ervation. Hence if there were no immortality provided for by revelation we must provide it by an absolute necessity as drastic as that which holds the stars in their courses. Voltaire was constrained to say, "If there were no God we must of necessity make one." If there were no rewards for virtue, and no punishment for wickedness, the conscience of humanity would devise an immortality, where there is a heaven. to reward and a hell to punish; so that there might be an adjustment in the balance sheet of nature.

The belief in a future life being, then, the basis and condition of all religions, we next inquire as to its influence on humanity. Has it been beneficial or injurious? This question admits of but one answer. It has been the only element by which the world has made progress in culture, in virtue, in all that distinguishes the man from the brute. This will be denied only by those whom pessimism or agnosticism has shown to be wholly perverted. Leaving these where they have placed themselves, beyond the limits of reason, we will deal with men as rational creatures, amenable to the world's ordinances which they are compelled willingly or by constraint to accept.

Every religion that has ever claimed the credence of men did so because it offered some evidence of benefit to its votaries. If it came professing to do harm it would have no better ground for acceptance than pessimism or agnosticism. It may have made false promises. It may have deceived its adherents under pledges of worldly gain and thus deluded them at first. But experience would be a crucial test; and such promises would entail ruin upon the system they purported to sustain. Hence both from a priori reasons, and from the evidence of testing, the condition on which a religion would be proposed or accepted must be its beneficent influence on humanity. And such has been the influence of all the great religions of the world-Judaism, and its supplement, Christianity; Islamism, Confucianism, and Parseeism; and also of every modification of these except Buddhism. This, if it can be called a religion, does not appear to

teach a separate immortality for each soul, but an absorption into the personality of Buddha. And yet this involves a future existence, and with it the qualities or character which the soul integrated while on earth. Hence if there be the conservation of energy the soul when reabsorbed into the essence or personality of Buddha must take with it all the increments of power, virtue, vice, which it has gained for itself. These, as positive forces for virtue or negative powers for vice, are still there to work out their results through an agent or personality. For these are in no way changed by reabsorption, because their essential nature remains identical. This can be clearly seen in the companion systems whose creed affirms metempsychosis as the condition of continued existence. Here the soul continues in another avatar, occupying a new body, indeed, but carrying into this all its original and acquired characteristics. And expressly because justice did not complete its work, either in purifying or punishing, the life will be prolonged until there is that consummation which the Christian revelation clearly enunciates: "He that is holy, let him be holy still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still."

From this digression we return to our thesis that all religions which have ever been advocated obtain credence because they promise a betterment of human conditions, and a perfect consummation in future of what is left imperfect here. If it be said that religions are imperfect in their conception and enunciation, we reply that the creatures to whom they appeal are themselves incomplete in their intellectual and moral character. When God speaks to man it must be in the terms of man's comprehension, that is, anthropomorphically. If he were to speak in the language of absolute truth and infinite knowledge none but an infinite being could understand the message. Hence he must condescend to the measure of our comprehension. And though the truth in itself be infallible, and the message conveying it be perfect, yet the terms in which it is enunciated must be understood in a lower degree, or made inferior to its real signification.

While the divine law is absolute in its essential nature, the terms of its enunciation must be such that it can be comprehended and obeyed by those for whom it was revealed.

It being demonstrated that every religion has its foundation in future rewards and punishments, we are prepared to bring this contention to the test of the law of excluded middle: It is either true or false. Not that every religion offered to men is absolutely true in all the terms of its enunciation. The extent of the meaning "true" which is here intended has already been made clear. Nor do we deny that there have been accretions partially, perhaps wholly, false, and unwarranted interpretations. But taking each religion. as a sum total, and all of them combined, their influence upon human nature has been salutary. Such being the tendency of all religions, and most of all the Christian revelation which stands or falls with the doctrine of a future life (1 Cor. xv, 14-18), the alternative meets us directly: These religions are true as a unit, or they are false. There is no escape from this dilemma. Between direct contradiction any middle is excluded. If, then, this is inevitable, there follows at once another equally drastic alternative: As they are true or false, then the influence which they have exerted upon the world has been caused either by truth or by falsehood. They derive all their warrant from the assertion that there is a future life where the miscarriages of justice for want of time, or sphere of action, in this life can be rectified. Without immortality no religion has any sanction. For the present life is so evidently disciplinary that it would mean nothing without a field for display of matured character; just as every stage of life from infancy to maturity has its raison d'être in that which is to follow. There is no reason for this life if it be ended prematurely and no other is to follow. It is a mistake in the ordinances of nature because it is a miscarriage of justice and a triumph of evil. This also amounts to a demonstration.

In conclusion: The universe, whether physical or moral— rather both as coordinates of system-is based upon truth.

The laws of nature-its constancy of movement, its unvarying results in the complicated movements of the worlds, or the molecular action in forming the crystal, or the definite proportions of elements in the compound-rest in their ultimate analysis on the infallible truth which prevails in materials and their forces. If this be the case in one part, then in all. Religion declares that there is a future life. If this be false, then all the good which religion has ever wrought in the world rests upon a falsehood; the strongest motive that ever actuated man rests upon a false basis; the structure of the universe is false; and the mind as the interpreter of the phenomena of the universe acts upon a lie. Our hopes, our fears, are groundless; and our life on earth is all a falsehood. From such a nightmare of unbelief we awake to the light of revealed truth. Life is a boon, to be desired now, by him who is sane, as a preparation at each moment for its further continuance; with the assurance that it does not cease at the moment when by discipline it has become best fitted for a wider sphere. All the thoughts, all the aspirations, all the motives to be derived from reason or experience, declare with the force of a demonstration, OUR LIFE SHALL NEVER END.

ART. 11.-SOME DISEASES OF MODERN BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

We know that the so-called higher criticism of the Bible is one of the newer branches of science. We know also that this criticism has proved itself to be a most formidable antagonist in that it has brought about a mighty revolution in the province of the estimation of the Bible. May one not, however, call in question the soundness of this criticism of our day? I think so, and shall undertake to describe some of its diseases. Symptoms of such are in my judgment discernible in three spheres of the life of this young antagonist. These diseases may be termed bodily, physiological, and psychological. But permit me to unfold my meaning.

1. Nothing threatens the bodily organism of man more than the intrusion into it of foreign bodies. These destroy the tissues and poison the blood, this last source of bodily health. But can it be said that such foreign elements have forced their way into the body of modern biblical criticism? I believe that such is the case, for what the blood is to the life of the body, that are the norms, or authoritative standards, in the province of criticism. False, inadequate standards, therefore, resemble the foreign bodies which poison the blood. Such false standards have been, however, frequently applied in more recent biblical criticism.

A standard which, it is maintained, cannot do justice to Hebrew writings is nevertheless applied when these are compared as to external age with Babylonian-Assyrian literature, and when the assertion is made that certain portions of the latter, because older, must therefore of necessity be also from original sources of greater antiquity than are the corresponding portions of the Old Testament. This method of procedure has been more than once apparent in recent times. In the lecture of Friedrich Delitzsch, "Babel und Bibel," for example, we were told that a considerable number of Bible stories had now suddenly come to light in purer and