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without a commensurately high and sacred purpose; but who will say that the work they are doing makes any near approach to the demands and the possibilities of the case? There is, no doubt, some deficiency of selfdenying devotion, and of personal self-sacrifice, but of these there is very much more than is made available. The Church's order and methods of Christian work afford very little opportunity for spontaneous religious zeal, and it is possible that both faith and hope may be repressed through lack of opportunities. But that still a good degree of enthusiasm exists is shown by the manner in which William Taylor's call for volunteers is responded to; and though it may be suspected that the motives that control in these things may be largely tinged with human admixtures, it is equally manifest that there is also in them an element of Christian heroism that ought to be utilized. No higher duty now awaits the directing hand of the governing minds and hearts of Methodism, from the chief ministers down to the pastors and laity of the churches, than the effective utilization of its working forces. It will be worse than useless to recount past successes, to set up our Ebenezers, singing "Hither by thy help I'm come," and to tell of our millions of converts, unless these reviews of our forces are made preparatory to better organizing for action, and the more adequate employment of our capabilities.

Ours is an age of money-making, of unprecedented financial increase, and of all this Methodists have received much more than their numerical proportion. While the denomination has doubled and redoubled its membership, their wealth has increased by a much larger ratio; and no problem of greater importance, or more difficult of a satisfactory solution, now confronts the Church than how the perils of such an increase of wealth may be avoided, and the money with which God is endowing his Church, in the persons of its members, may be used for the furtherance of his work. The danger of possessing, and especially of gaining wealth, is declared and emphasized by Christ and his apostles, and these warnings have been reiterated till they have become commonplaces of the pulpit and the religious press; but the golden game proceeds without abatement, and the Methodists are rapidly becoming a wealthy denomination. A very few have come to rightly apprehend this matter, and faithfully to employ the talents intrusted to them in the service of the Master, so making for themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; but to many more, it may be feared, the censure of the apostle is only too aptly fitting: "Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you. . . . Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton." The wealth given to Christians is a divine provision for the furtherance of the Gospel; and in order that they may serve God in that way, he has, in the orderings of his providence, made money a needed agency in his work, and at the same time given it to his people to be so used, not by the very rich only, but by all, according as God hath prospered each one. The work in which the Church has become engaged, and to which it should direct its efforts, calls loudly for not inconsiderable amounts of money for its successful prosecution in the immediate future for churches,

for schools, for missions, and for works of charity in behalf of the souls and bodies of men; and no other lesson taught by the "Centennial" calls more loudly or imperatively for devout attention and willing obedience than this demand for the consecration of wealth for the promotion of Christ's kingdom. And though we are aware of the power of worldliness, and of the "deceitfulness of riches," we still believe that this demand will be much more largely complied with hereafter than it has been at any time heretofore.

THE RATIONALE OF BELIEF.

The confusion both in the common and cultured mind respecting the extent to which one is responsible for what he believes, especially if it relate to religious truth, arises chiefly from a misunderstanding of the faith-principle, and an imperfect analysis of its contents and requirements. Careless statements and well-nigh meaningless platitudes on the subject, to the making of which the pulpit has contributed its share, have gone forth and been reiterated with such emphasis as to impress men that they are legitimate deductions from the Scriptures, and must be accepted as the condition of temporal good and final salvation. A survey of the foundations of belief will dissipate the common error, since it will be seen that belief is and is not within the mind's control, or subject to the volition and judgment of the believer. The beliefs that men entertain are of two kinds, for only one of which they are responsible. The beliefs that are the products of nature, or whose root is contained in consciousness, and those that are the product of thought, or whose root is in voluntary mental action, differ radically in character; and, by as much as they differ in origin and character, by so much does responsibility for them differ.

The

Both of these beliefs are common to the experience of the race. first we denominate spontaneous, universal, intuitional, or primary beliefs. Fundamental to human nature, they belong to every man, whether he is a savage or a Christian. To use the striking language of Professor Bowne, they are the "raw rudiments of consciousness," but in their "raw" state they are the constituent elements of manhood, the signs of a common humanity. Moreover, they are regulative as well as constitutive, distinguishing the true, the right, the beautiful, the good, and impelling to these things by a resistless under-ground swell, of the conscious life. Acute in distinction, they are forceful in persuasion, and consciousness is shocked at a refusal of the mind to co-operate and obey. If asked to name these "innate" ideas, which must be done to give value to our discrimination, we should place among them the ideas of right and wrong, of finite and infinite, of cause and effect, of substance and quality, of unity and multiplicity, upon which character may be built, or from which original, though perhaps not acquired, character may be evolved.

For these original ideas, notions, or conceptions-"common-sense" beliefs, Reid calls them-man is no more responsible than an elephant for his proboscis, or the sun for his rising.

However, let us guard this point. Though not responsible for his intuitions, man is nevertheless responsible for their use or application. It is true they impel him; it is equally true he uses them. They are the natural instruments of character, ever dominant and self-acting, and yet the subjects of training, development, and education. No one is responsible for having a conscience; he is responsible for the use he makes of it. He may bandage, suppress, bury the natural forces of character, the volitional energies of mind, the intuitional revelations of the soul, in which case he will inflict damage upon himself; or he may conform to righteousness and obtain its rewards, by the culture of consciousness and giving to the intuitions the right of way in his life. An uncultured conscience may provoke fanaticism just as an unenlightened judgment may turn to superstition. If in their "raw" condition the intuitions are sensitive and impelling, what would be their force if trained, matured, and regulated in activity? The power to hinder the intuitions and the power to invigo rate and employ them is the measure of the responsibility for their use.

The second class of beliefs we denominate reflective or derivative, inasmuch as they are not original with nature, or the spontaneous products of the consciousness. Professor Bowne ("Metaphysics," page 16) says: "Very many of our beliefs are effects, and not conclusions. They are produced in us, and not deduced by us." A spontaneous belief is an effect of nature; a deduced belief is a conclusion from investigation of facts, principles, relations, and must, therefore, be voluntary. Evidence, inquiry, and knowledge, absent in spontaneous belief, are the conditions of a reflective belief which gains in trustworthiness according to the investigation that has preceded it. A spontaneous belief precedes investigation, is not dependent on it, though it acquires strength from knowledge; a reflective belief succeeds investigation, and is baseless without it. The former is an unoriginated certainty; the latter is a creative form of thought, resulting from comparison of facts, and a purpose to harmonize them in the unity of a formula of faith.

Evidently, for a reflective belief, derived from the directive work of the mind, man is thoroughly responsible. The duty to believe any thing beyond the revelations of consciousness imposes the duty to investigate the subject proposed to our credence, and to believe only as the facts warrant. To this law of faith even scriptural truth is subject, since it addresses human intelligence, and appeals to the reason and to experience for confirmation. To exempt divine revelation from the rule of investigation would amount to a confession that it cannot be investigated, that is, that, being supernatural in character, it is entirely beyond rational apprehension, which, if true, would unfit it for human scrutiny; or, that it cannot bear investigation, which implies that it is not what it professes to be,— in which case it should be abandoned. This is an era of "biblical criticism," the justification of which is, that divine truth in the written form,

Of the results of

as we have it, is a proper subject for investigation. such criticism let no one be afraid, since a belief founded on rational inquiry will be more permanent than that superstitious reverence for truth which has too much characterized the past, and even the religious world itself.

Infidelity, rationalism, mysticism, spiritualism, Universalism, Roman Catholicism, considered as beliefs in reference to religious truth, are not spontaneous, but reflective; they are not inspirations, either of consciousness or of the divine Spirit, but the products of voluntary inquiry for which the inquirer is justly responsible. In proportion to his inquiry or the data he gathers, he believes. On insufficient data he predicates a baseless conclusion, behind which he cannot shelter himself with the insincere plea that he cannot control his convictions. Belief arising from data, except those of consciousness, he must fashion according to the demands of evidence, and accept the results. Hence, the fearful responsibility that attaches to voluntary belief, of which kind is the whole brood of skepticisms which it is the business of this age to correct and annihilate. Unbelief is not a spontaneous state, but a reflective or derivative, and therefore voluntary, conclusion; consciousness is antagonistic to doubt and never inspires it; hence, the doubter is responsible for his doubt. Both Bacon and Descartes initiated, the one science and the other philosophy, with the principle of doubt; it was voluntary, it was purposed. So all doubt is a reflective conclusion, reflective, that is, voluntary, even when it assumes the form of unintelligent stubbornness. It is not difficult, then, to indicate the bounds and limitations of human belief, or the nature and extent of human responsibility. Both intuitional and reflective beliefs involve the duty of self-enlightenment, the one for a right use of the spontaneous products of consciousness, the other for a proper development of the discursive reason, the instrument of all voluntary, and therefore responsible, faith. J. W. M.

FOREIGN, RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY.

THE story of the Anabaptists in the Venetian territory in the middle of the sixteenth century, by Dr. Karl Beurath, "Studien und Kritiken," is quite an addition to the history of the collateral workers during the Reformation. Very little has hitherto been known of the movements, in any portion of papal Italy, of the sect then called Anabaptists. We have lengthy histories of their labors in Holland, Switzerland, and even in Spain, in which latter country they were treated with the most revolting severity.

The history before us is a succinct account of the doings of these Reformers in northern Italy, many of whom were fanatical in their opinions and aggressive in their modes. The more sensible wing of these Protestants endeavored to work in harmony with the Lutheran platform,

and corresponded both with Luther and Melanchthon; whereas a more advanced faction were so radical in their doctrines and teachings as to make themselves offensive to the leaders of the German Reformation, and very unpleasant companions to the Catholic Italians. The Church, therefore, watched their activity with a very jealous eye, and finally adopted stringent and remorseless measures to suppress them or drive them out of the country.

They, however, at last became so numerous that they determined to hold a council in Venice, in September, 1550. In this council each congregation was represented by two delegates. The number that came was surprising even to the participants themselves, for although not every congregation was able to send its representatives, there were nevertheless sixty of these present, twenty or thirty being from Switzerland. Among the members on the roll of this order appear a great many Italian names that seem strangely out of place in a history of the Protestant Reformation. The participants were mostly poor, and of course they were friendless in the great city of Venice. Their traveling expenses were paid by their constituents, and they were obliged to provide for their own wants while there. Their proceedings, which bore the external character of religious fervor, were not marked by strong religious belief. They denied the divinity of Christ, the existence of angels, and a devil. They declared that the grave is the only hell, where the wicked remain always, but whence the chosen are delivered by the call of God.

Such doctrines, of course, separated them from the Lutheran workers in the Reformation on the one hand, while it made them more offensive to the papal authorities on the other, and alienated them from large numbers of their own brethren. These utterances gave an impulse to their persecution on the part of the local authorities. The magistrates of various cities ordered them to be punished or exiled, and in the bitterness of controversy the good and the bad among them were alike victims of persecution. The result was, that the true and fervent Christians among them appealed to their Protestant brethren in other lands, and received such sympathy and advice as these could give. They looked with special hope and love to the Moravian Brethren, who aided as far as possible the orthodox wing of these Protestant Christians. From the confessions that were forced from many who were imprisoned, information was gained in regard to many others, and thus the Propaganda soon came into possession of quite a list of these Italian Anabaptists, and proceeded to persecute them. We need hardly say that the agency for this work was the Inquisition; and indeed the "Sacred Office," as it is called, had its fill of congenial work. It found in Venice several lowly tradesmen, in Padua a baker and his wife, and in Vicenza five, of whom one was quite an influential member of society and of the sect. But amid all this suffering the letters and diaries of some of these men, of which we find extracts in this article, breathe the firmest confidence that God will lead all to his honor, and beg their brethren in the faith to remain loyal to Christian truth.

The entire story of these unfortunate Protestant Christians, and

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