real worship must cease. How could he be worshiped in spirit and in truth, since bodily form and personal presence are essential to the revelation of the character of God? The soul cannot worship a proposition or an abstraction. The spiritual intelligence demands a personal presence in time and space. If God fills immensity, then he who is from everlasting to everlasting must, by the necessities of thought, fill all space and be present every-where at every conceivable period. Man can know God only in finite conceptions; definitions and postulates and metaphysical propositions do not meet the wants of the intellect nor the necessities of worship.

But how can a material body be at all points at the same time? This is only another interrogation point; not a denial of a fact, but an effort to solve a problem. If the heart must wait for the how, it may as well wait for the trumpet and the angel. The corporeal body of Christ is related to pure spirit, and hence it is not subject to the common laws of matter. His body and spirit is a complex unit, and cannot be put in the same category with other corporeal beings; for by hypothesis it is the union of perfect spirit with perfect matter.

But what are time and space? Entities, attributes, or relations? Who has succeeded in formulating a definition? Who dare try again? Is not space the relation between objects, and time the relation between events? For all the purposes of religious thought, are not space and time the relations between the infinite and the finite? Matter, as related to his bodily presence, seems to have new properties, for corporeal being fixes no limits to the infinite Christ; mind must stay by the facts of his history, wherever they may lead.

What is matter? This is one of Plato's great interrogation points. He asked the question but never presumed to answer it. From the "flux " of Heraclitus to the "law" of Lotze the pendulum has been swinging from one of the extremities of the arc to the other; but during all these ages has philosophy added one cubit to its stature? Matter has been defined as phenomena, law, mathematical points, state of the infinite, a double-faced somewhat, with form for the physical side and law for the spiritual side.

Hegel says the essence of matter is gravity. Lotze makes it a phenomenon of spirit. Another high authority makes it a

form of thought, based upon the activities of something not itself, and declares that "a knowledge of God must rest for its assurance upon an ethical trust in God." What is an "ethical trust in God?" Will it cause the soul to cry out, "My Lord and my God?" Did Thomas belong to this modern school?

A. Milford Hall teaches that God is universal substance. That matter is a condensed form of spirit, and spirit is an attenuated form of matter. Professor Drummond's ink is scarcely dry till he is placed among the immortals for being bolder than Plato, if not wiser. He says: "Philosophy does well in proving matter a nonentity." "For men generally to call this a world of matter is an absurdity." But Mrs. Eddy stands at the top of this list, for she declares, "Divine science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter and resolves things into thoughts." In pure idealism neither philosophy nor religion is possible. Matter must be more than an idea; more than a law. Is it not the product of personal power? A substantial reality in time and space? If law is substance, and the only real in nature is law, then what is law? The fact of law is neither the knowledge of the law, nor the law itself.

Christ is the only solution of time and space; of the infinite and the finite; of matter and spirit. But Christ is a reality for the sense, a fact for the intellect, and a personal presence for the soul. Could all the facts of his personal history be generalized, the result would be a Christian philosophy. If by some unknown law in harmony with matter and spirit we have the fact that the infinite may come within the limits of the finite, and be present in time and space, then why by some other law may not the seen become the unseen, and corporeal being be present in time and space without affecting the outward senses?

Is there a logic of the soul? Back of the reasoning powers is there not a higher reason? If man bears the image of his Lord has he not some power enabling him to see back of phenomena and law? Is not all revelation built upon this hypothesis? "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom" is the divine announcement of this doctrine.

There is a race-mind with powers to perceive universal principles and data of consciousness-"a faculty divine" which sees into the heart of things; the high noon of the soul, when

it runs up to rapture and bridges over the gulf between the seen and the unseen, the visible and the invisible worlds. All knowledge is not the result of dull sense and cold logic. Is not inspiration a sort of higher reason? a mental fact without a satisfactory explanation? a thought-a faith-a flash from heaven-an apocalypse-a soul-leap beyond the boundary-line? Art has its metaphysics; and art is the nearest kin to religion. The soul has power to realize the unseen through the emotions.

Are there not supreme moments in the history of every earnest soul-times of great spiritual agitation, birth-throes of new thoughts, agonies of new experiences-when the heart begins to doubt its doubts, and the mysterious, subtle influence of spirit on spirit transcends all knowledge, and the soul is brought face to face with the great Reality?

Is not St. Paul's personal experience of more value than a library of speculations concerning matter and spirit? The fourteen days of storm on the Adriatic are as full of mystery as of moaning winds and midnight mutterings of the discour aged man. In that dark and starless night, when the tempest raged and all hope had fled, Paul stood forth and said: "There stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Cæsar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee." Is this angel of God a phantom, a poetic myth, or a personal reality in time and space, standing beside Paul, ruling the storm? Turn to the midday scene on the Damascus road, and listen to Paul's interrogation of that mysterious voice which had pierced his soul with that emphatic Hebrew "Why?" and hear the answer, "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest;" then attempt to substitute some abstraction, or a Christ beyond the stars, for a Christ beside the Damascus road. Some facts transcend our reasoning that may lie within the compass of our reason when stimulated by the Holy Ghost.

Reasoning is the power of intellectual analysis; reason is the intuitional, synthetic power of the soul. Reasoning builds bridges across gulfs of thought on piers furnished by the reason. But reason needs neither bridge nor pier, but leaps the chasm at a single bound. Reasoning puts facts and phenomena together, and weaves them into arguments, but reason is the faith power that realizes the personal presence of the Lord.

Faith is more than belief; it is the conviction of the unseen; the highest possible knowledge. Pure spirit-bodiless, without form and corporeal reality-must lie without the limits of human powers. Incarnation, God in time and space, is an eternal soul necessity. If Christ be an object of intelligent worship he must be in the range of human faculties. If there be no present, substantial Christ-if he be only an historical being, with deeds. and sayings, or an absent corporeal being in some remote future -then are we living in a dead past, and religion is only empty ceremony. Why build a tabernacle, a temple, or a church to the Most High if he is not personally present? Why sing hymns and bow the knee, and talk face to face with Jehovah, if Christ is in some other part of the universe limited by his body? Christ must be in the presence of the worshiper a reality for the soul. The sacred Scriptures teach this doctrine, and there is nothing in speculative science that contradicts it. There is no more difficulty in thinking of Christ in the midst of his people, "with all things appertaining to man's nature, wherewith he ascended," than there is in thinking of him in the far-off heavens.

The problem of matter and spirit remains unsolved, but the field of the supernatural is open, and earnest explorers are stimulated to enter. Matter is a physical entity-the product of mind and the symbol of a higher reality. When under the control of pure Spirit there are no fixed limitations to its phenomena. A perfect corporeal being has power to be present or absent at will.

Christianity is a philosophical religion: it is the philosophy of matter and mind; the philosophy of matter as related to mind. It is the only philosophy of God.

The personal presence is the sublimest promise of Christ to his Church; the philosophy of her persistent power and divine impulse through the centuries. It is the unlimited resources for all the future, and the inspiration of her teachers "unto the end of the world."

а
A. J. Nelson.

ART. VI. THE SEMITIC QUESTION.

THE author is aware of the existence of parties, Jewish as well as Christian, who profess to believe that there is in reality no Semitic, or, perhaps more specific, Jewish, question.

To such as have reflected upon our social conditions, and especially to those who have sought to comprehend certain phenomena emphasized by the great revolutions of the last century and of the one now current, it must have appeared no less than marvelous to note the altered social and political estate of the Jewish race. It is one of the fruits of the fermentation proceeding all along the line; and no better proof of the existence of a Semitic question can be adduced than the disparity of views respecting the utility and the righteousness of the feat. While the Jews and most Christians have hailed the achievement as one of humanity and progress, certain reac tionists have raised their voices in dissent, and have advocated a more or less substantial retraction of proferred liberties and privileges. The mere fact that among these conservatives are ranked some of the most eminent and impartial men-such as are famed for their labors of love toward the Jewish race, and even converted Jews, who hold that Jewish equalization can be only relative or approximate-ought to be sufficient plea for holding the question still unsolved.

Some general prefatory remarks may be of service in delineating the traditionary relations of the Israelite to his neighbors, whether foreign or domestic. His foreign relations, of course, practically ceased to exist with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and to Christians they are in general so known as not to require details. A few phases, however, may obtain mention further on. That Israel suffered much at the hands of the heathen because of its being the elect, even as David, the chosen of God, was hedged about with snares and pitfalls by his godless enemies, is a fact readily admitted alike by Jews and Christians. Throughout the Roman period indignities and chastisements were multiplied upon the race, and even the Mussulmans, whose religion is so closely allied to that of the Talmud, sought to extend their influence by persecuting their brethren the sons of Jacob. What was perpetrated against