hoped and longed for deliverance. Human society around them seemed to be tending rapidly towards its final dissolution. There was an external peace in the world; but the nations groaned without hope under the burdens of tyranny and oppression. Men said there was peace; but there was in fact no peace, no real unity, no harmony anywhere. No person could see better than the magi the internal strifes, conflicts, and antagonisms among men. When, therefore, it was revealed to them through the star, that a new prince was born in Judea, they understood its significance at once. Redemption was at hand, the victory of the good over the evil was announced, and the era of peace and harmony was to commence. The sign in the heavens which fixed their eye by night and engaged their attention by day was, with its mute surroundings, a most expressive symbol of the reign of peace. It was not a flashing comet, not an angry storm or tempest, not a display of meteors, or falling stars, not an earthquake, nor the floods of the great deep lifting up their voices, but a star, noiselessly appearing in the starry heavens in the silence and darkness of night. Shining down serenely from above upon this dark earth of ours, how expressive of peace and love! It was, as it were, a messenger that had come from some distant sphere, in which strife had never entered, in order to proclaim a truce to the strife and conflicts forever repeating themselves in this world of ours. It was the angel of peace and reconciliation.

When we speak of peace, the attention is naturally directed to the periods of war that have cursed our world, or to private feuds ever springing up between man and man; and we long for the time when these shall cease. Then the white-winged angels of peace shall come and reign. But the peace on earth, heralded forth by the celestial choir over the hills of Bethlehem when Christ was born, includes much more than the absence of strife among men. It implies the removal of the internal causes which produce the angry conflict or the bitter antagonism. It means the restoration of man with all his talents and faculties to right relationship with himself

and his Maker. Less than this admits room for jars and discords, and interrupts the general harmony which is the essence of peace.

True peace regards man as a unity, a totality, a kingdom, a constitution, or, as we should say, an organized world, in which there is one general life, that unfolds itself in diversity of operations, in diversity of organs or activities, all of which stand related to each other as parts of the same process. As such, it involves also many integral parts, subordinate worlds or spheres, such as the state, the arts, the sciences, philosophy, religion, and culture in all its ramifications. The reconciliation of the world, or peace on earth, accordingly, of necessity, must involve the proper relation of these different spheres of life not only to Christ, but to each other. They cannot be in conflict with each other, and cannot repudiate their subordination to God, their source, without self-destruction. Now all this is represented to us symbolically, prophetically, and in part actually, in the adoration of the wise men. They were representative men, representatives of the world under its best forms. They embodied in themselves its rank, its wealth, its wisdom, and its highest culture; for, as already said, in their native land they were princes, statesmen, priests, wise men, philosophers, and teachers. Most appropriately, therefore, were they selected by infinite wisdom as actors in a scene which was intended to teach in a figure the conversion of the world and its reconciliation to God. They bowed as individuals before the manger, but they brought with them the wisdom, the power, the rank, the honor, the science, and all other culture to which man may attain, and laid them freely as an offering before the Lord of glory. They prostrated themselves on the ground, thus acknowledging the insufficiency of human wisdom and humbly accepting of that which had descended from above. Aged and venerable sages, accustomed to teach and to rule in the affairs. of men, they take the position of worshippers and disciples of the new-born King of glory. They also opened their treasures, representing the wealth and power of the world, and laid

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them at the feet of their new Sovereign for his use. Whilst this is a real transaction it is prophetical, and looks to the future, when all science shall be reconciled with divine truth, and the wealth of the world shall be consecrated to the service of Christ.

The whole scene of the star and of the journey of the wise men is replete with instruction. For the times in which we live, it is the gospel of the day. We live in an age that is striving to be reconciled to itself, and that yearns for the unification of humanity; but strife and conflicts continue. Antagonisms everywhere abound; philosophy and theology clash; science and revelation contradict each other, and so the struggle goes on. There are two forms of evil which are a curse to our civilization, the one showing itself in the theoretical sphere, the other in the practical world, the pride of the human intellect and the love of money. Both spring from the same source in the natural selfishness of men, and both stand in the way of the world's progress in the peaceful solution of its own grand problem. How shall these evils be overcome, the world's fearful conflicts be brought to an end, and the now discordant elements be reconciled? Only, we answer, as the scene of the wise men of the East is continually re-enacted in the lives of individual men, and of communities generally. The light which guided them must be our light, and the light of our age. Their devotion must be ours, and that same star of hope, which led them in their long pilgrimage out of the darkness and selfishness of the natural world, must be the same star of hope to all alike. So we, and in the end the world, will be reconciled to God, and come and lay our offerings at the feet of His Son.

ARTICLE VII.

AUGUST THOLUCK,

DR. AND PROF. ORD. OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HALLE WITTEMBERG, PRUSSIAN SAXONY.

BY PROF. ARCHIBALD DUFF, JR, MONTREAL.

It is very fitting that a memorial be erected to this venerable friend of theology in the Bibliotheca Sacra. His life-work has been to cultivate individual laborers for the field of theology, for the science of religion, especially of the Christian religion. And such a cultivation is also the work of the Bibliotheca, in its gathering together the results of individual laborers, and by laying these before the world, encouraging those who produce to make earnest effort, and thus arousing theological thought in others. This is the real way to be scientific in theology. For the actual state of things in the spiritual world can be fully known only by such as recognize that God has something new, something entirely of its own kind, in each individual of his creation, and that something new can be contributed by each individual thinker. It may be fancied that individual workers at theology can differ merely as to comparatively little matters of method in working. But that is a mere fancy. Each individual soul contains a new revelation of God. Each individual who reflects on his own spiritual relations, on his own religious consciousness, if you will, -enriches the fund of phenomena whence is to be found by generalization the complete philosophy of religion, the complete natural history of the soul and ―yes of God, the complete system of the science of religion, the complete theology. Theology is not a stereotyped thing or book. It cannot become effete. There is forever discovery going on, and the souls of the discoverers are the mines in which these discoverers search. To increase the number of searchers is at the same time to widen the field of search. And they who do increase this, work rationally for the advancement of the science, for the advancement, too, of that profession whose members must become possessed of the science in some way if they will tend well their flocks. One who wrought to this end patiently, faithfully, daily, through a professorship of over fifty years, was Dr. Tholuck. He sleeps now in the tomb; but his work is carried on by himself. Years ago he and his most estimable wife so planned their affairs that not only all they were, but all they had, should be given to their life-work, and that the latter their propertyshould continue the same work when they themselves were no more.

We need not now give a sketch of Tholuck's life. Such is already within reach of all American theologians, even one written by himself. When unable to attend the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, in 1873, he wrote and sent to that assembly a short sketch, which was published at that time in the New York Tribune, and may doubtless be obtained among the published proceedings of the Alliance.

A number of brief sketches, including accounts of little incidents illustrating his daily life and his intercourse with students, have appeared in various places. The writer prepared one for the Canadian Independent Magazine of 1875. Others have been recently published in the religious newspapers by Principal Bancroft of Andover and Rev. Mr. Lawrence of Poughkeepsie, both of whom could write from extended personal acquaintance. These Articles make it unnecessary that this take a similar form. But we give a translation of a short Article in a German periodical, describing the last honors paid to the good man. The story gives a few words on Tholuck's character, by good and great Germans who knew him, and it will also serve, as it pictures the scene, to let many who have loved to live in Halle follow in imagination for themselves the funeraltrain as it was marshalled in that well-known garden, so often the scene of Tholuck's walks with students; yes, marshalled in the hall beneath his own quiet study in that hall where every Christmas the brilliant trees lighted up long tables, spread with simple gifts and Halle Christmasloaves, one for each of a dozen or more students who might be unable to journey far away to the festival at their own homes. The funeral-train assembled there, and mourned around the bier, as they looked on and listened to the discourse of the good pastor Hoffmann. Tholuck held sittings in the little St. Lorenz church, where Hoffmann has long preached so eloquently of sin and salvation. But Tholuck's seat was scarcely ever occupied; he was seldom or never at church, save when he preached the University-sermons in the Dom. But they misjudge who suppose that all who are absent from church in Germany are godless. From the house in Mittelstrasse the procession moved out to the city cemetery, in the style so striking to a stranger, with its conducting Halloren in old-fashioned cocked hats and knee breeches, and its train of student societies, with officers in quaint student uniform, bearing their craped banners. But let us take the account as written:

"Those were memorable, but sorrowful hours which we recently spent in the old town on the Saale at the funeral of the well-beloved teacher. On Sunday Tholuck died, and on the following day he was buried. With twenty-eight members of the Leipzig branch of the Wingolf StudentSociety I journeyed over from Leipzig to Halle. Professors Kabnis and Luthardt were also on the train. At five o'clock the funeral obsequies were to begin in the house, and at six the great solemn procession was to move toward the town-cemetery. I hastened to the house of mourning,