kind's woes, he is at the lowest end of a logical refrain. If poverty is an evil, why does he propose the destruction of wealth? If ignorance is a misfortune, why does he renounce culture? If misgovernment is tyranny, why does he oppose good government? If Jesus's ethical and social teachings should be obeyed, why does he array himself against the Church? In short, while poverty, degradation, ignorance, crime, and irreligion shocked his sympathetic nature into active manifestations of regard and benevolence, he proposes to subvert their opposites, wealth, culture, refinement, art, and religion, as though they also partook of the common infamy. Eschewing the opposite as a remedy, he advocates toil in poverty, the very thing he deplored in the masses of Moscow, as the redemptive agency in the world, and that which Jesus continually prescribed. In the philosophical sense, Tolstof refutes himself; in the sociological sense, he is nihilistic beyond endurance, and in the religious sense he is without religion, and has seen Jesus, if at all, through the poorest of telescopes. Verily, Tolstoï's proposition is that of a fanatic, and if it were not cruel we would write him a maniac.

Canon Knox-Little, the distinguished visitor from England, lately preached perhaps not unpalatable yet certainly strange and electric truths to the Protestant Episcopal Church in New York. Earnestly though undemonstrably anxious for the success of the Gospel in the city, it suddenly dawned upon that denomination that it was not satisfactorily effectual in parochial mission work, and that, notwithstanding its heritage of wealth and ancestry, it is constitutionally unfitted for this phase of Christian aggression. The discovery was as painful as it seemed to be remediless. Other denominations, notably the Methodists and Baptists, are missionary in function, and seek the multitudes to save them. Within their circles poverty is not a badge of dishonor, labor is not a sign of low-caste life, and sin forsaken makes not against the standing of the subject. The high-born Episcopalian is of a different temper, and taking refuge within the Church, stands apart from every system of evangelization that disturbs his inertia or requires his personal co-operation. Meanwhile sin abounds, and other Churches are active against it. The wise-minded Canon took in the situation, and administered, if not rebukeful, certainly cautionary and cohortative suggestions touching an aggressive campaign for reform and religion which will not soon be forgotten. In the presence of hundreds of people he assured them that their stately services, with sacraments, prayer-books, choirs, and robes, were inadequate to mission work, and that revival tactics, if not Salvation Army methods, must be employed if sinners are saved. He urged them not to be afraid of excitement, and not to be influenced by the error that the results of such excitement would not remain, for he insisted that too many were saved in this way to discount the method. With the English Canon we recommend Methodist methods to the consideration of a Church whose weaknesses are inherited puerilities, unnecessary robes, and a stiff aristocratic ecclesiasticism.

CURRENT DISCUSSIONS.

THE ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

BоTH the uniqueness and originality of the ethical system of the strictly biblical period grow upon us as it is made the subject of private meditation, as it was with David, and as it is brought into comparison with the legal codes of contemporaneous or other nations. In a short time it impresses us that in no sense or to any degree was it a borrowed system, or suggested by the legislation of surrounding tribes or countries. It stands alone as being different from the jurisprudence of the world. Moreover, the student is also impressed that, because of certain peculiarities that were not the outgrowth of environment, or of consciously felt necessities, and because of the marked religious trend of the system, it was in origin less human, and had in view fewer purely human ends than any other system that history has preserved for us. Its uniqueness, indeed, consisted not so much in its details, which were burdensomely minute, as in the moral impact and tendency of its constitution. Other peoples, under the influence of their religions, obeyed a certain moral impulse, and had respect unto a prevailing ethical idea; but the ethical expression of their convictions of right and wrong in statutory law was feeble, without propelling enthusiasm, and was wanting in that religious spirit that distinguished the economy of the Jews. As the bevel was the masonic Jewish mark in architecture, so religion was the divine Jewish mark in law.

Strikingly prominent in the Mosaic system are two integers by which it is segregated from all others, and which do not appear, symbolically, remotely, or in any way, in any other national jurisprudence. One of these is the theistic spirit that pervades the whole, as though the law, posing as a school-master in those days, would educate the people in the thought of Jehovah as the Ruler of the worlds and the Father of men. This species of education was a necessity of the times and of the Jewish people, for God was unknown among the Gentiles, and was but dimly apprehended by those to whom he was gradually revealing himself. The great thought of God seems to have been to make himself known, but the idolater did not hear his footsteps or see his face in the operations of nature, and the Israelites did not correctly interpret the epiphanies with which they in their long history were favored. Hence the manifestation of God in law given to men was a divine procedure, and it largely accounts for the system as a whole. It accounts for laws prohibitory and mandatory; for penalties singularly severe; for conceptions and lessons of right and wrong new to the philosophies of men; and for the intrusion of the theocratic idea in all their institutions, customs, governments, and history. No other national code makes prominent, even by influence, the theistic doctrine or purpose. The function of law is not held to be religious, nor in decisive terms to be moral, but as a civil instrument or criterion for the regulation of the civil or external life. The Hebrew system, according to its classification, regarded the civil function of law as elementary,

as lowest in the scale, the moral function being next in order, and the religious function the highest, the most permanent, and its greatest and most significant peculiarity.

In this connection the second integer, which is purely typical or prophetical, should have consideration. In no system of law, either defunct or in operation, is the prophetical factor to be found, except in the Jewish system; that is, no law, civil or religious, pointed with unerring exactness to the future as respects its events, its heroes, or the course of national development. It is not the mission of law, abstractly considered, to have reference to future personages, epochs, or movements-its business is with the present hour; but if in any event it should have a prospective element, it would be limited in its provisions to the civil doings of the individual or nation; in other words, national law as understood has reference to present conduct, and only remotely to future action. Here is the dividing line between national systems and the economy of tlie Old Testament. The latter, in its ecclesiastical or ceremonial aspects, was strictly prophetical of things to come, of changes in the affairs of the Jewish people, of the circumstances of the advent of the Messiah, of his offices as priest, prophet, and king, of his atonement and the special doctrines of his kingdom, and of all that belongs to the character and function of the only begotten Saviour of men. The Levitical system of the Pentateuch, in its symbolizations, is as prophetic of all the foregoing as the documents of Isaiah and Daniel. As the law was theistic in educational influence, so it was typ ical in its significance of the chief purposes of the advent of Jesus Christ. Of no law, or system of laws, can these features be predicated except of that system which breathes in the pages of the Old Testament.

If this representation of the old and truly biblical system be correct, then it must follow that whenever these two purposes of the law shall be fulfilled it must cease to be operative, unless it shall receive a new commission, or be perpetuated for other reasons than those that governed in its introduction. Whenever the theistic idea shall be fully recognized in the world, and whenever the antitypes of the law find their true and final type, the old law, by its own terms, must subside, or declare that it has new business on hand. However magnificent, therefore, the old lawwhatever educational work it accomplished—and granting that its prophetical mission was never rivaled-we must write that it decomposed for the want of another issue, and in the presence of a higher and more permanent system of law. Hence, much in the Old Testament is not now in vogue; that which was once law is law no longer; the examples, the precedents, the magistracies, the institutions and customs, having accomplished their purpose, have withered away.

From this it would follow that a mistake is made in relying with an all-embracing faith upon the promises, laws, and teachings of the Old Testament, or in looking to it as a guide in morals or an inspiration in religion. The Old Testament is the history of one people, or the appearance of the kingdom of God among one people for a specific purpose, which, being fulfilled, disqualifies the Book as a mentor in morals or

religion. The New Testament is addressed to all nations; and, containing laws, principles, examples, and a religious system, with a function as broad as humanity, it is to be consulted, obeyed, and venerated always and every-where by all the children of men.

Clearly to apprehend the process of decomposition of the ethical system of the Old Testament, and also to recognize it as a preparation for something better in the way of law, it will be necessary to define the system in its fundamental characteristics and developments. Nor is this a difficult task. Portions of it are scattered through Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; but the Deuteronomist has almost codified it, so that its sources are easily accessible. Following our own bent to classify, we first discover what may be called the civil law, which, serious in tone, is somewhat minute in requirement but inelastic in application. It was adapted to the people in their migratory and undeveloped state, and was therefore unsuited to a later age, though some of its provisions were maintained in the days of royalty, and could not be of use in our civilization. The release of debt at the end of seven years; the prohibition of interest from Israelites; the iniquitous divorce law, and the repulsive levirate law; the privilege to hate an enemy; the power of the father over the son's life; the right to hold foreigners as slaves; the infliction of death for harlotry before marriage, and laws in behalf of the poor, are tokens of the spirit, if not of the structure, of Jewish society considered merely from the stand-point of its civil regulations. If the civil law were intended to suggest the idea of government and the supremacy of divine authority to the untutored Jew, it certainly is not now obligatory upon the race, or even the Jew, its purpose having been “fulfilled.”

Closely interwoven with the civil, and only distinguished from it because the law itself makes the distinction, is the more complex and emphatic criminal law, which, as an expression of aversion to crime, is definite because it is terrific, and pedagogic because it is complete. Its moral distinctions are clear and cold, its penalties seem barbarous, and its spirit is that of inexorable justice without a shadow of mercy. For such crimes as idolatry, withcraft, disobedience to parents, cursing or smiting of parents, murder, death by one's neglect, blasphemy, false prophecy, sabbath-breaking, adultery, and kidnapping, the penalty was death, usually by stoning, but sometimes by burning. For assault and battery, and bearing false witness, the lex talionis, or collection of damages, followed. Theft was punished by a double or fourfold restitution; unlawful marriage by death or childlessness; and minor offenses by forty stripes. Suppose the object of the criminal jurisprudence of the Mosaic economy to be theocratic, as it was undoubtedly, it is self-evident that the Gentiles never were and are not now, nor are the Jews of to-day, under that code and to be judged in the great assize by conformity or non-conformity to it. As belonging to this general scheme of law, the provisions for the exercise of executive authority, or the judicial department, may be mentioned, though there is little that is peculiar to it. Throughout the entire history of the Jews the thought of civil government, as separate in itself,

and without a religious function, occupied a subsidiary position, and exercised a feeble influence over them. The priest was the magistrate and the magistrate was the priest. In the advance of the nation from the simple form of government, judges, local sanhedrins, and finally kings, with power to levy a tax of one-tenth, compel military service, and declare war, truly a type of monarchism, appear, eclipsing the priestly prerogative and harmonizing the form of rulership with that of other nations. While this stray from the intended type of government was attended with temporary splendor and final catastrophe, the civil power, whether centered in a judge or king, was under limitation, and was symbolical, because thus restricted, of that higher government, or the theocracy, instituted in the beginning. In substance as well as form this judicial or executive type of government to some extent abides on the earth, but without divine recommendation, and with no obligatory or coercive rights upon the nations.

Glancing over this schedule of the civil functions of the Mosaic economy, we see that they were temporary, adapted to one people, and had an educational end in view, and therefore that not a single law of that system is in operation or rests with any force upon any people.

Over the ceremonial system of the Jews, which was distinctively religious, and, therefore, of higher import than the preceding, a sacred pause is required. We obtain a sufficient idea of it by merely recalling its classified burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace-offerings, and sin-offering, and also the sacrifices at the consecration of priests and on the great day of atonement. The spirit of the system was sacrificial, typifying (Heb. x, 1) the complete future sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Whether the Israelites themselves distinguished between the sacrifices actually made and that to which they pointed is immaterial to us; we see that such was its meaning, and its value must be estimated by that meaning. It was without doubt the typical sacrificial idea in the old economy that engaged the meditation of David and rendered the law in his sight beautiful, and superior to every other legal instrument with which he was acquainted. It is this idea that is instructive to the modern Christian, for without it the ceremonial system would be repugnant, and even seem barbarous. But is it not conclusive that so soon as the typical purpose was "fulfilled" by Christ in his death it, too, passed away, and lost its authority both over the Jew and Gentile?

Up to this point, then, according to our tracing, the biblical system of law has had fulfillment, and is no longer to be obeyed by any portion of mankind. What, then, is left of that fabric of skill and wisdom? The answer is, The Moral Law. But by what stratagem or device did it escape the fate of decomposition or fulfillment? We frankly write, that if its function were wholly that of the civil or ceremonial law it too must relapse into degeneration, and its authority must be rejected. If its only design were educational, or the propagation of religious ideas, an argument for its perpetuity would be difficult to establish; but it is at these crossroads in history that law comes forth with another mission, and is to be