differed in kind from that exerted by the same Spirit upon holy men of God who have lived in all ages. Beyond such general statements, the doctrine of inspiration is not defined in Scripture. The writers grew in their apprehensions of truth, and this subject illustrates that growth.

The presentation I have given of this subject has another important bearing. It helps us explain, in a rational manner, other passages of the New Testament that are somewhat difficult. The low estimate which, in some places, is put upon this present world and present life; the patience and contentment which are advised under slavery, oppression and wrong; the precepts forbidding legal redress; the remarks discouraging marriage, except for the grossly passionate, these and other expressions find the key to their solution, generally at hand, in some phrase denoting the presence of the great crisis of all things. When John says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world," it is because, as he explains in the verses following," the world passeth away," and "the last hour" has already come. When men are exhorted to patience under the oppressions of the ruling classes, it is because "the coming of the Lord is at hand," and he will recompense to the oppressors the retribution they deserve. When Paul rebukes the brethren for going to law before unbelievers, it is because, under the new regimé, the saints themselves shall judge the world When he discourages marriage, it is because the "fashion of this world passeth away," and the time remaining is "short" "This opens for us," says one "the secret of the ethical philosophy of the primitive Christians. Believing as they did, the moral aspect of life necessarily had for them a totally different complexion from what it would have had if they had imagined that society and the terrestrial order of the world were to be as stable as they have actually proved."

We can easily see that it must have been so. Who would set his affection upon the things of this world that were soon to go down in the wreck? that were to pass away and be forgotten forever? Why should the slave care to strike for his

own freedom, when the returning Lord would speedily break his fetters? Why should the burdened laborer assert his rights, when the hand that was nailed to the cross was about to be lifted in his defence? Why contend for any interest on the eve of the glad day when all wrongs were to be righted? "Who would carry a cause before Dikast or Proconsul today, when Eternal Justice was pledged to hear it to-morrow?" "When the great assizes of the Universe are about to be opened, it were a poor thing for the suitors to begin fighting in the vestibule." Who would form domestic ties when they were liable to be so speedily broken when at any moment the great trumpet might sound and announce that the end had come? Under the shadow of that great catastrophe their lots were cast, and life necessarily became intense and narrow. As the tension was removed, their views widened, and their plans began to project into the future. The resistless logic of events has substituted for the ancient motto "the time is short," the better and truer one," the time is long," — long for the world if not for its denizens, long for the race if not for the individual, long that the plans of God may at length be gloriously fulfilled, in a renovated and exalted humanity!

"Man's self is not yet man.

Nor shall I deem his object served, his end
Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,
While only here and there a star dispels

The darkness; here and there a towering mind
O'erlooks its prostrate fellows."

There is a sense, however, in which Christ did return in their day; though his return was not that for which his followers looked, nor which they taught. He did come before that generation passed, in the feast of Pentecost, in the overthrow of Jerusalem, in the preaching of his gospel to many nations. Thus did he come, and he has been coming ever since in all the great movements of history. There is a story in Hawthorne that while James the Second was on the throne, a regiment of British soldiers appeared in a New England town to enforce a tyrannous edict. Suddenly the march of the soldiers was stayed by "the figure of an ancient man, who

seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the center of the street to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist the tremulous gait of age." His face was one of "antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended upon his breast." As he confronted the band and its leader, he said, "I have stayed the march of a king ere now. I am here, Sir Governor, because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place, and it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on the earth, in the good old cause of the saints." The Gray Champion was the type of New England's hereditary spirit appearing on the eve of danger in a crisis of the people. Thus in every crisis of his people does the Spirit of the Lord come again. In the mighty epochs of his kingdom, in a revival of learning or reformation of morals, in an uprising for freedom, in a war that breaks the chains of the oppressed, in the cause of temperance, in opposition to every wrong and evil, thus has he ever come, and thus does he come in our own age as well as in the ages that are gone.

"Some great cause, God's new Messiah,

Offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand,

Parts the sheep upon the right;

And the choice goes by forever

'Twixt that darkness and that light."

He comes also in the experiences of the individual soul. He comes in every impulse by which the soul is made better and purer. He comes in those moments when time and space are forgotten, and we are whirled upward into the very presence of God. He comes to us in every opportunity for rendering service to the poor and distressed. Christ stands before us in every needy soul, in every suffering body. There is a story of a poor monk who attended to the wants of a wretched leper. Time passed, and he shared with the miserable man his lowly abode and his table. But one day a marvellous trans

formation took place. The scales dropped from the face, the watery eye became firm, and the muscles of the body resumed the beauty and symmetry of health. The leper was healed. Startled at the change, the affrighted monk gazed in astonishment at the face - it was the face of the Christ. It was his Lord whom he had served, whose wants he had supplied, and who had afforded the monk the joy that will come into every heart that hears the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me."

He comes in that hour when heart and flesh fail us, when the tabernacle is taken down, and the occupant goes forth to another life. "Let not your heart be troubled. 1 will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."

These are the only comings for which we may look. We do not believe in that literal, material advent, concerning which early and later Christians have been alike disappointed. That the heavens will open and reveal his returning form, preceeded by an angel with the trump of resurrection, and followed by a retinue of celestial beings, we do not believe. We are not, therefore, affrighted, when a comet flashes across the sky or an earthquake thrills the land. These, cry the literalists, be the signs of his approach. Prepare to meet him. It was the failure of such signs as these, that in an earlier day, gave rise to the sneering question, "Where is the promise of his coming?" It were well for us to-day to let the mistakes of the past teach us, at least, the lesson of caution.

ARTICLE XXII.

Prayer.

In addition to all that has ever been said and written about prayer, a word more is ever in place, because the subject is radically important, and worthy of much serious and candid consideration; because, too, many crude notions are still quite prevalent concerning prayer, its nature and use, that ought to be outgrown. In the hope of contributing a mite toward the better view and better practice of devotion, the following considerations are addressed to the readers of the QUARTERLY.

Though prayer is everywhere observed among men, though through all the ages of history the observance has obtained, though the belief is and always has been general that prayer is useful and necessary, there seems to be a lack of understanding and of agreement as to its nature, the manner in which benefit is derived from it, and the character of the benefit. Many, indeed, are doubtful of the consistency and the utility of prayer; and quite often reflections are made on the practice as an absurdity. An utter unbelief in it as a good, necessary and proper thing is often declared.

It seems, however, that this unbelief must result from an attention too slight and a reflection too limited for a just and final decision; because, to a habitually reverent and thoughtful person, it appears almost incredible that such total unbelief should exist; that men in the exercise of their observing powers and rational faculties should remain unconscious of the necessity and the utility of prayer; since the fact is plain that the essence of prayer is seen in all life, and that the very first cry of nature always is a petition.

The prayer of nature is expressed by the feeble nestling as it stretches its neck upward with open mouth at every sound of approach; and in this we see the sign that nature ever prays. No human mother doubts, for an instant, the natural. ness, any more than the sincerity, of her helpless offspring's plea, as it turns to her bosom for sustenance; nor can she