were withdrawn from the multitude. These passages, as, for example, Mark ix, 43-50; Matthew v, 29; xviii, 8, 9, were not spoken to promiscuous hearers, but were parts of His esoteric teaching concerning the way of holiness and life eternal to a chosen few who were prepared to receive it. It is not denied that other men were exposed to the same danger of having the "whole body" cast into unquenchable fire. But the perversion alluded to has resulted in the manufacture, out of these directions to Christians to" mortify their members which are upon the earth," of a monstrous threat to cast the resurrected bodies of the wicked into hell-fire for endless torment. Nothing at all is said of what may come to men after their resurrection; they are only warned that their existing embodiment (which includes the soul as distinct from spirit) is in danger of irresistible destruction, unless its members be yielded unto God.

The same perversion is carried over to the teaching of the apostles, as, for instance, Heb. xii, 26 is read as if it taught that "God out of Christ is a consuming fire," whereas the very thing taught is that "Our God," the Christian's God, is a consuming fire.

THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS.-The law of the Divine forgiveness is clearly set forth in the Lord's Prayer, and it is very different from the idea of pardon prevalent in the minds of most Christians. The common idea is that God pardons our sins as a Judge, on the ground of our Lord's meritorious endurance of their penalty in our stead. Jesus taught no such doctrine, but that God's forgiveness reaches men as they come into that state of mind which is the

abandonment of sin. "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." The grace of Christ in accomplishing man's salvation consists in the fact that through His death and resurrection He effects in us that death to sin and that power of holiness which enables us from the heart to forgive our enemies. In this way God puts away our sins, which is the true meaning of the Greek word apinu, to forgive; and so we escape their penalty by getting rid of the sins that require it.

ARE ALL SAVED?-I meet along the street a riff-raff crowd of men; some of them rough, swaggering, boisterous, perhaps drunken and vicious. You ask me, "Will all these be saved?" My reply is yes or no, according to the point of view from which you look at them. If by "these" you mean the rough, exterior, disagreeable personages I see before me, I should say no. These humananimal forms are but the temporary investiture of a real man within, who is struggling through this mass of carnality to reveal himself. This real man, God's child, can never be lost he will finally be delivered from this bondage and discipline in these low forms of creaturehood, and find perfect expression in that perfect manhood which is the image of God. But these personalities before us are but rude draughts of this final personality, experimental phases in his progress toward this goal. Whatever of goodness and virtue may be developed in them cannot be lost. This is what we mean when we say that continuity of personal existence goes with character. But all that

is vile and unfit must be burnt up in God's consuming fire.

What therefore we see of such men will not be saved. The very self that is present to their consciousness will be lost. But the inmost man, which bears the stamp of God's image, which we do not see, and of which the outward man is but dimly conscious, will be saved out of the destruction of the flesh and out of the consuming fire.

UNITARIAN CONFERENCE.-A conference of the Unitarian Church of New England and the Middle States has just been held in this city. We listened to several addresses made by some of the ablest men of that denomination. They were largely devoted to practical themes suggested by the humanitarian aims and efforts for which that body is distinguished. There was a brightness and breeziness in their discussions, and we may say, too, a candor and an earnestness, which one often misses in similar assemblies of other Christian bodies. Notwithstanding its dangers, there is more of healthy vigor and of safety in an atmosphere of freedom than in the stifled air in which some religious bodies compel the fettered thought of their exponents to move. While we are far from indorsing the theology of the Unitarians, we certainly believe that the encouragement they give to every man to be loyal to his highest convictions will in the end contribute more to the establishment of truth among them than would be possible under a policy of trimming and suppression. Orthodoxy has yet to learn how much and how largely the Spirit of God in the Church may be trusted to eliminate

error and make luminous the truth where He is given full

scope.

But while we accord these men due honor for sincerity and uprightness, we must testify to some great defects in their thinking and working system.

We were told at the Conference that their body stands especially for these twin truths, the humanity of God and the divinity of man.. That humanity is divine, and that God manifests Himself in and though it is a primary truth of Scripture. But our Unitarian friends have been so zealous to claim this unity in life with God for all men as to depreciate and deny the supreme oneness with God of Jesus Christ our Lord. Where men can engage in public prayer, or dismiss their assemblies with a benediction from which this Name above every name is absent, something is radically wrong in their conception of the relation of this Divine Man, both to God and to humanity. They cannot give its true value to the Scripture declaration that He is the Son of God, nor take in the significance of His title, Son of Man. Hence, their humanitarian efforts, commendable as they are in some of their aspects, take no proper account of the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the divinely anointed Head of the race and Source of life and power for its regeneration.

The defect in their theology concerning the person and work of Jesus, as the Redeemer of the world, shows itself especially in the way in which they ignore the uplifting power of His resurrection. Their trust is rather in an appeal to the God-given instincts in every man, forgetting that these need to be aroused and quickened into life and activity by the energetic operation of the Spirit of Christ,

and that He now holds this office and relation to the race, as the depositary of a divine-human life by which men are created anew in Him unto good works. Every man, too, in whom the Christ-nature is formed becomes in his measure a transmitter of this life. The saints who have passed over into the life beyond are made channels of it. These victorious dead become our helpers; and so, also, each generation of living men, by an organic law of heredity, bear the burden of the failures and sins of their dead kindred in such a way that in achieving deliverance from the burden they help to free also those who went before them. Elect souls among the living are thus baptized for the dead.

Now views like these require a wider and more intelligent grasp of the relation of Christ to His Father and to the world than Unitarians have yet attained to, and a deeper and more sympathetic tenderness and charity toward sin-burdened humanity than they or any other class of Christians have yet cherished. They are indeed to be commended for their interest in all that concerns the welfare of society and for their aid to the unfortunate and oppressed. But the burden of the world's evil can never be lifted by any power less than that which wrought in Christ and raised Him from the dead. This alone can work out in the whole body of humanity its deliverance. And the channel of this power must be a consecrated Church in which Christ lives to put forth His power. The reason the Church has not effected greater results in the past is that she has been such an imperfect and broken channel of this divine energy. Where there is lack of knowledge and of unity and harmony there must be loss of strength.