his soul cried out after God," "Now, therefore, I beseech thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy ways, that I may know thee, to the end that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people" (xxxiii. 13, R. V.). . . . “Show me, I pray thee, thy glory." The Lord hides him in a cleft of the rock, and shews him, not the full glory of His face, but the reverse side of it, as was suitable to him who was the great exponent of the law. He reveals His righteousness and grace, not as antagonistic elements in His nature, but as two sides of the one essential glory. "And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the name of the Lord." "The Lord, the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation." We notice:

1. The pre-eminence of the attribute of grace. The New Testament defines God as Love. It nowhere says. that "God is righteousness," although He is infinitely righteous. Love seems to be more truly the essence of His being than even righteousness. Righteousness is a form in which His love is expressed. He would not be all love unless He were all righteous. But essentially it was His goodness which He made to pass before Moses (vs. 19) when he proclaimed His name, saying "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy to whom I will show mercy." This was the great bur

den on Moses' heart. Could Jehovah, who had just required him to slay three thousand of the people for this sin, and whose presence among them was a consuming fire, be gracious and forgive them? Hence, in His name, this was the first thing declared. "The Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.”

2. But His grace, although so abundant and far-reaching, cannot forgive, except as justice is satisfied by the removal of guilt. This may be by the identification with them of a righteous One who so bears their guilt as to die with and for them; as Moses here desired to do when he besought the Lord either to forgive them, or else to blot him out of His book. Or it may be after the infliction of the penalty due, that grace shall find a way to restore and heal. But in either case the sinning one must be separated from his guilt. This God can by no means clear the guilty. Even the process of his forgive

And this indeed is

ness must be a process of cleansing. the mystery of His salvation. Our God is a jealous God, a consuming fire. But the very fire of his anger against our sins is but the dark side of the flame of His love. He forgives the sins of men, in that He has redeemed their lives from destruction through the ransom made by One who gave Himself for all. But the life so redeemed must be cleansed and purified before it can be made eternal. And so against all that is evil in it the fire of His anger must burn. It is our God who is a consuming fire, and whose forgiveness is not complete until it has cleared away the sin, and destroyed the sinful na

ture of the guilty one.
cess that men find salvation.
themselves against it that they must be blotted out of
God's book. Their personal being must be destroyed in
the fire by which they would otherwise have been
cleansed and saved.

It is in submitting to this pro-
But they may so harden

NOTES ON CURRENT OPINIONS AND EVENTS.

"NOBLESSE OBLIGE."-Under this title a correspondent of The Presbyterian refers to the examination of the Rev. Eben Halley, D. D., recently installed as pastor over the Second Presbyterian Church of Troy, N. Y., as follows:

Among the questions asked him was the following: 'If you should become convinced of any truth which is contrary to the Confession of Faith, would you preach it?' 'Oh, yes,' responded Mr. Halley, in substance, but I would leave the Presbyterian Church first.' The manliness and straightforwardness of this reply was greatly relished by Presbytery. For in this section of the country it is deemed unmanly and dishonorable to march under the Presbyterian banner, and occupy a Presbyterian pulpit and accept a Presbyterian salary, and yet denounce the teachings of John Calvin and hold up to ridicule the Westminster Confession of Faith.”

We have to say to this, 1. The writer seems to assume that the only alternative for a man who discovers any mistake in the Confession, and who is not willing to leave the church, is to denounce and hold up its standards to ridicule. Where one starts out with such an unfair statement of the case, we may well decline to accept his conclusions.

2 Dr. Halley's answer, instead of being a manly one, involves an unmanly evasion of responsibilities. As a Presbyterian minister, he is bound with all his brethren to preserve the purity of the church, and to advance it in the knowledge of the truth. If he becomes convinced that the church has fallen into error at any point, he is under sacred obligation to help to free her from the error, and especially if it is wrought into her standards. The church, in adopt

ing these standards, recognized that they were not infallible, and made provision for their possible alteration. It may be the easy course for Dr. Halley to "leave the Presbyterian Church first," but, from our point of view, while he might refrain from introducing a disputed point into his pulpit, he is bound at any sacrifice to testify to the truth, as God may make it known to him, within the limits of the church where his present responsibility lies, and to seek to cast out any error that defiles and cripples it.

And here we make again our protest against the low notions of the church implied in all this style of remark. It assumes that the Presbyterian Church is a mere voluntary society, and not a body. A man can leave it or not, just as he can leave one political party and join another more to his liking. If the doctrine is to prevail among us that our church is merely an association of Christians, formed to defend a certain system of doctrine, then the sooner we all leave it the better. But it was never constituted, nor administered, upon any such low level. It claims to be of the body of Christ, pervaded by His Spirit, and authorized in His name to administer discipline (see chap. xxv.). If it be a body, Christ has set its members in place and appointed its officers. And if there be any back door by which any of its ministers may evade their responsibility to admonish and edify one another, on the plea of not disturbing the system, or of seeking larger liberty, it is not of His appointment. It is, therefore, a grave mistake to commend the principle involved in Dr. Halley's answer as one of noble duty and self-sacrifice. It is the reverse of this. It is certainly supposable that the Presbyterian Church may have gone wrong at some point. We would ask how, if all its ministers are to be governed by this principle, the wrong could ever be righted?

AN UNCANDID EVASION.-It is a very common thing to hear the defenders of the old dogmas about human destiny upbraiding those who dare to call them in question, as if they were not satisfied to leave the future of the heathen, and all such questions, where the Bible leaves them, when it asks, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Such critics ought to know that this question is a very different one from the inquiry, Are our standards right in their precise definitions of what the Judge of all the earth

intends to do? If the standards left this whole question on this ground of absolute faith in God, no one would have the right to say a word against them. But they do not. They define in precise terms that He will raise up the wicked, whose souls are in hell, and send them back to hell to be punished with unspeakable torments of soul and body, without intermission, in hell-fire with the devil and his angels forever. It is a dishonest evasion of the issue to charge one who raises the question, whether these words perfectly represent the whole teaching of Scripture upon this subject, with an unwillingness to submit to its teaching, or, still worse, to impugn his motives as if he were distrustful of the righteousness of God. And the men who bring this accusation may well inquire whether this show of zeal for a principle which no one questions may not be a pretence behind which they hide from themselves and others the inconsistency of standing by doctrinal formulas which they no longer preach.

THE ANDOVER CASE.-We have carefully read the statements and pleadings in this celebrated case. Prof. Smyth's defense is an able, eloquent and manly plea for that larger liberty of investigation and teaching which the case demands, and to which the Spirit of God in these days is summoning the Church. But, while he convinces us of his own uprightness, we yet fail to see that the liberty he claims was contemplated by the founders of that seminary when they framed its creed, and by those who gave their funds for its support. As this was the point at issue, the defendants confine themselves mainly to it, and do not traverse the Scripture ground upon which they base the larger hope.

This reveals to us the unwisdom of founding a church, or a theological seminary, on any such basis. The very thing that ought to come to the front in this issue is kept in the back ground. The speeches of the complainants are equally free from texts of Scripture. Neither side could fairly face the question which demands decision in the case. "Do the Scriptures give warrant for the hope that any class of mankind who die in ignorance and sin may come to the knowledge of salvation after death?" All creeds and churches, and schools of the prophets, should make room for the fair and candid discussion of such questions whenever they may