this method, or something akin to it, that the present accelerating commercialism is to be subdued and brought to the adoption of Christian principles. All our social questions are to be thus settled. Traditionalism will not settle them. Historic authority has lost its hold on the public just as certainly as it has lost its hold on the university. In the great commercial centers and among the multitudes where the Church still holds sway it does so because it appeals to reason and conscience on the larger basis of fact, thus compelling business classes to recognize a present-day God and an absolute present-day conscience as the only securities for future business or future joy.

Man may be said to have a fourfold life: 1. A life intellectual, which prompts him to study and invent; 2. A life commercial, which allures him to business-he lives this life in the world of finance; 3. A life social, which includes his domestic and political affiliations as well as the usual social functions; 4. The life spiritual. Now, it is plain that any social life which crushes the intellectual or paralyzes the commercial life by habits of extravagance, so as to cripple integrity and lead to hurtful indulgence; which dwarfs or deadens the spiritual, is unnatural and must be declared bad. Any commercial life which corrupts the political, debases the intellectual, destroys the spiritual, is likewise unnatural and must be declared bad. Any so-called spiritual life which blights a wholesome social or intellectual life is likewise vitiating. This fourfold life must be made congenial and in such a way that healthfulness will result, and the whole man, and the whole body of society, be stimulated and built up. Is such a Utopian state possible under the Christian system? Dr. Richard T. Ely, of the University of Wisconsin, than whom there is no higher authority in this country, unhesitatingly gives an unqualified Yea. It can be realized through the ethical principles of Christianity. That is to say, if the negro of the South is unfitted to cast his suffrage intelligently Christian ethics side in favor of the State, and the question of equality, notwithstanding the Fifteenth

Amendment, can be adjudicated upon a basis broader and more enduring for the negro as well as for the State. This same interpretation applies to capital and labor. Christianity will not permit tyranny of either over the other. They only rightfully act when they act to the highest good of the other. Neither greed nor injustice can dictate the policy for either; love only can. The very announcement of such a truth reveals at once the long step which modern life must take to stand square with Christianity. In this Christianity can be dogmatic. Here she is supremely authoritative. At this point Christianity holds a due balance in man's fourfold life. Christianity is the law of balances in human life. Plainly, then, any one feature of man's life can come into the ascendency to the hurt and death of the others. The Church cannot do better than set forth the Christian religion as a law of equipoise. For man to enjoy freedom in this fourfold life means everything to him. It is this which Christianity proposes to bring. It alone has the perfect law of liberty. "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." "I am come," said Christ, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." In other words, no life which nature has intended man to live must perish-otherwise the man is so much lost. Christianity is the conservator of life, and because it is so it is the conservator of man. It is intended to kill no life save the life of sin, which is unnatural, and never has been or will be sanctioned by nature. "The stars in their courses fought against Sisera." Here, then, is a social doctrine in which is the whole push of nature and Christianity. For, depend upon it, the religion of Christ in its regenerative and revolutionary processes always imparts three things to the individual: 1. It develops conscientiousness. 2. It quickens the sense of propriety. 3. It raises the question of expediency. The first asks, "Is this right, according to Christian standards?" the second, "Is this proper for me to do, considering my commitment to the Christian system?" the third, "Even if it is apparently not wrong, is it expe

dient for me to do so? Will my doing so afflict a weaker brother, and cause him to stumble?" The Church cannot solve every specific matter, but these are the principles the great apostle drew from the spirit of Christianity, and they are applicable to every conceivable problem with which man has to do. Educated Christian conscience cannot ignore the question of the highest good, and it can be trusted in its solicitude to reach high ethical conclusions.

This is an effectual and safe working basis for the Church, and experience has proven the futility of legislative dictation or peremptory command touching any feature of man's social life. Everyone enjoys the exercise of making up his own mind. Protestantism has contended for liberty of individual judgment, and whenever the Church deals either with the public or the individual on the broader basis of counsel rather than dictation, persuasion rather than legislation, seeking to do no more than set forth the ethical truths which must control Christian conduct, it is beyond question the most rational and potential attitude which the Church can assume. The Roman Catholic Church has always maintained to its communicants the attitude of ecclesiastical imperialism. Right of judgment in morals rests with the bishops, of whom the pope is first. Protestantism yet struggles with the peculiar problem of adjusting its ecclesiastical system to the right of individual judgment, which is fundamental to its life. The balancing of the religious and the social is a fine piece of art. It is generally recognized that the Church would prove recalcitrant to duty did she not declare unequivocally a judgment upon many matters, and this she has done upon the Sabbath, the liquor, the divorce, and kindred questions. These are of such a kind that the Church can speak upon them with authority and boldness and maintain her right to speak. But there are other matters, such as partisan political affiliations, the arbitration of differences between capital and labor, in which she can do no more than lend her influence. That this is powerful the recent unseating of Mr. Roberts from Congress aptly shows.

When it comes to social functions the Church discovers her limitations again. A dictatorial policy, or legislative enactments against particular social functions, has not, with us, resulted in any decided benefit, but with many it has produced actual harm, because the whole functional life cannot be set out in program by the Church, and the cataloguing of some things and the omission of other things equally baneful, the different view-points of ministers and people occasioning diversity of judgment-these things make it supremely wise for the Church to treat its communicants as men and women, capable of determining some matters for themselves. When that feature of social life which has to do with the pleasures of the people is considered there are three principles which the Church can emphasize with effectiveness: 1. What is wrong to the individual he must turn from. This is a principle which, if conscientiously exercised, will do two things: (1) It will preserve the purity of the individual; his manhood, etc. (2) It will save him from the spirit of tyranny and dictation. To him it is wrong. That is sufficient. Let him turn from it. 2. What seems wrong turn from. This is to "abstain from all appearance of evil." It is the individual giving to righteousness the benefit of his doubt. To turn from that which seems to me wrong is a plain duty. 3. John Wesley's rule, than which not anything wiser was ever framed: "The taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus." Finally, the Church has one duty higher than the mere ethical. Her supreme mission is to preach the Gospel of regeneration. Jesus Christ must be presented as the living Saviour whose name is Jesus because he will save the people from their sins.

ART. IX.-THE ETHICAL ASPECT OF PAUL'S

CONVERSION.

IT is the fundamentally ethical significance of Paul's conversion that has made the event memorable in universal history. No other considerations, whether theological or philosophical, should ever be permitted to obscure this great prime factor in the transaction at Damascus. The event marked a spiritual transformation, a work of divine grace, a revolution in the inner man; the accompanying phenomena were but secondary and incidental.

For Paul the two systems, Judaism and Christianity, were mutually exclusive. There could be no compromise between them. Either salvation was by the works of the law and the Messianic kingdom was to be brought about by Pharisaic zeal, or else the Messiah had already come to a people whose vaunted righteousness stood condemned as worthless before the bar of reason and conscience (Rom. chap. vii). If Jesus is an impostor his name must be persecuted to the death; if Messiah, he must be proclaimed so to the world.

The exact point of transition in Paul's case cannot be located. The expression "kicking against the goads" implies a painful struggle, but by no means a conscious deliberation on the subject of accepting Christianity. He remembered afterward that the new faith had broken in upon him without warning; yet there was an actual struggle which, unrecognized in its true significance even by Paul himself, was revolving about the Nazarene. For Paul's zeal was for righteousness-not merely an outward, but a spiritual, righteousness. He was, therefore, attempting to serve two masters, the outward form of legalism and the spiritual ideal of the inner man. He had, in fact, outgrown the narrow limitations of Judaism and was attempting, however blindly, to break his bonds and issue forth into a new world of thought and action. So, half consciously, the struggle in