when Jesus speaks of some things permitted to the Jews in ancient times because of the hardness of their hearts, but which he then would no longer permit, they recognized this law of progress, this evolution from a lower to a higher civilization, through which one age is to prepare the way for another and better age. Here the author and the critic probably stand on common ground. But a progress so irregular, so different in different individuals and different portions of the same people at the same time, can furnish no safe criterion by which to determine the date of a writing. When, therefore, it was proposed to expunge from the second commandment the prohibition of images, because of any notions on the subject possibly entertained by great prophets hundreds of years afterwards, we objected to this as an illegitimate use of the doctrine.

In our article, we may have attributed to The Bible of To-Day and to those whom it regards as masters in biblical criticism, greater use of the theory of evolution than they express, though in this, as in the bias against the supernatural, we think we see a leaning which is unfavorable to impartial investigation.

III. In matters of taste we have decided feelings, but do not argue with our friend.*

IV. The most important point, as it relates particularly to the books of the New Testament, is Mr. Chadwick's method of setting up one narrative against another as involving contradictions. Because one narrative differs from another, it does not necessarily contradict it. Because in giving an abbreviated account of a speech, I report one part of it and my neighbor reports a different part, it does not follow that we contradict one another. Yet this erroneous supposition, it seems to us, is what Mr. Chadwick has done in his argument against the Fourth Gospel. A large volume would be needed to treat the whole subject properly. We selected a few instances which could be easily understood. John speaks mostly of Jesus in Judea, the synoptics speak mostly of his ministry in Galilee. Any one of them, or all four together, fail to report a hundredth part of his sayings and doings during the one, two, or three years of his

* We cannot, however, pass by Mr. Chadwick's use of St. Paul's language, Gal. v., 12, without protesting both against his implied interpretation and his application of it. It is exceedingly improbable that the Apostles were the persons here alluded to, and the most natural and literal interpetation (the verb is in the middle voice) is, "I would indeed that they who are unsettling you would cut themselves off" from you. Or, more likely, the sentence is to be regarded as intensely ironical. "These men who are disturbing you by their doctrine of circumcision, I would that they should go still further and mutilate themselves." "Why do they stop at circumcision?" he asks indignantly. Why do they not mutilate themselves, like your priests of Cybele?" referring to a worship and a practice not uncommon in Galatia. See Lig tfoot on Galatians. So Mr. Chadwick's "over-much Apostles wholly destroys the sense of the passage, II. Cor. xi., 5, in which it occurs. Paul, in asserting his authority, says: "For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very greatest (or chiefest] Apostles." It would be a poor recommendation of himself to assert his equality with the "over-much Apostles," and the language lends itself more easily to the other version.

ministry. Why one selected this, or another that, we cannot say. But different accounts, in these briefest reports of what he said or did, do not necessarily imply a contradiction. Even in regard to the day when the last supper was eaten, we do not know enough of the different methods of computing time by different persons, Roman, Greek, or Jewish, to say with entire certainty that even in that case there is an absolute contradiction. We believe this can be shown, though it would require more space than we have at our command here. To prove a contradiction, it is necessary to prove that no other supposition than that which involves a contradiction is possible. In no one of the cases which we quoted as inconsistencies is this condition fulfilled.

We spoke of Jesus "as an example of what man may be in the full development and exercise of all his highest powers." Mr. Chadwick wonders at this "indiscriminate praise," and adds, "Among man's highest powers, surely Dr. Morison would class the imagination and the scientific faculty. But Jesus furnished us no example" of these. We must here differ entirely from Mr. Chadwick. Our thoughts and investigations have long been turned to the study of the imagination as revealed in its highest exercise and development in the life and teachings of Jesus. The way in which he endows a simple natural image - the fall of a sparrow, the opening of a flower — with a divine meaning, so that it comes to us as an emblem of the universal providence of God, involves an act of the creative imagination beyond what we find in any poet. The parables are not great poems, only because they condense into a small compass far-reaching ideas, and weigh down simple incidents with a wealth of meaning which comes to us always with new freshness. Those chapters in Matthew's Gospel, which crown the teachings of Jesus with images of glory and majesty such as we find nowhere else, would fill us with wonder as sublime creations of poetic genius, if we did not rather accept them with reverence and awe as revelations of divine truth and life, enforcing themselves upon us by the sanctities and judgments of God's unseen kingdom. The only poet who ever reminds us of Christ's method of teaching is Shakespeare,- the greatest among them all,— and he only when at his highest and best.

And as to "the scientific faculty," there is that in the language of Jesus which seems to look through the laws of Nature, and to see in them only an expression of the divine mind. In his incidental reference to the fall of a tower as indicating no special act of divine displeasure, does he not express the thought which lies at the basis of all scientific investigations, viz., the unchanging regularity of law? As Shakespeare is the only one who on the side of the imagination reminds us of Jesus, so Lord Bacon, the greatest of all modern philosophers, is the only one who even faintly reminds us of him in the breadth and universality of his thought on the side of reason. These are no words of "indiscriminate praise," no heated expressions of admiration forced from us in the excite

ment of the moment, or to produce an impression. They are the slowly matured convictions and conclusions which have come to us after years of careful thought. Outside criticisms have their place, and may be needed to remove obstructions, and enable us to meet the great truths of the Gospel face to face. But it is only as we enter into the mind and the life and the heart of Jesus, making ourselves one with him, that we can catch even a distant glimpse of his intellectual and spiritual greatness.

A word or two we gladly add. A review like what we gave of The Bible of To-Day is necessarily very incomplete, and to the writer very unsatisfactory. In dwelling as it has to do on points of difference, it fails to do justice to the other and better qualities of the book reviewed. We see plainly enough that Mr. Chadwick, in preparing his book, had in his mind persons much more sceptical than himself, and that towards them he stands in the attitude of a conservative, and the effect of his book on them will be to open their eyes to something beautiful and true and holy where they had before thought there was only delusion and falsehood. To them his position is an affirmative one.

We by no means reject all his conclusions. Many of these critical suggestions are no doubt true and valuable as leading to a better understanding of the Scriptures, and a fresher and more natural feeling towards them. We do not like the word supernatural. In the broadest signification of Nature*, we agree with Dr. Furness, that nothing is or can be supernatural. A direct revelation of truth and duty from God to man is a divine revelation, but not supernatural. It is a communication consciously received from him who "so clothes the grass of the field," and moves the stars. The Scriptures, old and new, we receive as containing records of such revelations from God to man, granted in less or fuller measures as man is able to receive them. In the Gospels we believe there are hidden treasures of divine truth waiting to be revealed when the man is found with vision open enough to behold them. In the contemplation of the highest that we can attain to, and the grander elevations of thought which shall rise above our mountain peaks to those who enter more fully than we can into the loftier truths of the Bible, we feel ashamed of our little controversies and disputes while we stand outside at the bottom of the path which leads upward into those majestic heights.

J. H. M.

*It is only a matter of definition. If by Nature we mean the universe of mind and matter, of course there can be nothing supernatural.

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.

THREE CRITICAL JUNCTURES IN THE JOURNEY OF LIFE.

"For the King of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination."— EZEKIEL, Xxi., 21.

It has happened to most of you, I suppose, to be travelling on foot or by private conveyance in a strange country, and to come to the head of two ways, each of which had its claim to be considered the direct road to your destination; and there you have had occasion to use divination. You have questioned the points of the compass, the formation of the country, the trend of the road, the evidences of more or less travel, recalled your directions when you started, and, according as the testimony pressed, have finally resolved to take the right hand or the left, as the shortest and surest way to your goal. You have sometimes found yourself correct, and sometimes mistaken. In the last case, you have rued the impatience that rejected the trouble of going back to inquire at the nearest house, or your reluctance to cross the fields and ask some laborer at his work. You have reflected too late that you did not use all the divination you might have used, or determine your course by the weightiest evidence. You took the pleasantest road instead of the one that had the truest direction. You were dismayed by the prospect of a long hill, or a threatening wood or cloud; or you trusted the instinct of your horse instead of your own judgment; or you yielded to the unwise wishes of a companion who had no responsibility for deciding your question; or you drew lots, or trusted your luck, as the King of Babylon did when he "consulted with images," and looked into the livers of birds and beasts.

Human life is this strange journey, on which, from time to time, we come to the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, and are compelled to use divination. I propose, in view of the new year, on which we have entered since we parted, to consider three of the critical seasons and places where the ways fork, in our human journey, and to ask by what sort of divination we are to determine our road.

First. It is strange that the most critical of all the forks in our journey should lie so near its commencement, and that is the early moment when the claims of our inclination and the demands of conscience are first brought into direct and conscious collision, and we must decide, as children or youth in their teens, which voice we will obey, and which fingerpost shall decide our course. In early childhood, and sometimes later, the ways of our life are settled for us by our responsible guardians, our circumstances, our education. The question of right and wrong is then very much a question of pleasing or displeasing our parents, teachers, or employers. There is then so much of mere convenience or inconvenience, of family order or disorder, of rules kept or broken; so much that is merely expedient or inexpedient, that has its little penalty or little reward,-settling the account at short reckoning,- that the conscience is not seriously aroused; and doubtless there is a wise and providential arrangement for keeping the solemn question of right and wrong thus in the background. It is even a misfortune to have it, in its most serious form, prematurely raised. Children should not be too early appealed to as wholly responsible moral agents. Their innocence, their good habits, their obedience to rightful superiors, their health, their diet, their cheerfulness, their subordination to teachers, are the natural things to look to. They do a great many thoughtless things, which are comparatively innocent for them, which would be very wrong in others. But their thoughtlessness and want of malicious purpose make their faults and follies not very decisive of their future character. So long as it is only gay spirits, want of reflection or experience, that make them err, we need not be very solicitous. It is only when they begin to throw their deeper selves, their reason and conscience, into their decisions, that we have occasion to look with profound anxiety into the direction they take. For then first it is the soul that is pledging itself to wrong or right, to weal or woe.

I am not addressing parents upon their duty to their children,― much as might be fitly said on that subject. But I