but of God and the Lamb. Even He, as man, was judged for us in the flesh and endured the curse of the law. And we, redeemed by His blood, and reaching the same heights through the same lowly way of the cross, shall sing with Him both of judgment and of victory, and evermore praise Him as the Conquering Captain of our salvation.

And now unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

APPENDIX.

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE.

THERE is a demand for it. The forms in which the doctrine concerning the destiny of the wicked is set forth in the accepted "standards," do not now express the convictions of the churches who have adopted them or of their clergy. Where, for example, in the Presbyterian churches, do we now hear future punishment proclaimed in the language of the "Confession"? It is there affirmed that the wicked shall be "cast into hell, to be punished with unspeakable torments both of body and soul, with the devil and his angels forever." (Larger Catechism, Q. 89.) The horrors of this doom are now concealed behind a veil of figures. And the torment threatened is reduced down to that suffering which, by the law of Nature and of God, is always attached to sin. The tendency of sinful character to fixedness is the main point in our modern preaching of "the wrath to come."

But this falls very far below the doctrine as formulated in the evangelical creeds, and as understood and preached by the men that framed

them. Their view of hell was that it is a positive place of torment, prepared for devils and damned men, to which God, as a Sovereign Judge, consigned them "to be punished with unspeakable torments both of body and soul forever."

There is thus departure from the "standards" on this subject all along the line. To what further extent departure is allowable is an open question.

That the mind of the church is earnestly craving a better and broader statement of the teachings of Scripture on this momentous subject is manifest. Even in the pages of that pillar of orthodoxy, the American Presbyterian Review, we find such writers as Dr. Prentiss and Dr. Schaff giving expression to this desire. In the July number (1883) Dr. Prentiss furnishes an article on "Universal Infant Salvation," in which he shows how

uch the Augustinian theology must needs be widened in order to take in this doctrine, the universal acceptance of which he pronounces a "revolution in theological opinion." He shows how this "gospel of the little children" compels us to admit that Christ's redeeming work is of far wider scope than the boundaries of our systems of divinity provide for, and advises us, when pressed by the awful problems of human sinfulness and eternal punishment, to turn to it "if perhaps our theology may be brought into fuller harmony with the truth as it is in Jesus. It

might learn here as nowhere else that the grace of God is not tied to even His own appointed means, still less to any mere human schemes and formulas, and that there is a wide realm of His providential system both in time and in eternity, of which it has pleased Him to give us almost no account, but which yet we know to be filled with special wonders of His creative and redeeming love."

Not less significant are the following quotations from an article by Dr. Schaff in the October number of the same review: "There is no doubt that a marked change is going on, not only in the Church of England, but also among Dissenters and in the various churches of America, in favor of milder and more liberal views. Sermons, like that of Jonathan Edwards on the sinner in the hands of an angry God, could not be preached nowadays without emptying the church.” (P. 738.) "While the reformers rooted out the mediæval doctrine of Purgatory, they failed to substitute a better theory of the middle state, and left it for our days to reconsider this whole question and to reach positive results. The Protestant creeds almost wholly ignore the middle state, and pass from death immediately to the final state after the general judgment, and the old Protestant theologians nearly identify the pre-resurrection state of the righteous and wicked with their post-resur

rection state, except that the former is a disembodied state of perfect bliss or perfect misery. By this confusion the resurrection and the general judgment are reduced to an empty formality." (P. 737.)

These admissions, however, of defect in our present systems of eschatology, and these implied demands for a broader and truer system, would signify nothing, unless it can be made to appear that fidelity to Scripture requires such a system. No creed upon this subject is worth anything that does not base itself upon that firm foundation. And yet, confessedly, we have not yet found out all that Scripture has to tell us about this matter, nor has any human creed been devised broad enough to take in all its teaching. Surely no one of them can long satisfy a mind cognizant of the fact that the Old Testament dispensation had no use for their view of future torment, and who has pondered deeply its promises of redemption, the "glad tidings" of whose confirmation, as Paul declared at Antioch, was the fact that God had raised up Jesus from the dead.

There must be, therefore, an eschatology of the future.

Let us inquire, then, by what methods are we to attain to it, and upon what firm principles of interpretation will it rest.

1. We must refuse to construct our doctrine