During the past year a prolonged stay in Italy gave me occasion to visit most of the larger cities between Naples and the Alps, and supplied the opportunity of personal contact with many of the men who are now at the helm of Italian social, religious, and philosophical movements, while at the same time I was able to obtain first-hand acquaintance with the thoughts and desires of the Italian laborer. I soon became aware of the variety, intensity, and complexity of the issues which are now agitating Italian public life. It is true that Latin blood warms more rapidly, and reaches a higher temperature in controversy, than that of the Anglo-Saxon. But no superficial grievances are those over which conflict now rages; both in politics and in religion the contending parties feel that the joust of the tournament-field has become a battle for existence.

A quarter of a century has now elapsed since the foundation of Toynbee Hall in the east of London inaugurated the “University Settlement” movement in the vast and then almost inchoate capital of the British Empire; and the present time seems therefore appropriate for an attempt to form some estimate of the past results and future possibilities of the movement, which soon spread to other towns of England and Scotland. Yet such an undertaking is beset with serious difficulties. Throughout the whole history of the settlements there is indeed apparent an essential identity of purpose, an underlying uniformity of motive; but the individual institutions have been the outcome of the action of various bodies of persons whose aims, as formally expressed, seem often very diverse; different groups have laid the main emphasis on different objects and methods, and what has been counted as triumphant success by one group has been deemed of relatively small importance by another. Further, the wide range of the activities of the settlements, the multifarious nature of their interests and work, render it practically impossible for any one observer to comprehend the whole in his single survey; and the selection which he must needs make tends almost inevitably to be determined, and it may be even unfairly biassed, by his own personal predilections. Within this narrower range, moreover, there is no certain standard by which to measure success or failure; the value of the work accomplished by a settlement is not to be judged solely, or even chiefly, by the statistics of its classes and clubs. If it has realized its objects, however imperfectly, it has exercised upon the surrounding community, in conjunction with all other institutions that in any way and by any means make for good, a subtle and permeating influence which has resulted in a progressive amelioration of social life; but, for the very reason that this achievement is the result of a number of co-operating forces, the share of the settlement therein cannot be isolated or defined with any exactitude.

In successive discussions of the title Son of God, which seems to have been Jesus' own self-designation, and Son of Man, which would seem to have been applied to him after his death by the primitive Aramaic-speaking community of believers in his second coming, we have sought to disentangle primitive from secondary tradition. We have particularly emphasized the fact that in its distinctive principles Jesus' own teaching attaches itself to the primitive form of the messianic ideal—Israel as Yahweh's son; not the later theocratic—the Davidic heir to the throne as Son of God; nor the still later apocalyptic—the supernatural deliverer coming on the clouds of heaven as the fulfilment of the promise. In agreement with this view of the teaching of Jesus, our earliest documents, the Pauline epistles, make sonship in the ethical and religious sense the essence of the glad tidings. Since the publication of our argument our conclusions have been confirmed by the important newly-discovered document, the Odes of Solomon. The confirmation is especially strong if the view of Harnack be taken, that the Odes in their original form are Jewish, rather than the view of their discoverer, J. Rendel Harris, who regards them as Christian. The Odes give irrefutable evidence of the existence in first-century Judaism, or at least in primitive Christian circles, of a doctrine of sonship in the ethical and religious sense closely in line with what we have urged as the distinctive element in the messianic consciousness of Jesus. The ideal of the odist for Israel is an ideal of spiritual sonship. By the knowledge and love of the Beloved, “the Most High and Merciful,” Israel is guaranteed not only sonship to God, but immortality, an eternal dwelling in God's presence.

To an increasing number of people the idea that a religion which means to be something more than an heroic moral idealism has any significant place in the modern world seems open to grave doubts. Moreover, a large body of traditional metaphysical doctrines and systems are being subjected to much the same sort of criticism which religion is called upon to face. Three general arguments are used to show that both traditional religion and traditional metaphysics are no longer able to do what clear thinking and enlightened practice demand.

This presentation is limited to an exposition and estimate of the chief types in which authority has appeared in the church, to which are added one or two fundamental suggestions.

The first type is naturally that of the Roman Catholic church. Authority here was a gradual growth. At the outset no one could have foreseen the ultimate result, yet the claims of a series of bishops of the early church of Rome, not seldom men of the greatest administrative ability, whose assumptions were favored by circumstances, grew at length into the acknowledged supremacy of the Roman see. This supremacy gradually took the place of the state and subordinated every government to its own law and end, and this claim now extends to every interest of every individual whenever and wherever the church sees fit to exercise its prerogative.

When we stand by the sea and watch a storm dash huge waves on the rocks with furious roar and tumult, the power of the ocean fills us with awe. When the storm passes by and the night comes on and the stars shine out, at first one by one and then in throngs, till the great dome is all aflame and infinite spaces open above us, lighted with innumerable fires,—while the grandeur of the scene awakens awe, the mystery and boundlessness of these evening skies awaken wonder also. But when the day dawns and we look around us and see some lovely landscape, we no longer feel either awe or wonder; both have disappeared with the shadows of the night and the mystery of the stars; we feel only admiration. Then, if we enter some home where sons and daughters gather around the chair of an aged mother, we see that they feel no awe, for she is feeble and they are strong; and perhaps there is no admiration, for her form may be bent and her features wrinkled; but when her children think of what her sweet goodness has been to them through many years, they feel a nobler sentiment. It is not mere respect, however, such as we always render to age; it is not mere gratitude and love; it is reverence.

In the account published in this Review for January, 1911, of the discovery of Hebrew ostraca at Samaria in 1910, it was suggested by me that these seemed to be of the nature of labels indicating ownership, in some cases joint ownership. A more detailed examination has led me to modify this view in favor of that held by the discoverer, Professor Reisner.