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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE. would have us believe is the real doctrine of the New Testament. Those who take the teaching of the Bible in the clerical sense would do well to ponder over the weighty observations. of Mr. Lucas, the author of the Christ for India, which we reproduce here :
" The modern mind frankly recognizes that the basis of its theology is not the Bible, regarded as an infallible book whose words and thought-forms are the moulds into which its religious thoughts must be pressed, but the religious experience of the race, and supremely of Jesus, the highest manifestation of the thought and mind of God. It finds in the Bible the richest religious experience of humanity, but it recognizes that that experience has been expressed in thoughtforms which are essentially temporary, representative of the age in which the writers lived, and coloured with views of the universe which the present age has outgrown. The religious experience is of permanent value, but the expression of it is, of necessity, archaic. The religious experience can only be made a living reality for the modern mind in proportion as the expression of it is altered by replacing obsolete thought-forms by those in current use. To preserve the Biblical expression is often to sacrifice the reality of the religious experience, with consequences which are fatal to present day religion."
There can be no doubt that this is the correct attitude of the really zealous mind. Religion must agree with common sense (not necessarily with the common sense of the city magnate, or the materialistic professor, but with the common sense of the sages of the race); it can never be true when it assumes a hostile attitude towards rationalism. When we look upon the Bible as a collection of the thoughts of the various prophets and seers according to their light, and not as constituting an infallible record of historical or religious events, or experiences, we cannot go wrong. None of the Biblical prophets can be regarded as infallible, and the only useful purpose
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