nized, the Book which "is in advance not only of the age, but of all ages," was thrown in the way of every modern reform. The line of argument for slavery e. g. was very simple. Slavery existed in Bible times. The author of the Book allowed it. He is immutable and infallible. Therefore He approves it to-day. Our venerable and beloved Quaker poet, in "A Sabbath Scene," epitomized this use of the Book, while northern divines were defending the fugitive slave law. A panting runaway, with her owner at her heels, flees for refuge into a church. And the obsequious preacher replies to the demand of the master:

“Of course I know your right divine
To own and work and whip her :
Quick, deacon, throw that polyglot
Before the wench and trip her ?"

So the Mormons argue for polygamy, the moderate drinkers oppose total abstinence, the objectors to a larger sphere of work by Christian women, in our churches, set the Book against that, and a fanatic in Massachusetts, a few years since, appealing to the example of Abraham, murdered his own child.

But the progress of theology is too large a theme for an article in a periodical. All openings of the contents of Revelation are but phases of that grand "History of the Work of Redemption," which Jonathan Edwards long since showed the Book to be. It is redemption, too, in a broader sense than the renewal of single souls. It is the regeneration of society. It is the ushering in of a better age in all cabinets and counting rooms, at all council boards, in all homes, no less than in all hearts. It is the disclosure of the truth that the confused and often conflicting movements in the tides of human affairs, the advancing strides of civilization, the ripening to their fullest fruitage of sciences, arts and literature, resolve themselves, when profoundly viewed, into the Redemption which the Book unfolds.

As one climbs the ascent of a certain peak of the Rocky Mountains, he plunges into a wilderness of forest and underbrush, of deep, mysterious gorges, of beetling cliffs, of gigantic snow banks, stretching away, above, below, to right and left,

in wild confusion. He is lost in a pathless waste. But, descending again and traveling to a distance, as he turns to look, he finds these snowy acres falling into line and assuming shape, and slowly the "Mountain of the Holy Cross " spreads out to him, in spotless splendor on its broad, shaggy bosom, like an old crusader, its magnificent symbol of the world's redemption. So do the intricate, and often perplexing lines of national thought and life, the uplifting and refining forces at work throughout Christendom, blend, under the ordering of Providence, in the grand evolution of

"That far-off divine Event

To which the whole creation moves."

The progress is constant. The process is unalterably one.

G. B. WILLCOX.

UNIVERSITY TOPICS.

PROFESSOR ELIAS LOOMIS.*

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT DWIGHT AT THE FUNERAL SERVICE.

"AND YET I AM NOT ALONE, BECAUSE THE FATHER IS WITH ME."

THE words of Jesus, which he used of himself and of the experiences of his own life, come to us oftentimes with a peculiar tenderness and power, as we think of the way in which we are ourselves led onward towards the Eternal Kingdom. He had a higher nature, indeed, than ours, and so there was a deeper meaning in that which he said from time to time, when it was spoken of what he was passing through, or what was before him, which we cannot appropriate to ourselves. But notwithstanding this, he was our elder brother, and life was for him, in a most real sense, what it is for us. We have fellowship in his sufferings and in his joy. We even, as the apostle says, fill up that which is behind of his experiences, as if he had, in the fullness of his brotherhood for us and of his participation in our life, left for each and every one of his followers some part of his own earthly, history to be filled out and made complete in ours.

With thoughts like these of our relationship to the Master, I could not but recall the words of his which I have read, when I heard, a few days since, that our friend, whose burial brings us here this afternoon, was dying. Alone, and yet not alone, he lived his quiet, studious, thoughtful, faithful life for many years. Alone, and yet not alone, he took his way to the place where he could be tenderly cared for by the Christian kindness which gives help, and, if it may be, healing to rich and poor alike, when he saw that a serious, and perhaps fatal, illness had come upon him. Alone, and yet not alone, he passed, by gentle and easy steps, out of the consciousness of life-as calmly, and with courage as undisturbed, as he had moved forward in the time of

*Professor Loomis died at New Haven, on Thursday, August 15th, 1889. The funeral services were held on Monday, August 19th, at Battell Chapel.

strength and health-and then, after a day or two, in the same quietness of spirit, into a new consciousness of a new life, a life of which we here know so little, but of which we have so beautiful a vision. What words could more fully and fitly express our thought concerning him at the end, than these which Jesus said of himself on the last evening of his earthly life; I am not alone, because the Father is with me.

Our friend, who has lived among us and has been of us, was a man of solitary life in one sense, and yet not in another. By reason of the peculiar circumstances of his history, and the ordering of Providence for him, he was left alone many years ago. The removal by death of the chosen partner of his joys and sorrows deprived him of his home, and the blessings belonging to it, even before he came to this place for his permanent work here. The passing on of his children, as time moved forward, toward their independent work and experience in maturer life separated from him, after a few years more, those on whom his thoughts and affection had centered for the future. The very studies in which he found his chief pleasure, and through which he was able to accomplish so great results, were such as, of necessity, parted him from the daily life and thought of most of those who surrounded him. The peculiar constitution of his own mind, also, disposed him to quiet reflection, and to solitary searching after truth, and led him to a dwelling, as it were, in the region of the laws of nature in the heavens and the earth. All things thus tended to keep him by himself, and even laid this necessity upon him in large measure. He had, moreover, a satisfaction in his own researches and his own thinkinga calm joy in the accurate, and steady, and even working of his powers, and in the clear vision of his mental eye commanding the sphere of abstract truth, which gave him a manly feeling of sufficiency for and in himself, and at the same time made him feel himself independent of the world. His mind could always turn inward and find what it most desired. It was not forced, for its very happiness and comfort, to look outward towards others, or to ask help from them. Nature and education, also, made him a man of few words; and men of few words are wont, more than other men, to live in and with themselves. For all these reasons-reasons having their foundation in the Providential dealing with him, in the gifts and developments of his mind, in his chosen studies and spheres of thought, and in the

power of meeting for himself the wants of his inner life-he was a man who lived, in a peculiar sense, alone. But he was not a lonely man. The hermit element, if we may so call it, which resolutely withdraws a man from his fellows, and often puts him in an attitude of hostility to them-to their thoughts, and customs, and their daily manner of working-was altogether foreign to his nature. The element in character which makes one shun social life with a sort of bitterness, or with a condemnation of it as foolish or useless, or with no care for it at all and no capacity to enjoy it, was equally unknown in his experience. He did not live apart from the world because he did not believe in its life, or wish to belong to it, or take any interest in what was outside of himself or his personal thoughts and studies. He was no solitary man in this unlovely or unmanly way. On the other hand, he was ready to teach others, and to work and write for their benefit. He was kindly and generous in his feeling; willing to hear the calls of need or benevolence, and to respond to them; glad to talk with his friends, and with men whom he met everywhere, if they would talk with him; disposed to follow, in his reading and his thinking, the public life of the day; open to social and friendly intercourse, in the ordinary lines of such intercourse, in a degree far beyond what many, who knew him only casually, could believe. He was a man who studied the great subject of education, and was willing to express his views upon it for the help of others who, like himself, were engaged in the work of teaching. He had a large outlook toward the future and the best things in this sphere of education, as I know from my own observation of him. He had the kindliness of social life, as well as a sympathy for it. He was a man who lived much alone, but he was not, as we have already said, a lonely, solitary man, in the sense that he saw nothing, or approved of nothing, or wished for nothing beyond himself. He was a man, therefore, who could be alone, and yet not alone : -alone in his work, in his thoughts and his satisfaction in them, in his solitude of life which was forced upon him by the progress of time and the separations of this passing world; but not alone, because the avenues of his soul were open to the kindly and noble impulses of the best life, to the thoughts which were constantly coming in towards him from the earnest men about him, and from the larger world, and above all to the influences and powers of the Kingdom of God. The scholar's life is often a