PUBLISHED QUARTERLY-IN JANUARY, APRIL, JULY, AND OCTOBER. Terms- 44 HARVARD APR 6 1887 LIBRARY. APR 1887. RICHARD EDDY, D.D., EDITOR. TABLE OF CONTENTS. The Ante-Nicene Fathers - Memoir of William Henry Channing - Ancient Cities- Dr. Whedon's Essays, Reviews and Discourses, and Statements: Theological and Critical Andrews' Brazil - The Fourth Gospel - Trench's Sermons - Talks with Socrates about Life - Dr. Oswald on the Poison Problem - Habit, and its Importance in Education-Life and Labors of Rev. W. E. Boardman - Gill's Systems of Edu- cation Miss Ryder's "New Every Morning"- Vos on the Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuchal Codes -Hall's Bibliography of Education - Katy of Catoctin - Sim- plicity and Fascination - Dr. Channing's Note-Book. Book Notes. "HE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH." FAITH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. A MEMORIAL OF SUMNER ELLIS, D.D. With an Outline of his Life and Ministry, CONTENTS: MEMORIAL BY REV. C. R. MOOR. I. The Universal Intuition. "As seeing Him who is invisible." Hebrews X1. 27. The Incarnation a Necessity. us." John i. 14. II. "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among III. The Christ Consciousness. "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by JESUS CHRIST." - John iv. 17. IV. V. The Fallacy of Disbelief. "Be not faithless, but believing." - John xx. 27. Inferences Based on Gift and Growth. even CHRIST."- Ephesians iv. 15. VI. "Grow up into him in all things, Faith Confirmed by Progress. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." -I Corinthians xiii. 2. VII. Righteousness. "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."-2 Peter iii. 13. VIII. The Law of Service. "And for their sakes I sanctify myself." - John xvii. 19. IX. Current Tendencies in Thought and Life. "Can ye not discern the signs of the times?". Matthew xvi. 3. The Song of Mercy and Judgment. "I will sing of mercy and judgment; unto Thee, O LORD, will I sing."--Psalm ci. 1. XII. The Fulfilling Principle. "Love is the fulfilling of the Law." XIII. 1 Romans xiii. 10. Religion the Vital Bond. "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us." - John xvii. 21. 16mo. Cloth, handsomely printed and bound. Gilt Tops with Portrait. 325 pages. Price $1.00, postage paid. Agents wanted. UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON and CHICAGO. ARTICLE IX. An Alleged Scientific Perdition. PART II. MR. COOK states what he doubtless means as a paradox: Man has natural power to open the door. God's knocking enables him to open the door. He says: Man by nature can make no holy choice; and yet, again, he declares that some act of man's free will must go before God's entrance into the soul. It would certainly appear that the son which does such an act, must by nature both choose and do a holy thing. But taking the assumed paradox above, we observe, that should God's knocking stop, man's natural power would count for nothing, and with that would go the corresponding responsibility — free will would disappear, and the soul become a spiritual fossil, or go into dissolution. If such a contingency were the position of the Lectureship, it might have apparently some support from science. It is speculative science which shows us that evolution reaches in the physical world an equilibrium between conflicting forces when dissolution of the products of evolution set in. For instance, the solar system is destined as a product of evolution ultimately to be dissipated into the attenuated matter out of which it arose. But in that case, the process is renewed, and a new solar system will again be evolved. So, if it should be thought that a finite mind may in like manner be ultimately dissipated, or reach a point of entire moral collapse, science would lend no necessary support to the idea of a permanent collapse, but rather to the idea of dissolution and a renewal of evolution. On the assumption of the immortality of the soul, we cannot see that science lends any aid whatever to the idea of a permanent state of evil habit and its consequences. On the contrary, it appears to us to set forth a universe wholly averse to the permanence of evil conduct, its processes being ever those of elimination, restoration, dis integration, renewal, correction, progress. NEW SERIES. VOL. XXIV 9 and by Mr. But, if God's Of the apparent paradox above, it is only necessary to say: subtract God's enabling the sinner to open the door, and we have the sinner's natural ability standing alone Cook's own words-man can open the door. enabling act is needful, as he asserts, before man can open the door, then by natural ability alone he cannot open the door. Thus the assumed paradox falls, and we have positive contradiction. The Universalist's position seems alone consistent with the freedom and immortality of the soul and the influence of God. It affirms, that man can open the door; that God so administers judgment and mercy, so maintains relations and faculties, and so makes under love and law combinations of circumstance, (not to enable the already capable soul to act, or to over-ride its freedom), but so that it is certain the soul will open the door. Yet, we also say, God is first cause in conversion, but not as Mr. Cook means it. We affirm the agency of God in every conversion in the fact of his maintaining the integrity of the soul and its endowments as a susceptible moral being in relations always with an influential and beneficently governed universe. We deny that God's part in conversion is that of re-creation, or re-endowment of soul, or of the nature of an arbitrary gift to the sinner. Man can by nature Opening the door is open the door, can make a holy choice. holy choice, rather comes of holy choice; that holy choice is the soul of repentance; that without a holy choice first, there can be no regeneration effected. Thoughts and choices favorable to God, which hence are holy, must in every case antedate the regeneration set forth by Jesus. To awaken these thoughts and choices is the fore-front of Christ's line of battle. He casts on sinners the light of the face of the loving God, the Father, that through thoughts born naturally in their souls favorable to the reception of this Light, they may be born again by the very laws of their own souls. But Mr. Cook says: "Regeneration is the gift of God; con-version is the act of man; but they are inseperable sides of the one great change of the new birth. No one, of course, can put forth a holy choice until his nature is regenerated." Here is an astounding state of things. We ask: What takes place before God makes the gift of regeneration? He certainly will not give it to a still rebellious soul. And again, conversion being the act of man, we ask, What takes place before man can do the act of conversion? And again, this gift from God of regeneration, and this act of man, conversion, being inseperable sides of the one change of the new birth, which is regeneration, we ask, What takes place prior to this perfect simultaneous coalescing of a gift and an act into the one change of the new birth? Certainly something very like a holy choice must be made by the man before he is in condition for God to give regeneration, or before he can receive so divine a gift. And before he can do so great an act as conversion the turning from sin to God he certainly must make the double choice of breaking away from sin and embracing the good. Then Mr. Cook makes the new birth to consist in a change made up of inseparable sides one side, God's gift of regeneration; the other, man's act of conversion. But the terms, "new birth" and "regeneration," are synonymous mean, and are, the same thing. Yet according to Mr. Cook they are different. By his terms, regeneration is the new birth minus conversion, and likewise conversion is the new birth minus regeneration. Then, again, God not only gives one half of what Mr. Cook calls the new birth, viz., regeneration, but He is the first cause of conversion, the other half. He says: "It is not safe to assert that man is the sole cause of conversion, defined even in the narrow way as distinct from regeneration. He (man) is a secondary cause of it, an instrumental cause of it, but the first cause even of conversion is God," (and it is as the conclusion of this sentence where he says)," and no one, of course, can put forth a holy choice until his nature is regen erated." Thus we have the new birth more than one half now due |