cient warning of their danger, would they have heeded it; that they were not perishing for lack of knowledge, but for misusing it; that they did know the way of life, but preferred the way of death, seems like an afterthought, to meet and head off another line of reasoning. Common humanity argued in response to the American Board that if twenty-four millions were perishing, would perish, for lack of knowledge, then that knowledge of Christ which failed to reach them here, must certainly be furnished hereafter; to which theology made answer, announcing the sufficiency of what is called natural religion. It may be added, though rather in an aside, that the reasoning which establishes the sufficiency of heathen knowledge would hardly hold in every-day affairs. If a queen mother should decide and decree that one pair of woolen stockings should be ample provision for each child during the winter, and if all the families of her kingdom for many succeeding winters should find that one pair was not enough, that they were worn to shreds long before the winter was out, and that the great majority of little feet became frost-bitten, sore, useless, and finally had to be amputated, we should not infer that it was the children's fault in not keeping their stockings whole. We should say that the queen had fallen into an error of judgment.

If now, leaving the question of theology out of view, we look abroad upon the world for mere personal observation, to judge of it as a mere experiment in world-making, and a completed experiment, we should say that it was a good deal of a failure. If it is finished, it is very defective. If it is only in process, we have everything to hope, because the tendency is upward. If impatient theologians would only give our Creator time, His ways would, no doubt, be vindicated; but if it is imperative that the "plan of salvation" be instantly and wholly formulated and accepted, it must be at the expense of the Divine justice; for we see nation after nation struggling up into light only to perish in darkness. We see Christian nations stealing, gambling, robbing, murdering, slandering, beating wives, rearing children to crime. The cry of the wisest and best of all ages is for more light. The passionate wail of humanity is that He is a God that hideth Himself. The passionate prayer of humanity is that God should reveal Himself. The very fact that after centuries without Christ, Christ came, is indisputable proof that natural religion is not enough. Paul said it is enough, and on the VOL. CXLIII.-NO. 361.

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line whereon he was then reasoning his statement is correct; but the Judge of all the earth, surveying things from the Divine point of sight, saw that it was not enough, sent Christ besides, and sent Paul to preach Christ. Paul, with illumined eyes, saw God clearly in nature, and may well have been impatient with darkered eyes that saw not; but the Father and Creator has evermore compassion on darkened eyes, and always and in all ways, as men can bear the light, sheds his light upon the world. God, we may be sure, does nothing that is not necessary. No revelation of Himself is enough, or ever will be enough, until he has reconciled the world unto Himself.

Without this belief, however, which the professors present-the belief that the heathen have a sufficient knowledge of God without Christianity, and therefore if they do not avail themselves of that knowledge before they leave this world, they will be forever lost-Professors Phelps and Hamlin think it probable that Christian missions would never have existed.

On the other hand, they think they detect and they resolutely antagonize a rising theory that knowledge of Christ is not necessary to the salvation of the heathen; that heathen in past ages have been saved without knowledge of Christ; that the ethnic religions, antedating Christianity in their origin, have been providential and even preparatory to Christianity; that they contain truth enough to constitute a saving power to the nations which have inherited nothing better, and that, so far as they have not worked out the salvation of their believers, the failure will be rectified by a Christian probation in another life; that restriction of any man's probation to one lifetime, and that under impoverished conditions, is unworthy of God.

It is easy to see that there are two sorts of questions hereone of fact, ascertainable; the other of consequence, inferential. And first of fact, in one department of which, at least, the antagonism posited by them does not exist. Their own setting forth reveals it not as antagonism, but identity. What possible difference is there between a belief that God has revealed Himself to the heathen sufficiently for their salvation through the splendor and power of the material universe and the intuitions of the human universe; and the theory of the "new theology" and of "advanced culture" that the ethnic religions contained truth enough to constitute a saving power to the nations that inherited them?

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There is no new departure" here, only a new name. Old theology calls it natural religion, and new theology calls it ethnic religion, but to the secular mind the things defined under these names are one and the same. I cannot place the two theories side by side in any words that do not make the one theory a mere repetition of the other.

After this point, however, there is a divergence. Old orthodoxy believes natural revelation to have been an entire and appalling failure. New orthodoxy thinks it to have been a partial success. Old orthodoxy thinks the masses of mankind, without knowledge of Christ, were utterly lost. New orthodoxy thinks the world has been gradually uplifted by the ethnic religions; that former systems of faith, imperfect but advancing, and beneficial in their total result, have been preparing the way for Him whose feet are wholly beautiful upon the mountains.

Very well, says Professor Phelps in substance, and in substance justly; it is a question of historic fact. Let us have the proof. If the unevangelized nations are already in the line of redemption, individual character should often indicate it. Private virtues should give signs of thrift. Public morals should be healthy; in a word, the civilizations existing in heathen lands should indicate that society is morally on an ascending grade. The ethnic, the preparatory religions, should seem to be prophetic of Christianity, should be full of sublime and mysterious hints of its revelation, and the civilizations growing out of them should display the moral buoyancy of nascent and crescent, not of effete and decadent,

races.

As I have hinted, Professor Phelps does not ask me whether all or any part of this is true. He asks Dr. Hamlin. It is indeed to be feared that he better knew beforehand what Dr. Hamlin would say. At least, Dr. Hamlin says it. There is nothing of Devil's Advocacy in his position. His trumpet gives no uncertain sound, and it pipes no music for the heathen. Dr. Hamlin roundly affirms that he cannot find the first instance of any one of the heathen or Mohammedan systems working in the line of redemption or developing any power toward a purer and better state of society, toward the elevation of the people. Heathen, Moslems, Greek, and Armenian apostates are all embarked in the same boat, rowing toward the same Dead Sea. And Dr. Hamlin speaks with the authority of one who has lived among them.

This has a dark look for the heathen. Something may indeed be said regarding the conclusiveness of such a comparison; but even on the basis of this comparison I can happily throw a little light over the shaded picture, and it shall be from as sound a missionary source as Dr. Hamlin. I suppose it could not be from a sounder, and I am sure that Professor Phelps will admit that it might have saved some heartache if he had asked me in the beginning.

Mrs. S. L. Baldwin, a missionary of the Methodist Board in China, now living in East Boston, addressed to the present Congress a petition which was presented in the Senate, praying that she might be allowed to import a heathen to this country, because of his great superiority to the Christians here; because the private virtues of the heathen showed far stronger signs of thrift than our That I may not, however undesignedly, misrepresent her testimony, I give her own words:

own.

"During a long residence in China, as the wife of a missionary, I have been accustomed to Chinese servants. I know the peace and comfort possible with them. One cook served us during the entire twenty years we lived in China. I have made many efforts to secure good and needed service from the help found in this land. I have given four years' patient trial to those of every nationality, not excepting our own. I have paid the highest usual wages, have planned my work with a view to my servants' comfort, have treated them with courtesy and kindness, keeping in mind the Golden Rule, have paid them promptly, and, in return, have only asked that they do properly the work they have agreed to perform. But all in vain! Not one has seemed to feel under the slightest obligation to give any fair return for wages received, or to have the slightest regard to my interests. Untidiness, badly-cooked food, waste, breakage, impertinence and disobedience have exhausted my purse and my patience, and imperiled the comfort and health of myself and my family.

"Notwithstanding the fact that in China our servants loved us and left our employ reluctantly, I might still think that in some way I am unwittingly to blame for this unhappy state of affairs, had I not found, in a very extended acquaintance in this country, that my experience is simply that of a large majority of the housekeepers of this land.

I earnestly petition that you will make an

exception to the anti-Chinese law in my favor, and allow me to import a Chinese servant. It is the only solution of the problem of housekeeping in this country now."

Is it possible to misrepresent or to misunderstand the significance of this statement—all the more significant because it is unintended testimony? In this Christian country private virtues are so submerged beneath ingratitude, selfishness, dishonesty, extravagance, impertinence, disobedience, that we fly for refuge to the peace, comfort, fidelity, love, found only in heathen character and heathen service.

These are high qualities. They are Scripturally stamped as a preparatory course for the kingdom of Heaven. When John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness: Repent ye: for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, he preached exactly the Gospel that Mrs. Baldwin craves. The way of the Lord which he prepared was precisely the way that Mrs. Baldwin had had for twenty years in China.

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Repent ye for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand!" thundered the stern ascetic.

"What shall we do, then?" cried the poor, selfish, but startled people.

"He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none." Charity.

And the corrupt, extortionate, alarmed tax-gatherers cried :
"What shall we do ?"

One look into their rapacious and hated faces, and the answer was: "Exact no more than that which is appointed you!" Justice, Honesty.

"What shall we do?" cried the cruel, turbulent, tyrannical soldiers.

"Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages. "Fidelity, Obedience.

No adherence to creed, no change of faith, no form of worship, but to each man this forerunner of Christ preached faithful performance of work; faithful discharge of daily and hourly duty; continued resistance by each man of his own peculiar temptations.

Who can doubt that if John the Baptist should come preaching in the wilderness of Mrs. Baldwin's American kitchen: "Repent ye for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand," and if repentant Bridget should ask, "What shall I do?" he would say:

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