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The New Testament in Modern Education.. By Rev. Principal T. Rees, M.A. My first impulse in response to the invitation to review this book was to decline because I stood in too intimate a relation to the author to assume a severely critical atti- tude, but when the editor repeated his request, I reflected that friendship and sympathy are at least no worse judges than envy or malice. But it needs no friendly eye to recognise that the writer of this book has attacked a very acute and urgent problem for present day education and culture, and that he has done so with rare courage and thoroughness, with great resources of scholar- ship and insight, and in a spirit of sincerity and reverence that befits his theme. Everybody who is concerned to-day with religious teaching under any form feels the difficulty of mediating between traditional ideas and modern scholarship. It is not a new difficul- ty, but a perennial accompaniment of living thought and divine inspiration. But the awakened mind works more vigorously at some periods than others, and we are reaping the harvest of an age of remarkable activity and fruitfulness. It has told most heavily on the outworks of religion where tradition had reared its thickest ramparts. One of its most striking results has been to bring the Bible into the light of open day from beneath the folds of dogma and super- stition which Popes, Councils and ecclesiastics had wrapped around it. What is called Biblical criticism is the process of training the mind to look at the Bible as it is, rather than as Popes and Councils wanted men to see it. But since people had looked so long and with such rever- ence at the simulacrum of the Bible which tra- dition and dogma presented to them, they find it hard to recognise the Bible itself, or to know what use to make of it when it is set before them. Some fear and others rejoice that when the simul- acrum is removed, nothing may be left. The pur- pose of this book is to show that the Bible, under the open air treatment of modern criticism, has not only retained, but enhanced its value for the practical ends of the spiritual life. Its pro- blem is to show how the Bible, after passing through the severest crucible of modern criticism, may be used for the purposes of religious educa- tion, and, indeed, how it serves all the better after the process. The writer's starting point seems to be that religion, and the religion of the New Testament in particular, are central and essential to educa- THE NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN EDUCATION, by J. Morgan Jones, M.A., Professor of Church History and Religious Education, Independent College, Bangor. Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., London. 12. 6d. tion. Between the New Testament and modern education there is a necessary affinity. The rul- ing principles of modern education were first enunciated in the New Testament. But the affinity is manifest only if the New Testament is read critically. "The consequences of this criti- cal study we must be prepared to accept frankly for the sake of teaching the New Testament effectively." "In the theological lecture room everywhere, the main results of modern Biblical Criticism are now universally adopted and more or less thoroughly applied If we still go on teaching on the basis of the traditional views of the Bible, we are perpetuating what we know to be false views and destroying the truth of history." Critical views in fragmentary forms have filtered into the popular mind, but men need clear views of them and of their signifi- cance. Especially is it important that teacher and preacher should have one consistent view, and state it frarkly. It is not the aim of the book to enter upon the discussion of details of criticism. The writer assumes the results of what, I think, Biblical scholars would call moderate criticism. It is taken for granted "that the Synoptic Gos- pels do provide us with sufficient reliable material to construct a historical picture of Jesus in the main features of His character. deeds and words." The teaching, the parables and the miracles are in the main regarded as being in every sense his- torical. The facts of the Incarnation and Resur- rection of Jesus are emphatically affirmed, and although the narratives of the birth and of the resurrection appearances are not regarded as liter- al records, they are still historical evidences of the facts, because they record the beliefs and experi- ences of the early church, which are our real his- torical evidences of the facts of history. But while criticism therefore establishes the historicity of the great cardinal facts of the Christian revelation, it also yields a residuary fringe of legendary material, attaching itself to the external forms both of teaching and history. And the education- ist's problem seems to be two-fold, to translate the Christian facts from the language and thought forms of the first century into ours, and to find meaning in the legendary fringe. Perhaps it is really only one problem. At anv rate our author's solution for the purpose of education is one. It is that the teacher must discover and bring forth the moral and religious values that were originally expressed, whether in history or in legend. The New Testament is a teaching in- strument of incomparable worth just because it embodies the highest moral and spiritual values. "This realisation of the supreme spiritual values in personal, individual forms-especially in Jesus Christ, whose character runs on such extraordin- arily clear, simple and pure lines-means a great addition to educational efficiency as compared with the presentation of the ideal in and for it- self." Both teacher and preacher will find in this book a wealth of suggestions as to the inner mean- ing of every form and stage of New Testament literature. Teachers who have abandoned the