the next edition, and thus add to its acceptability. An undue proportion of space is allotted to some subjects; while others, of more weight and deserving of fullness of treatment, receive scant and incomplete recognition. “Agriculture" is honored with 126 pages, while "Jesus" is proclaimed in 16 pages; "John Wesley" is biographized in one page, but "Voltaire" in eight pages; "Methodism" is recorded in uine pages, "Entomology" in 13 pages; "Anatomy" is unfolded in 110 pages, the "Jews" in eight pages. The more serious criticism of this encyclopædia relates to the materialism and rationalism of many of its contributors, who have, not surreptitiously but openly, undermined certain accepted and well-accredited views respecting the Scripture and the doctrines the Church holds they teach. Three cosmogonies are discovered in Genesis; the Mosaic account of creation is represented as mythical; the pre-existence of matter is attributed to the Elohistic documents; Abraham, not under divine guidance but prompted by a nomadic impulse, immigrates to Palestine; the book of Esther is characterized as wanting in religiousness, and Daniel as having been written long after the prophet's age; the Proverbs are inconsistencies; the Canticles are sensual; and the authorship of some of the books of the New Testament is held in dispute. Whatever the value of the historical, political, scientific, and philosophical monographs, as presented in the encyclopædia, we are impressed that the biblical subjects have been largely committed to those of rationalistic and materialistic tendencies, justifying our call for a reconstruction of such articles by writers in sympathy with the Christian faith. Orthodox Christian scholarship should predominate in its biblical discussions.

Apropos of Mr. Gladstone's letter to the Marquis de Riso, it is interesting to read the octavo of seven hundred pages by the Right Hon. Lord Robert Montagu, in which he affirms Great Britain is menaced by a conspiracy to place it under the dominion of Rome. He is sure that the majority of the political and religious editors posing as Protestants, Liberals, Conservatives, and Freethinkers are Jesuits in disguise; that the ministers of the crown and many members of Parliament are the pledged tools of the Roman Curia; and that in particular D'Israeli was, and Gladstone and Lord Salisbury are, secretly plotting the destruction of the monarchy and the intrenchment of Romanism in the national life. The story of this conspiracy, however doubt ul its reality, is as enchanting as romance, and places the chief moguls of English politics on the defensive. Gladstone's proportion in the conspiracy is of a gravity that absorbs us. In 1886 he favored the Oaths Bill, which released the officers of the civil service from the necessity of making a religious profession. This is interpreted as of Romanizing tendency. That he advocated the disestablishment of the Irish Church and proposes the same thing for the English Church; that in 1883 he forced the government to abandon the Constabulary Bill; that he has pursued a policy of obstruction in Parliament when Roman Catholic interests were in peril; that he supported the motion to place the power of clôture in the hands of the Speaker; that he has exhibited antagonism

to the doctrine of representative government; that at times he has endeavored to confuse and destroy the Liberal party; that both D'Israeli and himself winked at an Anglo-Roman alliance; and that the monstrous and iniquitous Home Rule scheme, involving the decentralization of parliament, the dismemberment of the British empire, the autonomy of Ireland, the crushing of the Protestants and the liberation of the Roman Catholics, was reiterated by him to his own sacrifice, are quoted as the unanswerable proofs of the inherent Jesuitism of his career, and of a purpose that survives defeat to transfer Rome to London. The indictment is lengthy, severe, and seriously proclaimed. No account is made of Gladstone's anti-Catholic attitude in his pamphlets, Vatican Decrees and Expostulation, or of his opposition in 1874 to "The Public Worship Regulation Bill" because it was inimical to the Anglican Church, or of any thing that he has proposed in the interest of Protestantism, except to stigmatize it as a mask, a deceitful appearance that would soon expose itself. Gladstone's real policy, it is here said, has ever been Romanistic; his apparent policy was partially and only occasionally Protestant in form. The trouble with the arraignment is, not his documents, nor his facts, but his method of interpretation-a method that would enable him to prove that John Knox was a freethinker, Francis Asbury a Socinian, George Washington a tory, and Abraham Lincoln a secessionist. He reads into Mr. Gladstone's life motives that did not govern him, principles of legislation not patent in his membership of the House of Commons, and a prophetic purpose with which the results of his policy do not harmonize. He also extracts from his career more than belongs to it, and points out sympathetic tendencies of which the statesman was not conscious. It is a case of monstrous involution and mischievous evolution. America believes in Gladstone because it believes in Protestantism.

In the literary race in the United States the South is far in the rear, it having given entirely too much time in the past to the protection of its social institutions, the cultivation of a sectional and unconstitutional spirit, and the indoctrination of political jealousies and religious alienations. As one result, the illiteracy of the people is dense and unconfined; and yet so conservative is public opinion respecting it that the political leaders of the South who are in Congress increase their popularity with their constituencies by opposing educational bills whose direct effects would largely inure to themselves. Not all, however, are partners in this ignominy, nor do all share in the pull-back tendencies of the majority. Among the few who believe in progress and respect the literary spirit, there is a feeling of humiliation over the situation which, as it is studied, is painfully distressing, if not alarming. Deficient in scholarship, the South is to-day without a great newspaper or eminent author, and without a magazine that makes any impression on the nation, or even the section where it is published. Of Southern writers not a few have earned a comfortable appreciation from the public, such as George W. Cable, Henry W. Grady, A. H. Stevens, Miss M. N. Murfree, Miss Amélie Rives,

Frank R. Stockton, Basil L. Gildersleeve, Thomas Nelson Page, Rev. Thomas O. Summers, and Robert Burns Wilson; but where are the poets, philosophers, scientists, theologians, antiquarians, explorers, and the earnest mental workers that constitute a literary class and give tone to the thinking of the people? Verily, the South is without the literary spirit and without littérateurs. That the situation is at all recognized by any considerable portion of the Southern people is a hopeful sign; but until the masses are taught to believe that literature, theology, science, poetry, newspapers, magazines, books, churches, and schools are more important than cotton, tobacco, profanity, sectionalism, and degradation, the nation cannot look to that section for contributions to the great literature of the world.

The Oxford League, by the recent action of its Board of Control, consisting of Bishop J. H. Vincent, Bishop E. G. Andrews, Dr. J. M. Buckley, Dr. J. M. Freeman, and Dr. J. L. Hurlbut, comes into orderly and official relations with the Methodist Episcopal Church. A parent League, of which Bishop Vincent is President, and Dr. Hurlbut Secretary, is recognized, and all local Leagues are invited to affiliate as auxiliaries with it. Further, each local League shall be subordinate to the Quarterly Conference of the church to which the League belongs, thus assuring pastoral and official oversight. The official relations of the League indicate a step in advance. It puts this great organization, in terms at least, on a par with our great connectional associations, which have a parent society and are under the inspection of the Quarterly Conference. This is but the outbreak of the methodical spirit that has characterized Methodism from the beginning. Progress is sure to follow this new proceeding; and not many years hence a column of statistics relating to the Oxford League may appear in our Annual and General Minutes.

If so little a matter as the claim that Charles Wesley is the poet of Methodism irritates the surface-nerves of the Protestant Episcopal Church, what outbursts of fury might be expected if it should be claimed that John Wesley had a better right to organize a Church than Henry VIII! We forbear to write what we think. It seems that our younger ecclesiastical sister—not mother-is quite willing to concede John Wesley to Methodism, though he never abandoned the Church of canonicals and prayer-books, but she holds to Charles with a vigorous and an affectionate grasp that confirms the value of the prize. It is immaterial what were the views of Charles respecting the Church of apostolical succession, so that the facts of history are not disputed. Granting that he was a preacher of the Church of England, he was not its poet; faithful in the general sense to that Church, in labors, in songs, in sympathies, he was with the reformatory movement of the Oxford Club; outwardly he was with the robed priests, but inwardly he was not of them. A member of the Church of England, he became the divine poet of Methodism, and is to-day held as the first of Christian poets in the world.

CURRENT DISCUSSIONS.

THE ETHICS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

IN striking contrast with the ethical régime of the Israelitic age, the Christian period is non-ethical in its government and tendencies; in other words, the New Testament, by way of explanation, is barren of an ethical system. There is law in the gospels, law in the epistles, law in the theologies; law of the strictest import, applicable to human conduct in its various evolutions, to human thinking in its rapid workings, to human feeling in its various degrees of intensity, and to the whole life in its settled or variable manifestations; but neither in form nor spirit is a system of law, such as Justinian or Blackstone would erect, apparent. In vain the student will search for traces of such a system, though he may suppose the existence of law at all is the key to some kind of orderly arrangement in moral instruction, or that one law is the evidence of many. In this respect he will be disappointed, for while the Mosaic law is a monumental structure, symmetrical and majestic, representing equity, justice, judgment, and truth, the ethical ideas of the great Teacher are unframed and sometimes undiscoverable; they certainly are not always within easy reach, and do but faintly impress themselves upon the thinker. Nor must it be concluded that in the absence of a colossal system of law there are, nevertheless, the elements, or the nucleus, of a system in the enactments and teachings of the Saviour and apostles; that law is in miscellaneous heaps, or such fragmentary forms that the wise and systematic student may gather and embody them in a positive and proportional system. For law in its breadth is not in the New Testament; it is not an invisible thread running through the religion of the Master; it is not piled up in scattered masses to be reduced to shape and beauty; it is not there in embryo, or development, or teaching, or allegory; nor does it pervade the Gospel as it pervades nature or the Old Testament.

Yet, to say that an ethical tendency, or the authority of law, is exhibited by the new teachers, is equal to saying that religion, however lofty and spiritual, has its legal phase or department, and that it must be inventoried along with all the constituent elements of religion. The relative position of law in the two periods is discovered so soon as one examines the subject. In the old period law was supreme; religious duty consisted in obedience to its behests; morality, tempered or invigorated by spiritual impulses, constituted the religious life; in the new period, religion as a spiritual fact or experience is supreme, law being subservient, if not incidental, to religion. In the one law is primary and fundamental, and religion secondary; in the other, religion is pre-eminent and original, while law is in the background and entirely subordinate.

From this view of the standing of law in Christianity we can understand some things that puzzle the inquirer and confuse the student of religion. While the Mosaic system of law contains six hundred and thirteen direct

precepts, appalling by its exact numerical requirements and burdening the Israelite by its complexities, the Christian is not under obligation to a code of minute precepts, but regulates his life according to certain principles which signify the spirit or essence of righteousness, and which are applicable in every emergency, temptation, and circumstance of the human sphere. If there is any system of ethics in the New Testament it is a system not of details, but of principles, a group of teachings that, appropriated and assimilated, is found to be sufficient for the regulation and development of moral character, as far as the boundary-line of the religious life. There is no specific law applicable to every act, every word, every emotion, every thought, every movement of life; but a principle, or teaching, such as for "every idle word" (Matt. xii, 36) and "whosoever is angry with his brother" (Matt. v, 22), that comprises every phase of moral action possible under the teaching. The old law specified every thing, and was endlessly expansive; the new teaching contracts itself into a few principles which apply to the whole human career.

Singularly, too, the ethical conceptions of the New Testament are largely original with their teachers, or in perfect harmony with the highest standards of righteousness set up in the old system, a portion of which was transferred to the new and made a part of it. But the burdensome system as a whole was not transferred; many of its precepts were either modified, as their non-resistance supplanted the lex talionis, or entirely abrogated, as the mischievous law of divorcement. None of the new teachers seemed to be under Semitic influence, adapting the laws of the Asiatic nations to the Christian world, nor under classic guidance, incorporating Greek or Roman ethics into the Christian system; but, avoiding Asiatic and European ideas of right and wrong, they taught ethical principles from a new and original inspiration, and left to mankind ideas, moral distinctions, and moral precepts such as cannot be found elsewhere, and such as will abide as the regulative system of human conduct until the end of time. It is a proof of the potency of the moral teaching of the New Testament that wherever it is planted and takes root in the national life it begins to grow, while other systems, classical, Semitic, mediæval, or modern, expire. Competition with it always results in the extinction of the rude and infirm systems of ethics, though they may have been in vogue for centuries.

Subordinate yet superior, systemless yet surviving, the ethics of the New Testament must be studied as possessing inherent peculiarities that distinguish it from all other systems, and give it the pre-eminence. A very noticeable feature is that it recognizes the absolute rightness and wrongness of things, making such distinctions as are found in no other law, and enforcing them with strange promises of reward, or seriously solemn threats of retribution. Right and wrong are both relative and absolute. As relative principles, they are the results of divine decisions; or right and wrong are so because God has defined them in human vernacular. Sin is the transgression of the law; but before the enactment of law there was no sin, though an act performed before the law by which it could be designated and defined as right or wrong may have been as