ets will discern that nothing was farther from His mind than that the sinful dead, either of Israel or the Gentiles, were to be sent down into the bondage of an endless hell. They were, indeed, to receive there of the Lord's hand double for all their sins. But their punishment was to be accepted and their iniquity pardoned, so that there would be an opening of the prison-doors and a proclamation of liberty to the captives. This was "the hope of the dead,” "the mercy promised unto the fathers," to fulfil which Christ came.

This is the hope to which this magazine has borne constant testimony against the adverse power of creed-systems, which are as reluctant as were the Jews in Paul's day to have the light turned in upon them of the full gospel of the grace of God.

GOSPELS OF YESTERDAY.

In an interesting book with this title, by Robert A. Watson, M. A., some of the modern substitutes for the gospel of Christ are ably handled and exposed. The author first turns his attention to the "Gospel of the Higher Biology," as set forth in Prof. Henry Drummond's famous book, and finds it defective, especially at the point noticed in the June number, of Vol. I of this magazine. He says:

"To those who cannot feel sure of their own elevation and safety, or who have an infirmity of compassion for the wasted multitudes, the reign of law in the spiritual sphere traced by Mr. Drummond appears as cruel as it is unscientific. They are by no means 'overcome with thankfulness that Nature is so like Revelation, and Revelation so like Nature.' On the con

trary, as they believe in God and reverence truth, as they trust to the working of the majestic laws which make no favorites and leave no waste, as they have faith in the evolution of Providence and Redemption, they will take leave to call the theory offered to them neither science nor theology; but a bastard Calvinism, with all the faults ever charged against the old, and none of its massive vigor or philosophic range.

"For where is Christ in this religion? 'The grace of God which bringeth salvation unto all men,' has a breadth and length and depth and height, of which the natural laws, as here expounded, know nothing; nor do they tell anything of the patience, and generosity, and cross of Christ. Meaning to support religion, Mr. Drummond aimed at re-stating to a worldly and comfort-loving age the severity of the Divine laws, and providing us with a philosophy of the new birth. Would to God he had succeeded! All that he has done has been to give us the alternative of pietism or despair."

As we said in the article above referred to, Prof. Drummond could do no better than this with his lame view of the plan of redemption, leaving out from it the gospel of the resurrection.

The author next takes up the "Gospel of the Lower Biology" as unfolded in Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics, and forcibly shows how weak and unsatisfactory a basis for moral conduct and noble aspiration is furnished by this evolutionary scheme. He illustrates the inadequacy of Mr. Spencer's favorite attempt to trace back the idea of God in the human mind to a primitive belief in ghosts in this way:

By means of an illustration let us sift the treatment of religion by Mr. Spencer-its fairness and logic. Take a primitive man, dwelling by the shore of some Pacific or Atlantic of prehistoric time, one of those men whose belief in the hovering shades of deceased ancestors is said to be the root of our belief

in God. This man made for himself a dug-out canoe. His ability to use the material provided by nature, his intelligence, activity, and skill served him so far, but no farther. By means of his rude hollowed log he could cross the river at whose mouth he dwelt, and even venture in search of fish a little way upon the great flood that seemed to end his world on one side. Exactly parallel to his notions of shadowy beings and of the duties he owed them were his notions of the universe and his ability to use nature. But with the progress of intelligence and industrial skill, with repeated experiments ending in new discoveries and clearer knowledge, it became possible for man to construct a ship, to make a compass and chronometer, to guide his course by observation of sun, moon and stars, and so reach a distant shore; and in progress of time we have the steam-vessel of 5000 tons, capable of conveying a thousand passengers across the globe to lands the savage never imagined. Now it would seem supremely absurd to charge Mr. Spencer with asserting that the steamship cannot bring us to a land beyond the range of vision because in his dug-out canoe the savage could not cross the ocean. And yet when we apply to this case his fixed principles of interpreting the more developed by the less developed, the conclusion can only be that the steamship, though it may bear us out to sea, cannot enable us to land on any unseen shore. There is a land beyond the great ocean, no doubt, a something of which we have adumbrations. But he who steps on board a vessel at Liverpool in expectation of reaching a shore vaguely spoken of as the antipodes is a dreamer. The trans-oceanic region is inscrutable, beyond the power of vision to see or logic to prove or navigation to reach. The steamship, immense as the skill and ingenuity expended on it have been, is a useless conceit, a moving exhibition of human folly. Says Mr. Spencer, if you think you can arrive at any unseen continent of life because you have a bigger and more elaborate vessel, you are under a delusion. The only "verity" in this evolved religion of yours is the recognition of the sea as a great deep. Elaborate theology is of no more value as a means of ascertaining truth than the imagination of the savage. The Eternal cannot be known.”

The last of these false gospels noticed is Mr. Matthew Arnold's "Gospel of Nature." Mr. Watson's review of it is able and trenchant. If there is anything pitiable in modern unbelief, it is the spectacle of such a man as Mr. Arnold-the son of a godly clergyman-, unable to divest himself of his traditional respect for Christianity, and yet, having given up its cornerstone by surrendering faith in the resurrection of Jesus, seeking to rebuild a system of æsthetic and moral culture out of the shattered fragments of the Christian temple, and endeavoring to persuade people that it is the real thing and that the glory has not departed. And yet since the Christian church has suffered the splendor of her Lord's triumph over death to be obscured by the denial that it carries with it any hope for the dead-except the elect—what wonder if the worldly mind become wholly blind to it, and will not admit that there is any foothold for the "legend" in this natural system. Its true relation to the whole plan of God's working in creation and in the realms of life is not perceived, even by the church. What wonder then that the natural mind holds

it

up to mockery! If Mr. Watson had better known this gospel of the resurrection, his exposure of these "gospels of yesterday" would have been far more complete and satisfactory. And yet the hollowness of Mr. Arnold's system is well described in such words as these:

Mr. Arnold should have "flourished" at the time of Christ, and been born a Sadducee of high standing and influence. Then of course he would have effected his mission. It would have been his "taking God's Word under wise protection " to correct its tendency to diffusiveness" to the legendary and "unverifiable," and by his clear reasoning to convince Christ that crucifixion would be a mistake, that Hellenism and its perfect

lucidity afford the right method of establishing a religion. But he has come too late. The world has gone after the crucified Nazarene. Those who sit in the market-place will not mourn to the wailing nor dance to the piping of the belated prophet. Very likely he misunderstood the respect paid to him when he began to preach. He spoke so much of the Eternal who "makes for righteousness," and of righteousness tending to life, that many fancied there must be a good deal at bottom between him and Christianity, and waited for it to appear. By this time, however, it is clear that his discovery is a mere formula, incomprehensible to those who have not learned the language in which it is written, worthless, when comprehended.

What use can Mr. Arnold make of his doctrine of Nature when he is brought face to face with the miseries and cravings of a great city, where the problems of human life crowd as thickly as the people? He was not long ago summoned to the east end of London to give the "sacrificed classes" what help and direction he could. We mean no disrespect to those who invited him when we say that he set out, like a modern Balaam, to condemn the people who trust to a supernatural guide and helper, who expect shortly to enter a land of promise. And he improved upon Balaam; he was even more sphinx-like than the original. He allowed the "charm" of a new heaven and earth; nay, he went so far as to assert that some day a renovation will come. There is comfort in the idea, and people who live in Bethnal Green or Whitechapel need moral opium of one kind or another. Surveying this poor blind Israel, with its crude visions, he really pities it; feels inspired to utter a few kindly warnings, a few vague consolations; at the same time never forgetting that a certain cultured Balak stands a little way off, wondering what this prophet, whom he is able to promote to great honor, means. He knows quite well, however, what he is doing; he knows that it takes a great deal of lucidity to sit quietly starving in the East End after the West End has abolished God and the future life. "There is no Divine Father; no immortality except the ideal society of the future, which none of us will ever see; no clearing up of the problems of