Stuarts, and as hope died in his soul his mood became hard and stern. In his bitter struggle with the papacy he saw no room for compromise, no place for tolerance. The danger threatening, the precious interests at stake demanded that the line be drawn clearly and strongly between truth as he understood it and loved it, and what he held to be error. This stern, uncompromising spirit told upon his theology. The liberal spirit of the renaissance was crushed. More and Colet were forgotten or ignored, and the men who met in Westminster Abbey were determined to give to the world a system of dogma which, if it partook of their own rigidity, might, at the same time, stand as the bulwark of Protestantism against Rome and the salvation of their distressed church.

Finally, in our study of the spirit and work of these men, one fact cannot escape us. It has been contended that their spirit was the spirit of Augustine and Ambrose, and perhaps it was, but more distinct than the influence of either of these master spirits, overshadowing all else, and like a mighty undercurrent, shaping the drift of the Assembly, was the genius of the great John Calvin. "An original and immortal man," the greatest theologian of the Reformed Church, as he was, I find his impriat upon almost every member of that Assembly. We must remember that though differing in polity and worship, and many minor particulars, yet almost to a man the Assembly was Calvinistic. Their theology wears the unmistakable stamp of the scholar of Geneva. Like him, they were no fencers in sophistry. Like him, they neither defied, nor destroyed reason. Like him, they took Christ as the supreme head of the church, and the Scriptures as their last authority, and with a logicalness as fearless as it was resistless, they drew their conclusions. Like Calvin, too, their theology radiates from one great central truth-the sovereignty of God. They have stated this in its clearest, most unequiVocal terms, and though this doctrine, with its conclusions, has never commended itself to a large part of the Christian world, yet, after all, it is perhaps the most logical of all the systems of religious truth men have ever framed. To these men, as to Calvin, God is always a personal and immanent being. He is not the God of the pantheist revealed in nature's glories; he is not the

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God of the deist beyond nature, but the God of the believing saint in every age, who holds in his hands the reins of human destiny. Few men who know anything will dare ridicule the Westminster divines. They were cast in no common mould. Whatever may be the honors the future holds for Presbyterianism they must come in for their share. Whatever contributions to national greatness the Puritan brought to Holland, or England, or America, they must claim as partly their work. So long as the world respects loyalty to conviction, faithfulness to trust, profound learning, and exegetical ability, their memories can never die. An unthinking and frivolous soul may find no charm in their brilliant intellectuality, and the stern logic by which they settled some of the mysteries of divine providence and human destiny. The generation of to-day will hardly build a monument to their memory. Their work, however, will remain as a rich legacy to the world of the loftiest religious enthusiasm of the Reformed Church. They will be revered as the founders of a system of religious dogma, which, in spite of the death knell repeatedly sounded by its enemies, still lives and counts in its train some of the brightest intellects and noblest institutions of learning in this country and Europe. From the rock-bound coasts of New England to the long wash of Pacific Seas, we still mark the imprint of their genius upon the thousands of sturdy yeomanry who are our nation's hope and pride. We know a living church is a growing church, yet we believe that beneath all surface changes lie the foundations of eternal truth. We will receive what these fathers have bequeathed to us; we will construe their message with due regard to the prejudices of their age; yet will we reverently guard the imperishable truth it contains. And when the world has produced another school of scholars as ripe as they, as capable of handling fundamental truth, and as reverent in their dealings with God's inspired word, it will be time enough then to think of replacing their creed with one abreast of the modern world. JOHN M. MECKLIN.

Dalton, Ga.

VII. THE BLESSED HOPE OF THE LORD'S RETURN.

A PREMILLENNIAL Conference was held in the church of the Holy Trinity in the city of New York, October 20, 31, and November 1, 1878.

Three members of that Conference from the Southern Presbyterian Church prepared a “Declaration of Principles" as held by Premillennarians, which was adopted by a rising vote of more than 2,500 persons, members of and in attendance on the Conference.

That "Declaration" was reaffirmed by the great Conference in Chicago in November, 1886, and has been generally accepted as a correct statement of the principles held and advocated by those who are looking and praying for the return of our Lord in visible bodily presence.

The "Declaration" is as follows:

1. We affirm our belief in the supreme and absolute authority of the written word of God on all questions of doctrine and duty.

2. The prophetic words of the Old Testament Scriptures coneerning the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ were literally fulfilled in his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension; and so the prophetic words of both the Old and the New Testaments concerning his second coming will be literally fulfilled in his visible bodily return to this earth in like manner as he went up into heaven; and this glorious epiphany of the great God our Saviour Jesus Christ is the blessed hope of the believer and of the church during this entire dispensation.

3. This Second Coming of the Lord Jesus is everywhere in the Scriptures represented as imminent, and may occur at any moment; yet the precise day and hour thereof is unknown to man, and known only to God.

4. The Scriptures nowhere teach that the whole world will be converted to God, and that there will be a reign of universal righteousness and peace before the return of our Lord, but that

only at and by his coming in power and glory will the prophecies concerning the progress of evil and the development of antichrist, the times of the Gentiles and the ingathering of Israel, the resurrection of the dead in Christ and the transfiguration of his living saints receive their fulfilment and the period of millennial blessedness its inauguration.

5. The duty of the church during the absence of the Bridegroom is to watch and pray, to work and wait, to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and thus hasten the coming of the day of God; and to his latest promise, "Surely I come quickly," to respond, in joyous hope, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

It must be affirmed in advance that there are no "arguments in support of this doctrine except the teachings of sacred Scrip

tures.

As man knew nothing whatever in regard to the first advent except what God revealed in the Old Testament, so he knows nothing whatever as regards the second advent except what is revealed by God in both the Old and New Testaments.

In common with our fellow-Christians of all communions, our appeal is to the infallible word of God; apart from this, we have no doctrine to state, no arguments to advance.

1. As a matter of fact, the religion of our Lord and Saviour has at no time prevailed supremely in any one community or country, or city, or race, or nation. It has not prevailed universally on any island, or continent, or hemisphere; nor has it prevailed universally in any one generation. It is an unusual event when all the members of even one family are saved.

God, in sovereign grace, under every dispensation has visited a lost race to take out of it a people for himself. Thus far salvation has been by remnants, and so a remnant shall be saved; the little flock does not win the kingdom and bring the world to Christ, but the Father gives them the kingdom, and for the coming of that kingdom the universal church continues to pray. We may be assured that that kingdom will not come without the bodily presence of the King. He will not be crowned Lord of all unless he is here in person to be crowned. The kindreds and the tribes on

this terrestrial ball will not and cannot crown him until the Lord himself is here.

Where in God's great universe will the coronation of the King take place? Not in some far-off star-world in infinite space; not in some other planet of this solar system; but here on this earth where he was born, and lived, and taught, and died, and was buried, and from which he rose, and to which he will surely come back in like manner as he went up into heaven-whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things.

2. As a matter of fact, the kingdom of heaven has at no time in human history, in no spot on earth, in no community, been so manifested and realized that the prophecies concerning the glories of the coming kingdom have been fulfilled even in any one locality and for one short hour.

The statement just made must be modified. Jesus said to his disciples, "Some standing here shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom"; and after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James and John up into a high mountain and was transfigured, and the kingdom was manifested in power and glory for a short season on that high mount; and then and there. our Lord gave the type and first-fruits of what the millennial kingdom will be; but the Lord was there as Son of God and Lord of all worlds in visible bodily presence, and without that presence there was neither visible kingdom nor glory.

When premillennarians talk of the coming kingdom, they mean that the transfiguration scenes will be enacted and multiplied all over the globe, with the Lord himself the great central person, around whom two worlds, the visible and invisible, gather to hold converse and adore. Moses, the representative of the dead in Christ who shall be raised in glory; and Elijah, the representative of the living saints who will be transfigured in a moment at the coming of the Lord, the Father looking down with delight on his beloved Son, and the shekinah glory enfolding all. Anything short of this or less than this is not that kingdom for whose coming our Lord taught us to pray.

The evolution of humanity and the Christianization of the