Rome was engineered by the ruling authorities in the various Protestant states; and this means that the churches of the Reformation were instituted, not by the "people" in the democratic sense, but by the upper classes. The logic of the origin of Protestantism went with it from the start. Being an upper-class institution, it soon began to alienate the lower and middle classes. A number of considerations worked together toward this result. The repudiation of papal authority, and the lack of entire harmony among the Protestant sects, were the signs of a new independence of thought. Among the educated classes, this led toward agnosticism and atheism, which were decidedly new phenomena, for until modern times all classes of people, Christian and pagan, had agreed that there were gods of some sort. On the other hand, the lower social class, troubled by the pressure of poverty, fell into indifference. The tendency of Protestantism, therefore, was to confine the organized life of religion within the upper classes which had established the Reformation; and while the vast lower class was drifting slowly away, the new churches moved steadily into a dogmatic legalism which reproduced the spirit of the Jewish and Catholic churches.

Protestant legalism came to a center about the doctrine of the person of Jesus. The churches of the Reformation declared, with increasing emphasis, that salvation depended upon the acceptance of certain doctrines about the person and work of Jesus. The Old Testament was interpreted as a huge "type," or "figure," of Christ; and it was resorted to as an arsenal of proof-texts in a way which drove all vitality out of that most interesting and vivid collection of documents. Building up mainly from Paul's utterances about Jesus, Protestantism constructed a metaphysical Christianity which took the form of pure legalism. God was viewed as the Chief Justice of a Supreme Court in which redemption was purchased by a mysterious potency residing in the work of Christ. The

believer availed himself of the redemptive merits of Christ by accepting Jesus in a metaphysical, divine character as the Savior. This, of course, was not the teaching of Jesus himself, who, in the parable of the Prodigal, and the Sermon on the Mount, had little or nothing in common with orthodox Protestantism. But the Reformation churches, held fast in the grip of social forces which they did not understand, lost sight of the Bible itself amid a rank upgrowth of doctrines about the Bible. The parallel between scholasticism in the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish churches was thus complete.'

Orthodox Protestantism resolved salvation into a purely individual process. According to this view, the world's troubles were to be cured by the reformation of individual sinners. If the individual was redeemed, then the world at large could be rescued by spiritual arithmetic, through the simple addition of one soul after another to the mass of the redeemed. Whether or not one agrees with legalistic Protestantism upon the exact "method" of saving the individual, it would be manifest folly to deny the abstract proposition that sinners need to be saved, and that bad people should be reformed. In emphasizing this fact, Protestantism occupies an impregnable position. But this is also the claim of the Jewish and Catholic churches. These other ecclesiastical bodies agree with orthodox Protestantism that we need better men and women. The only difference between them lies in their conception of the legal process of redemption. But the process in each case is purely a matter of individual salvation; and hence, from the sociological standpoint, all three churches are in the same category.

The decline of orthodox Protestantism is due to its emphasis upon individual rescue as the only method of redemption.Although the doctrine of personal salvation is profoundly

For Protestant confessions of faith, see Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York), Vol. III. In studying these creeds, it should be borne in mind that they took form in the upper social class, and were established by "authority."

true, it may be handled in such a way as to be false. To insist that individual redemption is the one, sovereign method of reform, is to claim in effect that there is no "social" problem, in the scientific sense, and is to ignore the fact that society, as an organized "group," may also be a sinner. In other words, orthodox Protestantism practically discounts the existence of social institutions, and sets up the doctrine that society is a crowd, like the grains of sand in a heap: reform each individual, and the world is saved. Protestantism has thus rejected the social problem as clearly as did its great historic predecessors, the Catholic and the Jewish churches.

Before considering the relation of sociological Bible-study to the modern world, it is necessary to discuss two further topics, the rise of scientific investigation of the Bible, and the modern separation of Church and State. Social development is a complex interweaving of many tendencies; and while we long to settle the problems of history by some brief and expeditious method, the actual course of social evolution demands the exercise of much patience.

CHAPTER XXXV

MODERN SCIENTIFIC BIBLE-STUDY

This chapter is not a history, but an estimate.-This chapter stands in its present position as an item in the general argument, and not as an essay on the development of scientific biblical scholarship. It is not a history of modern investigation of the Bible; it is a brief appraisal of the meaning and value of higher criticism in the pre-sociological stage. The significance of sociological Bible-study will be considered in the closing chapter. At present we shall speak only of the literary and historical forms of criticism as developed in the Wellhausen school, and accepted in the leading centers of academic learning.'

The general attitude of this book toward scientific Biblestudy is made clear by the previous chapters. We have seen that the higher criticism is part of the intellectual awakening which leads from the Middle Ages into the modern world, and that the literary and historical forms of criticism are a necessary introduction to all scientific study of the Bible. We shall now look at scientific Bible-study, not as an academic matter, but as one of the influences in the complex development of modern life.

Scientific Bible-study has largely replaced the legal view of redemption by the moral view. When we investigate the bearing of modern biblical scholarship on religious ideas, we are at once confronted by a problem which criticism has hardly touched, and which in fact lies outside of its domain. Leaving the mysteries of documentary analysis and historical recon

'The facts in regard to the history of modern scientific Bible-study are on record in easily accessible form; and we have referred to them briefly in earlier portions of this work. (See Prefatory.)

struction behind, we pass over into the field of ethics or morality. The new scholarship clears away the legalistic idea of Bible religion, and brings the great moral problem before us. Scientific investigation has indeed swept aside the mass of legalism and supernaturalism that has obscured the Bible; and it has thus laid open the moral questions that underlie the history of Israel. Science has pointed to the prophets as the great, central figures in the development of Bible religion; it has demonstrated that the prophets were moral teachers; and it has pointed out that the work of Jesus builds up from the work of the prophets. Consequently, in the mind of the modern scholar, the legalistic interpretation of Christianity and the Bible has passed away, giving place to a more natural, understandable, and reasonable view. Modern scientific Bible-study, then, has not only an academic meaning; it has a practical value as well. It has shown that religion stands directly connected with great historical movements and everyday problems. Until this was accomplished, no further advance in the study of the Bible and its religion would have been possible.

Thus far, most men of critical scholarship, like men of "orthodox" training, have treated redemption from the standpoint of individualism.-The contemporary higher critic, whether he be a professor of divinity or an active pastor, has been through a struggle. He is conscious of the effort involved in departing from older views; and he feels that he has passed through an important change. The laity, however, can judge the higher critic only by what he says. It is impossible to preach the critical, scientific method in the pulpit, because the church is not a university. When standing before a church audience, a man of the "new school" may give only the results of critical study as applied to theology and religion.

We have guarded against misapprehension by pointing out the scientific meaning and value of modern critical scholarship.