man is to cut adrift from the past, and by his own meager intellect think out a system of truth for himself. That would be as absurd as if in secular life each man should strip himself of the knowledge and civilization acquired in the past, and begin, in puris naturalibus, as a barbarian, to study nature and acquire the arts of civilization. The right of private judgment is the right of judging in the light of the past. Some truths we may assume as settled by the thought and life of the past. Man is not always learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. We rightly reject the Romish doctrine of tradition. The tradition of that church is not merely the clearer and fuller unfolding of the meaning of the Bible by the Christian experience and thought of the church, resting ultimately for its authority on God's word; but it includes the dicta of the church, resting on the infallibility of the church, and superadded to the Bible as of co-ordinate authority with it. Protestantism has its tradition; but it is simply the fuller exposition of the Bible, gained by the experience and thought of successive generations, and the application of the Bible to the new and changing conditions of man. Protestant tradition is the truth which flows from the fountain of God's word, and rolls down through the centuries, widening and deepening as it rolls the stream which Ezekiel saw issuing as a little rill from the threshold of the sanctuary, and swelling as it flows into a great river. Protestant tradition is the Bible itself as it has flowed into human thought and life.

Because the kingdom of Christ is perpetually unfolding out of the past, the unchanging grace of God ever manifested under new conditions, the old truth and life appearing in new manifestations, the history of redemption is necessarily typical, that is, an epoch is the type of a succeeding epoch. A prominent actor in one epoch will be the type of a promi nent actor in another epoch. In every epoch there is seen "The baby figure of the giant mass

Of things to come at large."

Thus we have a philosophical basis for the theological doc

trine that events and persons in the Old Testament are typical of events and persons in the New Testament.

VII. The Progress of Christ's Kingdom tends to produce a Homogeneous Civilization throughout the World.

The broad differences of civilizations must gradually disappear; the insignia of an outlandish man become less marked; thought and products be more fully and rapidly interchanged; interests will become more identified, and wars impossible; and the world will become a family of fraternal states.

It remains to apply these principles to determine what is the duty of the modern missionary in respect to teaching civilization.

If Christianity is taught to a people by preachers having the same civilization with themselves, then the full significance and scope of its principles will be gradually discovered, and Christianity will manifest itself in varying forms, and sometimes in alliance with error. But it is different when the missionary goes from a people having a superior and Christian civilization to a people of inferior and unchristian civilization, or still barbarous. In the civilization with which the missionary is familiar, the principles of Christianity have been carried out to many of their remote applications, and the results of ages of thinking and acting under the light of Christianity are embodied. Thus a new element is introduced into the problem. Shall he preach only the grand facts and broad principles of the gospel, leaving the people slowly to discover for themselves their remoter applications? Or, shall he also teach the detailed applications of Christian truth to the customs and institutions of society as already known to him, and teach therewith the industrial arts of the higher civilization?

1. He must not preach civilization antecedent to the gospel, and as a preparation for it. The preceding course of thought has demonstrated that a people is incapable of

having new institutions and a new civilization fitted upon it as a tailor fits a coat. It is the people who must be fitted to the civilization. Give to a savage a sewing-machine, or a power-loom, and the gift is useless. The man must be educated up to the machine, or he cannot use it, nor, indeed, have any occasion to use it. The same is true of political institutions. (They do not create or mould the life, but are the outgrowth of the life. It is as useless to force free institutions on a people not educated for them as to tie artificial flowers on a rose-bush in the winter. The right of selfgovernment in the hands of Paris communists is a curse to them and the world. Christianity is itself the most effective agency in awakening the savage to progress towards civilization, by stimulating the habit of acting for ulterior ends, and subjecting impulse to the control of reason; and in purifying and renovating heathen civilization by introducing and mak ing effective spiritual truth and a regard to spiritual reality.

Besides, all that is distinctively Christian in civilization is the result of Christianity. To insist that the apostles ought to have taught the civilization of modern Christendom in Jerusalem, Greece, and Rome, before teaching Christianity, or that modern missionaries ought to teach American civilization in China before teaching Christianity, is to put the effect before the cause. Christian civilization can be produced only by Christianity. Christianity must first be preached, in order that Christian civilization may be possible. The only real progress of society is the progress of the men and women who compose society. Society advances only as the men and women composing it advance in knowledge and culture, in wisdom, in self-control, in purity, truthfulness, and justice, in Christian faith and love.

This position is confirmed by the fact, constantly recurring in history, that the contact of civilization with barbarism or an inferior civilization, unaccompanied by Christianizing influences, is injurious to the inferior.

2. In reference to the personal character and duty of converts, the missionary is not to withhold Christian truth

and its application out of deference to the errors inherent in the civilization of those to whom he preaches. It is one thing to admit that Christian truth taught to a people, by teachers participating in their civilization, will be slowly and gradually apprehended and applied; and quite another thing to say that Christian teachers, having the clear knowledge of Christianity belonging to the highest civilization, are to accommodate their teachings to the prejudices and customs of heathenism; for example, to admit members to the church while practising polygamy and observing the rules of caste. This is of the type of pious frauds, and of the adoption by Christians of heathen usages and festivals under Christian names, which early corrupted Christianity in the attempt to propagate it. The justification of it involves a false interpretation of the parables of the new patch and the new wine; as if they meant that a patch must be found for the old garment as rotten as it, and for the worn-out bottles wine as weak as they. They mean the life must be invigorated, or a new life created capable of receiving the new institution. It is the statesman's business to adapt laws and institutions to the existing condition of society, just as the physician adapts medicine and food to the weakness of the patient. But the missionary is in the position of a prophet; it is his business to proclaim the truth which will create a new life. He is not to attempt the immediate subversion of existing institutions; but he is to declare Christian truth as the law of personal Christian action. Otherwise, the people cannot be educated in Christian truth, and prepared for Christian civilization. The missionary and his disciples may suffer persecution, and even martyrdom, for their fidelity; but these, if they must come, are themselves powerful agencies in educating the world in Christian ideas.

3. The missionary will introduce the arts of civilization incidentally, as he has opportunity and the people are prepared for them. These are educating influences which will help him in his Christian work. And in this respect he will be aided by the intercommunication of thought and of commercial products among the nations.

ARTICLE III.

ON "THE MAN OF SIN," 2 THESS. II. 3–9.

BY PROF. HENRY COWLES, OBERLIN, OHIO.

This is a passage of acknowledged difficulty. The fact of difficulty should not deter from its investigation, cannot excuse crude speculation or reckless disregard of the legitimate laws of language; but may invite to the exercise of candor, not to say charity, toward any well-meant endeavor to fathom its mysteries. Such an endeavor promises well and deserves candid attention only as it shall apply faithfully to the passage all the means at command for bringing its salient points to the surface, and drawing the line between the known and the unknown.

As to the value of the results to be sought for in this passage—if it be a chapter of the future history of our race; if it tells us of the "last times," immediately preceding the final coming of the Lord; if it opens new and most extraordinary developments in the great sin-problem of this fallen world then, surely, the truths it has in it, if we may but reach them in very deed, must have momentous interest to every Christian mind.

The passage proposed for special consideration from Paul's second Epistle stands related to these words: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are