But that they do it, even those least in sympathy with them seem forced to admit. I have lately read, for example, a somewhat flippant book which gives an account of the ordinary mode of life among the British residents in Calcutta, from the point of view of a woman of the world. In it a missionary appears. Here is the description of him:

"The missionary padre receives his slender stipend from the S. P. G., or from some obscure source in America. It is arranged upon a scale to promote self-denial, and it is very successful. He usually lives where the drains are thickest and the smells most unmanageable, and when we of the broad river and the great Maidan happen to hear of his address, we invariably ejaculate, 'What a frightfully long way off.' The ticcagharry is not an expensive conveyance, but the missionary padre finds himself better commended by his conscience if he walks and pays the cost of his transportation in energy and vitality, which must be heavy in the hot weather and the rains. For the rest, he lives largely upon second-class beef and his ideals, though they don't keep very well either in this climate. . . . . Those who are married are usually married to missionary ladies of similar size and complexion, laboring in the same cause. . . . . The official padre's wife looks like any other memsahib ; the missionary padre's wife looks like the missionary padre. I believe that chaplains sometimes ask missionary padres to dinner 'quietly," and always make a point of giving them plenty to eat. And I remember meeting a married pair of them. . . . . It was in the hot weather and they spoke appreciatively of the punkah. They had no punkah, it seemed, either day or night; but the little wife had been very clever and had made muslin bags for their heads and hands to keep off the mosquitoes while they were asleep. We couldn't ascertain that either of them had been really well since they came out, and they said they had simply made up their minds to have sickness in the house during the whole of the rains. . . . They knew little of the Red Road or the Eden Gardens, where the band plays in the evenings; they talked of strange places-Khengua Pattoo's Lane-Coolestollah. [The wife] told us that her great difficulty in the zenanas lay in getting the ladies to talk. . . . . and [the husband] had been down in the Sunderbunds, far down in the Sunderbunds, where the miasmas are thickest, and where he had slept every night for a week on a bench in the same small room with two baboos and the ague. . . . . He was more emaciated than clever," etc. (The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib. By Sara Jeannette Duncan. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 1895. pp. 238).

....

Not an attractive picture, you will say? That depends, however, on your point of view. From the world's point

of view it is a very unattractive picture-though we cannot help fancying that even the authoress intended it partly as a compliment to missionaries. From God's point of view I should think it would be very attractive-for after all what "is required in stewards is that a man be found faithful." (1 Cor. 4:27.) A caricature, no doubt it is, but a caricature which would not have been possible were not the average missionary both strenuous and faithful.

And bearing such a description of his ways in mind, perhaps we may say in conclusion, that the greatest danger to which the missionary is exposed is that, in the zeal for souls that burns in his bones like a fire, and in his ycarning desire to reap the fruits of his labors, he may forget the weakness of the human frame and wear himself out in toils that are too abundant, or cast himself away through sicknesses that are avoidable. The conditions of life in most mission fields are so different from those to which the missionary is accustomed at home, that a serious strain upon his physical system is unavoidable. It will be well if he does not unduly increase the strain and thus unduly decrease his usefulness by assuming burdens which no flesh can bear. Here, too, the rule is applicable that our zeal for God requires tempering with knowledge. Not that the missionary should not hold himself ready to give his life, if need be, for the cause to which he has devoted it; for here, too, is it true that he who would save his life shall lose it, and he who would lose his life for Christ's sake shall gain it. But that he should never be ready to throw away so valuable a life as his, through impatience with the limitations of human powers. In this matter, too, let us listen to the traditional saying of our Lord, which Dr. Westcott has adopted as his motto in life: "Be ye good money-changers." Let the missionary set high store on his life and strength-barter with them, sell them dearly-see to it that when they go down under the accumulated labors that will fall upon

them, they bring a great price-the greatest price procurable—in souls. They have been given him not to be flung away as things of little value; they are his capital-let him put them out at long interest, that they may earn great gains to present the Householder when He comes and asks for an account of his stewardship. BENJ. B. Warfield.

Princeton.

II. THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION AND

CATECHISMS.

In every age men are confronted by the question, Is religion rational or ritual? Is it a matter of faith or of form? On one side of that question the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments takes its stand, and over against it is arrayed every other religion known to man. We need not stop to inquire whether this was the original attitude of all forms of faith beside the Jewish and the Christian, or whether in some instances it has been brought about through the perversion of their primitive character and intent. The fact is obvious that among the religious systems of the world to-day the Scripture alone maintains that religion is not ritual but rational, is not a matter of form but of faith. Character is more than conduct. Motive gives quality to action. Religion has its seat in the mind. and heart, and the soul of religion is faith. Faith has two elements, belief, the faith of the mind; trust, the faith of the heart. Faith is not reason, but faith is rational. Scripture appeals to reason, must be received, interpreted and applied by reason. Truth must be apprehended by the understanding before it can touch the heart or shape the life. John Locke said truly that to decry reason in the interest of faith is to put out the eyes in order to look through a telescope. The wise man applies the glass of faith to the eye of reason. "Come, now, and let us reason together," is the word of the Old Testament; "Come and see" is the word of the New. The Bible is a plain book for plain men. "All things in Scripture," says the Confession (I. 7), "are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or

other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in the due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them." The Scripture has no hidden shrines, no veiled divinities, no mysteries but such as spring from the laws of our nature and the limitations of our powers. The truth lies open before us like the heavens, where no bounds are set to vision but those which the eye itself imposes. However it may be, then, with other systems, theology, creed, confession are the inevitable outgrowth of Scripture. A rational religion invites logical statement. Theology is related to the Word as science to the works of God. In the study of his works and of his Word alike it is the prerogative of reason, as Kepler said, to think God's thoughts after him. We cannot live out of doors in the realm of thought, and we fashion a creed as instinctively as we build a home.

Two hundred and fifty years ago the doctrinal standards of the Presbyterian Church were framed, the Confession and the Catechisms, and they remain substantially unaltered to this day, not as a venerable relic, a historical monument, but as the living exponent of the faith of one of the largest bodies of Christians on the globe. It becomes us to inquire what are the qualities that have given them this permanence and vitality. Great revolutions have taken place in Church and State, the face of the world has been changed, yet these symbols of faith remain almost untouched by the finger of time and the progress of the age.

The most striking and important characteristic of the Confession is that it is Scriptural throughout. It proposes and endeavors to draw its material from the Word of God alone without intrusion of human philosophy or speculation. God reveals himself in many ways, but the truth conveyed in every other mode of revelation is comprehended and interpreted in his Word. The Scripture, therefore, is the sole and sufficient source from which our theology may be drawn. Nature and providence may confirm