case.

arise. For, although they may seem to have been settled once for all, something may be found out which gives a new aspect to the The standard of appeal should always be, behind the creed, to an open Bible. And the ever-present Spirit shonld be recognized and honored as given by Christ to guide His Church to right decisions-not, perhaps, complete and final. Scripture everywhere assumes that God gives His children truth "in part," and as they are able to bear it. Growth into the full unity of the faith and perfect knowledge of the Son of God was not to be immediate. But through all her history it was intended that the Church should not be dependent upon past attainments and fixed formulas of the faith, but upon an ever-present Spirit, given for the purpose of guiding her into all truth, and revealing things to come. Both sides in this Andover business are, therefore, on weak ground. . The prosecutors are contending for an order of things which restricts the liberty of the Spirit; while the Professors have not yet put their feet on to the solid ground of Scripture in their views of human destiny. They see that it reveals a "hope toward God" for the heathen. But they do not give it its proper adjustment. They are misled by that favorite dogma of modern theology, that the issues of this present life will not be settled until a great day of final judgment; whereas they are summed up at death. Whether a man's soul shall be lost with the wreck of the body at that crisis, or whether it shall survive it, is determined then. Men go down to death either under con. demnation, or freed from it. The account is then closed. There is no opportunity, therefore, for a prolonged probation in Sheol There may be a probation for resurrection. The "spirits in prison," to whom Christ heralded the fact of His triumph over death, may have had this hope set before then. But the death or sheol state

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is essentially penal. And only resurrection, in the nature of the case, can open the prison doors. After judgment is satisfied, resurrection comes, therefore, not to open up a deeper hell, but as the gracious gift of another life in manhood. Any new trial for eternal life, therefore, must come in after that. After death, judgment." And the sinner's loss of soul in death is certain. But the recovery in due time to another life. What does this mean? What of hope does it bring? This is the point of view from which they shonld study this question? They would find a wealth of Scripture bearing upon it, especially when the New Testament is interpreted in the light of

the Old, which would give them firm ground to stand on,-ground upon which they can hold all the Scripture testimonies concerning the importance of this present life, the fearful danger of its loss, the punishment in hell which lies just across its borders, the inexorableness of God's law, the fixity of character, the desert of sin. But they would see also that this utter bankruptcy of the sinner's estate, which is God's penalty for sin, does not prevent Him from bestowing upon him another gift of life. And this is the very thing He has provided for in the fact that Christ, by the ransom given for all, has redeemed all. Not to eternal life. This is bestowed only upon those who, by patient continuance in well doing, seek for it (Rom. ii. 7). But life restored out of the pit of death and hell into which sin casts men must, of necessity, bring its own opportunities. It does not renew the opportunity of this present life, which is lost forever, but it brings its own. Resurrection must be a boon and not a curse. In this lies the key to all these dark problems. We have seen nothing yet in the statements of the Andover professors which shows that they have found it.

A TRUE WORD.-Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe, in a letter to the Independent on "Church Union," says that the Bishops, in their deliberations at Chicago, "felt that Christ would never reign in this guilty land until His followers are one army under His cross and crown, and that they were willing to despise themselves, or sacrifice everything but truth to their sense of the wickedness of divisions."

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

An old friend, now a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church writes:

"Your statement on page 360, that 'No fragment of the Church can contain or arrive at the truth in its perfectness," is one which I fully endorse. That sentence contains, to my mind, the key to the whole situation. And for that very reason, I am distrustful of any teaching, however plausible, that comes in conflict with what appears to be the Catholic faith. I say 'appears,' for I am not certain what the Catholic faith is on the subject of endless torment.

But, if it could be indisputably proved from the constant teaching of the primitive church that any one of the existing theories concerning the future of the wicked was a part of the universal faith of Christendom, I, for one, should not feel warranted in coolly ignoring that theory, merely because it did not square with my private judgment in the matter.'

We agree with our brother that great deference is due to the voice of the whole church, where it speaks with one consent, and where we have reason to believe it has fairly and submissively sought light from the Holy Ghost before making its declaration. Our correspondent may well hesitate, however, to reckon the dogma of endless torment as a part of the faith of universal Christendom. It certainly was not such up to the time of Origen and the two Gregories—of Nazianzen and of Nyssa. Nor has it ever been made such by any oecumenical council which carried with it the weight of authority required by the condition our correspondent accepts, namely, that a perfect statement of truth cannot bc expected from a fragmentary church. Our friend also may see another reason why one is now justified in exercising his private judgment in such a matter. Our Lord never gave to His church authority to limit the intelligence, or bind the consciences of her members for all time in such matters. The New Testament everywhere assumes that the church would make increase in divine knowledge until the final unity was attained (Eph. iv. 7-i6). Before that goal is reached, we cannot be sure that any of her dog. matic statements are the final and perfect expression of the truth. Something may be left out. Or some new aspect of the truth may come to light, modifying our conceptions. While, therefore, on the one hand, we are to reverence the voice of the church, we are not to forget that she is not yet perfected in her sphere as God's witness on the earth.

A MEMBER of the Society of Friends encloses to us some tracts of their publication, in which it is maintained that God gives to all men, including the heathen, an inward light sufficient to save them, if they yield to it. She adds:

"Now I have read thy magazine and ask that thee will candidly examine the enclosed tracts, which have always been con-vincing to my mind that there need be no straining of Scripture to

save the heathen; for God, himself, is their God, and will care for them, I do not like to hear any one endeavor to make out that 'eternal' and 'everlasting' mean anything but what they do. We cannot consistently apply them to the righteous and not to the unrighteous; and Christ's words are so plain and revelation such a mystery, that we must take the Saviour's words to mean what He intended."

These words concisely express the difficulty which many devout minds have in admitting that there can be any hope beyond the grave for any class of men who die in their sins, and who seek relief from this harsh view in the doctrine that all men, heathen and savage, have a gospel light in their own souls, by which they may now be saved. To this we reply:

1. The Scriptures teach that the heathen do not live up to the light they have, and by it they are all condemned (Rom. iii. 9–23). 2. They teach that men must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be saved, and ask, "How can they believe on Him of whom they have not heard?" Even Cornelius was not saved without this faith (Acts xi. 14).

3. If it be true, then, of the heathen that God is their "God and will care for them," He must in some way take up their case on the other side of death.

4. The Scriptures were given to reveal the fact that God cannot be defeated by death in any of His plans or purposes of grace concerning man. The doctrine of redemption through resurrection runs through the Bible.

5. The single passage (Matt. xxv. 31-46), to which our cor. respondent refers, must be interpreted in the light of this principle. It begs the question to assert that Christ means by "eternal," absolute endlessness, and "we must take His plain words to mean what He intended." Our friend should remember that Christ did not speak these words in English. They appear in our version after passing through two translations. For St. Matthew's gospel was probably first written in Hebrew, or in Aramaic, which was the vernacular dialect of those to whom He spoke. Both as a question of philology and of exegesis, we are sent back to inquire into the Hebrew or Old Testament use of the equivalent for this word "eternal." And we find that almost invariably it defines a relative, and not an absolute eternity. A thing is viewed in Scripture as eternal which lasts through the whole of the existing order.

It is

also an underlying Old Testament principle that redemption is effected by a judicial destruction of the old order, in order to clear the way for the introduction of a new order. Resurrection, in the Jewish conception, introduces man into a new order. It belongs essentially on the side of God's redemptive working. Our Saviour's words, therefore, relate to a destruction of the wicked which should be eternal in the sense that it must continue through the whole existing order of things. He could not have meant to set aside the "hope toward God," of which all the prophets had spoken, that there shall be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. Moreover, this destruction may also be viewed as endless in the sense that resurrection does not restore the old gift of life, which is forfeited forever. It confers another gift. The bankrupt who receives a new estate in life does not recover the old; whereas the righteous never become bankrupt. And so their life is eternal in the sense that it survives all changes of order, and through all "ages."

If we had all learned from childhood to properly locate the judgment-scene in Matt. xxv., as not pertaining to the risen dead, but to the living nations of mankind (see Vol. ii. WORDS OF RECONCILIATION, No. 4), we would not find it so difficult to understand how an "eternal" punishment, the essence of which is death, must necessarily be limited by resurrection which, while it can confer upon the unjust only a life which is under judgment, as is man's present life, is yet recovery from death, the wages of sin. Whether, however, our explanation is satisfactory or not, no single passage can be allowed to set aside a principle that runs through the whole Bible. Such a principle is this, that resurrection is redemptive. We say single passage, for this is the only passage which appears to teach distinctly everlasting punishment. The other passages relied on all take their coloring from this. Had we space, we could show also that the accurate meaning of the word kolasis, translated punishment," corresponds with the view we have taken of the whole passage.