being based upon the coment elements of his prophecy. Some critics hold that prediction was the resulf preaching, and occupied an inferior place in the prophet's mind, whereas preaching was the natural result of prediction. In this respect the critics find nothing in the commentator to comfort them. He also accepts the theory of a "double sense" in prophecy, and insists that the New Testament writers interpreted the Old Testament prophecies from the double view-point, and thus found a literal and a spiritual or allegorical meaning in them. If the New Testament writers really held to a double sense, the theologians of the present day, also, may justly interpret the prophecies in accordance with that rule. To the theory of a double sense, however, the critics are firmly opposed; but Adam Clarke does not sympathize with them. As to Isaiah, he says that the "return from Babylon is the first, though not the principal, thing in the prophet's view," which, as it enlarges, anticipates the Messiah and culminates in the triumph of his kingdom. The two views are given by the prophet, the one being natural and literal, the other spiritual and Messianic. Most orthodox critics accept the double sense of the prophetical writings. As some contemporaneous writers held that Isaiah was exclusively indebted to natural gifts or influences, the commentator wrote: "I had rather look to his inspiration for the correctness of his language and the dignity of his sentiments than to those very inferior helps," suggesting his belief in verbal inspiration. As to a double authorship of Isaiah's prophecies, he is ignorant of such a theory, and sees no difficulty in assigning the whole to one writer. The want of chronological order in Jeremiah he explains in a very natural way, but does not find the book to be composite or unreliable. The book of Daniel, he says, was "undoubtedly written by himself." He does not remand it among the hagiographa, nor does he attempt to degrade it or in any way criticise it; but he does pay the prophet a tribute for "his great and conscientious accuracy," and declares that his predictions were literally fulfilled. Thus, whenever he speaks, it is as if with set purpose to express his opposition to the views of the destructionists. The only exception to this statement is his admission that writing was unknown prior to Moses, which some critics will indorse; but as inscriptions carrying us back of the times of Moses have been found in Phoenicia and Babylon, and, therefore, establish the habit of writing anterior to his day, the critics are not warranted in jubilating over this discovery. We submit that when a shining example of rationalistic faith, or of disturbed mental equipoise, is wanted to cheer the disconsolate leaders of errant criticism, it will be well to pass by the fathers of Methodism and look elsewhere.

Theory has played a conspicuous part in science, philosophy, and religion. It has stimulated to research, discovery, and re-adjustment of established conclusions; and when not urged as a substitute for facts or final truths it has guided the thinker to results, either negative or positive, that were of value in the settlement of controversial questions and obscure teachings. The theorist should always remember his limitations,

and avoid assumption and the "ashness of a conjectural affation. The atomic theory of the universe, as well as the undulatory theory of light, can claim recognition, not as solutions or uths, which would destroy them as theories, but as tentative statemes of facts difficult of explanation. Science hitherto has been the playground of the theorist. Within a century geology has proposea eighty theories that are now extinct; chemistry, too, has modified its laws of affinity and proportion as new facts have been successfully discovered; physiology is also undergoing a radical transformation; and all other sciences are emerging from theoretic conditions into positive realities. The scientist is getting weary with working hypotheses: he wants facts. Philosophy likewise has passed through a variety of theoretic changes, and is still speculating on the problems of matter, life, and mind, with some expectation that it will finally reach a conclusion. Idealism is as much a theory as materialism; one is the natural reaction from the other; both are doomed to a deserved oblivion.

While the theorist is at home in science and philosophy he is equally a familiar figure in the sphere of religion. He stalks abroad with notions, explanations, and announcements concerning every truth and doctrine propounded in theology or the Holy Scriptures, and is never at a loss to account for every thing in antiquity or to explain the darkest problem of human history. He is useful because there are some things that can have only a theoretic explanation, as the mode of creation, the nature of atonement, and the physical aspect of the resurrection. Nevertheless theology has lost caste because it has employed speculative arts on biblical truths. The critical mind is now disposed to reject some of the truths of revelation because they are proposed as theories, or are explained only in a hypothetical way. The intelligent man demands truth, not speculation; he seeks facts, not sentiments. The Bible should satisfy him, for it is not a book of theories. Its writers were not speculators in the field of inquiry; and, singularly, there is not one theory in the Book offered in elucidation of a problem. The theoretic spirit is strong in Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who, in contending with Job, hold that calamity is a proof of sin; but the Book does not teach that doctrine. There is no theory of creation in the Bible; no theory of evil; no theory of inspiration; no theory of prophecy; no theory of incarnation; no theory of atonement; no theory of resurrection; no theory of the future life. The biblical teaching on these subjects is in the form of a revelation of truth, and in no instance in the form of a theory. The Bible writers were truth-tellers, and the truths they taught should be re-taught as truths. Exegetes, theologians, and critics analyze, theorize, modify, and agree or disagree; but the Book is a book of truth, and the Spirit that inspired it will guide the disciple into truth.

Is man in a state of probation in this life? Arminian theologians usually answer this question in the affirmative; but Professor C. A. Briggs, in his Whither? repudiates it as unscriptural and un-Calvinistic. On page 217

he says: The doctrine that this life is a probation was not known to the Reformers or the Westminster divines. It is a doctrine that is inconsistent with Calvinistic principles." On page 218, acknowledging that the doctrine has some standing in Calvinistic bodies, he says: "It is really a provincial and temporary freak in theology, which has already been abandoned by thoughtful British divines, and which will soon disappear from American theology." He also denounces it as "contra-confessional," and, besides being opposed to fact, is pregnant with errors that the Church cannot afford to encourage. With its alleged irreconcilability with original Calvinism we have nothing to do, except to say that it furnishes another argument, if one were needed, for the revision of the incoherent system, and its adaptation to the true position of man under the Gospel. The reasons assigned for the elimination of the doctrine from theology in general induce us to give them the formal consideration to which they are entitled, for it is neither a Calvinistic nor a Methodistic question in itself, but one large enough to concern the whole race. It seems that in the view of this teacher the race "had a probation once for all in Adam;" but as Adam failed to honor his opportunity, so he and his descendants forfeited the right to another probation, and are now under condemnation, to be redeemed, if at all, according to the sovereign pleasure of God the Father. He holds, therefore, that the race is a lost race; it is under a curse, and without probationary privilege either under the law or the Gospel. Then follows divine sovereignty, and the unpalatable doctrine of election and reprobation. The mere statement of the Professor's historical and doctrinal view of man carries its own condemnation. If a denial of the doctrine of probation is necessary to the vindication of the doctrine of election, it is easy to discover on what an insufficient foundation the latter is resting. Probation and election, according to Professor Briggs, are incompatible. Instead of rejecting election as the solution of the difficulty he rejects probation and has saved his Calvinism. In this he has made it a Calvinistic question, which robs it of general interest. When, however, he affirms (page 217) that "the doctrine of a probation after death depends upon the doctrine of a probation in this life," he aims to connect a general truth with a particular error, which cannot pass unnoticed. He more than once, though not in any logical way, associates the doctrine of probation, as held by certain evangelical bodies, with the Andover heresy, as if in this way the Calvinism he represents can be saved from extinction. On page 218 he says: "If this life be a probation, then there is no ground in the Scriptures or in the Westminster symbols, or in sound reason, why this probation should not be extended into the middle state for those who have had no probation here." On page 220 he says: "The doctrine that this life is a probation leads inevitably to the position that the middle state is a still larger field for probation, for the vast majority of our race who have had no probation here." As for those who take a different view, "they cannot hold probation here without following the Andover theory, and holding probation there." This bit of assumed logic is overthrown by the fact, that, of all the antagonists

of the "Andover theory," Methodist divines, who hold rigidly to the doctrine of probation, are the severest in their denunciations 3d most invincible in their arguments, against it. In our view one obation cannot imply another probation without losing its identity character as probation. The doctrine acquires validity in the limitation it prescribes for its operation, and loses force by repetition cttenuation. There is as much reason for asserting a third probation, if the second should fail, as to assert a second because the first failed; and this logic opens the door to successive probations until the whole race shall be saved, which is Universalism. When Professor Briggs attempts to ground heretical dogma in the evangelical doctrine of probation, which is allied with the doctrine of human responsibility, he mistakes the connection between them, and injures the cause he seems anxious to defend. The doctrine of one probation is neither unscriptural nor unscientific, and it is likely to abide in the theology of the Church.

The long-established belief that the family was the original social unit is now seriously controverted by antiquarians, some of them holding that the tribe was the first organized human institution, from which society, with its domestic and civil laws and customs, has descended. Mr. Lewis Morgan, tracing the progress of the early races from barbarism to civilization, is emphatic in the assertion that the tribe preceded the family; and Dr. Emil Reich is equally certain that the "polygamous and polyandrous family preceded the monogamous family," and that the "monogamous family is of very recent origin." These assertions revive the theories of historians, theologians, and scholars generally who have maintained that, as taught in Genesis, marriage was the primal institution, the family was the first social organization ordained of God, and society, whatever its developments or disintegrations since its establishment, originated in a divine order, and is typing itself after it. The cases cited by these authors of tribes without families prove that the family institution had disappeared, and that the tribal condition was a lapse from a former better condition. They certainly did not establish the precedence of the tribe any more than the doctrine of papal infallibility establishes the precedence of the papal hierarchy in the history of Christianity. Nor because polygamy or polyandrous conditions have been discovered among degraded and ignorant peoples are they proof of the precedence of polygamy as the type of the marriage relation. In our study of these social questions we must grasp the facts from the beginning, and recognize the degeneracy of mankind in intellect, religion, and social life. The prevalence of polygamy, and the authority of the tribe, are rather signal proofs of social disintegration than evidences of original institutions. The family was first, and made the tribe possible; monogamy was the primary institution and suggested polygamy. The skillful reversal of history on these points will excite inquiry, and in the end vindicate the scriptural teaching of the origin of the human family, and that monogamy as a divine idea was introduced into the world in the pristine days of paradise. 37-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VI.

THE HUMÀ

CURRENT DISCUSSIONS.

QUANTITY IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

As a general propositio the Bible may be considered a supernatural book, or a book whose chief reference is to supernatural agencies, methods, and results, and whose origin must be attributed, in whole or in part, to supernatural impulse and direction. The assumption of its supernatural character warrants the conclusion that in one respect the book is unlike others, so that it is not subject to the common laws and tests of literature. Whatever its association with the natural, whether in the realm of the physical universe, or human history, or biblical truth, the supernatural evidently does not lose its identity nor forfeit its authority; is in no sense amenable to lower law or order, and never appears as the slave of natural influence. So far forth, then, as the Bible is a supernatural book, it is not a human book, nor is it bound by canons of law, or open to the ordinary á priori tests and processes of human intelligence.

We are confronted with the fact, however, that the alleged supernatural book appears in the form of a human book; it makes use in these days of type, paper, ink, language, punctuation, chapters, binding, title, 12mo or quarto sizes, as, in ancient times, it made use of parchment and the simple apparatus of writing; in this particular it is not distinguishable from other books. The outward dress of revelation compels its assignment to the level of other books, and justifies its examination in the same way as other books are examined, without any regard to its supernatural content or origin. Keeping before the mind the distinction between the supernatural character and the literary form of the book, it may be studied, tested, and compared with other books from both view-points, and without danger to either. It is only when the literary form is pushed to the front, and the supernatural element is held in abeyance, that criticism may be damaging, and the order of study be subversive of established results. We should always remember that a one-sided view of the Bible, however devout or intelligent, is detrimental to an appreciation of its highest excellence, and the discovery of its richest significance. To ignore the literary aspect of the Bible is as narrow in spirit and as prolific of error as it is to forget that the Book is supernatural; and the reverse is equally true.

In discussing the question before us we do affirm the existence of a human quantity in the Scriptures, and propose to interrogate it as to its importance and relation to revelation. We must apprise our readers, however, that the discovery of human elements in the Bible is not at all recent, nor due to the genius of critics, nor that it is the result of the inspiration of some teacher in Israel. Any attempt to show that the discovery of the human side of revelation is modern, and that the Church owes much to the discoverer, is enough to make the sacred writers arise from their graves and dispute with the fabricators. It is not new that the writers