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men.

The distinction is real, and is more positively set forth in the Hebrew and in the Septuagint (Gen. i, 20, 21, 24, 25) than it is by St. Paul. The first three kinds of animals were created mediately-the waters bringing them forth, and the earth bringing forth beasts and cattle after their kind. They were "formed out of the ground." God formed man quite differently-his body immediately and at once "of the dust of the ground (Gen. ii, 7); and then God breathed into the body "the breath of lives"-animal life (Bòs), soul-life (vx), intellectual life, wn. The Son, sanctified by the Holy Ghost, becomes пvεvμātikη gwn, spiritual life. The "kind of the flesh of men" which differentiates it is this psychical organism.

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The resurrection is not a vegetation, but it is the avάorãos or the ɛyεipov of the soulical body "changed" into the spiritual body. "We shall all be changed, for this mortal must put on immortality." Further, "All who are in their graves (uvnuɛious) (μνημείοις) shall hear his voice, and shall come forth." John v, 28. cept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." John xii, 24. St. Paul wrote (Rom. viii, 23) of "the redemption of our body" (owμatos), and in Phil. iii, 21, he says, "Who shall fashion anew the body (owμa) of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory."

It is seen from these statements that St. Paul, in 1 Cor. xv, limits himself to the soulical body sown as the basis of the spiritual body to be raised. It excludes the notion of a spiritual body evolved at death; of the resurrection of the gross and material body; and that of the coming up of the soul from hades, with no reference to the body sown. Both the uncorrupted body of Christ was spiritualized after his resurrection, and the bodies of those who "remain" and "shall not sleep" shall be changed. The psychical organism shall be raised a spiritual organism. If the psychical body is that in which the soul (psyche) lives and acts, how does it differ from the spiritual body? The spirit, as also the soul, lives and acts in the physsical body. No: "There is a psychical body, and there is a spiritual body." The one is sown, the other is the body raised.

Bostwick Wawley,

EDITORIAL NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

OPINION.

THE cherubim of the Old Testament, so far as described, are unlike any living creatures in zoology, unlike human beings, unlike angels. Quite fully disclosed in Ezekiel, they appear to be composite figures, resembling the winged bulls of Assyria, the griffins of Greece, the sphinxes and winged lions of Babylon, or more nearly the asps, eagles, and angelic forms of Egyptian sculpture. Is it at all probable that they were any thing more than symbolical figures? To suppose that they were personal beings is to suppose the existence of creatures more animal in characteristics than any other animal, more repulsive in form than any other creature, and entirely outside the circle of intelligences or personalities known to man. The chief defense of faith in their personality is founded in their alleged appearance immediately after the expulsion of Adam from paradise as the guardians of its gates; but these, if beings at all, were probably angelic. The Mosaic cherubim were golden images over the mercyseat; Ezekiel's cherubim were the creatures of a vision, and therefore no more real than the nondescript animals of Daniel's visions; Solomon's cherubim were decorated figures on the walls, curtains, and doors of the temple. In no instance does a cherub appear as a personal being, with voice, message, sympathies, or any exhibition of personality. The cherubim of Eden do nothing; it is the sword of fire that swiftly turns in protection of paradise. God's riding upon a cherub (2 Sam. xxii, 11) indicates an inanimate vehicle, as a cloud, for in immediate connection "he was seen upon the wings of the wind." The king of Tyrus (Ezek. xxviii, 14) is spoken of as an "anointed cherub," implying strength, riches, greatness, so reminding us of the golden cherubim of the ark. Keil and Hengstenberg reject them as existent beings or personalities. We reject them as monsters of the imagination, the insubstantial products of visions, and to be dismissed both from theology and thought as representatives of beauty, manliness, perfection, or of any phase or form of personal manifestation. Josephus held that the cherubim could not be described or understood; we hold that they cannot be defined either in terms of Scripture, or zoology, or humanity, or angelhood, or of all together. They belong not to any order of intelligences, but to the iconographic department of ecclesiastical archæology. As symbolic figures they were not without functions, and were useful. Layard believes that the sculptured figures of Nineveh suggested Ezekiel's cherubim; possibly Egypt suggested Moses's cherubim. Perhaps the full-formed cherub of the prophet was significant of four ideas-man of spirituality, the ox of the uniformity of God's natural laws, the lion of omnipotence, the eagle of

omniscience. So Dr. James Strong interprets it. Whatever the interpretation, it should be held as the deciphering of a figure, and not the key to any conceivable personality.

The advocates of Spiritualism will probably proclaim the accession of Tennyson to their ranks, since he has written a letter in which he avers that from boyhood he has been subject to a "walking trance," during which his individuality seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being. This is not Spiritualism, nor any thing kindred to it, but a Paul-like experience of apparent temporary absence from the body, or that ecstatic state attributed to seers and prophets, in which they clearly foresaw the truths they would afterward report. The physiological aspects of the case we refer to physiologists; but the pyschological experience he describes, and affirms frequently to have had, is a proof of that poetic afflatus that links him with the immortal poets among men. He is not even on the border of the territory of Spiritualism. During the trance no feature of necromancy, no communication with the dead, no witchcraft, no apparitions, no scenic displays of eternal shadows, no miraculous endowments, no power to move tables, none of the haberdashery of those who pose as mediums between the living and the dead appears, or is claimed to be associated with it. Queen Victoria was once incorrectly reported as having espoused Spiritualism; Huxley, because he attended a séance for scientific investigation, was also chronicled as a proselyte; the Hon. Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, was speciously enrolled on their list; and the Encyclopædia Britannica deludes its readers with the statement that the Spiritualists number several millions in the United States. This is calumny added to falsehood, for the American people have no intention of adopting a religion whose schedule consists of thumb-raps, wax hands, flesh-and-blood spirits, millinery automatons, dark-lantern cabinets, and all the doctrines of a modified sansculottism. The poet-laureate of England is not a Spiritualist; he is a poet, exalted at times into transcendental states, with spiritual insight quickened into an intense superconscious reality, and his being lost in the infinitude of the eternal.

The attempt of the Newer Criticism to prove that the Bible, considered as to its original documents, is not wholly of Jewish origin, but that its Gentile sources are abundant and historically traceable, is a strategic change of position full of peril to the doctrine of inspiration. The Elohistic and Jehovistic accounts of creation are credited to the deciphered testimony of the Chaldean bricks; the tabernacle and the temple borrowed their models from Egypt; Isaiah's Messianic songs were imported from Babylon; Daniel's images were duplicates of heathen idols; the apostle John extracted his terminology from Philo; the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by an Alexandrian, perhaps a Hellenistic, proselyte; and Jesus appropriated incarnation and regeneration from India.

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Rev. R. Heber Newton, skirmishing among the Eastern mystics, discovers in their teachings all the categories or symbols of Christian experience, for they represent baptism, temptation, passion, burial, resurrection, and ascension as the successive stages of unfolding life. In this inquisitive, inductive, and deductive way the critics conclude that the Bible is a conglomerate, not of Jewish traditions alone, but of Gentile contributions of architecture, ritualism, history, dreams, and religious systems. If it should be established that many of the writers of the sacred books obtained their histories, institutions, and religious dogmas from Gentile sources it would not necessarily invalidate the books, impeach the writers, or estrange the Church from them, but it would seem to destroy their inspiration by destroying their Jewish texture and character. As yet no evidence appears that a Gentile wrote a line of it, or that Gentile influence in its composition was felt except as it was a part of the divine plan of revelation. Babylon, Persia, Egypt, Edom, Greece, and Philistia did not produce the Bible, either by suggestion, history, or plagiarism. The Jewish race, under the inspiration of the Almighty, must be allowed complete authorship of the sacred canon.

The recognition of American authors by the London Society of Authors registers an advance in foreign appreciation of American genius and scholarship. At a banquet given by the society, Mr. James R. Lowell, as the representative intellect, was pleasantly lionized by the literary magnates present, Lord Tennyson extending his greetings, and George Meredith, Walter Besant, Edmund Gosse, Mr. Yates, Mr. Collins, and others felicitating him on the development of American belles-lettres. Not long afterward, however, Mr. Gosse intimated in the Forum that America, with the possible exception of Poe, has not produced a genuine poet, with which Englishmen generally coincide. For an inexplicable reason our living poets are studiously excluded from his list. To this impeachment of America a retort or two may not be out of place. Excluding the dead from the thought, it may be asked, Has England a poet? Tennyson is in his dotage; Robert Browning is an unread line-writer; and as for all others, they are mere poetasters not worthy of mention. England's poets are dead; America's poets are alive, some full-grown, others in embryo, with a few in our necrology. The Saturday Review admits that England is not likely to have another great poet for a century. America is not anticipating such a "famine of intelligence" as will result in the decline of poetry, philosophy, literature, and religion. In the poetic line we may expect to rival "The Leech-Gatherer," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," the "Faery Queen," " Philip Van Artevelde," "Tartarus,” “Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," and the "Death of Artemidora." Mr. Gosse, unpoetical in nature, prosaic even to stupidity, is not a competent critic of American poetry, and is without foresight as to its probable evolution into something like the poetic greatness of the Elizabethan age. cynicism of the English critic is too apparent to justify remark.

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Hebrews xii, 14: "Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord" (Revised Version). "Sanctification" is not quite the equal of "holiness," which is the word in the Authorized Version. "Consecration" is perhaps the real meaning of the writer. The Christian is to be set apart or devoted to the highest use. Accepting holiness," however, as the legitimate word, our remark concerns the verb diwkɛTE, which means to pursue, seek after, continually advance, and come to an issue. Two ideas confront us: If holiness be the object to be sought there may be continual advance toward it, a following after it, or a catching up with it, a making it an issue and finding it. The difference between holiness sought and holiness found, either of which will admit the subject into heaven, is here clearly expressed. Holiness may be the "issue," but it is not the sole condition of seeing the Lord. Follow after holiness, for without following, without seeking, without continually advancing toward it, final fellowship with God will be impossible. Holiness is relative, and as a human experience is a diminished quantity. No one may claim absolute holiness, but one may advance, and will ever advance in that direction. It is the advancing, the pursuing, not the absolute possessing, that is the criterion of moral success. One may be next-door to holiness, and stopping or ceasing to advance or follow after will be lost; but one unmeasured distances from it and advancing toward it, however feebly, or as with paralytic step, will be saved. The pursuit of holiness, not its absolute realization, is the passport into the eternal kingdom. If this exegesis be correct many will be saved whom the rigid sectarian would assign to perdition. Many heathen following the flickering light of reason and nature will go in before the citizens of Capernaum; and many sincere souls in Christian lands, not explicit in religious profession, will ride in chariots of gold into the celestial city, saved because they sought the highest end, though they did not find it. In short, a standard of absolute holiness will shut the gate to the whole earth. We are pursuers of the end, and as such will we be made welcome into the banqueting house of the Lord.

Count Tolstof, the famed Russian author, is arresting the world's attention not only to himself, but to the inherent evil of the social structure and the remedy he is bold enough to propose for its relief and improvement, in books born of bitter experience and great travail of soul. After multiplied observations among the poor in Moscow, he concluded that society as constituted fosters gregarious poverty, the evils of crime and licentiousness, and a phase of inhumanity that forbids national progress and individual happiness. In describing the city's framework he is unique, artistic, pathetic, and never-ceasing, and so is instructive as to the actual birth-throes of human society. In sympathizing with the poor the multitudes are with him; the wealthy, too, are not without pity as they read after him; but when he suggests the destruction of society as the only cure for its wrongs he is vagarious, a foe to human interests, and cannot expect a large following. In conceiving a remedy for man

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