erance from all evil and all temptation, it acknowledges actual deliverance, not only from temptation and from evil, but also from sin, sickness and death; and instead of ascribing to God sovereignty over the universe, it pronounces him to be the sum total of all the life, substance, truth, and love in the universe forever. It is no longer a prayer, but a creed, and such a creed as no intelligent and sane Christian can ever accept.

Christian Science is a science which is based not upon facts, but upon irrational assumptions; a religion which reduces God to an abstraction, and makes rational worship an impossibility; a Christianity which, after dishonoring Christ by every possible denial of his word, presents him to us a Savior who disappeared eighteen hundred years ago, never more to reappear among men. It is, in fine, a philosophy without reason, a theology without a God, a faith without a hope, a religion without worship, and a Christianity without a Christ. Graham, N. C. WM. P. McCORKLE.

III. THE PERSONAL CHRIST, THE GOSPEL FOR OUR TIME.

From the spiritual side of our age it stands confessed an age of scepticism. The testimony of others and the observation of each one of us affirms that there is a profound and wide-spread unsettlement of soul in regard to the fundamental truths of religion, and also in regard to the nature and existence of the so-called spiritual faculties by which alone these truths can be perceived. The manifestation of this doubt takes the form of uncertainty rather than of positive denial; of general scep ticism rather than of specific infidelity. It not only challenges particular doctrines, such as the Being of God, the inspiration of the Bible, the possibility of a future life, the future punishment of the wicked: but it presents itself everywhere, asking for a reason in the shape of a scientific demonstration. The answers which have been given to these, the most difficult problems of man's inner life, are declared to be unsatisfactory, and without foundation. It is claimed that all of these and kindred questions remain unsolved.

The doubting spirit of to-day is severe but not bitter; restless but not frivolous. It is not that spirit of mocking atheism such as Bishop Butler described at the close of the last century, which led people of discernment to set up religion "as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule," but the unbelieving spirit of our day takes itself very seriously; it is also keenly intellectual, nobly artistic, and splendidly humane. Many of its advocates take high rank in science; they are unsurpassed in literature; are numbered among the most astute and painstaking politicians, and sometimes claim to possess the highest culture of the religious school with which they are associated. Modern thought, whether expressed in terms of science, or general literature, or even in much that claims the name of religious, supports this indictment. Physical science, with purblind infatuation, refusing to recognize

the fact that there are different kinds of truth, and different faculties and methods of pursuit, claims to tread the footprints of the Creator, examines minutely his handiwork, and finds no trace nor suggestion of so-called spiritual phenomena. "The world," it is claimed, "is made up of atoms and ether, and there is no room for ghosts." The spirit of this school tacitly divides all beliefs which are held among men into two classes: Those which are supported by scientific proofs, and these must be accepted; and those which are not thus supported, and these must either be rejected or may safely and properly be disregarded as matters of no consequence. Moreover, current literature is saturated with this religious incertitude. There is, of course, a strong religious current in the literature of to-day. But in much of it, and in some that is quasireligious, there is hardly any definite religious belief. Some authors have taken the rich colors of Biblical thought and Biblical characters and used them to paint forms of other than the Christ,-forms sometimes as shadowy and indefinite as the shapeless shapes of Milton's fancy. Others again have evoked magical and charming forms to float above an abyss. of disenchantment and nothingness.

To illustrate, I refer to the lay sermons and essays of Huxley and Tyndall, where scepticism appears militant and trenchant. I have only to hint at the fragmentary but majestic life philosophies of Carlyle and Emerson. Over Carlyle hangs forever the shadow of a moody tempest, full of darkness and tumult and muttering thunder; over Emerson the spirit of imaginative scepticism floats like a cumulus of evening vapors, luminous and beautiful, alluringly transfigured,

"In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun."

I have but to recall the scepticism at once inimical, idealistic and dogmatic which pervades the vivid and picturesque studies of Renan and Froude. I need only refer to the penetrative and intelligent critiques of Scherer and Morley, where it adheres

with proud but illogical persistence to the ethical consequences of the faith with which logic has broken.

The scepticism of our literature is perhaps more insidious in the form of the modern novel. Even a superficial acquaintance with such writers as Zola and Thomas Hardy, -representing unflinchingly the school of Naturalism,-will evidence how in them scepticism speaks with a harsh and menacing accent of the emptiness of all life and the futility of all endeavor. In the psychological romances of George Elliot and Mrs. Humphrey Ward, it holds the mirror up to human nature to disclose a face darkened with inconsolable regret for lost dreams. Current fiction in its more superficial form, betrays its scepticism by a serene, unconscious disregard of the part which religion plays in real life. In how many of the lighter novels of the day do we find any recognition, even between the lines, of the influence which the idea of God or its absence, the practice of prayer or its neglect, actually exercise upon the character and conduct of men?

In the poetry of to-day we again hear the voice of this scepticism, and hear it clearly. As another says, "Listen to the sonorous chantings as they come from France, and we hear either the celebrations of the unknown and mighty tyrant who agitates them endlessly for his own amusement, or else the sounding of the delicate lyrics that sing of defeat in life, and man's thirst for annihilation." If we turn to our English tongue, we hear Matthew Arnold, with cool, sad, melodious tones, confessing,

"Forgive me, Masters of the mind,
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearned, so much resigned—
I come not here to be your foe;
I seek these anchorites not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth;—

Not as their friend, or child, I speak,
But as on some far northern strand,

Thinking of his own gods, a Greek,
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before a fallen Runic Stone,-

For both were faiths, and both are gone."

Only a poetic song, you say: Yes, only a poet's song, but how many souls to-day are feeling the same vague sadness, as, standing by the fair shrines of immortal desire and aspiration and of a traditional faith, they see the ancient land-marks disappearing in the onward waves, silently creeping or surging with sombre music out of the vast deep of doubt,

"The unplumbed, salt, estranging Sea."

But possibly the most serious form of current unbelief is that found in our Christian Congregations. I refer to the spirit of criticism abroad in the church. A criticism which undertakes to review and revise the integrity, the authenticity, the literary features and the credibility of the sacred writings. I come not here with the proud boast of "expert" in these matters. I confess that in my limited study in this field, I have become confused. Prof. Edwin Bissle speaks for me, touching the whole subject. He says: "We have seen one scheme of the origin and structure of Genesis and its companion books give place in quick succession to another, until it would seem the very limit of possible combinations had been reached," and we are left in confusion amid the wrangling of the schools. I believe that in spite of my tender and jealous regard for my mother's Bible, I would not impose an unreasonable restriction upon the reverent and scholarly investigation of its every claim. Nevertheless, I am troubled at the iconoclastic spirit of that class of critics which comprehensively we call the Destructive School. "That school which challenges the gem of a plenary inspiration set in the crown of scripture, which avows that the pentateuch as we have it is simply a five-fold imposition, a neatly written composite of mingled cleverness and fraud. That school which leaves us nothing of patriarchal history except some floating myths; nothing of Mosaic history, except some scattered debris borne downward on the heaving waters of a beclouded tide; of the Old Testament properly speaking, practically nothing. A criticism which readjusts the whole idea of the ancient sacrifice on a