In making this statement Dr. McCosh asks, "Has any such offer of living young men and women been presented in our age or in our country; in any age or in any country since the day of Pentecost? '

Take this unprecedented uprising of consecrated young manhood and womanhood on the one hand, and the Macedonian cries that come up from every pagan shore-the white harvest fields that greet the eye wheresoever we turn-on the other, and we have the summons of the Lord of the harvest to his Church.

To answer this providential call—to bring these fields and these men and women together-the Christians of America have got to bestir themselves with their gifts to an extent they have not as yet attained. The rate of supplies now furnished Mission Boards is barely adequate for conducting the various missionary enterprises on their present scale. Last year the wealthiest missionary society of this country-that in connection with the Presbyterian church, to make good the losses by death, withdrawal and marriage, commisioned seven ordained missionaries, six of whom were married; eight medical missionaries, two of whom were ladies; and eleven unmarried ladies—a gain of but two.

The missionary organ of the wealthy Protestant Episcopal church, in a recent number says. Our mission work is always crippled for lack of means. It is a source of anxiety to secure sufficient contributions from year to year to meet the meagre promises which the Board ventures to make for work already begun, and there is no margin to enlarge the work."

Similar statements are from time to time made by the missionary societies of other denominations. The real truth is, the exchequers of nearly all missionary boards are in a state of chronic exhaustion, and the cry of distress from those in office seldom ceases, and only ceases for a brief season to burst forth in more pitiful and piercing tones. Some one has said, that "the normal condition of many of our missionary societies, great and small, is that of ships in perpetual danger of being stranded for lack of an adequate tide of pecuniary

means to float them. Occasionally they get aground, and after vast efforts they move freely; but the water beneath them is alarmingly shallow." Yet no one will dare to say that the Church's work has consumed the Church's wealth; that its piety has exhausted its purse. The Christian world is not bankrupt. It has untold resources at its command. It is rich, very rich, in material wealth.

While, then, the millions of professing Christians in America-thousands of whom God hath endowed with the wealth of this world-are burdened with the question whether they can send out a score or two new men to preach the glorious saving gospel of the ever blessed Jesus, the little African State of Tripoli,in Barbary, is sending from its Mahommedan College one thousand young missionaries every year into Africa to disseminate the miserable, soul-destroying errors of the false prophet! And the great Ayar in Cairo, with 10,000 students, sends to the Moslem mission fields not less than 2,000 a year. How these men shame us by their zeal in their faith! Little Tripoli on the one side, and the great United States of America on the other! Mahommedanism, thriftless, threadbare, and living upon a crust, upon the one side, and the affluent and Inxurious Christian church of America on the other! Little Tripoli a thousand for Africa; great America a score, more or less! How significant that remark of a Methodist bishop: "The question now is not so much whether the heathen can be saved without the gospel, as whether we can be saved if we fail to give it to them."

But America is by no means inactive in the work of missions in Africa, for while it can scarce send a score of men to bless the dark sons of that continent with the gospel, it can, and it does send every year well nigh on to a million of gallons of rum to curse its inhabitants. So that for every African who is influenced for good by Christianity, thousands are driven into deeper degradation by the rum traffic, and unless something is done to stay the tide of devastation now sweeping over that country, the indications are that ere long that continent, which Victor Hugo predicted would be the scene

of the greatest advance in the twentieth century, will be under the domination of the rum traffic! O, ye blood-bought sons of the blessed Christ, listen to the testimony of Kama : "The white man must stop giving us brandy if he wishes to save us." Give heed to the touching appeal recently sent to Bishop Crowther of the Church Missionary Society by the Mahommedan King Maliki, of Nupi (in the Niger region): "Rum, rum, rum! It has ruined our country; it has ruined our people very much; it has made our people become mad

beg the English Queen to prevent bringing rum into this land. For God and the prophet's sake, you must help us in this matter. You must not leave our country to be spoiled by rum."

Dr. Dunn in the above article puts great stress upon the lack of money given by the Church to carry on this work. He fails, however, to perceive the evil which lies back of this, and which we have indicated above. A church that does not realize the unity of all believers as members in the one body of the one Christ, and that does not conform its organization and methods of work to this leading idea of its very being, will never call forth the sacrifices to any great degree of its members. And this, because He cannot pervade an organism, the members of which are disjointed and dissevered, with His powerful presence, nor can He reveal the full measure of His truth to such a church. Accordingly, we find the church of to-day not only distracted by divisions in the presence of her enemies, but bewildered by diverse views concerning even the fundamentals of her faith, and especially in regard to God's purposes toward mankind in the gospel of His grace, and her own place under His great plan. She has yet to learn the full meaning of that gospel her Lord commanded her to preach in all the world.

There are great truths that pitch their shining tents
Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen

In the grey dawn, they will be manifest

When the light widens into perfect day.

-Longfellow.

"Take thou no thought for aught save truth and right,

Content, if such thy fate, to die obscure ;

Wealth palls and honors; fame may not endure,
And noble souls soon weary of delight.

Keep innocence: be all a true man ought,
Let neither pleasure tempt nor pain appal.

Who hath this, he hath all things having naught,
Who hath it not, hath nothing having all.''

NOTES ON CURRENT OPINIONS AND EVENTS.

OUR DIFFERENCE.-We have been requested to state concisely the points at which the teachings of this magazine differ from those of the Westminster Standards upon the question of man's destiny.

There is but one vital point. The other points grow out of this one and are subordinate to it. It is only necessary therefore to direct our reply to this initial point.

Our Standards teach that for the sins of this life the souls of wicked men are, at death, cast into the torments of hell, where they remain until the resurrection,—that they are then reunited to their bodies, arrayed before the judgment seat of Christ, and the restored man driven from thence back to hell to suffer most grievous and unspeakable torments, without intermission, in both body and soul, with the devil and his angels in hell-fire forever. (Chap. xxxiii. Sec. 2. Questions 29, 89, Large Catechism.)

That this teaching does not fairly reflect the character and purposes of God, nor harmonize with the voice of His Spirit as

uttered in the hearts of His children and in His Word, is seen in the fact that those who are under the highest obligations to warn their fellow-men to flee from the wrath to come are restrained from using these statements by an inward protest.

We have, therefore, in the interest of honest dealing by the Church in her solemn testimonies from God to men, raised the question whether the framers of this part of our Confession have not made a serious mistake. From a careful study of Scripture we believe they have, and that we are able to point out precisely where they erred

While they have been faithful to the Scripture teaching about the sinner's danger of being cast into hell, they have misconceived the meaning and place of resurrection in the divine economy. They make it to be a retributive act; whereas the Scriptures make it to be due to the redeeming work of Christ. They make this provision a curse to all but the elect. Whereas, it is a boon to the race. It comes in fulfilment of blessing secured to all the families of the earth by a chosen seed. Without it many specific promises of future blessing to Israel and mankind found in the Old Testament must remain unfulfilled.

This promise, however, we have held, is not to eternal life It does not set aside the operation of the universal law, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." It does not prevent the harvest of corruption which they must reap who sow to the flesh. It secures to the unjust only a "resurrection of judgment," by which we un. derstand that the results of evil character must impress themselves upon the bodily forms in which men are raised, and bring them again under judicial trial and correction, leaving them liable to the second death.

About the inferences we have drawn from this principle we are not so sure as of the truth of the principle itself. It is a simple assertion, derived from the comprehensive teaching of Scripture con cerning death as the wages of sin, and concerning resurrection, that the provision to confer upon all who lost life in Adam another life in Christ is a gracious provision, and not, as our Standards present it, one by which the punishment of the lost is greatly enhanced, and their existence perpetuated for endless torment. If this princi ple is wrong and unscriptural, then, of course, our offense is grievIf it be true, then are we rendering the truest service to the

ous.