fom mer works ma ma parter had arrived at a I TE meme fled with a certain emusest, according to me av of me assocatice of ideas. They nen are on a partcuar instance of a regular sequence in nenni amen when s bound to be operative n every human mnd Ye they themselves may be itsalutary increw the menti principle of which hey are a long encodiment. They may possibly not have heard that there is such ting in association of das by cncgnty or frequency of repetition, or in

As the law of association is a description not of how the mind sugar to at, but only of the way it does proceed, it may be better to compare the moral ideas which control the mind of me New Testament writers to the exactly amlogous ase of the laws of logic, which act as regulative principles of thinking in the minds of people who have never heard of logic and might not even be able to understand what a normative principle is. A person may be perfectly logical and illustrate in his reasoning the law of identity and the law of excluded middle, yet know nothing of either. A trained logician could detect instances of perfect syllogisms in the reasoning of those who might even resent the notion that anything in their mental operations could be so labelled. When, therefore, psychologists or logicians presume to understand the mental operations of another man better than he does himself, they are not guilty of setting themselves up as greater than he. They cannot be charged with patronising him, as if they thought they possessed deeper penetration. They are They are only maintaining that their specialty is different from his. They may see that he

has infinitely finer insight into more significant realities, and is an immeasurably greater character. Indeed, on this very account he may the better illustrate for them the tendencies and the standards with which they are acquainted and he is not.

When we come to look not for a mental sequence or a moral principle operating in the minds of the New Testament characters, but for the real factors in their moral and religious experience, the case is more complex. Here I believe that they were not only influenced by, but were actually conscious of, the very factors which the sociological psychologist of our day accepts as data for his theories. Yet they viewed these factors from a totally different standpoint. They saw them in a different light and in other connections; they named them differently. Probably they were wholly unaware that the factors could be viewed psychologically and sociologically.

Thus it well may be that Jesus Christ, in using the term "our Father," was designating the idealistic cohesive principle of all human society; it may be that this reality was not only influencing him but that he consciously felt and understood it as the vital principle of the spiritual organism of society; yet it is quite possible that he could not more exactly indicate it than by calling it his Father in heaven. I say he may have felt it, it may have acted upon him, he may have lived in it and by it and have worshipped it and obeyed it, but he may have interpreted it as a personal agent who, in his belief, had created the universe. Still, all the time the factor which he was using and fully appreciating may in reality, so far as psychological and sociological verification are concerned, have been but a regulative, normative principle operating in and among the souls of men. It may have been but the moral law as an active energy among human minds.

This moral law may have no existence in reality apart from the spiritual organism of human society. It may be nothing but the general will of the community.

Jesus may not have been able to distinguish between the elemental facts of his moral experience and the theory and idea or point of view from which he perceived them. On this account, any such interpretation as I am giving to the realities to which he directed men's attention, would possibly have astonished, if not bewildered him; it might have seemed false and dangerous to him. But, let me repeat once more, a man of genius may be consciously envisaging certain powers and realities in experience from the point of view of animism or personal theism; and yet he may none the less be aware of them and dealing with them, they may be regulating him and he may be inspired by them.

I have said that it is quite possible that Jesus never attempted to analyse his complex and developed moral experience, in order to detect how much in it was the raw material of experience and how much due to the current presuppositions and conceptions of his time, under which all its elements were classified and by which they were even built up and interpreted. But I ought to hasten to say that I do not believe that it is possible for any human being ever thoroughly to denude any experience of all hypotheses and expose to our understanding the elementary sensations, so to speak, of the moral life. Surely the modern psychologist and sociologist cannot do this. He also must have pigeon-holes in which he sees placed the elements of experience, and he cannot know these except as thus classified. The only difference between him and the earlier thinkers about righteousness is that he is fully conscious that what he experiences is an amalgam of theory and life, and that his theory is dis

tinguished from the old one by being a constituent part of that whole of modern organised common sense which is called science. But this enables him to be aware that the difference between his interpretation and that of another is due not to difference of raw material but to the fact that he uses a different set of pigeon-holes.

The sociologist may see a certain real factor in experience as "the general will of the community"; but he may at the same time believe that Jesus Christ, having no such pigeon-hole for it, labelled it, very wisely and effectively for his own purpose, "Our Father who art in heaven." If, therefore, such an account be correct, we cannot say that Jesus did not at all mean the moral law as the unifying principle of human fellowship. He must have meant it. Take the case of a sun-worshipper, who believes that the sun is a great living, self-conscious spirit. Very different is his interpretation of the sun from that of modern physics, chemistry, and astronomy. But nevertheless it is incontrovertible that he in his own way is referring to the same factor in the life of our senses to which the scientific man refers. Or take another illustration: a man may believe that he is tempted of the devil -of a personal agency outside of himself-but the whole basis for his belief is a certain experience of appetites and passions and ambitions which, he knows only too well, are operative in him. He does not view them as the modern empirical psychologist would do; he thinks and speaks the thought and language of religious spiritism ; yet he is talking of realities, and talking intelligently. Up to a certain point he may deal with them as wisely as the best-trained empirical psychologist.

I

may cite as illustrative and corroborative of my point of view the opening paragraph of Professor Gilbert Murray's notes on his translation of the Hippolytus.

He says: "The Aphrodite of Euripides' actual belief, if one may venture to dogmatise on such a subject, was almost certainly not what we should call a goddess, but rather a Force in Nature, or a Spirit working in the world. To deny her existence you would have to say not merely 'There is no such person,' but 'There is no such thing'; and such a denial would be a defiance of obvious facts." In exactly the same way, I am maintaining that the Being to whom the Lord's Prayer is addressed is almost certainly not what we should call an intelligent agent outside of the living organism of human society, but rather a Force of Nature or a Spirit working in the world that spirit being the general will of the community. To deny the existence, therefore, of the Being to whom the Lord's Prayer is addressed, you would have to say not merely "There is no such person," but "There is no such thing"; and such a denial would be a defiance of obvious facts. I maintain that the very same raw material of moral experience which has been pigeon-holed by supernaturalistic theologians as an infinite Person, can now be classified from the sociological and psychological point of view as a verifiable mental and social Force in human life, and that when it is thus treated it is rescued for the use of the scientific imagination of man and for the lasting benefit of human society.

Yet I should add that, even were my interpretation of the mental processes and the moral factors in the religious experience of the New Testament characters wholly wrong, the main purpose of my analysis and its ultimate validity would not be overthrown. I have taken the Lord's Prayer as an avenue through which to penetrate not simply to what Jesus and the disciples thought and felt, consciously or unconsciously, but to the realities of our present-day living experience. It is true that I believe