me, is because I am not ready to be forgiven, and hence it would be unwise and unrighteous for Him to come to me now in the form of mercy.

But suppose I turn away from my sin and become thoroughly penitent, then I am ready to be forgiven and God forgives me because it is wise and good in Him, now to do so. God's activity therefore towards or in the world is not always the same. It depends upon the condition of the world. What God will do at any particular time depends upon what the world is at that time. The principles of His activity are always the same, they never change; but the form and degree of His activity depend upon the condition and needs of the world. God is not a thunder cloud that lightens all the while, hit or miss. His activity is always wise and timely. What He does, He does with a purpose. He does not shine with any mechanical necessity like the sun, but He acts like a free moral being. What it is wise and good for Him to do, that is what He always does. But it would not be wise and good for Him to give me of His spirit when I am not prepared for it. There must be preparation on my part. I must hunger and thirst after righteousness, in order to be filled.

Clearly then God's inspiration is specialized by my condition. His activity is conditioned upon my receptivity. What I am at any particular time, is not the cause, but the occasion of what He does for me. Inspiration, therefore, is both universal and special. It is universal in the sense that there is never any lack of spirit in God nor of any disposition to impart that spirit. God has grace enough for all and is never indisposed to bestow it. It is universal, further, in the sense that all do partake of the Divine Spirit in some degree. It is special in the sense that every man has a special amount of that spirit according to his special receptivity. You have more of that spirit than I because you have greater receptivity.

But here comes the real crucial question? How is this specialty to be thought? One says that it is to be thought as being all on man's side, the other as being all on God's side;

but the truth, we suspect, is that it is to be thought as being on both sides. It isn't conceivable that God would try to inspire a soul in whom there is no preparation and no call for His inspiration. It is no more conceivable that a soul can receive a special amount of inspiration, however well His preparation, without a special act of God. To think of God as actually willing to bestow upon the world the same amount of His spirit, whether the world is ready to receive it or not, is inevitably to put into our thought of the Divine activity the conception of mechanical necessity, to think of God as acting not like a free moral being, but like a material force, for in this case He must act sometimes, at least, very unwisely and ungraciously.

This specialty, therefore, is to be thought as both human and divine. On the human side is the special preparation; on the divine side is the special activity. On the human side is the occasion; on the divine side is the cause. On the human side is the condition; on the divine side is the volition. On the human side is the demand; on the divine side is the supply. On the human side is the special hunger and thirst after God; on the divine side is the special outputting of the Holy Spirit to meet that hunger and thirst, and what is known as special inspiration is the union of the two, the filling of the hungry soul with the new bread of life, and the lifting of it into, or the creating within it, a higher consciousness of God.

Here, then, we have a philosophical basis for all that is called special inspiration, It is in the free, spiritual union of the Divine and human activity-in neither without the other. It is not special in the sense of an arbitrary breaking into the continuity of the world, or of human development, and it is not universal in the.sense that there is no special Divine activity. As Dorner says: "It is one of the advanced principles of modern philosophy not to disengage inspiration from the persons of the holy men, not to regard it as something abrupt, breaking in upon the continuity of their life, but as fitting into the same."

That is, God does not abruptly break open men's hearts, in

order to inspire them; but He fits His inspiration into their receptivity. Hence in special inspiration, as in the case of highly exalted spirits, the bearers of revelation, there is a fitting of the special activity of God into the special receptivity of man. But the receptivity of man is to be regarded as not only possession, but need; not only as being filled, but being hungry.

One of the great elements of the preparation for a higher inspiration is the conscious need of it. When the world has appropriated all the light it has, and is hungering and thirsting for more, as at the advent of Christ, then is it specially fitted to receive more, and then does God specially pour out of His spirit. At these points of advance, at these points where new light and power are to come in, does God choose His man and specially fit him for leading the world forward. Thus Christ was the special gift of God to the world when the world's special fitness for him was its own hunger and thirst, and by the union of the two he became the world's inspiration. In the same way Christ himself was fitted for his work. The natural and the supernatural worked together. There was no suspension of the physical process, but there was a vast addition in the spiritual process. Christ was born and grew like other men, but in addition he was born of the overbrooding spirit from the beginning. The spirit of God, given to him without measure, worked with his natural development and so aided it that he grew into the express image of his Father, and became the life and light of the world and the power of God unto salvation.

So it is with all these great religious lights of history. They are the special gifts of God to supply the special needs of the world, and are therefore specially inspired. As James Freeman Clarke says: "All great births of time are supernatural, making no part of the nexus of cause and effect. They are imponderable elements of civilization, not to be accounted for by anything outside of themselves." That is, they are not to be accounted for on any purely naturalistic grounds; but if accounted for at all they must be on the ground of some special Divine activity.

We have, therefore, we trust, something like a comprehensive view of inspiration, both in its broader and narrower sig nification. Mediate or indirect inspiration is both special and universal, and immediate or direct inspiration is the same. And it is universal not only on the Divine, but on the human side; and it is special not only on the human, but on the Divine side. Hence as thus viewed, it explains all the phenomena of history, furnishes a philosophical ground for revelation, and opens a truly rational way for the unfolding of God's thought to the world, and the realizing of God's life in the world. S. Crane, D.D.

ARTICLE XXI.

The Second Coming.

THE question of the Second Coming of Christ, as it is called in dogmatic literature - although the expression does not once occur in the New Testament receives a new interest from the recent prophetic conference. The subject is one that has always possessed a strong fascination for the minds of Christians, and one that has been differently understood by different schools of thought. Some have regarded it as a spiritual advent, others have taken it in its most baldly literal sense. These latter have told us that the day was approaching when the parting sky would reveal the returning form of Jesus, and the trumpet of his herald angel would wake from their long slumbers the uncounted sleepers of the earth. The time even has frequently been fixed; sometimes placed so near at hand that devout believers have sold their possessions and purchased robes for the ascension; again so remote that the scoffer has grown bold in his mockery, and felt that there was yet ample space for repentance. When the dates have passed, and still the sun has obstinately refused to be veiled in darkness, neither would the moon turn to blood nor the

stars fall from heaven, the "millennium mathematics" have been readjusted and new dates worked out. The world, however, has gone rolling on, and "since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation."

The ideas of a second coming and a general judgment were originally based upon the parables of Jesus and the imagery employed in them. That imagery was drawn from various sources, and appears in the parables of the Talents, the Virgins, the Husbandmen; in the external trappings of kings and courts; in figures from the Old Testament, such as the signs in the heavens, the Son of Man coming with clouds, and the sound of the trumpet. The great fact underlying these representations, the moral taught, is that nations and men are judged and will be judged. Jesus himself does not teach a visible, material, local advent, at which the dead will be raised, and living and dead brought to trial and sentenced. ever the drapery, the truth itself is what he seeks to impress. That it may be rendered more impressive he presents it in pictures. It has come to pass, however, that men have been content with the figures of his speech instead of trying to grasp the precepts they embodied. They have taken the sheath and left the sword. They have taken the rhetoric and rejected the idea. They try to support their building upon the ornaments of the pillar, instead of the pillar itself. The metaphors of Jesus, instead of his principles, have shaped the currents of theological thought. His oriental imagery, rather than his eternal truth, dominates the minds of men.

What

The ideas of Jesus himself seem clear. The world is judged in righteousness. Evermore the thrones are set. Constantly are the decrees pronounced. The notable illustration of judg ment upon nations before his own mind is the coming overthrow of Jerusalem, of whose temple and palaces he declared that not one stone would be left upon another. This was to occur before the generation then living had passed away. It would, indeed, be the consummation of that age, not the "end of the world," as the old translators made it.