It

say is that while we hold fast to the essential feature of that system, we are compelled to abandon many of the accessories by which it has been supported. We cannot go with it in its failure to recognize the lordship of Christ over the world and His judgment of it in righteousness as a present fact. It is now indeed a fact concealed. is hereafter to be disclosed. And the period of its apocalypse will be a consummation, a period of special and searching judgment and overthrow. But it will be only the culmination of a judgment process which has been going on ever since He ascended. This thought relieves us at once from the gross literalism and the gloomy pessimism with which the true view of our Lord's second coming has been encumbered. How is it possible, for example, to fit in to any reasonable scheme of literal interpretation Ezekiel's prophecy of the invasion of the land of Israel by Gog and Magog in the last times? We ask any one to carefully read the 38th and 39th chapters of that prophet and give an answer. We are therefore compelled to regard these great judgment prophecies of both Testaments as pictorial descriptions of continuing processes of judgment and of resultant transformations, having their times of crisis indeed and one supreme final crisis; but all connected by one great law of administration. The history of the world is thus seen to be the judgment of the world. The Lord is not only coming. He is now here, both blessing and judging; and judging in order to make room for larger blessing. We shall go wrong if we refuse to recognize the present effects of His reign in waiting for its larger manifestations, or to regard His presence as not actual because it is hidden by clouds.

These clouds must indeed gather for a final tempest. But the Sun has already risen. We are persuaded that our existing second advent literature needs to be rewritten from this point of view.

NOTES ON CURRENT OPINIONS AND EVENTS.

EXPLANATORY.-Our excuse for giving up so much of the present number to the article upon Matt. xxv is the intense importance of the subject. The passage in question is the key-passage to all our Saviour's teaching concerning things to come. We beg all our readers to carefully read our interpretation of it, and to see for themselves whether it does not relate to an economy of judgment before resurrection.

MISSIONARY MEETING.-We were present at an immense meeting of the Episcopalians in this city held in the interest of a new scheme to enlist all their members in the work of Missions. The principal speakers conceded that the old basis of appeal, which was the assumption that all the heathen who die without the gospel must suffer eternally in hell, has been undermined. At the same time they recognized the great danger and falsity of that limp gospel which would conceal from them and from us their urgent need of salvation from a wrath to come. All we heard went to confirm the strength of our position that, in the present falling away from the old doctrine of future punishment, the church greatly needs a new and the true one. We have earnestly

testified against that relaxing view which makes the "essential Christ" of a pious heathen as good for him as the historic Christ is for us, or which prolongs his probation after death before the just judgment of God shall be visited upon him for his sins. The Bible everywhere assumes that there is a definite damnation from which all men need immediate salvation, and it always teaches that the prison house of Sheol or Hell, down into which sinful men pass at

death, is not the place for prolonged trial, but for penalty. It does teach, however, that hope comes with resurrection. And, if the enlightened Christian consciousness, which can no longer accept the old view of endless torment, would connect its larger hope in the mercy of God with the hope of resurrection, all the Scripture testimony to the present danger of all who die unsaved, and to the Name of Christ as the only Name by which they can be saved, and all the motives it employs to urge upon us our great duty to the perishing, can be held in all their integrity.

DR. HODGE'S LECTURES.-We have listened with great pleato the course of lectures by this distinguishrd theologian now being delivered in this city. We regret, however, that such an able defender of the faith, in defining the church, should stumble into such a mistake as the following:

"You and I believe that immortality is provided for all souls before birth, as well as after birth, and for infants that have not come to free moral agency, irrespective of their knowledge of Christ. Now think of that: think of the history of the world since Adam; all the souls of those that have died before birth, or between birth and moral agency have been redeemed in Christ. You see that organization cannot be of the essence of the church. I tell you that the infinite majority of the spiritual church of Jesus Christ came into existence outside of all organization. Through all the ages, from Japan, from China, from India, from Africa, from the islands of the sea, age after age, multitudes flocking like birds have gone to heaven of this great company of redeemed infants of the church of God. They go without organization. Now this is demonstration, that if the great majority of the church always has existed without organization, then organization, while of assistance, is not essential to the church."

Now without denying the probable ultimate salvation of infants, we submit that to sweep the whole infant brood of the human race, which Dr. Hodge admits has probably existed on the earth for more than twice six thousand years, including those born of lust and those who died in the womb, at one swoop into the church of God, which Dr. Hodge declares to be the body of Christ, is to immensely degrade the idea of the church and to entirely misconceive the purpose of its calling. The church, in Scripture is a selected body of mankind "chosen as first fruits unto salva

tion through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth' (2 Thess. ii. 13, R. V. see margin). "Of His own will begat He us by the word of His truth that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures" (Jas. i. 18).

This company has organization, "being built upon the founda tion of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone (Ephes. ii. 20, iv. 11-16). Now we have no doubt but that, through the ministry of this royal priesthood, the infant portion of the human race, and many of its grown up moral and spiritual infants also, will be saved. God's manifold wisdom, the hidden treasures of His redeeming power and grace, are all to be made known by the church in the ages to come. it shows a sad ignorance of this great redemption plan thus to confound these minor and future subjects of its grace with this chosen company of Christ's brethren who are to be associated as kings and priests with Him in these gracious administrations.

But

And this leads us to remark that the narrowness of that theory which demands that the everlasting destiny of every human soul be fixed at death leads to the following absurdities :

1. In order to turn the scale in such a moral system on the side of mercy, it puts a great strain upon its own principles, and eagerly makes up a majority for the saved by putting all the infant billions of the human race, and all idiots, at once into the church of the first-born.

2. It therefore makes infant mortality a blessing. English Christianity, instead of suppressing infanticide in India, had better encourage it.

3. It draws a line of moral agency through childhood, to cross which makes an abrupt and inconceivable transfer in its destiny. Before a child, dying six years old (if that be the line of accountability in any particular case), there would be an eternity of happiness. Dying six years and one month old, it would be doomed to endless misery.

When will Christians come to see that God has never tied Himself up to any such narrow line of action toward His creatures, nor given death such fearful power in this system of the world as to preclude any operation in behalf of any one of them

beyond it. On the other hand His redemption plan proceeds in this very way of victorious judgment over the empire of death, and to the stripping it of its spoils.

CHURCH UNION. It is because Dr. Hodge's definition of the church is thus faulty, and his view of its relation to the unsaved portion of the human race defective, that his "open letter" in The Century on Christian Union is unsatisfactory. It virtually justifies the existing divisions in the body of Christ, and apologizes for external division as not obstructive to internal unity. All we can say is that a true spiritual union cannot remain content, and cannot thrive, without suitable expression. It must ever seek to conform the outward organization to the inward life.

If Dr. Hodge believes that these rival denominations are all desirous of and working toward the perfecting of the body we beg leave to differ from Him. Or if he believes that the purpose of Christ in constituting His church can be realized before there be such visible union and organic adjustment as shall manifestly show that one Life and Spirit lives in all the members, we ask what other kind of union can the world recognize, or by what other can the prayer of Jesus find its answer in the world's belief that the Father sent the Son to be its Saviour? No, the body of Christ is a much more select and closely knit body than his theory calls for. And its immediate duty to seek to realize its oneness in Christ is much more imperative.

His article virtually admits that every denomination ought to subordinate its own interests to the welfare of the whole body. Do any of them do this? Or if they did, how long would they continue to exist as denominations? He also admits that no one of them has the whole truth, but that each has some treasure of truth for the common benefit. If this be so, is not each one of them bound to hold its " Confession of Faith " open to receive these other aspects of truth? How can he justify the position of his own church in this regard?

PLEA FOR REVISION.-A Presbyterian elder, in writing to a clergyman of this city, states that of the five members of the ses