learned a new truth from a minister always entertains a special regard for him and is peculiarly accessible to him. There are many young people looking and listening for the newest and best facts, eager to enlarge the area of their knowledge, and ready to follow anyone who proves himself a capable leader. The minister will greatly strengthen his influence with such persons if he occasionally drops a new fact into their hungry minds, thus acquiring a leadership that he can use for his highest aims. To save from sin is not the only mission of the pulpit, but to build up character in righteousness and knowledge and by such building aid the primary work of salvation. It is within the proper scope of the ministerial function, and according to the example of the great divine Teacher, to use the works of God to illustrate and expound his word. Any act of God in creation or in providence may engage the minister's attention and find a place in his message. It is his business to teach the people the mind of God, and this he finds revealed in two volumes-in his word and in his works.

The study of science will help to keep the minister out of ruts. The processes of thinking, like the rolling wheels of a vehicle on soft earth, cut a track for themselves, that grows even deeper as they are repeated along the same line, that holds them to it and renders it difficult to get into a new and independent course. Many ministers have a few well-worn paths of thought and set phrases of expression, and whatever the text or the occasion they are quite sure to fall into these to the weariness of their hearers. It is the result of sluggishness, and the want of real energy in pushing out into new fields of truth for something with which to instruct and build up the people. It becomes very monotonous and uninteresting to the preacher, as well as to his congregation, to find that he is in a deep rut that holds him to the same round of topics and phrases. What he needs is something to free him from the old bondage and set him upon a new course, or give him wing to fly instead of plod. Nothing can be more helpful to this end than the study of science. It will hopelessly explode the old narrowness, wrench and twist the mind out of its old grooves, whirl it about in the sweep of great forces, and, like the young eagle flung out of its nest, compel it to fly in the trackless heavens, free, and able

to make its way wherever it will. Intellectual narrowness is to be broken up by broader fields of study that widen the horizon of the soul. Every preacher knows how jaded the mind becomes in an unvarying round of theological studies; commentaries, lexicons, and books of divinity become very dry, and his soul hungers for something fresh and invigorating-and so do the audiences. The study of science will also help the preacher in preventing or breaking up an offensive professionalism. He should speak as a man to men; when he assumes a professional manner or cast of thought he loses power. When manliness, freshness, vigor, and spontaneity are crushed out by a superincumbent ecclesiasticism or theological system, "which neither we nor our fathers could bear," ministerial usefulness is greatly impaired. A man who has been crammed, theologized, dehumanized, made artificial, and thrown out of touch with the world, must get back to naturalness before he can accomplish anything worthy of his calling. It is not walking bodies of divinity or systems of theology that the world needs, but renewed, natural, radiant, forceful men, full of the Holy Ghost and of power. This abnormal professionalism will scarcely be possible to a man who walks among the flowers, listens to the singing of birds, comes into sympathy with insects and creeping things, studies life in its multiform manifestations, digs among the rocks, floats in the air, rides upon the sunbeam from star to star, and in roaming through the vast fields of nature keeps himself natural, reverent, and devout. The study of science will enable him to make the hemisphere of theology a complete globe of truth, and that which was partial and unsatisfying by itself will become complete and satisfying. The world wants the Gospel, but it wants it with the accessories and adjuncts that naturally belong to it. No one has a right to take it out of its beautiful setting in the system of nature and present it in the hard, cold, bald way in which it is sometimes given to men. The world needs the Gospel; not some new thing, but the same old bread and butter on which the saints have lived the ages through. But it must be confessed that much depends on how the bread and butter are made and served. Dry, sour bread and rancid butter have been known to have great power in thinning out a congregation.

The old soul hunger in men is as sharp and quick as ever to respond to that which really satisfies. The Gospel is old, as sunlight is old, as roses are old, as love is old-old but ever new. This is the minister's task, the field for his sanctified genius: to make the Gospel new; to put life into it; to adapt it to the new conditions that arise, and to coordinate it with all knowledge and with all phases of the world's ever-changing life.

But there are those to whom this study of science seems attended with many dangers. That there are dangers I freely grant, but that they are such as to justify the neglect of such studies I deny. There is no good that has not its perils. Our first parents could not walk through Eden without encountering danger, and there has never been a garden since that has not had its dangers, nor an earthly paradise that has not had its lying serpent and tempting devil. There is the alleged danger of a tendency to skepticism; but the proper study of science must ever tend to the strengthening of faith. Many of the most devout men see danger in the temptation that will come to ministers to make a show of their learning in the pulpit. It must be granted that Greek roots and Hebrew stems have often been flourished about before gaping congregations in a manner out of all proportion to their real value; but this is not a valid objection to the work done by the great Greek and Hebrew scholars who have interpreted the Scriptures to Others fear it will lead to the substitution of science for the Gospel. This can never be in a well-balanced mind that is permeated by the spirit of Christ. The truths of the Gospel are so much greater and more vital than those of science that a really capable mind will be in little danger at this point. The greater danger for the pulpit is that of becoming dull, prosy, dry, or heavy; these are the vices that are eating out its substance and destroying its power. The path of safety and highest efficiency certainly lies in a wise use of all sources of knowledge, so blending them as to give truth its due proportions and proper colorings.

us.

S. M. Vernon

ART. VIII.-EPISCOPAL SUPERVISION FOR MISSIONS. WHAT is the best form of episcopal supervision for the work of the Church in foreign fields? There has been a great deal of legislation to meet the requirements of this question, and a number of plans are being tried, but they all seem to be of a tentative nature. Nothing is settled. That the state of things is not satisfactory is evinced by the fact that the plans are frequently changed, and by a lack of unanimity among those most concerned as to the efficiency of the methods now in operation. At least four plans are now being employed. A brief outline of these may help some to understand the situation.

The first plan for episcopal supervision of the foreign work of our Church is that of sending out periodically, at least twice in a quadrennium, a general superintendent, to visit and inspect the work, hold the Conferences, and perform any other necessary episcopal functions in some particular mission field, who, upon his return, makes a report of his work and gives his impressions, gathered while in the field, to the Missionary Society and to the Church at large. The second plan is that known as missionary episcopacy an authorized form of ecclesiastical supervision exercised by bishops set apart for certain mission fields within which alone they have jurisdiction. The third and most recent plan is that of assigning a general superintendent to a certain foreign field, or fields, within which has been fixed an episcopal residence where he is supposed to reside during the quadrennium and supervise the work of his field. The fourth plan is a combination of the first and second, requiring "that once in every quadrennium every Mission over which a missionary bishop has jurisdiction shall be administered conjointly by the general superintendents and the missionary bishop," they being coordinate while in the field, but in case of disagreement the general superintendents having the supremacy. All four of these plans are now in operation in the various mission fields of the Methodist Episcopal Church: the first in South America and Mexico, the second in Southern Asia and Africa, the third in China and

Europe, and the fourth, in connection with the second, in Southern Asia. These miscellaneous and disjointed forms of episcopal supervision in the great mission fields of the Church indicate a weakness in administration and are out of harmony with an otherwise compact and uniform ecclesiastical government. Moreover, no one of the various plans enumerated above is adequate to meet the needs and requirements of the Church either at home or abroad. It may be a guide to more harmonious legislation if some of the virtues and a few of the more glaring defects of each of these heterogeneous plans for ecclesiastical administration be pointed out, and what might prove to be a better method, combining the virtues of each and excluding most of the defects, briefly outlined.

Concerning the first method, that of sending out from time to time general superintendents to inspect and administer the work in specified foreign fields, it may be said that this plan may keep the Mission in closer touch with the home Church and the source of supplies, and may provide the Missionary Society and the General Committee with an official means of communication and administration in foreign parts and tend to conserve harmony and uniformity in ecclesiastical government throughout the connection. Yet such visits must of necessity be intermittent, and the visitor, at best, only a visitor; precluding, in the short time he can give to the field, much familiarity with the peculiar methods essential to success or thorough acquaintance with the needs of the work or with the strange people among whom he briefly sojourns-their language, their customs, their habits, their religion—and enabling him only to do the routine work of the Conferences and attend to the more urgent matters which present themselves at the time. Moreover, in the interim between his visit and the visit of his successor grave emergencies sometimes arise, requiring immediate attention, with no one on the field having authority to meet them. Add to this the fact that but rarely the bishop visits and administers the same work twice-thus giving a changeable and sometimes conflicting administration-and it may be seen how unsatisfactory this plan is, especially to the missionaries on the field.