It is related that Dr. Everett was once asked by the professor of systematics in another institution what subjects he found it possible to discuss in a non-denominational school of theology. The question was a silly one, for it assumed that in such a school no teacher gives utterance to the particular views which determine his own denominational affiliations, whereas, in Harvard at any rate, each instructor expresses without hesitation or reserve his entire thought, not seeking to present a composite picture but trusting that his instruction will blend with that of his colleagues to impress upon the minds of his students, whatever distinctive features they may finally adopt, the deep common lines of Christian faith. Characteristically, however, Dr. Everett did not point out the false presupposition of the question, but mentioned some of the principal topics considered in his lectures,—the nature of religion, the thought of God as Absolute Spirit, and the like,—to which the inquirer replied in some surprise, Why, we take all those things for granted. Dr. Everett answered mildly, I wish we could. It was a thoroughly characteristic remark not only because of the humor of its gentle rebuke, so gentle that probably the victim did not realize that his head was off, but also on account of its utter fidelity to his own theory and practice. He did not take fundamental things for granted; hence it was that while students in other theological schools were articulating a body of divinity, Dr. Everett's pupils were searching into the deep things of the spirit. For he was, first of all, a philosopher whose religious nature made him a theologian. The twenty-fifth chapter, of the thirty-five which make up the recently published volume upon Theism and the Christian Faith, begins with the words, “It may seem as though we were only now beginning our examination of the content of Christian faith.” Doubtless it would have seemed so to most of his contemporaries in theological chairs, but it was precisely in the relation between the Christian faith, as he conceived it, and the profound metaphysics of the preceding chapters, that Dr. Everett found the supreme worth of Christianity and the assurance of its absoluteness. The heart of a worshipper made the mind of a philosopher that of a Christian theologian.

In the instrument providing for the endowment of the series of lectures which bears his name Judge Dudley directed that the third lecture should be for “The Detecting and Convicting and Exposing the Idolatry of the Romish Church, their Tyranny, Usurpations, Damnable Heresies, Fatal Errors, Abominable Superstitions, and other Crying Wickednesses in their high places; and finally that the Church of Rome is that mystical Babylon, that man of sin, that apostate Church, spoken of in the New Testament.”

It is upon this topic that I am to speak this evening. The times have changed since the lectureship was founded in 1750. Many of the animosities of the fathers are no longer felt by us, and particularly in religious matters union has taken the place of division, sympathy of hostility, coöperation of rivalry. We are interested in other things. Our sense of proportion has changed. We are farther away from the days of persecution, and less nervous about many movements and institutions that our fathers dreaded unspeakably. The spirit of toleration has taken hold upon us all, and Protestants can think and speak kindly of men of other faiths, and can coöperate gladly and heartily with them as opportunity offers for the promotion of good ends dear to them all.

With this spirit I am myself in cordial sympathy, and it is as an historian, not as a polemic, that I shall treat the subject assigned me. I wish to consider as dispassionately as possible the great system that still remains essentially unchanged, in spite of all the vicissitudes that have overtaken the affairs of men since Judge Dudley made his will a hundred and fifty years ago.

In the year 1794 Charles François Dupuis brought out his Origine de tous les cultes, ou religion universelle, a work that made a great stir in its day. His object, he explains, was not to express his own religious views, but simply to describe the opinions of the ancients. The religion of antiquity he represents as the recognition of the divinity of the universe, the heavenly bodies playing the chief rôle; all ancient cosmogonies, with heaven and earth, all the apparatus of religion (ritual, processions, images), and all myths were derived from sun, moon, planets, and constellations. The beast-forms and plant-forms of the Egyptian deities, for example, were copied from the constellations into which men had divided the starry sky; the zodiac was associated with the sun as a cause of mundane phenomena, and the division of the sky into twelve parts gave vogue and sacredness to the number twelve among Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks; the sun was the chief god—it was called the right eye of the world, and the moon the left eye; from the victory of the sun over darkness and winter sprang the idea of a Restorer of the world, a Saviour. He remarks also that the ancient Chaldeans were distinguished for their achievements in astronomy, and that from them the knowledge of these sciences was carried to the West. They taught that the heavenly bodies controlled mundane destinies, and, according to Diodorus, that the planets were the interpreters of the will of the gods.

In considering the present religious conditions and prospects in Germany, the main problem appears to be this: Can the church, which up to the eighteenth century had been the chief promoter and embodiment of culture, remain and be preserved over against a culture which has now become independent, or is this independent modern culture destined to sweep the church away? And if the latter be the case, what then will become of religion? This problem of the prospects of religion and church in the modern world has nowhere more significance than in Germany; for there, as nowhere else, an immensely rich and highly developed intellectual culture stands absolutely independent over against a strong and living church. Neither in France nor in England nor in America is the issue so burning as in Germany. In France secular culture faces no strong church filled with profound spiritual forces, but an outgrown institution governed by Roman spiritual tyranny; and therefore it has triumphed over the church. In England and America secular culture has not developed in opposition to the church, but is in the main friendly to it. In Germany, however, national culture since the eighteenth century has stood outside of the church and in a certain opposition to it; Goethe, who in his own person embodies our national culture, took a cool und unsympathetic attitude towards the church, and so have in a greater or less degree the other creators of our modern thought,—Kant and Schiller, the Darwinists and Karl Marx, the Naturalists and Nietzsche, the Liberals of 1848 and Bismarck. On the other hand the church made very great progress in the nineteenth century. German theologians—Schleiermacher, Strauss, Baur, Ritschl, Harnack—utilized for the church the best spiritual results of modern culture, and gave to German theology undisputed leadership in the Protestant world; piety in the church was profoundly deepened and enriched by Schleiermacher, Claus Harms, Löhe, Wichern, von Bodelschwing, Stöcker; while the external power of the church increased greatly in consequence of the restoration movement, the political leadership of the pious Hohenzollerns, and the establishment of a new and more democratic ecclesiastical constitution with synods and presbyteries.

In order to establish a negative answer to this question, one would simply have to show either that pragmatism itself is not tenable, or else that it can afford theology no adequate support. To establish the affirmative, however, it would be necessary to show in the first place that pragmatism is in itself tenable, and in the second place that it is compatible with and gives some real support to theology. But for the would-be theological pragmatist himself neither of these positions can be readily accepted as established without the other. On the one hand he cannot say that pragmatism supports theology unless it is itself tenable, for, if untenable, so far from being the philosophical basis of theology, it cannot be a real basis for anything. On the other hand the person who finds religion essential cannot, on pragmatic principles, accept pragmatism, if it is not at least compatible with the fundamentals of religion and theology—unless, indeed, he needs pragmatism more than he needs religion. While beginning, then, by inquiring whether pragmatism is tenable or not, it must be recognized that a final affirmative answer cannot be given until we have considered the question of the bearing of pragmatism upon the essential affirmations of religious faith.

In the Review for January, 1909, an account was given of the excavations carried on by Harvard University at Samaria in the summer of 1908. The work of that year extended, with serious interruptions, from April 24 to August 21, and was confined mainly to the summit of the hill and to a building beside the threshing-floor near the village of Sebastiyeh. At the summit, and only a few inches below the surface, a paved platform, or floor, was uncovered, with a broad stairway of seventeen steps leading up to it from the north. On the stairway was found an inscribed stele, and a few feet in front of the foot of the stairway a large altar with another inscribed stele standing beside it. Near this altar lay a fine statue of heroic size, carved in white marble, representing a Roman emperor. Massive foundation-walls resting on the rock were uncovered on the south of the platform. Several periods of construction were recognized in these buildings, and one of these periods was believed to be that of Herod the Great.