same, but its interpretation is constantly advancing more and more to the full measure of the truth.

Whence comes this higher guide in the interpretation of Scripture to lead the Church on to higher apprehension of the truth, or to correct it when it becomes wrong? It comes from the Scripture itself. It is its own light constantly guiding in its own interpretation. There is a spirit in the Word of God which guides in its interpretation, and just this is the meaning of its abiding inspiration. The individual believer is fallible, the Church as a collection of believers is fallible; but the Scripture is given as the infallible guide, so that the Church may recover itself from error and return to the truth. Dr. Apple argues that the Bible is its own court of appeal.

PERSONAL CONSECRATION TO CHRIST. By REV. J. G. Noss (Reformed Quarterly Review, Philadelphia).-Pre-requisite conditions of personal consecration to Christ are oneness with Him, and difference from Him. Devotion to any being from another, in any sphere, is possible only on the basis of their oneness; and the nature of the oneness determines the character of such devotion. The lowest form of devotion is grounded on the basis of the animal life (sarz). Where the psyche and the sarı together constitute the basis, as in the human being, there may be devotion in three directions to the animal, to a fellow-human being, and, not to God but to that which the merely psychical man can know of God. God is a Spirit, and as such the merely psychical man cannot be devoted to Him, and cannot even know Him. The position of the psychical man is meaningless as a finality. “There was no common basis on which the infinite God and finite man could hold full communion together, even independent of sin, and hence men in all ages of the world constantly attempted to establish such a basis either by the personification of the wisdom, goodness, and power of God in the natural creation, or by the apotheosis of sages and heroes. In both cases there was an unconscious effort to bring into harmony on a common basis the superhuman and the human, the infinite and the finite."

In the Incarnation God was made man; in the gift of the Holy Ghost man was made partaker of the Divine nature. By the indwelling Spirit man becomes pneumatikos, and, as such, he can now discern that which was unknowable to him on the lower basis. The Pneuma in him ennobles the psyche and sarx, just as the incoming of the psyche ennobles the sarx of the first creation. Oneness with Christ has become possible, and it is the first condition of personal consecration to Him.

The other condition is the consciousness of our difference from Christ. The difference between the Father and the Son during the state of humiliation of the Son enables us to understand the difference between Christ and the Christian. In every respect in which our Saviour could say, "My Father is greater than I," we find the measure of the condition in which He could consecrate Himself to the Father. His oneness with the Father constituted the internal, and His difference from Him the external condition of such consecration. The consciousness of our difference from Christ ought to make us the humblest, meekest beings on earth; but in it lies the possibility and danger of our going astray. In our want of perfect apprehension lies the danger of misapprehension, and in our incapability of perfect obedience lies the danger of disobedience.

"The great danger in our day is that the consciousness of our oneness with Christ, and therefore also of our difference from Him, does not keep pace with the supposed increase in our apprehension of the revelation of Christ. The so-called advanced theology is not afflicted with modesty." The thing to be continually feared is that the spiritual life and the intellectual life do not unfold and grow harmoniously together.

HENRY GEORGE AND THE LATE ENCYCLICAL. By CHARLES A. RAMM (The Catholic World).—The deliverance of His Holiness the Pope concerning Social, Land, and Labour Questions has been answered by an open letter on "The Condition of Labour," written by that prominent land reformer, Henry George. This letter is the subject of criticism in the article now before us, which aims at clearing the meanings of the Pope, and reasserting the principles on which he lays stress. The author deals almost entirely with the effort of His Holiness to establish the right of private property in general, and incidentally of private property in land. Mr. George teaches that a man has a right of private ownership in things produced by his labour. This right cannot attach to things created by God, which are the common possession of all men, and cannot rightly be made the exclusive possession of some men. Mr. George distinguishes between the right of possession and the right of ownership in land. Ownership belongs to the community, to whom rental would be paid by those having possession and use of it; and such rental would constitute one sufficing tax for the country. His Holiness, in defending the right of property in land, points out that if a man saves from the wages of his labour, and invests his savings in land, the land is only his wages in another form, and a working man's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his disposal as the wages he receives for his labour. Mr. George attempts to answer this by supposing that the workman invests his savings in a slave, and argues that a slave would then be completely at his disposal. But Mr. Ramm properly points out that the land and a fellow-man do not lie in the same plane, and cannot, therefore, be compared. To argue that because man cannot belong to man, therefore land cannot belong to man, is absurd.

Meeting Mr. George's teaching that it is " unjust for any one to possess as owner either the land on which he has built, or the estate which he has cultivated," His Holiness points out that the soil which is tilled and cultivated utterly changes its character and condition; and what has improved it becomes inseparable from it. In reply, Mr. George urges that this consideration would justify the taking of the land from the landlords, and turning it over to the tenants and labourers, who have done the actual cultivating. But he fails to see that while His Holiness declares that "industry expended on land gives ownership in land," he does not say that only such industry gives the right. Labour is one means of acquiring a title, but occupation can also give a title.

His Holiness further shows that it is a most sacred law of nature for a father to provide for his children, and he cannot effect this except by the ownership of "profitable property." It need not be land, but it may be. Mr. George urges that it is not the business of one generation to provide the succeeding generation with all that is needful to enable them honourably to keep themselves from want and misery. But it is easy to reply that if it is not absolutely necessary, it is the Divine order and arrangement, to which we ought wisely to conform.

The Pope points out that while God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race, and has left the limits of private possession to be fixed by man's own industry and the laws of individual people, it is a fact that land owned by some contributes to the needs of all. It is ineffective to compare God's winds or waters with land as Mr. George does, because the use of them involves no deprivation of others, and there can be no private possession of them. Good laws may wisely check the monopoly of the land, but to shift the rights in land from private individuals to State communities would destroy one great safeguard of modern civilization.

THE CHRISTOCENTRIC IDEA IN THEOLOGY. BY PROF. J. W. ETTER, D.D. (Quarterly Review of the United Brethren in Christ).-In the theological unrest of

our times no harm will come to Christianity so long as we keep inviolate the germ and root in our system. This vital nucleus is the Person and Work of Christ. There are four methods of constructing a theological system. 1. The Analytic, which begins with the assumed end of all things, and thence passes to the means by which it is secured. 2. The Trinitarian, which regards Christian doctrine as a manifestation successively of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 3. The Anthropological, beginning with the disease or sinfulness of man, and passing to the remedy or salvation of man. 4. The Christological, which views every doctrine in systematic theology from the standpoint of a personal Redeemer as the centre in our theological system. It may be asserted that Christ and His atoning work is the central theme of the Bible. As in Beethoven's matchless music there runs one idea, worked out through all the changes of measure and key, so throughout the Bible runs one grand idea-man's ruin by sin, and his redemption by grace. Hebrew monotheism, the Mosaic economy, the schools of the Prophets, and the Davidian dynasty are so many different stages in a Divine-human history, whose characteristics are developed from the indestructible vitality latent in the Messianic idea. This idea is the key to a right understanding of all the events recorded in the books of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a consistent system only when studied as a theology of redemption. And this fundamental idea of the Old Testament literature is not affected by the Higher Criticism. And a still more striking unity pervades the New Testament. Christ is the hero of the Bible. We must read the whole Bible with the strictest care of exegesis to know who Christ was.

It is then declared by Dr. Etter that the one theme of the whole Bible is Christ's vicarious atonement; and he proceeds to show that the mediatorial idea ought to be the centre in our system of Christian theology. The following passage from H. B. Smith's Systems of Christian Theology is quoted with approval: "The analysis of incarnation in order to redemption presupposes the doctrine respecting the Divine nature, the end of God in His works, the nature of man, and the condition of man as sinful; and this comprises the first division of theology-the antecedents to redemption. The same principle, in its concrete unity, gives us the doctrine respecting the person and work of Christ. And the same principle, in its application, gives us the third division of the system, embracing regeneration, justification, sanctification, the doctrine respecting the Church, and the Sacraments, and the eschatology." For such a system the doctrine of the Atonement is fundamental. A defective soteriology works radical and widespread mischief. It begets an unworthy hamartology-a representation of sin as a light matter; a vicious anthropology-a superficial diagnosis of the ethical constitution and history of the human race; an unbiblical Christology, in which Christ may be only the mightiest of many mighty teachers, reformers, or saviours; an impertinent pneumatology, in which there remains little or no place for the gracious leadings and cleansings of the Spirit ; and an enervated ecclesiology, in which the Church is stripped of her glory, and sinks into the category of the other social and moral agencies which are at work among men.

It is not, however, necessary, and it may not be the best, that a system of theology should begin with the doctrine of Christ. "The centre is not the beginning, but it throws light on the beginning and the end." And the theologian ought to construct his system, not only round the Christ centre, but also out of Christian material, that is, the works and teachings of Christ; and these properly include, besides the sayings and doings of the Incarnate Christ, the utterances of the Christophanies, Theophanies, and Pneumatophanies, both before and after the Advent. Christianity is practically and theoretically an exposition of Christ.

But the Christocentric idea may be carried to a wider sphere, even to that of the Cosmos. Christ sustains some relation to the universal creation. Speculative theology discusses whether Christ would have become incarnate if man had not sinned. Dr. Etter thinks" we have no authority for teaching that the Incarnation was simply an expedient to meet the contingencies of human sinning. If man had not sinned, and the Son of God had nevertheless become flesh, the manifestation would, no doubt, have been different." It is an assumption, and incapable of proof; but we may say that "Christ is the subject of interest to the inhabitants of other worlds."

Dr. Etter's practical conclusion is, that if Christ is thus pre-eminent in the Scriptures, in Biblical, doctrinal, and historical theology, and a subject of profound interest to all angels and all worlds, He should be the sum and substance of all preaching.

In criticizing Dr. Etter's position, it may be pointed out that Jesus never presented Himself to men as a finality; He always sought to lead them to God the Father. And the Apostles never speak of Christ as a finality; they unite in the idea which St. Peter most succinctly expresses: Who, by Him, do believe in God." It may, therefore, be argued that the Fatherhood of God, revealed through the Sonship of Christ in humanity, is the true centric idea of a system of Christian theology.

OUR CONFESSION OF FAITH. By PROF. J. P. LANDIS, D.D., Ph.D. (Quarterly Review of United Brethren in Christ).—This article concerns only the doctrine of the Trinity. This is thus stated, "We believe in the only true God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; that these three are one-the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father, and the Holy Ghost equal in essence or being with the Father and the Son." Dr. Landis introduces his subject by showing its importance, because it affects our very conception of the nature or being of God Himself; because its denial involves denial of the Atonement, because its denial indicates a feeble view of the turpitude of sin, and because such denial involves denial of the deity of Jesus Christ. But it may be objected to such an introduction, that it tends to create a preliminary prejudice, which must interfere with the calm and honest treatment of the subject. It is far better first to discuss the doctrine, and then consider its bearings and relations.

It is admitted that the doctrine is a profound mystery, and though not involving contradictory elements, is beyond the power of human comprehension. We can, however, as Martinsen says, "have a true, though not an adequate knowledge of the nature of God." (1) There is but one God, and He is one-a simple or indivisible Being, not consisting of parts. (2) This unity is a trinal unity. The Godhead is one infinite, spiritual substance common to three subsistences, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Joseph Cook expresses this so as to avoid the word "person." The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one and only one God. Each has a peculiarity incommunicable to the others. Neither is God without the others. Each with the others is God. It will be noticed that the creed, as given above, also avoids using the word "person."

Dr. Landis discusses the difficulties felt in the use of the word " person," and finds even greater difficulties connected with the suggested substitutes, "hypostases," or "subsistences." The test he appears to apply is, What will best resist the error of Sabellianism; but the theologian is most likely to preach an acceptable setting of the truth of the Trinity who is brave enough to take Sabellianism into his counsel,

and not regard it as antagonistic, but, at most, an overstating of one side of truth which must be fairly and calmly estimated. What divines wish to conserve by persisting in the use of the term " person " is the intelligence of Father, Son, and Spirit. They are not names for mere forces. Dr. Charles Hodge says, "A person is an intelligent subject who can say I, who can be addressed as Thou, and who can act and can be the object of action."

The three hypostases are distinguished by certain properties. There belongs to each a characteristic individuality, which is his own exclusively, and cannot be transferred from one to another. To the First Person belongs the "property" of paternity, Himself unbegotten, but begetting the Son; to the Son, the filial "property" of being begotten; to the Holy Spirit belongs the "property" of procession-He proceeds from the Father and the Son. These "properties" are not to be confounded with attributes.

The proofs of the doctrine of the Trinity are to be found only in Scripture. The familiar passages are reviewed by Dr. Landis, but while they may support a general statement of the doctrine, it may be fairly urged that they can hardly bear the weight of all the philosophical distinctions which theologians have made. And Dr. Landis does not deal with the position which is taken by many devout English thinkers, that the distinctions in the Divine Being are distinctions in our apprehension of the Divine Being; and we have no right on the basis of any revelation given to assert that they represent eternal absolute distinctions in Him. For many the Trinity is apprehended thus: God thought by us is God the Father. God seen by us-sense apprehended-is God the Son. And God felt by us is God the Holy Ghost. This, too, might be philosophically unfolded.

A WORKING CHURCH. WHAT SHOULD THE MINISTER DO? (Editorial in Quarterly Review of United Brethren in Christ).—A Church must be organized round some great idea. A working Church is one that holds most of the revealed truth, the most points emphasized in its individual life, and all these vitalized in the hearts of all its members. For such a working Church what should the minister do? That is partly answered by showing what the minister should be. The personal character of the minister can never be separated from his work. A bad man may be a good artist. A bad man can never be a good minister. What makes the difference in the words of men? Not the rhetorical finish, not elegance of diction, but the personal force which is behind the words, which you feel, and like to feel. As Phillips Brooks says, "The truth must come through the minister's character, his affections, his whole intellectual and moral being."

The minister must be a correct interpreter of the Word of God. That demands highly cultured intellectual faculties, a vigorous imagination, and sensitive moral sympathies. He should have an intense love of truth, and skill to discern the relative importance of the truths of God's Word. If he misses the proportions, the foodsupply of his congregation is ill-regulated, and spiritual health is imperilled. He should be constantly renewing personal consecration to the Lord in his work. He must be prepared to undertake special forms of work: a dead Church has often been revived by putting all force for a time into some one branch of work. Make that go: make it live, and life will surely quicken life. And the minister of a working Church must come into personal contact with the membership. It is a poor thing to say of a man, "He's a good preacher, but no pastor." Here is a radical defect; a cart with one wheel. The pastor must touch every life, and that touch must be the call to work, to give emphasis to what he deems important; an enthusiasm to every one,