not safe to judge the tree by the fruit? Every temple in India is the natural child of the Vedas. Hence, by going back to them it is only a return to the corrupt fountain of a corrupt faith. Had the Arya Samaj done nothing else than to bring the missionaries now laboring in India to take up the Vedas for a new study, not because they are a Sanskrit classic but because of their theological absurdities, and subject them to the burning lens of Christian examination, its indirect and undesigned service would have been incalculable.

6. All the Samajes repudiate the temple. They build their own prayer-houses, or churches. Now the very sight of these new edifices is a reminder to every native passer-by that here is a structure in opposition to the temple. It is a drawn sword against the faith which underlies the Golden Temple of Amritsar and the holiest fanes of Benares.

7. The divergences among the Samajes are an open declaration of the fruitless search for unity even in a return to the Vedas. There are minor divisions among even members of the same order. When the leading teacher dies the Samaj is lost for a time. When Chandra Sen departed his Samaj lost all aggressive power. Since Dayanand's death some of his followers declare that he has come to life again. At this time there is a serious division among the Aryas on this very ground. The attacks of these Aryas on Christianity are becoming so violent as to affect even the persons of missionaries. They have stirred up mobs, who have assailed and beaten Christians. In Lucknow they have abused also the Mohammedans. Strange to say, the latter are now joining hands with the Christians against their persecutors, and say to the Aryan preachers, "You may speak against Christians as much as you like, but not against Christ; we hold him a sinless prophet, and when you attack him you will have us as well as the Christians to oppose." *

8. The brotherhood of man preached by all the Samajes is an edge of God," and "The Vedic Doctrine of Sacrifice." All these are published in Lahore, and the first four in a second edition. These little works, unfolding the inner absurdities of the Vedas, and the absolute antagonism of them to the very doctrines which the Brahmas would draw from them, would be good reading for some of the English and American admirers of the early sacred literature of India, who profess to find in the Vedas a very fine and about equal companionwork to that other Oriental work, the Old Testament.

* Rev. B. H. Badley, D.D., in letter from India.

ax laid at the root of the old Brahmic tree. All the apostles of the four theistic societies declare relentless war against the despotic cruelty of the caste system. Every word spoken against this monster must, in the end, be helpful to the Gospel.

9. The public advocacy of the moral element in education in the government schools by the savages is in the very line of missionary operation. In a recent very able article on "Moral Education for Young India," in the Calcutta Review, by T. J. Scott, D.D., Principal of the Methodist Episcopal Theological School in Bareilly, we find copious extracts from the Liberal and New Dispensation and the Arya Patrika, in which the government is severely attacked, not only for allowing infidel writings from Europe to be used in the schools, but for the general want of thorough ethical culture in government schools. Surely, it is no little significant that the leaders of the new Hinduism should advocate the introduction of the best ethical writings of Europe into the schools of India.

It must not be forgotten that the first stages of a movement of this radical character do not furnish the best opportunity for safe judgment as to final effect. When the Samajes shall have gained a larger following, and theism shall have become the central dogina of multitudes now in idolatrous bondage, it may come to the light that the Gospel shall reap a rich harvest among them. The theists have turned their backs upon the old faith. They do not incline to enter the Christian temple; but many of them are slowly advancing toward the outer court. Like Plato, Seneca, and Epictetus, they are uncon scious searchers for the true light.

When 7. Hurst

ART. II. -WHAT IS THE PROVIDENTIAL DESIGN OF GERMAN METHODISM?

FIRST of all let us define the scope of the phrase "German Methodism." It does, of course, include all that work of God which he has wrought among the Germans in America and Europe through the instrumentality of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which constitutes an integral part of that branch of the Church of Christ; but it embraces still more than that. It applies also, self-evidently, to the Wesleyans in Germany, though comparatively small in number, and not any less to the Evangelical Association in America and Europe, which clains under God the Rev. Jacob Albright as its founder. Doctrinally we may also count the United Brethren in Christ in this category, although they never based their Church organization on the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church as the Evangelical Association did, and their German membership is numerically quite small. We therefore limit our present remarks to the German work of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Association.

After having thus stated the purpose we have in view in our paper we take a few long steps backward, to some first. principles.

1. Paul very profoundly says to the Athenians: "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before ap pointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us." Acts xvii, 26, 27. This providential arrangement, or "determination" of national "times" and "bounds," includes certainly also the Teutonic (German) nation in the divine purpose, that "they might feel after him and find him."

2. It is God's providential way to select and prepare, at certain periods of time and history among different nations, certain men, and to use them as his "chosen vessels," or instruments, to promote and execute his purposes; as, for instance, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel, Paul, Luther, Wesley, and many others. In some instances he also chooses nations as his instru

ments through whom to exert certain influences and accomplish certain ends promotive of his divine counsels

3. Although prophecy sheds a clear light upon some cardinal events to occur in the unknown future, the "times and seasons," and the details of the fulfillment, are generally left either untold or enshrouded in figurative language, and hence the full understanding of them may be obtained only by a contemporaneous observation of the "signs of the times," or a subsequent review of prophecy and history combined, explaining each other.

4. When under divine providence one nation or race renders good services unto another, the nation thus served is thereby placed under an obligation of gratitude and moral indebtedness to the other. This just principle is frequently referred to in Paul's writings as obtaining between Jews and Gentiles in matters of salvation. Keeping these principles in view, we now approach our subject more directly, and will endeavor to find the proper answer to the question which forms the heading of this article.

The German race is ethnically original; its existence reaches back into the early times of the Romans, even centuries before Christ. Cæsar found them in the way of his conquering march, and in making war upon the Teutonic tribes he realized that they were more than a match for his otherwise victorious legions. The Germans were then a robust, sturdy, and comparatively well-organized heathen nation, practicing the virtues of chastity, honesty, and patriotism, but also indulging some national sins that cling to them still. Their patriotic valor defeated the proud Roman invader in the Teutoburger forest; and until this day no other nation and no Napoleon could destroy this people. They stand to-day unamalgamated in their Teutonic peculiarities. And this nation sent into Great Britain one of its strongest tribes, the Angel-sachsen (AngloSaxons), which has become the dominant element in the composition of the British nation.

When the Church of England, in course of time, became vitiated in doctrine and depraved in morals, and the better portion of it almost hopelessly entangled in a "part law and part Gospel" legality, so much that even the earnest, sincere Wesley brothers sailed across the Atlantic and went among the Indians

in Georgia to convert them, in order to obtain salvation for themselves as John Wesley afterward clearly saw it-an overruling providence employed German Moravians-Bishop Spangenberg and his godly companions-to teach Wesley what he yet lacked, namely, salvation by faith. When the Wesleys had left Georgia, and returned to England in great distress about their own salvation, it was again a German instrumentality that showed John Wesley the way of faith. He heard some one read Luther's Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans. While listening to this exposition by that great German teacher, he began to see the simple way of salvation by grace through faith, and the Holy Spirit led him, even while thus listening, into this mighty truth. His heart was "strangely warmed," and the blessed Spirit witnessed that his sins were forgiven, and that he, even he, was a child of God; and it is well known that from this experience of saving truth, which was also the prime moving force of the German Reformation in the sixteenth century, English Methodism appeared in the eighteenth century, and has since spread over Great Britain, and even to the ends of the earth.

Let us now take another retrospect. In 1709 some thirteen or fourteen thousand Palatine emigrants ("Pfälzer") emigrated from the Rhenish provinces to England and encamped near the city of London for a short time. About eight thousand of them were shipped by the government over to New York province, and settled along the Hudson River, where the present towns of New Palatine (Neu-Pfalz), Newburg (Neuburg), Rhinebeck (Rheinbecken), and others still testify of their German origin. Some five hundred "Pfälzer" families were sent into North-Ireland, followed by eight hundred persons (Germans) soon after, and they were "fruitful and multiplied." Their children, of course, learned to understand and use the English language.* Wesley and his collaborators found them in their sins and led them to Christ. Among them were the Heck and Emerich families. Barbara Heck and Philip Emerich (Embury) came across to New York, and, behold, in the providence of God that German woman Barbara Heck stirred up the spirit of Emerich, who became one of the earliest preachers of English Methodism in the United States. *Kapp's Geschichte der Deutschen Einwanderung in Amerika, p. 91, etc.