yet form an acknowledged part of the faith of Christendom. It would be a clear abuse of the powers of the Board for it to recognize any merely local or individual opinion, or even to seem to give it a place by the side of the common faith of the churches. With the several schools of theology as such, the Board has nothing to do; it cannot discriminate between Old School and New School, between Calvinism and Arminianism; it is not adapted to such uses, even if it were permissible for it under its constitution to attempt this office. The message which its agents bear is the gospel of God's dear Son, in its fulness, without enlargement, without diminution, unmingled with human speculations, as the Scriptures reveal it and as evangelical Christian thought apprehends it and receives it; just that, nothing more and nothing less. It must see to it that the agents whom it commissions know this gospel truly, believe in it heartily, hold to it purely, and are capable of teaching it with clearness and with power. The service to which it calls its agents is special, arduous, exacting, rendered at great cost in a distant land and a foreign tongue; all considerations of wisdom and prudence demand that only well-approved, sound, and unquestionable candidates should be sent. The interest at stake on the foreign field is too sacred, the character of the service is too delicate and important, the bearing of even a single serious mistake is too wide and enduring, to permit any relaxing of vigilance, any carelessness of scrutiny, in selecting the laborers to be employed. An unevangelical teacher might within a few years mar a work that it had required many hands and long years to build. It is, therefore, no mistaken sense of duty, no narrowness of view, no blameworthy exactness of inquiry, that debars from the service of the Board, Unitarians, Universalists, Restorationists, Deists, and Agnostics. None of these persons, nor any others. who hold equally unevangelical and faulty faiths, are thus

ruled out of the field of Foreign Missions; it is as open to them, one and all, as it was to the first organizers of the Board, to set on foot and sustain a similar agency of their own. The personal liberty of those whose services are declined is not touched; they may hold and teach such views as command their approval wherever they can gain a hearing, unquestioned and undisturbed by the Board. The Board simply reserves to itself the liberty of selecting such agents as give promise of being able to do its work sympathetically and effectively, and in harmony with its laborers already in the field.

These principles all friends of the Board will heartily admit and maintain. And it is upon these principles that the Board has enjoined upon its Prudential Committee great caution in dealing with candidates who are hospitable to the hypothesis of future probation and kindred errors. Without attempting to determine whether that hypothesis is probable or improbable, its obvious tendencies are remarked, and the Committee is instructed not to commit the Board to its approval. This is in perfect keeping with the practical aim of the Board; and it leaves the merits of the hypothesis to be tried out on the proper arena of theological discussion, without the least embarrassment to the proper work of the Board. The plain fact of the case is, and most people are ready to acknowledge it, that this hypothesis has no place whatever in the accepted faith or opinions of evangelical Christendom or of any distinct portion thereof; and to many, probably to the far greater part of the constituency of the Board, this dogma appears not simply without support from Scripture or reason, but positively anti-scriptural and dangerous.

The question whether those who entertain in any form. the hypothesis of a future probation shall be welcomed to the service of the Board on the foreign field (the critical question in all this controversy), seems to have been answered decisively in the negative. The conclusion al

ready thrice announced by the Board, at Des Moines, at Springfield, and at New York, is not likely to be recalled, or modified, for many years to come. The question whether this hypothesis is in harmony with Scripture and reason, and thus is entitled to cordial recognition in the evangelical churches (an entirely different question and on all accounts the first of the two to be decided), though practically answered in the negative, is still in present discussion. And this discussion, it is to be hoped, will go on and be pushed more vigorously with a searching scrutiny of every argument from Scripture or reason, or Christian experience which can be alleged for this hypothesis and the new theology of which it is a subordinate feature; and in such discussion all will rejoice, and truth alone will be the gainer. The agitations in the Presbyterian churches of Scotland and America, now so energetic over the question of Revision, but in reality reaching far more deeply and touching every principal element of the Christian faith, are a part of the same wide movement, and will tend to clear up the nature of the controversy and the magnitude of the interests involved. We have no fears for the result. Learning, criticism, discussion, these all favor truth and tend to its clearer discovery. And it is the supreme interest of every church, of every sect, of every soul, to know the truth unmingled with error, undimmed by prejudice, untouched by ignorance, as it appears to the All-seeing One himself. And the truth of God, so apprehended and so ascertained by this generation, will prove itself the light of the world, and the best hope of mankind, and the guardian of man's present welfare and eternal salvation, as certainly and as exclusively as it was in apostolic days, in the ages of persecution and martyrdom, in the great missionary epochs of the Middle Ages, and in the glorious prime of the Reformation age. Indeed, it will be the same truth in all essential features, drawn from the same divine original,

bearing upon the same divine order, concerning itself with the same great realities, as the Christian world from the first ages has known, has believed in, has confessed, and has everywhere proclaimed. Salvation is its mighty theme; its heart and living core is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." "Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." The creeds of the earlier and of the later days have a sacredness and power which enshrine them in the lasting memory and love of all Christian hearts, because they embody in words dear to many generations the august thoughts and facts which lie at the heart of the gospel, which have to sinful man a perennial sweetness and power, which can no more fade from men's nobler thoughts than the sun and stars from the wheeling heavens. But these later generations must speak their faith in terms and phrases of their own, while they cherish the sacred memorials of the kindred faiths of former days; and the ef fort thus to embody in fitting and expressive forms the sum of Christian truth as it is apprehended in this age is both wise and just and full of promise. Nothing will suf fer from it but that which is intrinsically weak and ready to perish; the truth of God, more clearly seen and more warmly loved, will gain in power and shine with added glory, as the sun in the glowing heavens when the night and storm have passed away.

ARTICLE IX.

HAVE THE QUAKERS PREVAILED?

BY THE REV. professor CHARLES A. Briggs, d.d.,
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

In the seventeenth century, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, so far as I have been able to determine, were unanimous in the opinion that the heathen and their infants were doomed to everlasting fire. The Baptists pressed the doctrine of the salvation of their unbaptized children as the children of believers; but they did not teach the salvation of the heathen and their babes. It was first the Latitudinarians of the Church of England, and then the so-called Quakers, or Friends, as they called themselves, who are entitled to the credit of opening up the doctrine of the universal salvation of children, and the partial salvation of the heathen. This was made possible by the great stress they laid upon the Light of nature, and "the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John i. 9).

I. CULVERWELL AND TUCKNEY.

Nathaniel Culverwell published his book entitled "Light of Nature," in 1652, in which he advocated the salvation of some of the heathen. He was immediately attacked by Anthony Tuckney, the chairman of the committee that composed the Westminster Shorter Catechism, in a sermon at Cambridge, July 4, 1652. This was published in 1654 under the title "None but Christ," with an Appendix discussing the salvation of "(1) heathen; (2)