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ing for the shrewdest of all assaults upon Christianity. I mean that which takes it up on its dogmatic ground, as ground common in part to the ethnic creeds, and plausibly classifies it with the religious inventions or developments of the human mind. There is no escape from this category but to revert to the Divine Epiphanies, verify them by historical tests, and prove to the exclusion of a rational doubt that in the Revelation we hold it is God who has spoken, and not man.

To this end the principles of historical science and the application of those principles to the supernatural demonstrations of the Gospel will necessarily be among the first objects to engage our attention. At the same time, however, we shall find other demonstrations of Divine authenticity equally absolute with those miraculous credentials that originally attended the Divine messages to man. The open miracles wrought for the conviction of primitive witnesses have indeed become for us, in some cases, tests and trials, rather than supports, of faith. But there were also hidden miracles wrought at the same time, and stored in the Bible for our irresistible conviction in these latter days. Some of these credentials of Divine Revelation are already old and familiar, but some of the most cogent are novel, from the fact that human science, both natural and historical, has but recently begun to overtake and comprehend some of the facts revealed by inspiration concerning prehistoric and even pre-Adamic affairs.

But let me not be understood to disparage, much less to disavow, dogmatic theology proper. Its light, direct or refracted, is, like that of modern science, of inestimable value to the modern explorer of the Bible facts. The epistles of Paul are the grand dogmatic standards of the Church. The Gospel and Epistle of John unfold the profoundest spiritual mysteries ever revealed to man, and antedate the very "beginning" that Moses wrote of, with a light that Moses never saw. Without these latter-day lights, of apostolic theology and modern science, we could penetrate comparatively little of the depth of the significance of the miraculous history itself.

In the focus of these latter-day lights of modern science and New Testament theology, any fresh and independent, though devout, reading of the primitive revelations of Genesis, etc., in and between their lines, will develop little that is trite and much that the world never read before. So momentous a process will require concentrated and consecutive attention, for which certain outlines may here be useful to blaze out the way beforehand. These outlines

How do we Know? or, Religion as Science.

stretch out before us in something like the following order:

I.

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First, to re-examine the foundations of our knowledge, which are the same with relation to Divine history as to human histories, and are to be tested by the same scientific methods.

II.

Second, to ascend to "the beginning," where historical sciencebecomes impossible, and apply the principles and records of natural science to the stages of creation outlined in the first chapter of Genesis, tracing that process by the concentrated lights of astronomy, geology and inspiration, as they at once interpret and verify that most convincing miracle of Revelation, the Mosaic cosmogony.

III.

Since the first condition for understanding any object is to learn what is it for, our next inquiry will be for the "final cause" or ultimate reason for this world's existence, as the theatre of sin and redemption.

IV.

Again, as the intelligent way to study a complex object is to begin with its totality and proceed by gradual analysis, we shall first reconstruct the main framework of the ages, from first to last, as it is outlined in Revelation.

V.

Entering on the more intimate study of history, we will examine the physical nature and environment of man as created; notice, perhaps, the theories of creative method, and adduce scientific evidences that justify the Mosaic chronology in its limitation of the antiquity of the human race; evidences that both allow and cogently argue the single paternity assigned to us twice over in Genesis (in Adam and Noah); and that give intrinsic probability to the prodigious life terms of primeval men that are asserted in their genealogies.

VI.

Then follows one of the most momentous and essential of all theological inquiries, namely, to get down to the fundamental Bible definition of man's moral position as created, and then as subverted by his apostasy from God, with the mode and consequences of the apostasy as revealed in the Book of Genesis and discovered in human experience; showing how clearly the Bible here defines the essential nature and origin of sin (with its implied correlative, the essential desideratum in redemption) independently of philosophy spiritual or materialistic; "flanking," as it were, both of the hostile strongholds of speculative theology at this point, without offence or favor to either, and with infinitely more satisfaction to the rational as well as the devout mind than both of them have ever contributed.

Directly following the primal apostasy is the promise of the Re

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How do we Know? or, Religion as Science.

storer; introducing us to a dual series of memorial types of the promise; types personal, of the Christ himself, and types symbolical of His atonement; a cursory enumeration of which will eventually run through the whole historic frame of the ages, that we shall have set up, and give it a first filling-still in bare outline-of its most vital facts.

The standpoint and starting point for this first outline of the course of redemption must be made by an examination of the primitive religion, revealed through Abel, the first priest, prophet, martyr and type of Christ; with its prototypical antagonist in the natural religion of Cain; the historical consequences of both departures, and the course of the antediluvian world.

VIII.

We shall come next to the prototypical judgment of the world by Noah and the Deluge, with the details, the natural causes, conditions and consequences, of that event, followed by the circumstances of the re-peopling of the world, and the scientific evidence that the progenitors and the period of time allowed by the Bible to the establishment of the primitive empires is ample to account for all their magnificence in arts and multitudes, and is not effectively contradicted by their ultra dynastic pretensions. This division of study includes the history of the enterprise called Babel, with the cause and manner of the dispersion and differentiation of races and languages, their geographical distribution, and the genesis of the several primitive empires, the whole settled on the basis of the sketch in Genesis, in striking harmony with modern archaeological discoveries.

IX.

It will be time, then, to survey the total of Divine legislation for the world down to the time of Abraham, and, indeed, of Moses; to wit, these five institutes, in this order-the Sabbath, the forbidden tree of moral self-wisdom, worship through the symbol of atonement, or "blood of Abel," the capital penalty of homicide, the covenant of circumcision.

X.

We shall then be prepared to enter with a little more fullness into the main historic evolution of the present world, on both of its opposite lines, the theocratic and the anthropocratic, as both began to develop in the time of Abraham; began their grand "conflict of ages" in full force at the time of Moses; continued it, with thrilling vicissitudes of victory and defeat, through the times of the judges, the kings, the prophets, the captivity and the restoration; until the coming of the theocratic King in person with a "New Covenant" and new forces; and at length the uprising of his last adversary, the Anti-Christ, whom the Lord has promised, and has begun now these three hundred years, to "consume with the spirit of his mouth," the

How do we Know? or, Religion as Science. 17

re-opened word of God; and, at the end of a certain revealed term of ascendency, "shall destroy with the brightness of His coming." This division includes the discrimination and harmony of the New Covenant prophecies, from Isaiah, Daniel, etc., to Jesus, Paul and John; discrimination in their twofold and often blended perspective of the two advents between which we now stand, and even beyond them both.

Finally, having acquired a clear and fixed conception of the seven grand stages of revealed human history, their several characteristics. and their general contents of Divine, Human and Satanic action, we shall be in a better position to pursue, with endless pleasure and profit, endless researches in the knowledge of God and in both the theory and experience of "the mystery of godliness," from the inexhaustible treasure of the Word.

A word may be added here in recommendation of the historic-or, better, æonic-contemplation of Christianity, which is here proposed. It is true that religion cannot be too thoroughly personal or too profoundly subjective and practical. But it is possible for it to be too private; and that, I think, has been a prominent distemper, or perversion, of the past century's development of experimental piety in the evangelical churches of Britain and America. It must be confessed that there is very little that is inspiring or ennobling, as an ideal, in the absorbing pursuit of one's private salvation. Notwithstanding that we have had a great growth of revivalism and of every kind of effort for the salvation of souls, far and near; it remains a significant circumstance that not only has the salvation of individuals been almost the sole object set before the church, but his own salvation has been also the main object set by the church before the individual. This is certainly an excess of individualism, such as indeed infects the whole tendency of modern society, if we except the labor unions. It is, indeed, a reaction from the opposite and more dangerous extreme, of organic rather than personal religion, to which human nature has always strongly tended. None the less, however, is it an extreme to be corrected, like the other, by a just counterpoise of the contending forces, centripetal and centrifugal, such as we find to be necessary for health and efficiency in every part of the creation. As we have all witnessed, in this generation, and in many places, examples of outward evangelical zeal which have fallen into a sickly and colorless state and finally died of inanition, for want of inward devotional nourishment; so we have

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Collated Testimonies of Inspiration.

had before us exhibitions of sedentary holiness that were powerless and emaciated in muscle, for want of practical activity.

Then, without forgetting that "the kingdom of God is within," let us elevate to a just prominence in our minds the transcendent scheme of a redeemed world, which is the burden of Revelation historic and prophetic, as the superior object, after all, of our individual calling and conversion. It is monstrous that we individually conceive ourselves redeemed on our own account, and not mainly for productive factors in the establishment of the kingdom of Christ over the whole world. To break up this ignoble tendency of the mind, there is nothing like much devout contemplation of the larger work of grace and redemption, as manifested in the past and promised in the future, of nations, races and mankind at large.

FULL-TEXT TOPICAL CONCORDANCES OR COLLECTS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

OR COLLATED TESTIMONIES OF INSPIRATION.

Ignorance of the Bible deplorably pervades the Church of the present day, and especially its children and youth. Nothing in the wide world or in the work of the ministry can be compared in importance with the removal of this ignorance. And no amount of cursive reading, nothing, in short, but searching the Scriptures for specific instruction, can practically remove this ignorance for most minds. And again, no method for this end will be practically available for most minds, but to have the Scriptures searched for them, and the whole Divine testimony on each great topic connectedly set before them. (This, however, cannot supersede, and should not supplant, that broad absorption of the Living Word in its whole and living form, which is living nourishment to the soul.)

These concordances, or collects, therefore, it is our desire, above all things, to have perfected and used. Perfected by the aid of every one who may be able to supply an omitted passage of Bible testimony on any subject in hand. Used in the religious instruction of children, memoriter; in private and family devotional reading; in public worship; in Sunday and every-day schools; in personal dealing with the individuals who are or who should be inquiring what the Bible teaches, and especially in social prayer meetings, where a novel and peculiar utility as well as charm can be developed by the use of copies in the hands of many different readers of one verse each in informal succession, thus giving the usually silent ma