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in the Assembly. It signally fails to fulfill the purposewhich theoretically enters into its structure—of a court of Jesus Christ for the determination of matters

of either doctrine or discipline. For purposes of discipline it is not only too cumbrous and unwieldy an instrument; its methods are human and not divine. The fitness of "the saints" (1 Cor. vi. 1) to judge controversies among brethren resides in the fact that the Spirit of God dwells in them, and also in the fact that they alone can feel the force of those principles of love and self-sacrifice and submission to injury which the gospel inculcates, and which, as truly as the principle of righteous dealing, should determine the issue. It is therefore unchristian for such a court to bind itself up by a system of technical rules, derived mainly from the forms of human jurisprudence, and which must limit the free action of the Holy Spirit upon their minds. The business of a court of Christ is to seek to know and declare His will. There were one or two notable instances in this Assembly which revealed how completely the formalities of "system" have displaced the rule of the Spirit, who should be recognized as the only arbiter and director in the Church of God.

Still more noticeable was this defect when the Assembly came to handle matters of doctrine. There was one very important matter, at least, of this character brought to its attention. We refer to the overture of the Presbytery of Nassau, which was printed in our last number. Here was a case in which a whole Presbytery unanimously declare that the statements of the Confession upon election and reprobation "go beyond the Word of God and are opposed

to the convictions and repugnant to the feelings of very many of our most worthy and thoughtful members," and an urgent request of the assembly to arrange for their revision. What does that body do? It gives up whole days to the thrashing over of old straw about Freedmen and Publication and Temperance and so on, and just toward the close, when part of the members had left and the rest were hurrying through the business in unseemly haste in order to leave, it passes, without dissent or even remark, a report from the Committee on Bills and Overtures that it would be inexpedient to take up this question at this time. Surely here was a question in which the conscience and Christian honor of at least the members of that Presbytery were concerned. It involved the question whether the Church's authorized statements on these points are true to the Word of God. There should have been prayerful inquiry, honest searching for the truth, and humble waiting upon God to know His mind and will. Surely all that we said in our last number about the church's need of a Jerusalem Chamber found here its verification. The General Assembly does not fulfil this function. Nor can there be any fulfilment of it so long as the rule of system takes the place in the Church of the rule of the Spirit of God.

4. Still another defect was the low estimate of the relation which that church sustains to the church at large in the unity of the one body, and the consequent lack of any earnest desire for church union. There was a great deal said about the conquest of this land and of the heathen world for Christ, and an entire ignoring of the conditions of this success as given in the Lord's last prayer—“ that

they all may be one, that the world may believe." We were glad to find some recognition of this need in one or two of the popular addresses made by returned missionaries at the evening meetings. But there was no serious consideration of it in the councils of the Assembly. There is not only a fearful waste of energy and resources at home and abroad as the result of division. There is a weakness and vacillation before our foes. And there is a constant quenching of the Spirit in the body. He cannot and will not put forth His mighty energy for the world's conversion through a body, the members of which are dissevered and inharmonious, and out of organic connection one with another. Mere denominational comity is not enough. Not even co-operation could fully meet the case. The body is one, and it is an organism. And it is only in connection with a church that realizes this that He will make His glory known in the eyes of the nations, and all flesh shall see His salvation.

RESURRECTION AND EVOLUTION.

Notwithstanding the condemnation of Dr. Woodrow by the Southern General Assembly, the doctrine of evolution is likely to be increasingly accepted by enlightened Christian teachers as marking out the method by which God has been unfolding His plan of life in Creation, up to the production of man in His own image. The Bible, however, teaches that this process of developing a creature who should be a fit vehicle of His eternal life and the heir of His wide dominions has not yet reached its final stage. The "earthy"

man is only an image in clay of that splendid figure which is to stand on the summit of Creation. "Flesh and blood

cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither can corruption inherit incorruption." The true "Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation" (Col. i. 15), is the Risen Man. As such all its wide realms, and all its potent forces are now subject unto Him (Eph. i. 20--23). St. Paul in the first chapter of his epistle to the Colossians intimates that the region of His life and power lies specially on what to us is the invisible side of Creation (vs. 16--18). The visible is also His rightful possession, although here His sovereignty is disputed by "the prince of this cosmos" (Eph. ii. 2) who is yet to be cast out. That there are two sides to this created system, the visible and the invisible, is equally a truth of Science. And that man stands on the border line which separates the visible from the invisible, the material from the spiritual, the temporal from the eternal, is also a fact of Science and the first postulate of Metaphysics. He belongs to both systems. His body of flesh and blood ties him to this material system. But he has a spiritual nature which overleaps its boundaries. What wonder, therefore, that the conatus of his being should be to struggle out of the limitations of its present form into an environment of things spiritual and eternal! Scripture teaches that this is his destiny. He is to take on a form of manhood which is forever superior to and regnant over this created system, and into whose composition all its finer and subtler elements shall enter. The doctrine of evolution, while it may not affirm, does not exclude the possibility of such a higher form of humanity. It encourages the hope. While the doctrine that there is a God requires this; for

without it, this vast and splendid fabric of Creation is a monstrous failure-crowned only with a ghastly, grinning skeleton. It is not too much to say that the testimony of evolution is more than negative as to this point. The plan of life which it delineates seems to require the final production of a perfect form of which all previous imperfect forms are a dim prophecy,—an imperishable structure, “eternal in the heavens," of which all perishable houses of clay are the rude forecasts. And there is no ground on which it can object that this higher structure may not be framed out of, and be adapted to, that region of unseen substances and forces which it knows to be the most real and substantial part of creation. Such seems to be the plain prediction of even nature. And such is the definite promise of Scripture; such the pledge given to man in the resurrection of our Brother-Man, Jesus Christ, from the dead. An agnostic Science, wise apparently concerning things seen, but blind to things unseen, declares that such a change is impossible, that the record of the resurrection is a fable. It throws the pall of endless night over this splendid prospect opened up in the Bible for us sons of men who are called to be the sons of God. But to it we answer back with joyful confidence: "But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. * * If there is a natural body there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written. The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam, a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is of heaven. As is

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