forms, relate simply to the settings of the truth, not to the truth itself. They do not affect the eternal, the essential, the experimental. Prime Minister Balfour said last year at the inaugural centennial meeting of the Bible Society at the Mansion House, London, "The researches of critics have made the Bible far more a living record of the revelation of God to mankind than it ever was or ever could be to those who, from the nature of the case, had no adequate conception of the circumstances under which the revelation occurred, or the peoples to whom it was revealed. And I most truly think that not only is the Bible now what it has always been to the unlearned, a source of consolation, of hope, of instruction, but it is to those who are more learned augmented in interest and not diminished, a more valuable source of spiritual life now than it could ever have been in the precritical days." With this most modern scholars agree.

The Bible is indeed the book above every book, in whose pages God is met as he is met nowhere else. It has a vitality which nothing can touch. Twenty years ago the circulation of the Scriptures in Germany amounted to ten copies per thousand of the population. Last year it amounted to eighteen copies per thousand. While learned men have discussed and doubted and even denied, the German people have doubled their purchases of the precious volume. It is the book of all saints, in whose revelations men have found, and are still finding, the best discipline for Christian character. It is the book of converts, making them in most marvelous ways out of raw heathen, and then still further training them into righteousness and true holiness. It is the book of the progressive nations, of those which have the largest colonizing and civilizing energies, of those which are certain more and more to dominate the earth. It is the reconciler of differences, the healer of breaches, the promoter of union among Christians above any other instrumentality, breaking down the middle walls of partition and bringing about spiritual intercommunion of the churches. It is the only universal book, the book of unvarying victories, the book of most magnificent achievements. Through centuries it has withstood countless storms, it has survived countless foes, and remains the only book wherein God speaks the eternal message which satisfies the needs and aspirations of the human soul.

Captains and conquerors leave a little dust,
And kings a dubious legend of their reign;
The swords of Cæsar, they are less than dust;
The Bible doth remain.

THE ARENA.

MAN GREATER THAN NATURE.

How insignificant is man! It is only as we think of human insignificance and frailty that we get a startling conception of man's superiority and power.

There is a disposition in some minds to belittle man, and reduce him to such absurd insignificance in the universe as to nullify the importance of human conduct and destiny, and to escape the notice of the Creator. Think of man, therefore, in his physical structure. The body comprises but thirteen of the seventy-two simple substances. A French chemist tells us the average man is composed of a few pounds of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, a few ounces of phosphorus, calcium, chlorine, and salt, a few pinches of silica, sulphur, potassium, magnesia, and iron. How closely akin is man to the clods in the field! Stop and reflect. What do a few pounds of earthy substances amount to in comparison with the mighty volume of the earth, or the huge frame of the shining sun? What is one human being among all the multiplied billions of beings on the numberless planets of space? In a universe of fathomless spaces, of immeasurable forces, of worlds without number, what is man? What are human achievements? What is man's destiny? A "mere mote of dust in the sunbeam of time." A mere ripple in the ocean of immensity. A dream-and a forgetting.

How insignificant is man! Weak and puny is his arm compared with the elastic strength of the greater brutes, or with the power of the tempest, or the might of the earthquake. How frail is man! His body, composed of a few simple substances, endures perhaps for threescore years and ten, and then crumbles into dust, but the giant fir and the lordly redwood tower aloft for a thousand years; and the snow-capped peak stands a mute sentinel while continents endure; and the stars shine on while men and mountains pass away. The mind of man, how frail! So subject to hope and fear, to truth and error, and so limited in its powers that it knows but little of the infinite kingdom of knowledge. The skeptic thus muses upon man, and reduces him to a vanishing infinitesimal, and laughs moral responsibility out of existence, as such an exceedingly small matter. Some take a flippant view of human existence, but while man in a sense is insignificant, we should take a more reverent view even of his insignificance. When we consider the size of the human body, the brevity of its earthly life, the limitations of its powers, in comparison with sizes, and durations, and forces in the universe around us, well may we be overwhelmed with the thought of human littleness-but in the very insignificance of man do we find hidden his most startling superiority. Stop and reflect. The revolving earth is a mere pygmy in comparison with man, as the earth belongs to the kingdom of matter, but man belongs in the kingdom of mind. Mere earth, whether at rest or in motion, is inert; it must continue in its

state of rest or motion until acted upon by some external force. But consider man. He has life, consciousness, and volition. He is able to originate motion. Man is, in this, far superior to the material world. The giant forces of nature, gravity, steam, electricity, are but dwarfs when compared with man. These natural forces operate from the laws of necessity, but man is free to act or not to act. Nature's forces, then, are subject to necessity, while man has freedom. Moreover, these gods of the materialist fall before man, for in his superiority he makes them his servants to do his bidding. Man, "the mote of dust in the sunbeam of time," is mightier than the earth upon which he treads, or the sun which shines upon him, or the skies which bend over his head. These belong to the realm of the inert, lifeless, unconscious, unthinking, and are ruled by necessity, while man dwells in the nobler kingdom of mind and is endowed with life, volition, intelligence, moral consciousness, and has freedom. Even the earthworm is mightier than the planet in which it grovels, for it possesses the physical qualities of inert matter, but it possesses something more. It possesses life and volition and knowledge. Although the materialistic thinker laughs man into nothingness, from the intellectual standpoint man holds dominion over the earth, its treasures and forces.

How insignificant is man-yet how superior! Man's superiority over the kingdom of nature appears in three great facts: In physical structure he stands at the head of earthly creatures. He is provided with feet, enabling him to move from place to place, but with hands free to perform the many tasks and inventions of daily life. In his mental powers man is far superior to all his contemporaries. He is able to do for himself many things nature has left undone. Nature teaches the brute by instinct, but man lives and triumphs by the powers of reason. He adapts himself to the various conditions of climate, the diversity of natural productions, and makes his home in every land from the regions of perpetual summer to the shores of the frozen ocean. He conquers the forest and plain and ocean, and wrings from them the comforts and luxuries of life. Talk about the insignificance of man! The supremacy of man's mind and the skill of his hand are seen in the march of science and the riches of art. But the crowning superiority of man over the material universe lies in his moral consciousness, and likeness unto his Creator. We conceive of the Creator on high, beholding the circling worlds, which are obedient to the behests of law. We think of him peering into the kingdom of living things, and observing their thrift and their enjoyment. We imagine him contemplating man. It is not too much to think the Supreme Mind rejoices in the mathematical movements of the starry universe and in the prosperity of the lower kingdoms of life. It is fair to presume God rejoices as he contemplates man, a being able to think God's thoughts, to apprehend the glory of virtue, and to commune with the Creator and reciprocate his love. The creature that responds to the attraction of virtue and of love is vastly superior to the creature that can respond only to the attraction of gravitation. Right here we plainly see the towering superiority of man over the material world and the hosts of the stellar spaces. Roseburg, Ore. GEORGE H. BENNETT.

THE REVIVAL IN CHURCH AND COLLEGE.

A GOOD pastor and able preacher writes: "The work done in revivals of religion is not to be compared in quality with the work done by churches in their ordinary methods. Hand-picked fruit keeps the best." Abstractly, the statement concerning the careful picking of fruit, for good keeping, is true, but the analogy is not so good when applied to saving men. Experience has not always confirmed the theory that men brought into the church through the ordinary routine work are better than those who have been brought in through a genuine spiritual awakening. It is the glory of Methodism that the old-time revival of religion, attended ordinarily with deep feeling, rooted the people, where it occurred, out of old soil into new. Excitement there was, to be sure, but what of that? There must needs be excitement where children are born-travail, labor, great excitement indeed, and agony, ending in much joy. These strenuous things seem inseparable from life; and is it not better so? Can anything be worse than chronic barrenness; or the going on of a church from year to year in a condition of dead propriety, with all the fountains of feeling smothered and drying up? It may come to pass some day, possibly, that piety itself shall be carried to a level so high, so systematized, purified, and understood, as to become less fitful, less disposed to moods, but that time has certainly not yet arrived. As things now are, there is no time and no condition under which wicked men, living habitually in low sensual moods, feel or see so keenly, and truly, as when under the stimulus of a genuine revival of religion. Such men are so dense they have to be slugged into a spiritual fact, before they can see it, and if they ever get to the brink of a decision, they have to be shoved over, or else they draw back. This is the only way left. Many eminent saints have thus entered the Christian way.

Nor is this all: It is believed that the experience of every Christian teacher in our earlier Methodist colleges, like old Augusta College, Kentucky, the first Methodist Episcopal college in the United States, where John P. Durbin, Martin Ruter, Bascom, and other able men gave instruction, turning out such men as Peter Akers (afterward president of McKendree College), Randolph S. Foster, John W. Locke (likewise one of the presidents of McKendree), John Miley, Colonel Hatch, and others of but little less note, and the Ohio Wesleyan, which is Augusta College transferred across the Ohio River into free soil, retaining all the virtues of the old plant and adding many excellencies thereto. In these schools the annual revival was, and is still, considered practically to be a part of the regular curriculum, in order that the ideals set forth may be reduced to practical life.

In fact, it seems to be well understood by the men in charge of our Church schools, both East and West, that the college student passes through a certain transitional state, of a speculative tendency, liable to unsettle him in matters of Christian faith, the antidote for which is the Spirit of God working coordinately with human reason in the study of the sciences and philosophy. Nothing short of this anchors the young man during college life. Aaron Burr, the young grandson of Jonathan Edwards, just

at this stage of student life was spiritually and morally wrecked by the counsel of an infidel physician of the town, to whom young Burr went while under conviction in a college awakening. At such times the revival, deep and pungent, opens the mind and heart of the young man as the plow opens the field ready for things to be planted. This the commonplace methods of church work do not always accomplish. Portland, Ore.

C. E. CLINE.

"AN EDUCATED MINISTRY" AGAIN.

ONE who has pondered considerably the very thought presented in the Methodist Review of January-February, in the "Arena" department, by Rev. Frank Seeds, on the subject, “An Educated Ministry," and the socalled "correction" of Rev. J. A. Boatman in the March-April Review, cannot help but think that often a "correction" is merely stating another phase of the subject and, in this case, is considering the letter but missing the spirit. It may seem assumption to say this, but looking carefully at the former article we read such expressions as "mental training," "taste cultivated," "mind until awakened cannot grow," "unfold brain power," "brain culture," etc. These expressions surely show a broad conception of the meaning of education. But directly considering the expression in apparent dispute, namely, "Education means a drawing out of the powers and forces of the mind," nowhere therein does the author declare that this is the primary meaning or sense of the word "education," neither does he say that this is all there is to it. In fact, his article makes it clear that he does not exclude the thought of training, much less does he deny that it is derived from the Latin educo, educare, educavi, educatum, as set forth in the criticism. And granting that the primary meaning was "to teach," "to instruct," "to train up," "to foster," etc., it does not follow that this Latin word is not etymologically one with e-duco, educere, eductum, which means to lead forth, to draw out. As Dr. C. B. Hulbert, ex-president of Middlebury College, declares, "This makes the distinctive idea in education to be eduction. It implies the existence in man of latent germs, properties, capacities-call them by what term you please-which in a process of disciplinary training need to be developed." When the author of the second article adds, "to impart information," he misses the better meaning somewhat, for it is not the imparting, but the informing process, that makes the desired change in the mind. Education in its better sense is not what is done on the outside and for us, but what is done on the inside and by us. And, as Dr. Hulbert again says, "the distinctive idea of an education is not to increase what a man knows, but to augment what a man is." A teacher who imparts rather than draws out-imparts facts instead of developing inlaid powers-is a dismal failure. Neither is the one who retains the most the best educated, necessarily. "Feeding and nurturing" is not so much educating as the growing of the inlaid, Godgiven powers of mind. Parents make a mistake who try to induce a child to enter a profession which is antagonized by the inlaid bent of mind. According to the Century Dictionary, to educate meant to bring up a