circumscribed by the New Testament records, we find the tap-root of modern inefficiency in church organization.

It must be said that in the last decades the Church has seemingly acquiesced in changes and adaptations to new needs with greater facility than in previous periods. This, however, is partly due to the more rapid movement of life, carrying the Church along with it. Then, too, the traditional views of the Bible are losing ground, tho it is to be feared they are

giving place largely to vague uncertainty rather than to an intelligent understanding of Scripture as a product of historical growth.

We are coming into an age more likely to be subject to kaleidoscopic change than any previous period in the memory of any living man. The new problems which present themselves, whether they be local, sectional, or national in their implications, must be met by a much more versatile and adaptive religious organization than we have had in the past, if that organization is to assist in the right solution of those problems and is to instill into their solution a religious motive. The Church, therefore, must completely loose itself from the trammels of tradition. During the war the Church moved to the field of conflict; when the army advanced the Church advanced with it. During the reconstruction era the Church must reproduce this triumph in a spiritual, and therefore a much more difficult, sense. It must sense the changing viewpoints, the new birth of social trends, the forward march of ideals good and bad, and must, with ameba-like response, throw out new branches, remold the shape of old ones, making immediate spiritual answer to the social need through the instrumentality of its organism. But how can the Church do this if it must forever pore over the pages of a Book or revert to the authority of tradition to give sanction to each new project?

The true test of any innovation, any adaptation of church organization, is whether it will enable the Church to move men by the power of religious impulse and help them to realize their true and God-like selves. And to determine what are the best adaptations to achieve certain spiritual ends, we need a freer and bolder spirit of scientific experimentation. This the modern Church has begun to enter into haltingly, carrying out the Paul

ine injunction to prove all things. Some of our denominational boards have carried out avowed experiments in dealing with city mission and immigrant problems; others of them have established experiment stations in country-life work. These experiments have come as the result of the recognition-all too tardy-that the Church does not exist for the "preservation of the newer ethical values," nor primarily for preservation at all; but for the spiritual dynamization of human society, for injecting into the soul of all other human enterprizes that restless energy of truth that shall move them onward and sweep them into the heavenly kingdom.

The age in which we now live and in which we are about to live must witness a systematic experimentation with church forms and organizations, a widespread study of results in widely differing fields of church effort, and a collation of those experimental findings. What the Church has done occasionally, haltingly, and spasmodically before, it must do scientifically and systematically now. And to this end there must be a greater freedom from tradition and from that conception of the Church, in particular, as an organization designed and handed down complete and perfect from the time of the apostles. If the Church is not to continue to stand halting between a modern need and an ancient tradition, if it is not to remain hobbled by false views of the authority of the Bible in these matters, then ministers must teach both themselves and their people to accept the Bible as the record of a progressive revelation and of a progressing religion, whose forms of expression are not fixt but are living and growing under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, which is the Spirit of the living God. Once let the historical view of the Bible become thoroughly diffused among the people and its im

plications thoroughly understood, and the church organization will become as pliable to the need of the hour and the place as it is now fixt and hardened in traditional molds of bibliolatrous fashioning.

Historically speaking, then, the cause of much of the lack of coordination within church societies to-day, as well as of much of the immotility and lack of speedy adaptiveness of the Church as a whole, is due to the prevalence of the conception of the ecclesia as an institution prescribed and circumscribed by a Bible which, supposedly, contains a final, once-for-all revelation of the will of Christ concerning the form and life of the Church. It is in this same soil of error that we find the roots of the reasons for disunity. The lack of unification of the life and forces of the Church universal, and the affliction of many hundred small communities with church societies whose work competes and overlaps, and kills as much as it makes alive, constitute two situations which find their common cause in the conception of the Bible as an inerrant and final declaration of God's plans for his people and his Church. Given such a revelation, it logically follows that what that revelation (supposedly) teaches concerning the quantity of H2O to be applied to the believer, the mode of applying same, and similar weighty matters, partakes of the essence of eternal truth. Differences of view on such subjects, therefore, constitute ample grounds for separation; and a Church which believes its own to be the only Biblically sanctioned practises will feel obligated to plant itself in every community, no matter how overchurched, in order that the truth may be proclaimed. In the words of a doctor of divinity who still holds this traditional view of Scripture: "Every teaching of the Bible is of equal importance and equally vital with every

other." No effective degree of church unity is possible for any man or body of men who adhere to such a bibliolatrous belief. Continued disunity, therefore, lies not so much in the perpetuation of dead traditions, as in the persisting widespreadness of the view, whether clearly or only vaguely conceived, of the Bible as a once-for-all revelation.

What, now, if all the Christians of Homeburg should suddenly find themselves without church houses, church organizations, or organizations, or any recollection whatever of the forms, ritual, or method of organization to which in their past life they had been accustomed; and what if they set about with nothing but the Bible, prayer, the Holy Spirit, and their common sense, to reorganize themselves religiously? What would be the result? The answer to this question gives an excellent approach to the proper understanding of the causes of disunity. And the answer manifestly is, that the action of such a body of people would depend upon their view of the nature of the Bible. If they believed the Bible to contain hidden within and scattered through its pages an outline form of organization and a description in detail of ceremonies, they would doubtless give more weight to discovering what the Bible said about these matters than to their combined resources of prayer, common sense, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Some of them would doubtless include foot-washing in the ritual; others would not. Sooner or later there would arise differences on baptism. It would be a very small community, indeed, which, after ten years had elapsed, did not have as a result of this conception of the Bible at least two distinct sects of believers. And as teaching crystallized into dogma, unless the community were very small indeed, further schisms would be certain to occur. But if, on the

other hand, such a community of Christians were familiar with the findings of historical criticism and had learned to accept the true view of the Bible as the "record of an evolving religion," the predominant factors in the organization of their Christian community would be common sense and the guidance of the Spirit, and the end would not be, as in the former supposition, adherence to the written letter, but adaptation to the living need. Obviously, on such grounds, only that which a common spiritual experience proved to be of the vital essence of Christianity would be adhered to closely; and this would constitute a bond of union, never a cause for disunion. The only possible schism within an organization so formed would have to find its ground in grave differences of opinion as to what was needed to motivate spiritually the life of the community. And such a difference could easily be set aside by a proper degree of trial and experiment-even as such differences are actually being settled to-day.

There is, then, no one influence so detrimental to the spirit of church unity as the traditional conception of the Scriptures; and the greatest single factor in the present situation, excepting the factor of practical necessity, which is making for the overthrow of sectarianism and the growth of cooperation is the increased vogue of the historico-critical view of the Bible. This being true, and the spirit of unity being imperative for the fulfilment of the Church's high mission in the coming age, it behooves us to popularize the historico-critical view of the Bible with the greatest speed consistent with thorough and constructive teaching, and to get rid of the remnants and befogging desiderata from the traditional view of the Scriptures which still remain in our system of religious education and our pulpit work.

When once the enchainments of this age-old misconception of the nature and purpose of the Bible are broken and loosed and the Church learns to trust its own eyes and the leading of the Spirit, realizing that its organism is being molded and formed to-day as truly as in the days of the apostles, then it will be ready for whatever transformations will most fittingly prepare it with the means of instilling the religious spirit into the life of the day-whatever degree of unity or union that may imply.

But we are not greatly concerned to prove that church union of this, that, or any sort whatever will grow out of the universal acceptance of the historico-critical view of the Bible. The whole question of church union is simply and purely one of efficiency in accomplishing the Master's work. The important thing, therefore, is that, with the passing of the false views of Scripture and the implications of those views, the greatest single barrier to efficient reorganization and ready adaptation will be permanently removed. Thus, we perceive historical criticism in the rôle of a church efficiency expert.

When the rank and file, as well as the leadership, of the churches fully rejects the error of supposing the Church to be fixt and circumscribed by Scriptural precedent, and comes to perceive it as a living, motile body for the religious motivation of life, all hope of uniformity and conformity will vanish and localized revolutions in church polity will begin to take place. Churches which have been Idead will achieve a resurrection and go forth in newness of life. Organizations once rigid will become plastic under the hand of the Spirit of God. The quickened realization that religion is still living and growing, that revelation still has its functions, and that spiritual experience is as valid to-day as it was in the first century,

will give rise to a larger freedom and boldness of the means employed for the creation of spiritual results.

Men will be set apart more readily to new offices as new needs arise, and offices will more readily cease to exist as the need for them disappears. In stead of precedent to guide in such matters there will be the spirit of prophecy and discernment for the divination of human need. The churches will also use their hours of social worship in the consciousness of their great function of inspiring life with the spiritual energy; and certain slavish uniformities of ritual will begin to go their way into oblivion. Instead of repeating at every service a creed whose very phraseology was shaped in thought-molds which make its meaning obscure to all but students of ecclesiastical history, whose repetition therefore stands not for a living religion of the heart but for a dead uniformity with past ages, there will be living creeds to be taught. There will be personal creeds, comforting creeds, service creeds, and they will be used as the spiritual need demands, not with monotonous regularity. As new national sins and temptations arise and new community problems appear, the Church will make use of new vows by means of which to strengthen and inspire men in their hours of trial.

Hymnody, too, which has largely become degenerate, will in the era of the resurrected church, come into a new awakening. The old hymns will not all go. But surely those which arose in an age of controversy and breathe a controversial spirit can hardly survive; nor can those which fail to breathe the spirit of the living Word. And there will be new hymns, songs of a new Zion going forth to battle girt with the sword of the Spirit, which is not an inerrant Bible, but the living Word of a speaking God. If spiritual song ever again

regains its proper place in social worship the place it is said to have had in the days of the Reformation, when people sang the truth into their own hearts-we shall see the age of the loose-leaf hymnal, capable of being expanded and adapted instantly to the changing human equation.

When once the Church becomes fully cognizant of the fact that it is to be led by the Spirit of truth rather than by precedent and tradition, it will quit hunting for proof-texts and begin in earnest its study of human nature. The last barrier will be removed to the full utilization of the results of the sciences of psychology and pedagogy. Religion will proceed speedily to organize itself in such ways as to make the best, steadiest, and strongest appeals to the human mind. And out of this movement will come that better coordination of the methods and machinery of church organization now so greatly needed. Modern means of character analysis will also be utilized in placing the workers where they can serve best and develop their own best spiritual possibilities.

The leaders of the Church who will count for most in the future will not be the men who effect great "ingatherings of souls," but those who by habits of prayer, watchfulness and quiet study of the life about them succeed in developing that prophetic gift of leading the Church into uncharted forms of service for the truer strengthening and spiritualizing of individuals and communities. The Church, considering itself no longer as the depositary of salvation or the preserver of orthodoxy, but as the dynamo of God, will seek not so much members as spiritual influence. Members will follow. The time will come when the Church shall have been fully freed from bibliolatry, when men who have been helped and inspired will