For one thing it is truly said that preaching at its best is prayer turned round and aimed at the people : "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." With equal wisdom the lecturer says that "preaching at its best is apt to be an interpretation of the Christian consciousness at its best. As the preacher rises in the utterance of his faith men about him are saying, 'Yes, that is what we have felt, but have never been able to tell. Go on; speak for us, that is our faith."" True, also, is Dr. Tucker's saying that humility gives the preacher entrance into the high places of his high calling. “I once asked Dr. Philip Schaff to preach for me. As we passed through the doorway, near the foot of the pulpit stairs, he turned to me and said, 'Don't you always feel humble when you go through this door?' I knew that he felt what he said, and I knew that, though he was not distinctively a preacher, we should have that day great preaching, and we had it. The safety of the preacher, the safeguard from himself, lies in the growth of humility. All God's chosen ones have had it. It is the fine quality which underlies their nature. It explains their shrinkings from duty, their hesitations and reluctance. It was the ground of Moses's protest, Who am I that I should go in unto Pharaoh?' Of Isaiah's despair, 'I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;' of Jeremiah's shrinking, ‘Ah, Lord, God, I am but a child;' of the abasement and exaltation of Paul, 'I am the least of the apostles; I am not worthy to be called an apostle;' but 'I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.""

Another word worthy of being laid to heart by every minister of the Gospel is the statement that the truth gets its highest power when it flames in the preacher's mind and warms his heart so that it comes forth, not only radiant in its own light, but touched with emotion: "Touched with emotion; this is often the touch which makes the old new and the common fresh. As a quaint old commentator said, after reading Paul's words to the Philippians-'I have told you often, and now I tell you weeping' Ah, Paul, that makes it a new truth. You have not said just that before.' We repeat that the Yale lectures on preaching, for 1898, if not supremely brilliant, are valuable for substance and for service.

THE ARENA.

NESCIENCE OF GOD.

THERE is and has been a tendency among Arminian Methodist theologians to look with favor upon the idea that the foreknowledge of God may be limited. Two distinguished names at least will ever be associated with this thought, Dr. Adam Clarke, the great expositor, and Dr. L. D. McCabe, the able and saintly teacher who has lately gone from among us. In his Commentary on the New Testament, at the end of his notes on the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Dr. Clarke argues that, as God's omnipotence implies his power to do all things, so God's omniscience implies his power to know all things;' and he concludes "that God, although omniscient, is not obliged, in consequence of this, to know all that he can know, no more than he is obliged, because he is omnipotent, to do all that he can do." On this way of thinking it is obvious to remark:

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1. It confounds knowledge and power. But knowledge is not a power or ability to know, but the knowing. Omniscience is not a faculty or power to know all things; it is the knowledge of all things. 2. It would seem to involve a knowledge on the part of God of what he is unwilling to foreknow. How shall he choose or determine not to know any conceivable future event without some foreknowledge of it?

3. It involves the acquisition of knowledge through the course of the ages on the part of God. For he cannot but know events as they come to pass, and, if he had no perfect foresight of them beforehand, how his knowledge must increase with time!

Dr. McCabe, however, pursues a somewhat different line of thought from that of Clarke, and affirms as his fundamental and all-controlling proposition that "divine nescience of future contingencies is a necessity in the necessities of things." On this declaration we submit the following observations:

1. This is not a self-evident proposition. For it lacks the nature and force of an axiomatic truth, such as that two and two equal four.

2. In common with Clarke's view it would involve the acquisition of knowledge on the part of God; and, if God is thus acquiring knowledge through the ages, he cannot be omniscient.

3. The proposition must needs apply to all God's future free volitions,. as well as to those of man.

4. We may well question the competency of any finite mind to affirm so much about the possibilities or impossibilities of God's omniscience.

5. The proposition assumes a notion of what time must be with God. But what theologian, philosopher, or prophet has ever yet determined for us what time is even with finite minds? Much less will one so easily

say what time signifies with that Being with whom Dr. Clarke declares, "All that is past, and all that is present, and all that is future to man exists in one infinite, indivisible, and eternal now."

6. Dr. McCabe's arguments in support of his proposition are not convincing:

(1) He avers that future contingencies are nonentities; but the same is as true of future necessities as of future contingencies.

(2) His argument from the divine goodness is stranded and becomes futile when applied to the existence of any and of all evil now existing. (3) The plea that knowledge of contingent future events impeaches God's sincerity in exhortations and warnings might be turned to show with equal force that omniscience unfits the Eternal for the creation and government of the moral universe.

7. Finally, we are of opinion that this doctrine of the nescience of God involves as many insuperable difficulties as it assumes to explain; and we conclude with Dr. Whedon (Freedom of Will, p. 274), “The real difficulty, which we distinctly profess to leave forever insoluble, is to conceive how God came by his foreknowledge." Evanston, Ill.

CHURCH MUSIC AGAIN.

MILTON S. TERRY.

THE article in the last "Arena," on "Church Music," suggests to me a few thoughts on the same subject:

1. The foundation for good congregational singing must be laid in the Sunday school, where all our members begin their Church life. The children and after they cease to be children--the young people should be taught the solid, strong, well-tested hymns of the Church. Too often the singing in the Sunday school is conducted in a haphazard way, without a thought of its educative influence. The children sing the songs that are learned most easily; and the less thoughtful the songs are the more readily they are caught up, and, the sooner learned, the sooner they lose their interest. Hence many Sunday schools must have a new music book every year. But singing should be a part of education in the Sunday school, and the children should be taught only such hymns and tunes as are worth the learning. The wise superintendent or chorister will arrange the music of the session according to a plan, having at least two Church hymns and as many familiar but good choruses, and learning one new song every week.

2. For the Sunday school, therefore, a song book is needed containing the best of the standard hymns of the Church and also many good songs of a more popular sort, yet far above the trashy melodies that fill so many of the Sunday school hymnals. I differ from your correspondent in his estimate of the Epworth Hymnal No. 1, which he says was not a success." In my judgment it was the best hymnal for the Sunday school and the social meeting ever published by our house, and as good as any published elsewhere. It contains the cream of our Church

hymnal and the best also of the popular choruses, giving thereby just what every Sunday school ought to have. And its sale has aggregated a million and a half copies, and is still progressing. We know of Sunday schools that have used it for ten years, and are using it still. No other song book issued by our Church has obtained anything like its popularity. The verdict of the Sunday school world is that it is not a failure, but a pronounced success.

3. If our people are diligently taught in the Sunday school to sing the best Church hymns, then our congregations will sing, whether led by a chorus choir, a precentor, or a quartette. Of these the chorus choir is the best, but the most difficult to maintain; the precentor is second best, and the hired quartette is least likely of all to result in congregational singing, for it tends to a concert of fine music to which the congregation listens in enjoyment.

4. Many of our pastors might help the cause of good congregational singing by giving more thought to the selection of the hymns for the church service. There are many ministers whose range of hymns is lamentably narrow, for they announce the same ones on an average of once a month. Let the pastor write in the hymnal that lies on his study table a memorandum of the date when any hymn has been used, and resolve not to repeat it for twelve months. Let him study his Hymnal with Tunes, bring forth from its treasures hymns new and old, and make his people familiar with them; let him see that on the Wednesday evening after a new Church hymn has been practiced in the Sunday school it is sung in the prayer meeting, with an interesting story told about it (vide Nutter's Hymn Studies, or Stead's Hymns that Have Helped); and then on the next Sunday let him have that same hymn sung by the congregation. If three people-the pastor, the superintendent, and the chorister-will plan and work together we shall have better singing in all the departments of our Church. New York City.

JESSE LYMAN HURLBUT.

A STUDY.

THE basis on which commercial and industrial enterprises have been projected and operated in the United States within the last generation, and the remarkable success of many of them, have astonished the whole world. The climax of these operations in its highest expression, perhaps, is the fact that within the last two years the balance of trade between ourselves and the other nations of the world stands more than six hundreds of millions of dollars in our favor. This fact has invited the reflection and inquiry of the business world of to-day, as well it may.

The genius of these gigantic enterprises seems to be the concentration of brain and brawn on aggregated capital; the inspiration-to reduce the cost of production and thereby the cost of consumption—

having cardinal to it, however, the maintenance of uniformly high-grade quality in abundant supply; the ultimate object being to supply demand and control trade in given lines of manufactured product. To do this thought is previously focalized on these enterprises, thoroughly elaborating every detail in their projection and prosecution, until a well-defined line of action is determined on and as thoroughly carried out with reference to them. Such thought would include all resources: as the seat of production (which would no doubt be selected on the basis of low-cost real estate); proximity to abundant and constant supply of crude material required by the business; accessibility to improved machinery necessary to its prosecution; low-cost labor adapted to operate all branches of it, and facility for finally distributing product to the consumer when made.

It is for this reason that, whereas thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars have been nervously risked in times past, millions and hundreds of millions are now unhesitatingly massed behind well-directed energy in the manufacturing, merchandising, and transportation ventures of to-day.

The necessary trend in such mammoth aggregations is to the incorporation of consolidated capital and concentrated individual energy. Incorporation eliminates individuality by absorption, but does not destroy it. Its absorption secures relief from that sort of personal element which frequently unsettles and defeats a partnership by the attritions of strong personality; whereas, if absorbed, the individuality of the corporation is itself intensified. Consolidation increases the volume of capital hitherto scattered among individuals; this insures to the unified interests greater commercial credit and purchasing power; secures low-cost crude material; multiplies the quantity of product to the volume required, thereby again reducing the cost of distribution by increasing the volume of tonnage to the centers of consumption, and in various other ways reducing the final cost of production. Concentration of thought and energy likewise secures clearness in plans, precision in design, and fervor in execution. The final result is an output of uniformly high standard quality at the lowest possible cost in production, distributed at equally low-cost transportation, to centers of consumption. These conditions existing in the very nature of things will control the markets, in a given business, beyond the whimsical influence of a so-called personal magnetism, intrinsic or extrinsic, and will secure a good will both substantial and permanent, because based on mutuality of interests between buyers and sellers as near as may be; the very life and guarantee of permanent business relations.

This exalted individuality of the corporation so dominates that every department of its business comes to manage the individual in the common interest, rather than be managed by him for any purely personal The unified forces of the association are thus brought to focus on the final objects desired, namely, the uniformly highest standard of prod

one.