wicked, nor is it His decree, but the wickedness of their own hearts, which restraineth and hindereth them from accepting the free offer of His grace made in the Gospel.

Other chapters follow, in which the freedom of the human will and the universal offer of the Gospel is asserted in such terms as throw the responsibility of the sinner's perdition upon himself; although it is also stated that “man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all disposition to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so as a natural man, being altogether avèrse from that good, and dead in sin, he is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto." All infants and imbeciles and possibly the devout heathen are swept in to help make up the "innumerable multitude" of the elect in these terms:

"Infants dying in infancy, and all other persons not guilty of actual transgression, are included in the election of grace, and are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are not outwardly called by the Word."

From all which it is plain that no greater blessing could come to the large majority of those who are born into the world than that they should die in infancy.

We are firm believers in the salvation of infants and of all the other classes of unfortunates whose cases this section is designed to cover, but it dishonors all the Scripture teaching concerning election, and degrades the whole idea of it, to include all these classes among the elect and Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven. The whole work of the Committee, indeed, is vitiated by their failure to apprehend this subject of election. They seem blind to the truth, which stands out so plain on the pages of Scripture, that the very purpose of the election is that they may become the channels of God's bounty to the world. Even when Jesus said: "I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given me," the prayer had respect to this ultimate end "that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me." It is an increasing surprise to us that men so intelligent, and pledged to defend the truth, should so persistently refuse to admit that the "first fruits of God's creatures," begotten "of His own

will by the word of His truth" (Jas. i, 18), implies that there are later fruits. What is the meaning of first fruits if there is to be no harvest? or of first-born if there are to be no later born? We presume the Committee will still retain the stock prooftext of the old Confession, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated" (Rom. ix, 13), but do they not know that Isaac pronounced a lower blessing upon Esau, and that we are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi, 20) that by faith Isaac blessed both Jacob and Esau concerning things to come? And must they so linger over the ninth of Romans as to refuse to rise to the broad outlook of the eleventh, where we are told that, beyond "the remnant according to the election of grace " which God always preserved in Israel, there was a hidden purpose of blessing for the whole, insomuch that all "All Israel shall be saved," and that "His mercy upon all" should overflow even to all the Gentiles?

But the saddest part of the Committee's report is that part where we read concerning the chapters "Of the state of man after death, and of the Resurrection of the dead" and "Of the last judgment," -"there is no change in these chapters." The doctrine that the wicked, after their resurrection, are to be "cast into eternal torments" is thus retained as the settled faith of the Church. We have so often set forth in this magazine the reasons why we regard this conception of resurrection as fundamentally wrong and viciously destructive of the true knowledge of God and of the gospel of His grace, that it is unnecessary to go over the ground again. We are convinced that all the existing dissatisfaction with the Confession takes its rise just here, in its misconception of the place and meaning of this foundation fact in the Christian faiththe resurrection of the dead. All this tribulation over election and sovereignty and free will and the fate of the heathen could never have arisen, had the framers of that Confession grasped the meaning of the purpose and provision of God to raise the dead. To say that they failed here is to say that they did not understand the gospel. The revisers have tried to supply their lack, and to find hooks upon which they might fasten the gospel into their framework. But the issue will be a lamentable failure so long as they retain those sections in which the first principle of the gospel

is denied. The old perversion of it is perpetuated, and no careful compounding will help them to get rid of, or even conceal, this fly in their new pot of ointment.

INSPIRATION.-The Rev. A. J. F. Behrends, D. D., says in a recent sermon:

"We should not forget that in all the ferment of human thought, especially in the Church of Christ, the Holy Spirit has His part. Let us repeat together that clause in our common creed: 'I believe in the Holy Ghost.' We believe in an inspiration of original utterance, unique alike in degree and kind. Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. But there is also a divine guidance for the readers and thinkers and preachers of the present. The divine tuition has not ceased, and so we may be sure that a better knowledge will be the outcome of the fiercest debates. The history of the past abundantly proves this, and with God's hand upon the lever, there can be no jumping from the track."

BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD.-It would be amusing, were the subject not so serious a one, to observe the absurd and impotent attempts constantly made by professed Christian teachers to escape the plain meaning of this expression of St. Paul. Its meaning, as gathered from the context, is "If the dead rise not, why then should I be undergoing this baptism of suffering in their behalf? How can my endurance be of any advantage to them, if they are not to be raised? Why stand I in jeopardy every hour?" The reason this plain interpretation does not suggest itself is that the truth seems to have died out of the Church that the condition of the dead can be changed; and the thought of such a thing as their rescue through the fidelity of the living would at once bear the brand of heresy.

And hence men go on proposing such wriggling attempts at explanation as this latest one by a writer in the New York Churchman of February 13th:

"Since, if the dead rise not, Christ is not raised; and if He be not raised, ye are nothing but dead, in every sense 'dead'; nothing can be more absurd and contradictory than your practice of baptism."

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

SO MANY of our correspondents have referred, either by way of inquiry or of criticism to some of our recent remarks upon the subject of reincarnation, that we have to say in the way of general reply that the ground of our teaching has been throughout the redemptive character of resurrection. We have not, therefore, "shifted our ground." The change has been in respect to the mode of that inferior resurrection which Scripture assigns to the unjust. In respect to the true and higher order of resurrection— that of the just-no such question can arise.

All admit that the resurrection of the ungodly cannot be of the same order as that of the righteous. The point we have made is that, as it cannot be to the heavenly order of manhood, it must be to the earthly, for Scripture makes mention of no other than these two. This involves-whether it be on this earth or some other-reincarnation.

We still hold, however, to a period of suffering for sinful souls in hades before death is completed by the destruction of the soul in hell (Matt. x, 28). This suffering is not probation but retribution. The soul, however, is not the inmost self of man. It pertains to the expression of the man, to personality. Its destruction is therefore" the second death" of man; it carries with it the objective man and his self-consciousness developed on that plane of being. The experiment of building a fit temple for the divine image in the man has to be begun afresh. Here comes in the necessity for reincarnation. The former man has been lost to view in the destruction which has dissolved his being, the Scripture symbol of which is the lake of fire.

That all imperfect souls must experience this destructive process, except such as are in conscious union with Christ, we do not. affirm. Cornelius was not a saint " " before Peter showed to him. the way of life. We have shown on another page that the psychic realm of being on its lowest plane touches earth. It may be that it is only those entering that realm on the lower planes who gravitate back to another life on earth, and that those on higher planes persist in that form of being until prepared for the spirit-

ual. This would provide for the case of infants, devout heathen, and others.

But that the principle of reincarnation has place somewhere under the Christian scheme is obvious, for

1. The doctrine of resurrection, as presented in Scripture, is broad enough to require it. There must be grades in the future embodied life of man according to character. An earthly sensual soul can be reclothed only in the kind of body suited to it. We know of no other kind of body that fulfills these conditions except the one familiar to us. And it contains possibilities for every degree of imprisonment, of suffering, and of corruption. It therefore provides for every form of judgment and correction.

2. No other explanation than this fits in so well with the constant teaching of Scripture that redemption is by a seed, and flows in the channel of successive generations.

3. No other adapts itself so readily to the truths concerning the origin and progress of life which Science has opened up, and which those who investigate the proofs almost universally accept.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS.

The subjoined letter is from a brother beloved in the Presbyterian ministry. We accept his words both of approval, and where they approach to gentle remonstrance, as coming from a truly Christian soul touched with the finest sensibilities, and we give to our readers the benefit of the impression which such a letter is fitted to produce, both in respect to the things which it commends and those about which it hesitates and speaks with caution:

"MY DEAR FRIEND:-If it is not too much to ask, I want you to put the mildest construction upon my long silence, to wit, that it was at most but a very unbusinesslike failure to renew subscription at the right time, and in no wise to be interpreted as waning regard for yourself, or failing interest in your work. It is impossible to feel any less interest in the matters to which your magazine is devoted. They gather interest of a momentous character with every added year of one's life. I have read the monthly issues as they came, generally at a sitting. There is no number but contains suggestions concerning which I could write by the volume, and should like to talk by the hour. I have watched the new courses into which your thought has been led with keen interest.