According to Professor Riehl of Berlin, the most widely read of serious writers in Germany today is Nietzsche. German ideas require time to cross the Channel and still more time to reach America; but already translations of Nietzsche's numerous works are appearing in England, and within three or four years three books have been devoted to him in this country. Probably erelong the thoughtful among us will have to attend to him, as we have had to attend to other German writers in the past. As yet very confused ideas are current about him; his disciples are more or less confused themselves. Nietzsche once half-humorously remarked that the first disciples of a doctrine really prove nothing against it.

Moreover, Nietzsche was a lonely, markedly individual thinker, caring more to express himself than to be comprehended by the ordinary reader, soliloquizing much; and he said many things that, unless we carefully, patiently attend, may mislead, have misled. I could easily quote passages from him that would offend you, as they did me when I first came upon them. No one needs to be studied more before he is judged. No one lends himself less to impressionist treatment, which is all he ordinarily gets from non-Continental writers. Indeed, I sometimes think that Nietzsche is a philosopher for philosophers and a moralist for moralists rather than for the common run of us, so subtle is his thinking, such an acquaintance with the history and refinements of philosophical and ethical speculation does he presuppose.

Accordingly, it may be most useful, as well as most conformable to my abilities, to cover a quite limited field this morning; and I shall content myself, after giving a few facts about his life and a very general characterization of him, to portray somewhat in detail his state of mind during one—the first—period of his career. What I say may thus serve as a kind of introduction to the subject; and happy shall I be if I interest any one sufficiently to take it up on his own account.

No one who has studied the history of the last century can fail to be struck by the great changes which have taken place in human thought, affecting the whole outlook of man in his relation to the world both within and without and constituting a revolution in the intellectual life of our times. The most permanent forces in human life have been brought face to face with new facts, new conditions, and new ideas, and nowhere do we find the evidences of this change in outlook greater than in the sphere of religion, where the old problems and the old controversies are passed or passing. One of the great questions of today is, as a recent writer has said, “whether Christianity can come to terms with the awakening self-consciousness of modern civilization, equipped with a vast mass of new scientific knowledge and animated for the first time by ideals which are not borrowed from classical or Hebrew antiquity.” But Christianity itself has already been deeply influenced by some of the changes which have taken place. The great forces of history press steadily upon all the institutions of society and the form or expression of the religious life is profoundly affected by the movements of thought or changes in sentiment which take place in human society.

There is no subject about which popular psychology just now has so much to say as the “subconscious.” Since the name came into wide use a dozen years ago, it has come to be regarded as something so definite and well understood as to be itself the explanation of many other things. Its bearing upon questions of religious experience has been particularly emphasized, and, in fact, it is largely on this account that it has aroused so much popular interest. In short, the word “subconscious” is spoken so glibly and taken to be the self-evident solution of so many spiritual problems that it will be worth our while to consider what we really know about it, and especially what its actual relation to religion may be. For, though often misused, there can be no doubt that the term stands for something very fundamental in our mental life, and that its connection with religion is in one way or another extremely important.

The current essays to disentangle the literary history of the material which now forms our Gospel of Mark were described in an article by Professor Moulton in a recent number of this Review. Of the attempts to solve the problem there mentioned two seem plausible enough to warrant fuller exposition in these pages. They are the reconstructions by which Professor Hermann von Soden, of Berlin, and Professor Emil Wendling, of Zabern, have tried to resolve our Gospel into its constituent elements.

Professor Gray's commentary on Numbers (1903) not only filled a vacant place in English exegetical literature, but had to do with a book that has usually been perfunctorily treated by serial commentators; and this made an intrinsically valuable work doubly welcome. Isaiah, on the contrary, competes with the Psalms for the distinction of being the subject of more commentaries than any other book in the Old Testament, and of some of the best. The inevitable question therefore is, Wherein does the volume before us mark an advance beyond its predecessors? To answer this question it will be necessary to indicate the problems with which the critical study of Isaiah is at present chiefly concerned, and to show what progress has been made toward a solution of them.

The Dudleys occupy an honorable place in the history of Harvard University. The first American Dudley was Thomas, second governor of the Massachusetts colony. It was he who signed the original charter of the University in 1642 and the revised charter in 1650. His son Joseph also became governor of the colony, and of him President Josiah Quincy said, “Of all the statesmen who have been instrumental in promoting the interests of Harvard College, Joseph Dudley was most influential in giving its constitution a permanent character.” Joseph's son Paul was the founder of this lectureship. He had a judicial career of forty-nine years, for the last six of which he was chief justice of the supreme judicial court. Believing, as he evidently did, that religion was the primary fountain of justice, he chose to show his interest in his college by providing her with funds so that four subjects of great moment to him should be discussed publicly, one every year. There is small wonder that the Validity of Non-episcopal Ordination, which is the subject set for our consideration tonight, should have interested him. While he was a student in college, this question which had hitherto been regarded as settled in Massachusetts colony, at least, was violently reopened.

The books that have been written on the preparation and delivery of sermons are usually more helpful to ministers of some experience than to the students in divinity schools for whose instruction they were first of all intended. The man who is already a preacher, and who is also open-minded and willing to learn, sifts out from the detail of the numerous divisions and subdivisions of such books much that is suggestive and stimulating; his own experience interprets the precepts and warnings that are given, confirms their wisdom, and brings home their application. To the average student, on the other hand, the elaborate analysis easily becomes confusing; the sermon is made to appear a thing highly technical, if not artificial, and, in spite of any protest to the contrary which the book may contain, an end in itself instead of the means to an end. Learning to preach is like learning to do anything else. The rules for the beginner must be few and simple, and refinement and enrichment of method must come as part of the preacher's general growth, and with the gain in confidence and freedom which should naturally result from the continued practice of his calling. Many students would find it easier to begin to preach, and many preachers would be more effective, if they could understand from the first that the rules which govern the method of the sermon differ in no way from those of any other form of persuasive public speech.