Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/226

 2o8 Later Theology movement of the second century. The majority of our schol- ars took a moderately progressive stand. As the pregnant debate approached the New Testament, American scholarship maintained largely a dignified silence but refused to move the previous question. The most substantial contribution of our scholars in the whole field of Biblical literature is probably Ezra Abbot's Authorship of the Fourth Gospel (1880), which, while it defends the widely disputed apostolic authorship of the book, admits the cogency of opposing opinion and the discrepancies between the fourth Gospel and the other three. George P. Fisher, Professor of Church History in the Yale Divinity School and author of a very usable History oj the Christian Church, sensed the vital import of the criticism of the gospels and devoted the greater part of his careful and well-poised works on The Supernatural Origin of Christianity (1870) and Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief (1883) to a vigorous and able defence of the historicity of the gospels. But while doing so with full conviction, he is clear-sighted enough to declare: The Bible is one thing and Christianity is another. The religion of Christ, in the right signification of these terms, is not to be con- founded with the Scriptures, even of the New Testament. The point of view from which the Bible, in its relation to Christianity, is looked on as the Koran appears to devout Mohammedans, is a mistaken one. The entire conception, according to which the energies of the Divine Being, as exerted in the Christian revelation, are thought to have been concentrated on the production of a book is a misconception and one that is prolific of error. Or as T. T. Munger, Professor Fisher's neighbour in New Haven, has it in his notable essay on the New Theology: "It [the Bible] is not a revelation but is a history of a revelation ; it is a chosen and indispensable means of the redemption of the world, but it is not the absolute means, — that is in the Spirit." While Marvin R. Vincent is right in saying that "Germany furnishes the most and the best, ' ' our theologians have main- tained an open mind in the study of the book upon which their whole discipline rests. One reason, then, for the waning prestige of theology is the fact that its source of authority can no longer be regarded as lying in a class apart from all other works of the human