the gospel now, they will have an indefinite probation hereafter, I have no expectation that the Board will object." Dr. Storrs does not seem to see that this is a disingenuous statement. It furnishes an instance of the unfairness into which such masters of rhetoric are apt to be betrayed.

The controversy in the American Board is only representative of the differences on this subject that prevail throughout the bounds of the whole Christian Church. As yet there appears to be no basis of reconciliation. On the one hand, the instincts of the Christian heart, together with many positive statements of Scripture, compel the conviction that there is a wideness in God's mercy which the old doctrine of "no hope beyond death" does not make room for, and which is indeed destructive of its claim to be the final truth on this subject. On the other hand, it is plain that the Bible puts emphasis upon the decisiveness of this present life, and the Christian intellect and heart respond to its call for the most earnest work here and now for the souls of men.

We have been urging upon the Church the truth of the redemptive nature of resurrection, limited by the principle that every man must receive in body according to deeds done, as furnishing the scriptural and scientific basis for reconciling these two sides of truth. So far, its leaders of Christian thought have not been willing to take up with or discuss this principle. Even a writer so strenuously orthodox as Dr. Warfield, in his review of The Fire of God's Anger, was obliged to confess the truth of our principle concerning resurrection. He sought refuge from it, however, in the denial of its application to the case in

hand. Manifestly, however, if resurrection be essentially a redeeming process, it must contain some blessing even for the unjust. There must be couched in it some "hope toward God" for the countless generations who have gone down to death under the just judgments of God for their sins.

And yet the Church is afraid of the principle because of its apparent denial of the decisiveness of this present life and the excuse it seems to afford for present neglect of the great salvation.

To this we reply that no principle can be dangerous if it be true, and that, if this principle be true, it becomes an essential feature of the very gospel the Church is sent to proclaim, and an indispensable feature of that knowledge of God for the want of which the world yet wanders in darkness and groans under its bondage to sin.

But is there then no way in which this principle can be held by the Church without surrendering her view of the importance of this earthly life and the decisiveness of the life and death issue which she is commanded to present here and now to men? The following considerations show that it can be so held, and that within the depths of this mystery of life destroyed on account of sin and of life renewed by the grace and power of God, there is contained the corrective for all our present partial knowledge of this subject:

1. Resurrection, while redemptive, must always proceed according to the harvest law of all life: "Whatsoever a man soweth, that must he also reap."

2. While resurrection provides for the re-embodiment in personal manhood of the essential man, who is spirit

and indestructible, it does not necessarily restore the personal prerogatives and characteristics of the former man. These pertain to the expression of the man. They are therefore temporary and destructible, except so far as these qualities of person have been subsidized to the uses of the divine spirit in man. Here emerges the principle that while the inmost self of man, which is from God, is unchangeable, the continuity beyond death of the personality through which this true self seeks expression depends upon its character. It is this outer "self" which Jesus warns men may be lost. We may well conceive that where the personality has been developed wholly in the line of evil and subordinated to its uses, there there may be even the complete extinction of its self-consciousness. Under this head all the Scripture teaching about the destruction of the wicked can be properly ranged.

3. If, now, there be added to these considerations the truth that lies imbedded in the world-wide belief in reincarnation, we shall have just that inferior order of resurrection which Scripture places in contrast with "the resurrection of life," and which it styles "the resurrection of judgment," and which, as it cannot be "in the image of the heavenly," must be to another life in the only other form of manhood, "the image of the earthy." And we shall at once meet every objection that can be brought against our principle as denying the importance of this earthly life, and the decisiveness of its present issues. For it is seen that there is no other arena upon which human souls can correct the mistakes of the past or win the crown of life in the future than this earthly state. It is seen that all human souls are put here and now in this earthly state

for this very purpose. The hades in which the generations of the past who have failed are lost to view is this mass of living humanity around us. If they finally reach deliverance from their bondage it must be through them. If the gospel of salvation ever reaches them, it must come through the lips of men here on the earth. It matters not whether each living man be an incarnation of some one soul who heretofore made trial of this earthly life and failed, or whether he may gather up and represent a whole group of such souls in his line of life who passed through the conflict before him; in either case it invests every human life with infinite importance, and opens heights and depths in the issues of its present trial beyond all previous conception. And it also affords the Church a sublime view of its responsibility as the royal priesthood of God between the living and the dead, and as charged under its Divine Head with the burden of the world's redemption-a redemption which must be wrought out, not in some unknown future state, but here in this sphere of earth and time.

And the Missionary Church is at once furnished with a gospel to the heathen which is both true to this tremendous issue of the present, without being shorn of those large hopes for the race which are of its very essence, and which grow out of its fundamental doctrine of a new and risen life for all humanity in Jesus Christ our Lord.

For the instinct of the heathen teaches them that no religion can be true which does not recognize an identity of interest in life and destiny between the living generations of men and the ancestors from whom they sprang, and that no system of faith can be divine which does not embrace in its broad scope the interests of the whole mass of mankind, living and dead.

JUDGMENT IN THE FLESH.

We desire to show in this article that Scripture accords with human experience in teaching that God's judgment against sin is primarily a judgment upon men in the flesh, and is therefore executed in this world and in this sphere of earth and time.

Certainly this is the idea of the divine judgments running through the Old Testament. There is nothing there which plainly teaches that men are judged for the sins of this life in a future world. At the outset we are taught that the wages of sin is death. Doubtless the effects of this sentence continue beyond the present life; and hence the Old Testament describes them as captives in sheol. But the judgment is visited upon them here and now. And so in the Pentateuch-passages in which Moses solemnly warns the people of what awaits them if they transgress God's laws, the whole catalogue relates to calamities which must come upon them in this present life; and their culmination. is destruction in death. (See Lev. xxvi, Deut. xxviii.) This would be the end of the diseases, the wars, the pestilence, and famine, and bondage which would follow disobedience. And this is the manner of God's judgment of Israel and the nations as outlined in the Psalms and Prophets, and as illustrated in all history, sacred and profane. Even in those descriptions of a judgment of the nations which seems to be final, such as are given in Isaiah lxvi; 15-24; Ezekiel xxxviii; Joel iii, they are evidently executed upon the living nations of mankind, large numbers of whom are slain, while their carcasses, given to be consumed by the worm and the fire, pollute the ground.