criticism so far as it refuses to accept the divine history as infallible and inspired.

6. We hold to the fact of the inspiration of the Bible. Some have imagined we have a theory of inspiration to propound; not so; we believe that holy men of old, as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, wrote the sacred books, Genesis as well as Matthew, Joshua as well as John, Job as well as James, the Chronicles as well as the Acts, Isaiah as well as Peter, Daniel as well as Paul, poetry and history as well as doctrinal epistle and Apocalypse. Spiritually guided in the preparation of the books, the Bible stands forth in its wholeness as a supernatural book in contradistinction to all human and uninspired books. What believer can find fault with this position? A theory of inspiration that reduces the Bible to a human book we reject; but the inspiration it teaches for itself and the theory that exalts it into a supernatural book we approve. Higher criticism is at one with rationalism in rejecting this teaching; hence we oppose the infidel position.

As we understand conservative or orthodox critics, such are the general and special beliefs they hold, and such we are quite willing to maintain. We have no merely personal or esoteric views to thrust into the controversy, but those beliefs which the Church, through its scholarship, is now declaring we propose to defend, and if there are those who are of a different mind they must be willing to be understood as having gone beyond the limits of conservative criticism and as sharing the beliefs of rationalists. We have not drawn the line between the two classes of critics; it exists; and we have recognized it.

It is frequently said that, no difference what the higher critics may do, or what results they may announce, it is impossible for them to overthrow the Christian faith, or to do any substantial harm by any attack they may make upon the Bible. This is true. We never have had the least fear of any permanent injury resulting to the Bible, or that the rationalist is greater than Moses or Paul. Why then oppose the critic? Why resist a movement that can destroy none of the fundamentals? Dr. McCosh says, "I believe that in the age on which we have now entered the Church will have to engage in a fight for the faith once delivered to the saints." We must defend the faith, not because it can be destroyed, but because it cannot be destroyed. It is our duty to show the rationalists that they can do nothing and should surcease their vain attempts. Truth does not take care of itself; it is propagated by human agency, and the divine order implies defense. We resist pessimism, agnosticism, atheism, and infidelity by argument, not because they can destroy, but because they cannot effect any thing, and because they ought to be destroyed. Did not John answer Gnosticism? Did not Paul, who said "For we can do nothing against the truth but for the truth," assail error whenever he met it? Did not John Wesley resist error and want of faith in the Established Church? Did not Dr. Whedon mightily assail Calvinism, not because it would triumph, but because it delayed triumph? Nor did any of these heroes, nor do leaders of thought now, consult denominational courtesy,

or ask of the errorists the privilege of attacking them. Truth is under no such restraint as the critics would impose upon it, but, going forth to conquer, it presses to the front, and decapitates the boasting Goliath without any regard to his feelings, or the feelings of the Philistines behind him. In this special work of defending orthodoxy, or propagating the results of criticism, Methodism will not be an idle spectator or a timid participant. We quite agree with Dr. O. A. Curtis, who, at his inauguration as professor of systematic theology in Boston University, declared that if theological conflicts are before the Church "Methodism will be the most conservative force in the battle; " that is, we shall see to it that biblical truth, modified in expression as orthodoxy may require, shall be maintained against rationalism, and all the destructive forces of criticism, radicalism, and infidelity. In such conflicts the Church will have no difficulty in understanding where to find the Methodist Review, or how to interpret its advances and defenses.

THE RACE QUESTION.

History is the picture of a struggle of human ambition with the divine doctrine of the brotherhood of man. From the time of the recognition of racial distinctions, selfishness, oppression, and war have characterized nationalities, tribes, families, individuals, and kingdoms; and the self-centered programme is in some lands still in process of execution. When Shem and Japheth separated their interests, each drew boundarylines around his possessions and demanded of the other to keep his distance at the peril of his life; hence, the anti-Semitic agitations in Europe from the dawn of the modern period to the present time. Ancient Egypt was so circumscribed in national feeling as to forbid the settlement of foreigners in her cities, though the Phenicians by special dispensation were exempt from the rigorous rule; but generally the presence of a stranger excited public animosity and almost immediate revenge. The Greek looked upon an outsider as a barbarian, and felt that he owed him none of the rights that belonged to the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus; but Paul proclaimed in his ears that God hath made of one blood all the nations to dwell upon the face of the earth. The Hebrew and the Samaritan hated each other with a perfect hatred, and fought each other's religion with the angry fury of wild beasts. In our day the same insanity of race antagonism, though not as intense as in the past, owing to the diffusion of Christianity, is still prevalent-Celt and Teuton, Anglo-Saxon and Chinese, American and Negro, disputing with each other, over rights, boundaries, interests, and the providential lot assigned them in the order of the world, and disturbing the peace of society and the progress of government with quarrels and conflicts that indicate a great deal of depravity latent in mankind. One wearies with the incessant turmoil over human rights, as if birth north or south of Naples, east or west of Greenwich, nearness to or remoteness from the equator, the more or less of pigment in one's person,

the character of hair on his head, or the facial contour he offers to the world, in some way determines whether one is really a human being, or something else, to whom extension of privileges is a great courtesy and condescension. On the broad teaching of the divine Gospel we affirm that it is a crime to raise human rights into a question at all, or to discuss their limitations and applications, for he who was born under a favored star is no more than he who is clothed in black raiment or the yellow garments of nature; and to insist upon distinctions which qualify rights is as absurd as it is criminal.

The problem of the rights of races is not new in the United States, nor is it in such an advanced state of settlement as to allay anxiety, or suppress inquiry into its probable evolution. The existence of slavery in the South introduced a dividing-line between the white and black races that even the sacrificial blood of the war did not erase, or for the time being more than obscure. It was believed by many that thereafter the Negro, by nature as much a human being as the ruler who emancipated him, and endowed with certain constitutional rights, would disarm the hostility of the white people, and share with them the results of our common civilization. Whatever may have been the hopes of philanthropists, or the expectations of the Negro himself, it has come to pass that an actual social war is in progress in the South, and that the future is not at all encouraging, either for the black man or the country. Many are still hoping, as they have hoped, that an adjustment of differences between the races is still possible, and that peace and unity will prevail in all the South; but there are some facts that are opposed to this optimistic view of the situation, and they might as well be considered now as later in the conflict.

In general terms, there are twice as many white people in the South as colored people, but in twenty-five years more the latter, it is estimated, will have so increased as to constitute nearly one half of the population; but even if this is an over-estimate, the most conservative view must allow that in a majority of the States of the South, as in a few of them now, the Negroes will exceed the whites, and if permitted to exercise their rights will control political affairs and practically rule that section of the country. To those whose fears are excited by this probability it appears that the time will come when, as once the white ruled the black man in the South, so the black will be in authority over the white man; and to prevent this consummation, which seems inevitable, a war, first upon the Negro's rights, must be carried on, and, if unsuccessful, then a war upon the Negro himself must be precipitated. We do not say that this general apprehension of an increase of population and of a substitution of black for white authority is justified by any thing more than a reasonable probability; but the opposition to the Negro is whetted into cruelty by this apprehension.

The alarmist is also disturbed by the evident fact, that, notwithstanding the accusation of indolence against the black man, he is industrious enough to accumulate property; and, going on at the present rate of success, he will be the capitalist of the South not many years hence. The

war cost the Southern people their wealth, and they have not yet recovered it; but the quiet, honest blacks already represent millions in real estate, bank stock, manufactories, and in the general industrial interests of the South. In the slavery period the black man was an economic factor upon which the property of the whites was based; he is now no less an economic factor, but it turns to the account of himself. Politicians may discount the energy of the colored people; but statistics contradict their statements and prove them to be formidable rivals in the race for wealth, all of which the sober-minded whites begin to see, and, seeing, begin to calculate their own final displacement, both in political authority and in the influence that wealth controls. We are not prepared to dispute the conclusion of the alarmist, because the facts as given seem to justify it; but, admitting the facts, they no more authorize a conflict than, admitting that foreigners may exceed the native population in twenty-five years, and that they may be the owners of our soil, our government would be authorized to confiscate their property, expel them from our coasts, or exterminate them in a speedy war. If the facts are as stated, a problem is on our hands; but they do not furnish a single reason for oppression, curtailment of rights, or a war of extermination.

It is not affirmed by the whites that the presence of the colored people among them is an offense, because that would be refuted by history; but the fear of what they may be, and what they may be able to do, in the near future is quoted as a defense of all the precautionary measures the whites are now taking for the prevention of what, according to present signs, is inevitable. If by colonization, legislation, or extermination, they may be checked in population, or reduced in political influence, or limited in acquisition of wealth they will be tolerated, and treated as superiors treat inferiors; hence, while the more violent outrages against the race are mildly denounced by those of generous sentiments, it may be taken for granted that the Southern people, as a whole, are in perfect sympathy with the ends of the more vindictive oppressors. As time passes on we can hardly expect a reversal of social facts, or a change in political status, but rather an approach to the larger influence of the black man in the South. To prevent the inevitable, colonization schemes will again be revived, but they will prove insufficient; two or three Southern States may be assigned to the blacks, but this will not avail, for they will soon be too small, and, besides, it will disintegrate the republic; then the annexation of Lower California or upper Mexico will be proposed as an asylum for the race, bat, unless driven from their homes, they will not go there; and then a war of extermination will commence, but it will settle nothing, for when peace shall have been restored the two races will still occupy the South.

All these theories are based upon the supposition that the black man is not a citizen, or even a resident with any natural rights, but that either by law or the sword the white man may dispose of him as readily as he did when he was a slave. To reckon thus can only result in mischief. Patient, and inclined to bear much, the Negro as he increases in selfrespect, self-knowledge, and appreciates his manhood, is increasing in

self-assertion, and will not tamely submit to being crushed. Nor will the people of the North look with complacency upon any attempt to deprive him of his rights, or to coerce him into a form of expulsion from the land; nor as God is just will he look upon the iniquity of the white man in his oppression of the black man with special favor. The continued oppression of the Negro will finally be met by the three forces just named, and the South should carefully consider the odds against them.

Some facts compose the problem that the people must consider, for they are too patent to be denied, and they underlie the situation in the South. The Negro is here. He was not originally here, but the story of his coming, and why he happened to stay, are too well known to require recapitulation. He would have gone back one hundred years ago, but it is too late now to ask him to go. He means to stay, and the nation cannot say nay. If it should be hinted that the presence of the colored people in the South in such overwhelming numbers and with such threatening probabilities is in answer to the original demand for slaves, and may be viewed as a providential punishment for the sin of slavery, the South will be embarrassed if it should attempt to contradict it. We are not philosophizing on this matter, but we wish definitely to state that any theory that contemplates the expulsion of the Negro from the Republic must reckon with history and Providence.

He is a wise man who, foreseeing the conflicts of the future between the races, suggests methods of reconciliation, or the means by which such conflicts may be averted. Statesmanship seems inadequate to the task; the Southerner seems chiefly bent on reduction of the ex-slave; the black man proposes nothing, and the drift is toward confusion and collision. We frankly say there ought to be no race question in this country; and this is the foundation of what we further say respecting the situation. The recognition of the rights of the Negro to which he is entitled will dispose of all the factors of the race problem, if not of the probabilities so horrifying to the native Southerner.

The Negro, as a human being, is possessed of all the rights that naturally belong to human beings, and to repudiate them is to strike at humanity. He has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or Governor Morgan of Georgia has no such right. He is a native of the soil, and cannot be driven from it any more than Senator Butler of South Carolina. No natural right can be named as pertaining to any white man in the South that is not a part of the providential outfit of the black man, and interference therewith is in contravention of nature, and therefore of Providence. We may classify men on other grounds, but not on the basis of natural rights. Epictetus in slavery had all the human nature, with all the rightful belongings, of his master, and it was a crime to dispossess him of them. It is as great a crime to dispossess the free man of his natural rights as to deny them to the slave. In refusing these rights to the black man the white man is fighting not so much with the man as with humanity, and this increases the crime by so much as humanity is greater than the individual. The right to life implies