Thus sings Frederick William Faber, who, more than any other, deserves to be called the poet of the highest Christian life, and to whom all must resort who would hear the choicest things about the choicest experiences, and receive the strongest stimulus to the very best religious attainments. A modern Roman Catholic (dying in 1863), he has well preserved the holiest traditions of the many eminent saints that this ancient Church in former centuries has given to the world.

Among poetic selections helpful to a trusting faith we can hardly omit the stanza so frequently repeated by John Wesley, and of which he was perhaps the author:

With patient course thy path of duty run;

God nothing does or suffers to be done

But thou wouldst do the same if thou couldst see
The end of all events as well as he.

Full of meaning also are the anonymous lines:

I welcome all thy sovereign will,

For all that will is love;

And when I know not what thou dost,

I wait the light above.

I will say it over and over,
This and every day,

Whatsoever the Master orders,

Come what may,

"It is the Lord's appointment;"

For only his love can see
What is wisest, best, and right,

What is truly good for me.

Other hymns that throb fervently with entire surrender to the will of God, hymns of sublime confidence in the divine goodness, are Henry F. Lyte's "My spirit on thy care, blest Saviour, I recline," John Ryland's "Lord, I delight in thee, and on thy care depend," Schmolke's "My Jesus, as thou wilt," Bonar's "Thy way, not mine, O Lord," and Madame Guyon's "My Lord, how full of sweet content I pass my years of banishment." Our Hymnal is rich in them, and so is every Christian collection. There is no better exercise than to gather, in a small compass, the sweetest and deepest of these, commit them to memory, and sing them when the clouds are thick and the storms are out. They will rise above the fiercest tempest, and scatter the murkiest fogs that ever hung over the bogs of doubt. They will give rise to glorious Hallelujahs, sounding loud in the ear of God, and mingling harmoniously with cherubic anthems.

THE ARENA.

PRESIDENT RAYMOND ON WESLEY'S EXPERIENCE.

IN his timely article, "Wesley's Religious Experience," in the January-February Review, Dr. Raymond quotes from Overton's Wesley the following alleged utterance of Wesley on the subject of "Assurance:" "When, fifty years ago, my brother Charles and I, in the simplicity of our hearts, taught the people that unless they knew their sins were forgiven they were under the wrath and curse of God, I marvel they did not stone us. The Methodists, I hope, know better now. We preach assurance, as we always did, as a common privilege of the children of God; but we do not enforce it under pain of damnation denounced on all who enjoy it not." In a footnote Dr. Raymond adds, "I have not been able to verify this quotation." The verification may be found in Southey's Life of Wesley, Vol. I, p. 253. The saying is there introduced as follows: "In his old age Wesley said to Mr. Melville Horne these memorable words." The chapter containing this alleged saying is chiefly devoted to what Southey terms the "extravagances of the Methodists," and recounts much of Wesley's ministry in Bristol, in the year 1739. In an earlier chapter, but belonging to the same eventful year, Southey gives the correspondence (somewhat heated) which passed between John and his older brother Samuel-a Churchman of Churchmen-on the subject of "assurance." As Samuel understood it, John was preaching what he denounced as the fanatical and dangerous doctrine of assured final salvation. John replies, "To this hour you have pursued an ignoratio elenchi. Your assurance and mine are as different as light and darkness. I mean an assurance that I am now in a state of salvation; you an assurance that I shall persevere therein." And in a second reply he seeks to make his views still clearer to his brother's mind by saying, "It is an assurance of present salvation only; therefore not necessarily perpetual, neither irreversible."

Coleridge's note on their argumentation is a characteristic mixture of abstruseness and acumen: "Without a previous metaphysical intuition (aspectus immediatus, sive intellectualis presentia ad rem intellegibilam quae vere est) together with an insight into the possible or necessary zoo-physical and psychical accompaniments of such a spirituality (cujus Ens vere ens unum est ac vera ipsius aspectio, whose Being is one with its being known to be) and, likewise, of its possible counterfeits and substitutes-without these, I say, we are not capable of determining what and how many distinct, perhaps differing, senses may be confounded under the word 'assurance.' Now, as far as I remember, no such preliminary process has been attempted, at all events has led to no fixed or intelligible result. But, taking the term in all the lights in which Wesley and his antagonists have placed it, both the probability and the logic

seem on the side of the Calvinists, that is, appear to favor the doctrine of the perseverance of the assured-a conclusion so perilous in its moral consequences that a wise man would need no other inducement to make him doubt and fearfully reexamine all premises, whether they may not be transcendent, that is, that which 'passeth all understanding,' and the deductions from which are binding as far only as they are pious." The American Edition of Southey's Life of Wesley (published in 1847 by Harper & Brothers), was edited by Dr. Daniel Curry. Perhaps we should add his comment on this controversy. It is, like all his thinking, clear and strong: "The doctrine of a personal assurance of present acceptance with God was not considered fanatical or dangerous until that of the impossibility of falling from such a state was superinduced. Then, and not before, it became a licentious doctrine, leading directly to Antinomianism. But Wesley properly discarded the new ingredient brought from Geneva, and continued to assert the old catholic doctrine of the witness of the Spirit." BENJAMIN COPELAND.

Geneseo, N. Y.

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY ORTHODOXY: A STATEMENT IN HISTORY.*

AT the Drew Alumni Banquet of the year 1899, in the absence of Professor Curtis, who was invited to speak for the faculty, I had the pleasure of saying some words to you. But this is the first time I have had the honor, in response to an invitation coming to me in the first place, to speak for the faculty to the alumni. At that time the subject of biblical criticism was being debated in the Preachers' Meeting, and I allowed my remarks to take their color from that discussion, showing the significance of some very notable opinions and concessions that had just then been published by one of the most eminent scholars in early Church history in the world, these opinions having to do with the New Testament, and being of a character to reassure our faith. Since that time theological education in the Methodist Episcopal Church has been the subject of animated discussion. This has been partly due to the case of an eminent biblical scholar in a sister school, against whom charges were preferred by his students before the trustees, which precipitated an agitation which moved the whole Church. This professor was confirmed in his chair for another term of years, but not without some plain speaking on the part of many, and not without diligent inquiry as to his orthodoxy by the bishops of our Church. Immediately after that a professor in another theological school sent in his resignation as the result of a more or less similar discussion of his case-a resignation which was immediately accepted by his trustees. This has been followed by the publication of tracts and pamphlets on the subject of the loyalty of our theological schools to the faith. These publications are the evidence of a widespread uneasiness as to the soundness of our seminaries, and a

An address delivered at the annual banquet of the New York Alumni Association of Drew Theological Seminary, 1903.

professor who is called upon to speak before a body of alumni at this juncture can hardly avoid speaking to that uneasiness. Speaking, then, to that question of which all our minds are full-the orthodoxy of our seminaries-it is well known that that matter was guarded by our fathers as well as they could by compelling our professors to sign a statement every year, or every so often, that they would teach nothing contrary to the Methodist faith. I say as well as they could, for one of the pathetic revelations of Church history (I speak historically only) is the futility of all such pledges to conserve purity of doctrine. You know the Church of England compels all her ministers to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles, but no Church in the world has exhibited a wider divergence of belief, her ministers running the gamut from the almost Roman Catholicism of Frederick George Lee to the almost Unitarianism of the writers of the Essays and Reviews. A notable instance in this country is Andover Theological Seminary, whose professors must every five years pledge consent to a stiff orthodox Calvinistic creed.

Now, when we look at the history of the Methodist movement there are certain facts which reassure us when we are tempted to despair of the sufficiency of creeds to preserve the faith of the Church. For as a matter of fact no Church in the world has had less variations of doctrine than the Methodist, none more fidelity to the faith once delivered to the saints.

The first fact is the intense practical emphasis of Methodism. The Methodist fathers had only one passion-to save men from sin and death and hell. Their doctrines grew out of or were founded on a real inner experience of the saving touch of Jesus in their own souls. They knew by their own experience these three things: (1) The reality of sin; (2) The saving power of Christ-that meant the divinity of Christ; (3) The present witness of the Spirit to their sonship-that meant the personality of the Holy Spirit, conversion, sanctification. Here you have the essence of the Gospel guarded by the very fact that Methodism was itself that essence, or the expression of it.

The second fact is Wesley's method in regard to his preachers. His early conferences were discussions on doctrinal questions, but these were largely practical questions, as to justification, sanctification, good works. Wesley did not formally enforce his own opinions; he simply set forth his views and trusted to the exigency of the work which the preachers had to do to keep them in conformity to them. He knew that any essential variation from any of the great truths on which the revival was founded would inevitably of itself throw the person who held that variation out of the connection. In other words, the preachers were welded or melted into oneness of opinion by the intense heat of the revival.

The third fact is Wesley's method in regard to the Church he founded when his hand was no longer on it. First, England. He made his sermons and notes on the New Testament standards of doctrine, not the great creeds of the past, but the very products of the revival itself. What did that mean? It meant that the emphasis was still upon the funda mental, the practical, the essential things of a living, conquering, revival

Church-the facts of faith, of Christian experience. Second, America. When this Church was organized the Protestant Episcopal Church was not organized, and Wesley wanted to construct the Church so that, while it would still remain Methodist, it would be sufficiently Episcopal to attract the former adherents of the Church of England and would itself become the Church of England of the colonies. For that purpose he sent over a liturgy and a revised Thirty-nine Articles, but did not formally make his own Sermons a standard. Now, in that revised creed-the Twenty-four Articles-what was Wesley's method? This was his method (and it has well been emphasized by Professor Loofs in his great article on "Methodism," just published in Leipzig in the third edition of the German Protestant Encyclopædia, the twelfth volume of which recently reached this country, closing with the article on "Methodism"): ΤΟ emphasize the important, the essential, the central truths, and to leave out the unimportant, the sectarian, the divisive. Study the articles Wesley omitted, and they are special opinions, or extreme opinions, or opinions associated with some great sect; they are not the main central unifying principles of Christianity.

The fourth and last fact I mention is the history of Drew Theological Seminary. This seminary has been characterized by three things: (1) Earnest spiritual life—in that it has been like Methodism, it has reflected Methodism in its best and finest characteristic. (2) Fidelity to the essential doctrines of Christianity as understood by the Church catholic and by Methodism. What are those doctrines? Ask the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Twenty-four Articles, the fundamental ideas of the Sermons. (3) Freedom of reconstruction within these limits. Theology is a living science; it is not a dead thing laid away on a shelf. If it is living it is progressive, and if it is progressive it is capable of improvement. "I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now." That is Christ's charter for a living theology. Drew has not been a dead machine repeating old formulas, but has been a living center for growth into larger and more vitalizing apprehensions of truths which are at the core of our Methodist faith. Do you wish illustrations? Compare Watson's Institutes with Bishop Foster's Studies in Theologystudies which were started in Drew. There is no revolution, there is no contradiction, but there is a growth, a larger view, a deeper view, and a change of emphasis, an actual change in a few teachings. Methodism inherited a vast deal from the old Calvinistic theology of the seventeenth century. She could not immediately adjust her message to all of this. There was the doctrine of the guilt of depravity, held universally in Wesley's time, and still held in many sections of Methodism. Drew, through Dr. Miley, has killed it. There was the doctrine of a vicarious sacrificial penal atonement. Miley substituted a governmental theory. When Drew was founded the verbal inspiration of Scripture was taught very largely, and the text-book for Methodist preachers in the course of study on that subject set forth that view. Dr. Strong riddled that theory and drove it out of the Church. When Drew was founded most Methodists believed in a universal deluge. Strong taught a local deluge. They