not deny inspiration even to great poets and statesmen, or even to the great legalists of the Roman law. This is truly the Jewish view." This view of inspiration has certainly the advantage, though perhaps it may be a doubtful one, of opening fresh and wide fields for commentators.

THE SANCTIFIED UNBELIEVER AND CHILDREN BORN HOLY (1 Cor. vii. 14). The apparent paradoxes of an unbelieving husband being sanctified by a believing wife, and of their children being born holy, are very clearly explained in a recent article in the Homiletic Review. The writer, Professor Wolf, points out that the purpose of the passage is to sanction the continuance of the marriage union after one of the parties has become a Christian, while the other still remains a heathen. St. Paul asserts that, in virtue of the faith of one of the parents, the unbelieving husband (or wife) and the non-believing children become "sanctified" or "holy." The general teaching of the New Testament forbids us to interpret these epithets as referring to internal purity, spiritual renewal, or regenerate character. Faith in the case supposed, that of a heathen husband, is wanting, and without it there can be no radical change of a moral nature. The paradox is explained if we keep in mind the clearly defined meaning of holiness in the Old Testament-namely, that which is separate, distinct, set apart. Any person or thing consecrated to God was sanctified or called holy, without any reference to intrinsic or internal purity. Thus the Sabbath was holy, the Levites were holy, the first-born were holy, so were the Tabernacle and all its vessels. The Apostle says virtually to the Christian wife united to a heathen husband, "Your union with him really withdraws him, in a sense, from the contamination of heathen impurity, brings him into a Christian atmosphere, into contact with the means of grace, and under the influence of the Holy Ghost. Externally, at least, though yet an unbeliever, such a one is brought into sacred relations-i.e., sanctified. The children, too, are within the sacred circle. Nothing stands in the way of their coming into the fullest Christian fellowship. The family is one, and the faith of either parent makes it a Christian family in idea, and confers the colour of sanctity on all its members." Though this external sanctification does not ensure ethical renewal any more than the sanctification of the priests made them ethically holy, yet it is a help to that end; it affords a ground of hope for it. It brings the subject within the circle of the Church's activity. It puts him in touch with the leaven of grace, and through the mighty power of these spiritual influences under the most favourable circumstances-namely, those of an endearing vital union with one surcharged with these influenceshe is destined to be won to Christ. Through the living faith of a parent, salvation comes to one's house.

THE HISTORIC AND THE IDEAL CHRIST.-The New World, a quarterly review which desires to be hospitable to progressive scientific thought in religion, theology, and ethics considered in relation to religion, contains a number of very interesting articles in its first issue. While these contain a

great deal that is fresh and suggestive, many of them contain at the same time highly controversial matter, which is rather in conflict than in harmony with most schools of positive Christian thought. One of these articles, by C. C. Everett, is entitled "The Historic and the Ideal Christ." While we find ourselves out of sympathy with what the author has to say, not only about the attempts which have been made to formulate doctrines as to the union of the Divine and human natures in Christ, but also about the difficulty of distinguishing between mythical and historical elements in the Gospels, we can unfeignedly approve the testimony he bears to the unique character and personality of the Saviour. He says, "We see in Him a man in whom the mystical and the practical were united in a wonderful degree. His consciousness of God, from certain points of view, seems to be the one supreme factor in His life. It shows itself under all circumstances. Whatever may be the subject on which He speaks, this thought of the ever-present God mingles in the discourse. We do not need the stories of the nights of prayer and of lonely struggle to teach us how He lived in this Divine companionship, though these confirm and complete the impression of this aspect of His life. Sometimes this consciousness of God takes form in the glad sense of fellowship. Under one form or another, the thought of God seems always present to Him. When we turn to His life among men, His care and His loving sympathy for them seem in turn to be the supreme power that manifested itself in Him. His days were passed in ministering to their needs. While He shrank from being known as a wonder-worker, the strange healing power that He possessed was always at the service of those who needed His help. The spiritual needs of men moved Him, however, more deeply than their physical sufferings. To Him a blind and halting spirit was far more pitiful than a blind and halting body. He did not underrate, as His followers have sometimes done, the importance of ministering to the physical needs of those about Him. These, as we have seen, He never failed to help, so far as in Him lay. But His great enthusiasm went to the quickening of the spiritual life of men. He would take them up into that fair world of aspiration and peace, of purity and love, in which He perpetually dwelt. He would make them share that Divine companionship which was the strength and the joy of His own life. In Jesus we also find blended in a union no less rare the elements of conservatism and reform. His keen vision distinguished accurately between the abuses that had gathered about the fundamental principles of the national constitution, and these principles themselves; between the pettiness of observance that sank into triviality, and the service which the law itself demanded. Perhaps. nothing is more marked in His character than His power of seeing things in their true perspective, of distinguishing between the great and the small. The saying, This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone,' illustrates the spirit which controlled His teaching and the habits of His life. Thus He reared within the Jewish law a moral and religious structure so complete that it stood undisturbed and fair when that law fell

away. Another of these harmoniously blended contrasts in the spirit of Jesus we find in the manner in which He looked upon different classes of sins. Nowhere does His sense of ethical perspective show itself more clearly. The sins that spring from impulse and from human weakness, that have their roots in something not wholly bad, and are fostered by the needs of the individual and by the customs of society-the sins, at the same time, that the world most affects to despise-to these He was unspeakably tender. He strove to uplift the fallen, to encourage those whose hearts had failed, to lighten by the smile of sympathy the path of those who moved in the shadow of the world's scorn. At the same time there was nothing weak in this sympathy. It held up the ideal of a purer and better life that was still in the power of the sinner. On the other hand, for spiritual pride, for the spirit of those who, unconscious of their own sins, looked down in scorn upon their fellows, He had no sympathy. He seemed to feel that their spirit of self-righteousness crushed out all faith in the true life, and all power to attain it. While for the outcasts of the world He knew there was no hope save in encouragement; for those who were filled with spiritual exaltation, whose sins disturbed neither their satisfaction with themselves, nor the world's satisfaction with them, He saw that there was no hope save in humiliation. . . . . And while He rebuked with righteous indignation those who oppressed the lowly, whom He loved, He met insult and cruelty directed towards Himself with sublime patience and Divine forgiveness."

SCIENCE AND FAITH.-In an address delivered before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, and republished in Christian Thought, Professor Du Bois, of Yale University, shows that the basis of all scientific knowledge is faith. He says that though science may and does differ widely from religion in its methods and in the character of its facts, in the character of its evidence it can justly claim not one particle of superiority, and it convictions rest upon the same foundation. That the conclusions of the one have no better claim to acceptance than those of the other, and that, in both alike, proof has its sole justification in experience, and conviction is the outcome of faith and faith alone. For all scientific proof is really based upon a single hypothesis, viz., that of the uniformity of nature, and therefore there is no such thing in science as "rigid demonstration." We assume and believe that the forces and laws of nature are the same to-day, and will be the same to-morrow that they were yesterday. That like causes will always and have always produced like effects. Without this assumption science is impossible. Without it the simplest experiment loses its force and value, and the whole structure of science falls to the ground. And this assumption we cannot prove, but must take on trust! And we do take it on trust, without a murmur. And yet the only "proof" we have, or can ever have of it, is not direct but inferential, not complete but cumulative in its nature. That which can be added to is never complete. Until nothing remains to be known or investigated there will still be a loophole for doubt, and the proof

is not complete. Thus the very basis of all our knowledge rests upon that which cannot be proved. We walk by faith, and not by sight. He draws an illustration of the virtual but not absolute certainty which experience yields, from Babbage's calculating machine. This machine can be so arranged and adjusted that at every turn of the handle it will expose to view a number greater, by say two, than the preceding. Thus if the first number is two, the next will be four, the next six, and so on. Now, let the man turn the handle once every second, and keep turning, hour after hour, and day after day, till the days run into months and the months into years. At every turn he observes the invariable result, always greater by two than the next preceding. At the end of a hundred years what would be the conviction of that man as to the next number which the next turn would reveal? Why, he would stake his life without hesitation as to the result, so sure would he And on what grounds? Simply on the grounds of experience. The machine had never deceived his expectation or contradicted his involuntary assumption of the law upon which it worked, and he assumes and believes that it never will. And yet on the last turn of the last day of the hundredth year, that machine, by reason of the very law of its mechanism, which the man thinks he knows so well and really does not know at all, would suddenly and without any warning make a single break in the sequence of the numbers of the series, and then would run on as before. The man would probably be astonished at such an unheard-of result, but he would be obliged to confess that at bottom his belief had been founded upon faith, and faith alone, and not upon proof. Such proof as he had was cumulative, and grew stronger with every turn. But the real foundation of his belief was faith in the uniform action of the machine, and the only ground for this faith was limited experience. From that which he knew he inferred that which he had no means of knowing, and his very positive conviction had no better basis than an assumption of uniformity, which he accepted only upon faith. Not only, therefore, is the proof of all scientific belief thus cumulative in character, and therefore never complete, but it rests also upon experience, which is necessarily limited, and therefore not logically conclusive. Where reason fails, faith must step in to fill the gap.

BIBLICAL

THOUGHT.

THE FEAST OF PURIM AND THE BOOK OF ESTHER.

BY REV. P. HAY HUNTER.

AMONG the Old Testament Books which have been most exposed to the assaults of criticism, the Book of Esther holds a unique position. We may dislike its tone, with Luther; and admit, with another of its critics, that "it stands further removed from the spirit of Old Testament revelation, and

of the Gospel, than any other book in Scripture." Our suspicions may be aroused by obvious exaggerations of statement and inconsistencies in the conduct of the chief characters of the story. We may allow their full weight to arguments directed against the authenticity of the Book on the ground of its historical improbability. But after all is said, there remains a fact which will demolish any theory that does not take it into account; an outpost that must be carried before the main position is even reached. It is undeniable that the Jewish people, from a comparatively early date, has kept an annual feast called the Feast of Purim, of which the name and origin are explained in the Book of Esther, and in no other document. Unless, then, it can be shown with some approach to conclusiveness that Purim was in its beginnings something quite different from the commemorative festival which had become an institution in Judæa in the last century B.C. -that it originally carried with it no suggestion of a deliverance of the Jews from their enemies, had no connection with any such personages as Mordecai and Esther, and nothing to do, etymologically or historically, with any casting of lots- there is a prima facie case in favour of the Book of Esther as containing at least a germ of historical truth. One must hesitate, at all events, before reducing that Book to the level of the tales which the Persian professional raconteurs put in 'the mouth of the Princess Shahrazâd in the Thousand and One Nights.

Suppose that our knowledge of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 were wholly derived from a single written narrative, of unknown authorship, and abounding in wildly improbable details. In such a case, it might be justifiable to dismiss that narrative as a work of mere fiction, or an anti-Catholic "tendency romance." But if, together with this supposed narrative, there had come down to us from the past a popular observance of the Fifth of November; if it were found that ancient usage had associated with this anniversary the name of the chief conspirator, and that the day was kept with signs of popular rejoicing which, however grotesque and vulgar, agreed in the main with the story as written-manifestly this would make it impossible to set aside the narrative, off-hand, as purely imaginary. It would be necessary to account for the rise and spread of popular beliefs which had led to the celebration of a certain day in the year with fireworks, masquerades, and effigies borne in procession. It would be necessary to admit as at least a possibility the actual existence of a personage named Guy Fawkes, who had had something to do with explosives.

So with the Book of Esther and the Feast of Purim. A document may be explained away; not so easily an institution. Those who pronounce the Book a fable have first to show that the Feast is a fraud.

The data as to the Feast contained in the Book are these: It originated among the Persian Jews, about the year 477 B.C., as a popular festival, a demonstration of joy over an escape from imminent danger. It was held at first on different days by the Jews of the provinces and the Jews of the capital; by the former on the 14th, and by the latter on the 15th of the