CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED FROM MARCH 19 TO APRIL 17, 1894.

Alliance House, 7 Adam Street, Strand, London, W.C.

**Remittances may be made payable to the order of the secretary (Mr. A. J.

Arnold), or to the Treasurer.

THE various meetings for the different religious societies which have been held during the last month do not show any falling-off in the interest or enthusiasm which generally mark the May meetings. In many cases serious deficiencies. have appeared in the balance-sheets, but some of these when announced beforehand have been speedily met, and in the case of the Church Missionary Society, whose deficit was considerable, a balance of £4,000 in hand has been provided, over and above, with which to commence the new financial year. Dr. Barnardo has had a striking proof of the interest which is shown in his work of reclaiming the waifs and strays of London. A threatened invasion of the precincts of one of his most important centres of work by a Roman Catholic sisterhood forced him to appeal to his friends for £9,000 to renew the lease of the ground threatened, and so repel the invaders. In a few days he was able to announce that the danger was past. It is gratifying, in the midst of so much commercial depression, and diminution of incomes from many causes, to find that there is still a ready response to appeals for works in which the Christian public have confidence.

Dr. Lunn, with well-intentioned zeal for the promotion of Christian union upon a somewhat larger scale than that attempted by the Evangelical Alliance, has written to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Vaughan, as well as to the heads of all the other religious denominations in Great Britain, inviting them "to co-operate in the observance of Whit Sunday as a day for specially emphasising the evils which follow upon our unhappy divisions, and the blessings which would result from unity." From the Arch

bishop he has received a courteous and sympathetic answer, coupled with the issuing of a request to his clergy to use on Whit Sunday the prayer for unity in the Accession Service, a request which no doubt has been largely complied with. The prayer is a very beautiful one, well worthy of being used every week, if not every day, rather than once a year. It wisely avoids any request for mere unity of outward form, and asks rather for "godly union and concord" and that on the ground of the seven unities enumerated in Eph. iv.-unities not of form but of spirit: "That we may henceforth be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and with one mouth glorify Thee." The use of this prayer on Whit Sunday is an indication of the power by which alone the unity sought can be brought about.

A very different answer has, as might be expected, been received from Cardinal Vaughan. It affords him an opportunity, of which he gladly avails himself, to lecture Protestants for their departure from what he calls "the Catholic Church," all their disunion and divisions being "evils which have their place not inside the pale but outside of it, and are the inevitable results of departure out of and separation from it." No wonder, therefore, that his conclusion is that "Believing, as we do, that for that evil there can be no true remedy other than that which Christ Himself has ordainednamely, that the minds of men should become one in hearing the one true Church, and by submission to her teaching and authority, all our prayers, exhortations and labours, not only on Whit Sunday but on all days are fervently devoted to that consummation." This, at least, is honest, but a little reflection upon what the claims of the Church of Rome have always been, might have spared Dr. Lunn the humiliation of the refusal, couched in language which recalls the well-known fable of the lion and the lamb.

Mr. Gladstone, as an eminent layman with a peculiar interest in eccle siastical questions, was also addressed by Mr. Lunn. His answer is generally speaking sympathetic, but very cautious, especially as to "efforts which seem to me to be premature," or to such as "in creating approximation to one set of Christians widen the gap of separation from another." This latter caution is expressed in somewhat enigmatical language. Speaking from the point of view of an English Churchman, as Mr. Gladstone naturally does, Nonconformity on the one hand and Rome on the other might be regarded as each "a set of Christians." Does Mr. Gladstone fear separation from Rome or from Nonconformity? It is hard to say. The language would suit either case. It is, at all events, well to be reminded of the fact that as Rome is immovable the Church of England must choose between approximation to that corrupt church widening (we may hope in so doing) the gap of separation from Nonconformity so far as it remains Protestant, or vice versa. All the efforts of the Evangelical Alliance tend in the direction of the latter alternative.

Professor Goldwin Smith, writing in The Pall Mall Gazette, says: "England shares the general unrest which has set rolling a tidal wave of Socialism with Anarchism as the foam on its crest; for Socialism and Anarchism are identical in their origin, though Anarchism seeks the abolition of all government, while Socialism would give us a government more absolute and

more searching in its despotism than any which the world has ever yet scen. The deepest cause of the disturbance is the decay of the religious beliefs which have hitherto sustained the social frame and reconciled the poor to their present lot. A passionate revolt against the inequalities of this world, which in truth without religion are sad and perplexing enough, is the natural consequence of loss of faith in the world to come." This is confirmed by words spoken by the Anarchist, Emile Henry, before receiving sentence of death at Paris, in describing the steps which led him to take up Anarchy as a remedy for the evils of Society: "I saw, moreover, that at bottom, Socialism does not change the present order of things. It upholds the principle of authority, and that principle-whatever pretended Freethinkers may say is merely a vestige of the belief in a Supreme Power. Scientific studies had gradually initiated me into the play of natural forces. I was a Materialist and an Atheist. I felt that the hypothesis of a Deity was set aside by modern science as unnecessary. Religious and authoritative morality, based on a sham, had therefore to disappear."

All this points to the terrible evil being wrought upon society at large, and especially upon its lower stratum, by the weakening in some and destroying in others of the hold which hitherto the Bible has had upon the conscience of men as a true revelation from Heaven of God's mind and will concerning them. Those who lightly endorse the conclusions of the higher criticism of the present day little know how they are aiding the growth of a spirit of infidelity amongst the masses, which may yet show itself in a more fearful form than any that we associate with the horrors of the French Revolution. Deprive man of his belief in the overruling Providence of God, and of his responsibility to Him for his actions, and you deprive him of the chief motive to self-restraint and virtuous living. This belief rests mainly, if nct wholly, on his acceptance of the Bible as a faithful record of true events, and of a revelation otherwise unknown. To tamper with this belief is the greatest injury, not to say the most heartless cruelty, which man has it in his power to inflict upon his fellows.

The address of the chairman of the Baptist Union this year, the Rev. G. Short, contains some valuable words of warning, with special reference to the Biblical criticism of the present day and its persistent attacks upon Holy Scripture. "Who must not admit that much of the continental criticism is directed against the supernatural element in the Bible? and who also must not admit that here at home there are many critics much too tolerant in the same direction? There are critics who seem to hold a brief against the Book -whose self-consciousness is painful to witness, and often impels them to lay violent hands on the Ark of God itself!" What is meant by this appears further on in the following timely words of warning: "Our brethren who are tutors of colleges, expositors of Divine truth, in any way leaders of public opinion, especially among young men, should be extremely careful how they treat the authority of the Blessed Lord."

Upon this vital point the speaker proceeded: "There are certain matters of ancient Biblical tradition which appear to have had the imprimatur of His personal sanction and belief; and now because such traditions stand in the

way of modern criticism, we are asked to believe either that He was not superior to the popular errors of His time, or that, if He were, He deemed it expedient to speak as if He were not. Now both these alternatives seem to some of us very shocking. He could not share the errors of his time and be our Saviour." So, too, on the other point of expediency in doing that which does not look quite straightforward. Oh, the painful association of such a thought! Yet the fact must be faced; some people are beginning to think if the Lord Jesus Christ be the fallible person He is made out to be, or if He be capable of saying one thing and meaning another, is such a Christ worth keeping?"

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But "if the trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself to the battle?" The trumpet of the meetings of the Baptist Union has been made to give a very uncertain sound on this important question by a subsequent address of one of the Ministers, in which, speaking of the higher criticism, he says that "the analytical view, as held by eminent Christian scholars, is not incompatible with perfect evangelical doctrine, and with a complete submission of heart and mind to the absolute authority of Christ." He had before contrasted the "analytical" view with the "traditional," so that we have here the same distinction which Mr. Short expresses in the words, "There are certain matters of ancient Biblical tradition which appear to have had the imprimatur of (Christ's) sanction and belief; and now because such traditions stand in the way of modern criticism we are asked to believe either that He was not superior to the popular errors of His time, or that if He were He deemed it expedient to speak as if He were not." Mr. Short well adds, "Both these alternatives seem to some of us very shocking." Would that he could have said "to all of us"; but opinion in the Baptist Union seems to be divided on this point.

It seems well nigh impossible to understand how "a complete submission of heart and mind can be accorded to "the absolute authority of Christ," if we are driven to choose-as the Higher Critics would drive us-between the two alternatives of a Christ who was ignorant, or a Christ who connived at fraud. We see no other alternative, consistent with the due recognition of His claims, than that of believing the Scriptures to be what He ever taught them to be, the Word of God,-the Scripture that cannot be broken; and on this account rejecting as untrue the speculations of the Higher Criticism of the present day. As to their theories of authorship and original documents, when these do not conflict with anything that Scripture expressly asserts, we may treat them as ingenious theories, so far, but little substantiated by facts; but when they go to the length of questioning even the existence of Abraham (as Professor Cheyne does), there is no Christian worthy of the name but must feel that our Lord's words (to go no further)"Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad," have once and for ever settled that question.

Dr. Gordon, of Boston, has lately published, in The Missionary Review of the World, a very interesting account of conversations he had at Chicago last year with Joseph Rabinowitz, the well-known leader of the movement amongst the Jews in Bessarabia, who are called by the name of "Israelites of the New Covenant." In one of these conversations he asked him, "What is your view