landscape of our thought. I appeal to all lovers of God's book whether this be not so. One passage will serve as a staff for the heart all day. The leaning on it for a day of toil makes the staff precious ever after. And a poem holding a radiant thought in solution, to be set out from the book wherein it was housed with many others, becomes thereby personal and visible. The same is true of a thought in noble prose or a prayer which flowed from a heart in which God was consequential. Such a page pushes the boat of life out into the sea of the day, gives it a vigorous thrust which holds to the heart through the livelong day. A book of devotion should be catholic, fetched from afar. The wise souls were never dwellers in a single house. Like families, they live under many roofs. This is the objection to such a book, to select at random, as For Days and Years, by Lear. It is an Anglican book and contains that amusing Church egotism which writes Church with a capital "C" and Dissenter with a small "d," and the selections of words from the wise are all but entirely from the Church fathers or Roman Catholics or Anglicans. The obliviousness to the wide Christian world outside of these limits is humorous rather than devotional. Cardinal Newman is scarcely the sanest and most wholesome religious guide, to say the least. What is wanted is the walk through the Churches as Christ among the candlesticks, going everywhere and hearing all and holding the most precious truths as the flower the dew. True Christianity is eclectic in its tastes. What holy moods have meditated and what holy men have done, these are the precious considerations. What cares the good man's heart what Church David Livingstone was of, or Thomas Coke, or Hannington, or Gardiner? For each we thank God and take courage. "There is one God and Father over all, who is rich unto all that call upon him;" and that is the conclusion of the whole matter so far as touches the point of devotion. That heart which hath held God's hand, it is good to touch. Those eyes which for a sublime moment looked into the face of God, it is blessed to look into. The whole family of God is sacred; and the voice of any one of them, no matter what name he wears, is good to hear. Did not our hearts burn while we listened to Him by the way? And there is and can be but one answer.

Let us listen to the words of Brother Standfast as he stands in the river waiting his turn to pass

To where

Beyond these voices there is peace,

recalling Rufus Choate's words, "On the whole, the most eloquent, mellifluous talk that was ever put together in the English language was the speech of Mr. Standfast in the river:" "This River has been a Terror to many, yea, the thoughts of it also have often frightened me. But now methinks I stand easy; my Foot is fixed upon that on which the Feet of the Priests that bare the Ark of the Covenant stood while Israel went over this Jordan. The Waters indeed are to the Palate bitter and to the Stomach cold, yet the thoughts of what I am going to and of the Conduct that waits for me on the other side do lie as a glowing Coal at my Heart. I see myself now at the end of my Journey, my toilsome days are ended. I am going now to see that Head that was crowned with Thorns, and that Face that was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by Hearsay and Faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall be with Him in whose company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of his Shoe in the Earth, there I have coveted to set my Foot too. His name has been to me as a Civet-box, yea, sweeter than all Perfumes. His Voice to me has been most sweet, and his Countenance I have more desired than they that have most desired the Light of the Sun. His Word I did use to gather for my Food, and for Antidotes against my Faintings. He has held me, and I have kept me from mine iniquities, yea, my Steps hath he strengthened in his Way."

ART. IV. THE ETHICAL AND THE POSITIVE IN

CHRISTIANITY.

CHRISTIANITY is a religion of principles rather than precepts. Its essential principle is love. This practically unfolds into the precepts and prohibitions of the Decalogue. All the law and the prophets are summed up in love to God and men. In examining the duties which arise from our relations to God and men we note a distinction. Some are grounded on reasons we intuitively see, and some on reasons which we do not see. Theologians call the former moral, and the latter positive. Says Bishop Butler in his Analogy, that exhaustless seed-bed of Christian apologetics: "Moral duties arise out of the nature of the case itself, prior to external command. Positive duties do not arise out of the nature of the case, but from external command; nor would they be duties at all were it not for such command, received from Him whose creatures and subjects we are." All our duties would be moral, if there were no revelation of God other than that through nature. There can be nothing positive in natural religion, the religion of conscience. It is possible that a collision may occur of a positive with a moral precept where it is impossible to obey both. In such a case no universal rule is laid down in the Scriptures. Should we say the positive must always yield to the moral we would be greatly embarrassed by certain positive commands, as that to Abraham to offer up Isaac and that to exterminate whole tribes of people. There are at least three reasons why generally the moral should override the positive: 1. Because it is written upon our hearts and is interwoven into our very nature. 2. Because positive precepts aim at a moral end, which must have a higher value than the means. 3. When the two are mentioned together in the Scriptures the stress is always laid on the moral. But Bishop Butler remarks that "Mankind have, in all ages, been greatly prone to place their religion in peculiar positive rites by way of equivalent for obedience to moral precepts." They lengthen the creed as a compensation for shortening the Decalogue. Thus many false positive precepts have been foisted upon Christianity. Let us examine

some of these, after we have ascertained the infallible criterion by which they may be tested. We will limit our discussion to the New Testament. We find this essential of every positive institution, that it should be of such a nature as to keep Christ the Son of God in the very center of the system, which collapses if he is removed. A man may become a geometer in utter ignorance of Euclid, who first discovered geometry, but he cannot become a Christian without knowing, loving, and obeying Christ. The positive institute must be Christocentric, like Christianity itself. Of course it must be a direct command, and not an inference merely. It must proceed from the Author of Christianity; for human authority, even that of an inspired apostle, is not sufficient of itself alone to establish a positive precept.

There are only two positive precepts which correspond to these requirements: baptism and the Lord's Supper. These were deliberately instituted by Christ, the latter just before his death, and the former just before his ascension. The central position of Christ in these sacraments is seen by the so-called liberal Christians who deny the supreme divinity of the Son, regarding him as a man only. When they continue to administer these ordinances they are greatly embarrassed by this illogical procedure. The German rationalists baptize their children in the name of the universal brotherhood of man, the only God which Comte, the positivist, teaches his followers to worship. When Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian preacher in Boston he was asked by his deacons why he had ceased to administer the Lord's Supper; he replied that "it was giving too great prominence to one among many good men." The dilemma in which this incipient pantheist found himself was either an acknowledgment of the Godhood of Jesus Christ, or the total abandonment of that positive institution in which this doctrine was objectively proclaimed. The great purpose of the two positive precepts of Christ was to keep his Gospel from sinking into a mere moral system, by the elimination of his personal authority. Such a tendency has existed in every age, beginning with ancient Ebionitism and ending with modern Unitarianism, whose leaders have gravely discussed the expediency of taking the Bible with its "alleged miracles" and perplexing

doctrines out of their pulpits and of preaching its pure ethics disentangled from its "puerile fables." This would reduce our glorious Gospel to a meager philosophical cult attractive to a few cultured intellects, but bereft of all motive power to lift up the fallen and to save the lost masses submerged in sin. It is instructive to note that the only Christian sect in Church history which neglects and denies the obligation of the two positive precepts of Christ—the Friends-was in 1827 rent asunder by the secession of large portions of six out of ten Yearly Meetings, on the ground of their denial of Christ's true divinity while incarnate. We call the attention of General Booth and his Salvation Army to this hidden rock on which this Christian body may split. We erect a beacon upon it for their benefit.

It should be borne in mind that the Gospel scheme of salvation through faith only, without meritorious works, a faith bearing the fruitage of perfect love and obedience to God and altruistic effort and sacrifice for men, cannot consist with a multitude of positive precepts. Such a number would overload the religion and smother the spiritual life in the legalism of "the letter that killeth." This is demonstrated by the fact, noted by Butler, that "mankind are for placing the stress of their religion anywhere rather than upon virtue." The scribes taught that there are two hundred and fortyeight affirmative and three hundred and sixty-five negative precepts. Hence the necessity of limiting positive precepts to the smallest possible number that will keep Christ in the center of the system. The divinely adjusted balance between the two kinds of precepts must be preserved. The free spirit of Christianity requires us to reject all such positives.

1. Foot-washing. We cannot regard this as designed by Christ to be a positive ordinance of perpetual obligation the same as baptism and the holy eucharist. It seems rather an impressive symbol teaching humility, the dignity of service, the necessity of purity of heart, and the duty of every believer to help his fellowdisciples to obtain this great blessing. Paul's requirement of the widow before being enrolled for Christian service, “if she hath washed the saints' feet," must be interpreted as a synonym for altruistic Christian service. This literal act cannot be a positive