MENZIES, men'zez, ALLAN: Church of Scotland; b. at Edinburgh Jan. 23, 1845. He was educated at St. Andrews (M.A., 1864) and the universities of Edinburgh (B.D.,1868) and Erlangen. From 1873 to 1890 he was minister of the parish of Abemyte, Perthshire, and was also examiner in classics at St. Andrews from 1881 to 1884. Since 1889 he has been professor of divinity and Biblical criticism at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. In 1897 he was elected president of the National Church Union, a position which he held for a number of years. He has translated F. C. von Baur's Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi (2d ed., 2 vols., Leipsic, 1866-67) and Das Christentum und die christliche Kirche der drei eraten Jahrhunderte (3d ed., Tübingen, 1863) under the titles Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ (London, 1876) and The Church History of the First Three Centuries (1879); J. Wellhausen's Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (2d ed., Berlin, 1883) under the title Prolegomena to the History of Israel (in collaboration with J. S. Black, Edinburgh, 1885); and also 0. Pfleiderer's Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlicher Grundlage (2d ed., 2 vols., Berlin, 1883,84) under the title Philosophy of Religion (in collaboration with A. Stewart; 4 vols., London, 1886,88), and has likewise edited the supplementary volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers (New York, 1896) and the Journal of Theology and Philosophy since 1905. As independent works he has written, in addition to briefer contributions, National Religion (London, 1888); The History of Religion (1895); and The Earliest Gospel (1902).

MERCERSBURG THEOLOGY: A school of philosophy and theology which took its rise about 1836 in Marshall College and in the Theological Seminary of the German Reformed Church, then located at Mercersburg, Pa. It grew out of the contact between the modern Evangelical theology of Germany and Anglo-American church life, and quickened the German Reformed Church to new activity. It produced considerable fermentation and controversy, which affected also the Lutheran and other neighboring churches, but is now a matter of history, though its fruits remain. The movement had three phases. The first was philosophical (1836-43); the second was theological, and turned chiefly on the church question (1843-58); the third was liturgical (1858-66).

The leaders of this school of thought were F. A. Rauch, J. W. Nevin, and Philip Schaff (qq.v.), though Rauch's plans were frustrated by his premature death. Complementing each other reciprocally, Nevin and Schaff developed the ideas of Mereereburg theology in different ways. Nevin discussed the questions concerning the Church and the sacraments. Turning to Cyprian and the Nicene age, he represented the contrast between the church idea then extant and the sect system of the nineteenth century, but aimed chiefly to show that the Oxford Tractarian theory of repristination was historically untenable, and would lead logically to the whole system of the papacy. On the nature of the sacraments he reproduced the anti-Zwinglian and anti-Lutheran conception of John Calvin, which he held to be the true Reformed doctrine. Schaff, in his Princilude of Protestatdiemi

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vindicated the doctrines of the Reformation on the basis of historical development, in decided opposition to Romanism and Puseyism on the one hand, and also to rationalism and sectarianism on the other. The Mercersburg school was charged with transcendentalism, mysticism, and Romanizing tendencies, but all these charges gradually subsided. A regular heresy trial was held at the synod of York in 1845, and again at two subsequent synods; but in each case the Mercersburg professors were acquitted by an almost unanimous vote.

Mercersburg theology taught that the divine human person of Jesus Christ is the primordial truth of Christianity, both of revelation and redemption. From the Christ-idea, as the fundamental principle, are to be developed all scriptural loo trines. Issue was taken with the high Calvinistic principle of a twofold unconditional predestination, as well as with the contrary Arminian principle of. free will, and no less decidedly, also, with the Roman system, which starts from the idea of the Church as a visible and centralized organization. Mercersburg was the first theological school in America to propound and vindicate what has since been called the "Christocentric" idea of Christianity. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, is the second Adam, the head of a regenerate human race. Born in him and of him, by the Holy Spirit, believers are his members. He, glori fied in heaven, and they, though still in the flesh on earth, together constitute one mystical body, a spiritual organism. This is the Christian Church, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Of supernatural origin, invested with divine authority, possessing spiritual powers adequate to the fulfilment of her mission, instinct with heavenly life, and destined to overcome her enemies, she is the communion in which men may obtain salvation and eternal life. The Church, extending through all ages, and destined to embrace all nations, is ever identical with herself, having one Lord, one faith, one bap tism; yet different phases of the fulness of her spiritual life, including doctrine and morals, cultua and ecclesiastical polity, appear at different epochs in her history. Hence no statements of doctrine formulated in any past age need be final, and no form of organization can be fixed and unchangeable. The Church modifies doctrinal formulas according to her progress in the knowledge of Christian truth, and adjusts her organization to the advanced status of her life and to her altered connections with the world. Christ perpetuates his mediatorial office by an order of chosen men, who, by the laying-on of hands, are duly invested with divine authority to speak in his name, to dispense the sacraments, and to bear rule as undershepherda over the flock. At the same time, Mercersburg always taught the general priesthood of the laity and the equality of ministers.

The sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper are not empty forms, but the significant signs and seals of God's covenant with us. They are means of grace which become efficacious by faith alone. By baptism, the subject is received into the covenant. The Lord's Supper is the commemoration of the once crucified but now glorified Christ, and the communion of his body and blood, wherein, by the impartation of his own divine-human fulness, he nourishes his people unto everlasting life. The contrary opinion, which then largely prevailed in the American churches, that baptism is only the empty symbol of forgiveness and of the new birth, and the Lord's Supper merely a celebration of the crucifixion of Christ, was sharply criticized. Mercersburg found fault with the common style of extemporaneous public prayer, and advocated a revival, in a modernized form, of the liturgical church-service of the Reformation period. The result was, A Liturgy, or Order of Christian Worship (Philadelphia, 1858), prepared by Schaff, Nevin, Harbaugh, Gerhart, and others, and a book of common prayer, entitled An Order of Worship for the Refornied Church (1866). Both, however, were merely optional, and not intended to supersede free prayer: A new German hymn-book was also prepared by Dr. Schaff (1859), which is now generally used in the German congregations of the Reformed Church.

The Mercersburg movement was Christological, and in close sympathy with the positive Evangelical theology of Protestant Germany, though necessarily modified by American surroundings and wants.

At present, the peculiar characteristics of the Merceraburg school are no longer distinctive, because similar Christological tendencies have since sprung up, and taken root in other denomi nations; hence former issues have been superseded. The formation of the General Synod in 1863 set tled the doctrinal differences which had divided the church into two parties. See Reformed Church.

E. V. Gerhart.

Bibliography: F. A. Rauch, Psychology, New York, 1849; J. W. Nevin The Anxious Bench, Chambersburg, 1843; The Mystical Presence a Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, Philadelphia, 1846; idem The History and Genius of the Heidelberg Cats chum, Chainbersburg, 1847, and his Introduction to the tnglot tercentenary ed. of the Heidelberg Catechism, New York, 1863; idem Antichrist, or, the Spirit of Sed and Schism, New York, 1848; P. Schaff The Principle of Protestantism as Reated to the Present State of the Church, Chambersburg, 1845; idem What is Church History f A Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development, Phila delphia, 1846; E. V. Gerhart, in Bibliothwa Sacra, Jan., 1863, pp. 1-78; idem, Institutes of the Christian Religion, New York 1891; H. Harbaugh, Christologiml Theolmy,

Philadelphia, 1864; T. G. Apple, The Theology of the German Reformed Church, in the Proceedings of the Second General Council of the Pesbyterian Church, held in Philadelphia, 1880 Philadelphia, pp. 484-497. onsult also The Mer. ceraburp Review vols. i.-aji., 1849-60; Der deutsche Kir_ chenfreund, 1848-54; German Reformed Messenger; Minutes of the German Reformed Synod, from 1843 to 1866; The Provisional Liturgy, Philadelphia, 1858; The Order of Worship for the Reformed Church, ib. 1867.