The business man is strong who can bear up under the possible failure of his securities. In the great matters of the soul and eternity, when opposing doctrines are presented for credence, it is well to accept those which, if there is room for question, in any event are safe. Take, for illustration, the two leading doctrines of the future state of those who go out of this world in unbelief: first, that the finally impenitent are to be consigned to misery without end: secondly, that all men, whatever their character or conduct, are to be at last universally saved. He who accepts the former of these doctrines and acts in the light of it, by flying to Christ as a Saviour from coming wrath, is safe in either event. If all are saved, he is saved; if some are lost, he is not among them. How is it with him who holds the latter and who has no Saviour? What if he has embraced the wrong doctrine? What if the future should be quite otherwise? What if the Bible statement of "torment forever and ever" should prove to be true? He has committed a fatal mistake. He has done himself infinite harm. He has before him a fearful harvest. This should be a primal condition of belief, that those doctrines should be embraced which are safe in any event.

It is not a small thing what we believe. God will hold us accountable for our beliefs and for the actions which flow from them. Nor is the right faith a difficult matter to gain, if we approach the evidences with the teachable disposition.

Great, solemn truths are revealed to us. We are in charge of eternal verities. The science of God and of man, of sin which is lithographed on the globe, and of salvation which is written in the blood of Calvary, of probation and of the enduring destinies, is all brought within our cognizance. We have the knowledge of Christ and of His Gospel, of the blessed fact which steadies the rolling world on its uneasy orbit, that there is salvation for the lost. Life and immortality are brought to light. We know that heaven or hell is before us. Facts large enough and important enough to make our life serious, and our work here momentous, are in our possession. As far as we can judge, they are verified facts. They have entered into the life and history of ages. They belong to man, as responsible and immortal. They are taught by the

inspired Word.

They are confirmed by human experience. They have been voiced in song and prayer, which have alternately expressed the hope and fear, the penitence and aspiration, of souls. They have not been abandoned in death.

And what would the world be without them, and what would man be if he lost faith in them? The babblings that are profane and vain, the opposition of science falsely so-called, must not rob us of immortal birthrights. We cannot give up these eternal certainties for the guesses of whatever discoverer. We cannot let go of a divine hand to grasp, we know not what. We cannot degrade ourselves to brutish origin or kindredship, when our aspirations are beyond the skies and to the seats of angels.

If the Universe had a Creator, and if He impressed His laws upon it and is the Governor of that which He wisely made, He challenges our undoubted allegiance. If in this world of sin, sin so palpable that it stares in our faces everywhere, there is a divine Redemption so that every lost man may be saved, it were only folly and presumption either to ignore or reject it. We cannot accept charlatanry for Christianity. Not yet can we throw overboard chart and compass and reckonings, and commit ourselves to the turbulence of a sea swept by hurricanes and thundering on a coast white with the foam of breakers. We must have something to go by; something that will hold. What is it? Speculation? Uncertain science? Undoubtedly an age of scepticism and materialism degrades the conditions of belief. Sacredness is at a discount. things are common and cheap. When the soul is resolved into a breath, and God into a myth, there is no room for consecration and no object in effort. The blow that dethrones God dethrones man. All great things go down together. Life runs to commonplace. A new fascination comes to worldly business, and young and ambitious men feel it. To gain the world, to hold its wealth and the power which wealth gives, to feel that the vast systems of commerce and trade which vex the seas and jar the land are tributary to their plans, and that they are the moneyed kings on whose confidence thrones stand, on whose vote republics succeed in the throes of revolutionary struggle, whose power is greater than that of armies and navies,

All

in whose counting rooms destiny is dictated, is something wonderfully alluring.

The same conditions give an equal, though different fascination to the studies of nature. To unlock the palaces that have been closed and guarded for countless ages, to let light in upon their splendors and to stand first of all, first of a line of mindkings, amidst their regal glories, to hear the majestic minstrelsies, the old choruses, that have reverberated there with no ear to listen, to discover the laws, ancient as the globe, written by the divine finger on tables of stone laid up there as in arks of testimony, to detect the fine arts of nature, its pictures, and sculptures, and traceries, and tapestries, and the consummate grace and glory of its architecture, to lead the way of explora tion through rooms and galleries where no human foot has trodden before, possesses a charm which carries brave students. through endeavor and sacrifice. We admire and approbate the steady devotion, the unyielding faith and constancy, of these leaders of thought. The scientific ranks are crowded with noble minds which in every step of their progress win our love.

But the questions of responsibility and of destiny are profounder than those of business and of science. We demand the higher estimate for that which affects the soul and reaches through the eternities. We enter a protest against the materialistic tendency and against the scientific unbelief and against. the vice of worldliness. We maintain the enthronement of God and the authority of Holy Scripture and the central place in the world of the CROSS OF CHRIST. We ask that the tremendous issues of the future shall not be slighted nor travestied nor handed over to blind and unsatisfactory ignorance. We want those verities which have wrought on human character for the sturdiness and uprightness of our fathers still to be among the active forces of philosophy and society.

On the high table-lands of the Andes, among the mountains that tower above Quito, where the old Indian race, driven back from the sea, driven out and back from their ancient seats and capitals, still holds its own, in the free air and under the free skies, and within the impregnable fastnesses of the eternal hills, as it is said, lies a gorgeous city which they have builded

and maintained, while below and around them the overwhelming tide of conquest has poured. There they have kept their greatest ancestral inheritance. Father to son has transmitted the secret of the rich mines and no one has ever betrayed them. There the old architecture rises in its strange glory, and roofs and battlements glitter with gold and flashing gems.

To us has come down a grander inheritance. Shall we as faithfully transmit and guard it, and shall our treasures of thought and love be builded into that city which is lightened by the glory of God?

ARTICLE III.-SWEDEN BORG AS A THEOLOGIAN AND A SEER.

WITH Swedenborg's contributions to natural science, which were very considerable, this paper has nothing to do. They preceded his theological writings, and, like them, were penetrated with the "identity-theory," which formed the backbone of all his thinking.

His theological system and his claim are not dependent on each other. They should be judged separately, since the latter, though appealing strongly to the religious imagination, was a mere accident, an excrescence, which disfigured, even if it did not weaken, the former. And yet the claim in itself did not want a certain plausibility. So far from involving a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture, it was a professed fulfillment of the Second Coming of Christ. Swedenborg professed for his inspiration only a secondary office, interpretative rather than original. He believed that he had enjoyed, during the last thirty years of his life, frequent visits to heaven and hell, where angels, good and bad, communicated to him the true, or "internal," meanings of Scripture. He also believed that he had been commissioned of the Lord to make known these things to the rest of mankind, and that with their promulgation the New Jerusalem had begun to break through the clouds of heaven and descend to earth.

His severest critic may well begin by paying a tribute to the advanced, searching, helpful, and even sublime character of much that he wrote. Though excessively repetitious and frequently commonplace, he excites wonder by the inscrutable depth of his philosophical insight and the loftiness of his poetical genius. The parabolic comparison of the spiritual and material realms by manifold closely traced and very curious analogies stimulates the imagination.

He is withal sufficiently improbable to interest others than critics and theologians. He might be appropriately termed the Jules Verne of Philosophy. But his principal readers are