confusion in regard to the historical sense of the Scriptures. In the case of his successors, as in his own, this error of interpretation has been inseparably bound up with a view of Christ which came not from Christ himself but from Greek philosophy.

Another Greek feature in the author's conception of Scripture— implied rather than expressed—is the passivity of the human agents through whom the teaching is given. The psalmists and prophets whose words are quoted are simply ignored. In the great majority of cases God himself is said to have been the speaker, in two places words of Scripture are cited anonymously, and of three passages Christ is represented as the speaker. When the eighth psalm is cited, which the author doubtless knew was attributed to David, it is cited simply as the testimony of a "certain one." Thus the human authorship of the Old Testament practically drops out of sight. The only real author is God. But this idea of the complete passivity of the human agent through whom God speaks is Greek.

Again, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was an allegorist, and this style of interpretation goes back to the Greeks. Jews of the Dispersion made use of it in the second century before our era, and the writer of Hebrews may have had no knowledge of the fact that it was Greek in its origin. That, however, is immaterial. He was an allegorist, and how profoundly this fact has modified his conception of Christian truth we shall now see. We notice first his explanation of a passage in Ps. 95. The author of that psalm called upon his contemporaries to hearken to God's voice, and warned them against unbelief by reminding them of its sorrowful consequences in the case of the generation who came out of Egypt (3:7-4:13). They did not enter into God's "rest," but their bodies fell in the wilderness. Moreover, the succeeding generation whom Joshua led into Canaan were nevertheless not partakers of God's rest, for in that case the Psalmist would not have been inspired to speak of "another day." The thought is that if he, centuries after the time of Joshua, was instructed to say,

To-day if ye shall hear his voice,
Harden not your hearts,

it follows that the "rest" of God was not entered upon by those who passed over Jordan with Joshua. There are here two points to be

noticed. The writer sees in the simple "to-day" of the Psalmist a designation of the present age, the entire period from the day when he wrote down to the second coming of Christ (9:28). But this is to take the word allegorically. There the word "rest" is also allegorized. In the thought of the psalmist it was the inheritance in Canaan (Deut. 12:9). This land that flowed with milk and honey was regarded as God's rest to the people after the long hard experiences in the wilderness and in Egypt. But the word has a new meaning in our epistle. It is no longer Canaan and an earthly rest, but it is the "Sabbath rest" beyond the grave (4:9-10). This is indeed the crown of God's gifts of rest to his people, but it did not come within the Psalmist's horizon in the passage which we are considering.

The next instance of allegory is the author's treatment of Melchizedek (5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:1-3). This is by far the most notable New Testament illustration of allegorical interpretation. It is true, the author seemed to have a starting-point for his thought in the mysterious language of Ps. 110, where we read:

Thou art a priest forever

After the order of Melchizedek.

This statement invited an imaginative reader to seek to discover what that "order of Melchizedek" was. But recent Old Testament scholars regard the word "Melchizedek" as a gloss, as perhaps a marginal illustration of what the text was supposed to mean, and they translate: "Thou art a priest forever for my sake." The simple thought of the passage then is that the person who was addressed, perhaps Simon who was high priest in 141 B.C., was established in his office for life, and that this was in a peculiar sense God's appointment, for Simon was not of the priestly order. We may suppose that the case of Melchizedek was set in the margin as an illustration, for he is called in Scripture a priest of God (Gen. 14:18-20), though he lived long before the establishment of the Aaronic priesthood and was not a Hebrew. Then this gloss, as was often the case, crept into the received text of the psalm. Accordingly, this mysterious "order of Melchizedek" disappears from the psalm, as not in the original text. But the author of Hebrews took the gloss as authentic, and the verse furnished a convenient support for an allegorical interpretation of the reverend and mysterious figure of the king of Salem

who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.

Turning now to the author's use of the passage in Genesis, we notice two significant points. First, he found a deep meaning in the etymology of the name Melchizedek, and also in that of the name of the town over which Melchizedek was king. The first name justified him in thinking of this ancient priest as king of righteousness, and the second justified him in the thought that he was also a king of peace.

The story in Genesis, as might be expected, gives no very good warrant for this picture of Melchizedek, for it simply represents him as approving of Abraham's exploit against Chedorlaomer and the allied Kings. It does not suggest that he was pre-eminent in righteousness and worthy to stand as a model for far distant ages. Of course there is no occasion at all in the nature of things why Melchizedek should be put down as a king of peace because he ruled over "Salem," which word means peace, or why he should be held to have been a king of righteousness because his parents gave him the name "Melchizedek," which word has that meaning. But such treatment of proper names was very common in Philo, and it is properly reckoned as belonging to allegorical interpretation. The extreme felicity of the application of these names to Christ does not lend any support whatever to the author's treatment of the passage.

The last instance to be considered under this head of allegorical interpretation is that of the word "pilgrim" or "sojourner." It is said that Abraham became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, and from the word "sojourner" it is inferred that he looked for "the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (11:9-10). Again, the author says, with apparent reference to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, that they were self-confessed "pilgrims and strangers on the earth," and he concludes that they were" seeking a country of their own," that is, a heavenly one (11:13-16).

Now, according to the Old Testament, Abraham was indeed a sojourner in Canaan, as in a land not his own, though he did at length acquire the field of Machpelah as a burial-place; but he was a sojourner and stranger simply in contrast to being in possession of

the promised land of Canaan (Gen. 23:4). The Lord said to Moses regarding the descendants of Abraham, "I have established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings, wherein they sojourned (Exod. 6:4). This was the land of promise, and, as far as the ancient story goes, the only land which the patriarchs or their descendants contemplated. When the psalmist said unto the Lord,

I am a stranger with thee,

A sojourner, as all my fathers were (39:12),

he expressed his sense of the transitoriness of his earthly life. It is a going hither and yon, a coming forth as a shadow that tarries not. His words are a plaint on the sad limitations of earthly life.

The author of Hebrews, having himself a Christian hope of the consummation of life in the city of God and in a heavenly country, quietly ascribed the same hope to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He ignored the historical sense of the passages which speak of Abraham and others as pilgrims and sojourners, and gave to them instead an allegorical significance. This was solely an error of judgment as related to the problem of interpreting the Scriptures.

These then, as it seems to me, are the Greek elements in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Its conception of Christ is wholly interpenetrated with the widely current views of the Logos, its conception of a heavenly tabernacle of which the Mosaic was only a copy and shadow is based on the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and its conception of Scripture is Greek in the underlying view of inspiration, Greek in that Christ is sometimes represented as speaking in the Old Testament-for this view probably sprang out of the Logos influence-and Greek in its profoundly allegorical character.

THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PSYCHO

THERAPEUTIC MOVEMENT1

PROFESSOR IRVING KING

State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa

The great wave of enthusiasm for mental healing through the agency of the church has in some measure subsided and it is now possible to look at both sides of the questions involved in it with a somewhat juster valuation of the factors concerned. In spite of exaggerations, the movement had an undoubted educational value for the church, opening its eyes to certain lines of religious effectiveness which it had scarcely realized before, lines indeed which are quite distinct from direct participation in the healing vocation. I refer especially to the facts, now widely known, which emphasize the intimate relation that subsists between mental conditions and the well-being of body and spirit. There can be no denying the vast array of evidence which has accumulated under the auspices of psychology in the last few years. Neither the average minister nor the average physician, for that matter, had suspected the scope and significance of these facts.

The minister, it is true, has had more or less theoretical and unsystematic notions regarding the possibility of effecting the cure of disease by faith and prayer. The physician has had equally vague notions of being able to supplement the action of his drugs by working upon the "imagination" of his patients. Then came the wave of popular enthusiasm for religious leaders to become active psychotherapists. This wave culminated with the so-called Emmanuel Movement, although it had certainly been slowly gathering in strength for the past twenty-five years under the stimulus of Christian Science and kindred sects. The point, however, to

I The author of this paper, while quoting extensively from certain authors, does not wish to be understood as thereby approving of all the positions taken in the books referred to. In many cases he differs widely. His approval extends no farther than the actual quotations. He has attempted to avoid making this a controversial paper.