tice also an editorial plea in the Andover Review, both for more social science in the pulpit and for more and better sociological instruction in theological seminaries. Says the Review:

"We believe, with Dr. Abbott, that social questions belong in the pulpit by every right which can entitle subjects of human concern to a place there. They are not to be relegated, like political questions of a past generation, to fast-days and special occasions, but are to be preached upon without leave or apology, in precisely the same surroundings, and with the same accessories of worship, as may attend the utterance of any class of truths on the Sabbath, and in the house of God. Only let the preacher be prepared to preach with as much discrimination, wisdom, and force upon them as upon other subjects. Let his preaching be such that his hearers will go out from his influence instructed, counseled, encouraged and warned in regard to their social duties. We especially emphasize the need, on the part of the pulpit, of directive and constructive thought in its treatment of social subjects. It is so easy to be denunciatory, or indiscriminate, or vague. The pulpit has it in its power, as Dr. Abbott affirms, beyond the press, to be really helpful to men in the discharge of social obligations. But, to be helpful, the preacher must be a thinker, trained in the application of Scriptural truth to the existing conditions of society. President Buckham, at a recent alumni dinner in one of our theological schools, urged as the next chair calling for a foundation in our seminaries, that of social science. He was right. The seminaries are doing what they can by related courses of instruction, and by supplementary lectures from without, to meet the present demand for the study of sociology in its Christian aspects. But the subject is large, and ought to be assigned a distinct place in the curriculum of our theological schools. We welcome Dr. Abbott's plea for the introduction, in full degree, of social questions into the pulpit. And what the pulpit ought to preach, the schools ought to teach."

All this is timely. If the thinking of leading minds is beginning to set in this direction now, far more will it do so in ten or twenty years from now. The world is waking up to the importance of a religion for this world and for today. But to fit our ministers to preach such a religion they must be intelligent regarding the great questions and interests that are central in men's thoughts and lives to-day. And what so fit a place to be the fountain head of such intelligence for them as the theological

schools? We would by no means disparage any of the subjects taught at Andover, and enumerated above, but we insist that while those subjects might with some reason have been thought to cover the whole ground of preparation necessary for the ministry a hundred or even fifty years ago, they do not cover the whole ground of such preparation now. Think of devoting three chairs and a part of a fourth to the Bible-its languages, exegesis and theology, and yet having no chair of social science, and indeed none of ethics.

the endowment of another professorship A call is beginning to be made for in our theological school at Meadville. Why should it not be a professorship of social science? or, of social science (including also philanthropies and reforms) combined with something else? While of course we must not neglect the great and important lines of religious instruction that the school has been carrying on from its foundation, we of all Christian bodies are most bound to keep abreast with the best thought and the most effective practical work of the age. But how can we do this unless we provide ample facilities for instruction upon subjects vital to the social, and therefore the moral and religious interests of all our communities such subjects as the rights, duties, moral responsibilities and relations to each other of capital and labor; the ethics of strikes and lock-outs; co-operation; the land question; the wage question; tenement house reform; pauperism, its causes and prevention; charity reform; sanitary charities; intemperance, its causes and prevention; crime, its causes and prevention; prison reform; juvenile reformatories and their work; childsaving work in its full range; kindergartens; creches; industrial education, in its economic, social and moral bear ings; moral education as related to the public schools; the "woman question," or the question of equality of rights and privileges between men and women; the Indian question, that is, the obligation resting upon the American people to civilize the Indian and make him into a useful self-supporting citizen, and how

it is to be done; the Mormon question; divorce; social purity; gaming; the ethics of politics; the ethics of business; immigration; humanitarian science, or organized work for the prevention of cruelty, etc., etc.

come.

These are pre-eminently living subjects, and will be for a long time to They are of vital concern to individuals, communities, the state, the church. The next century will be amazed that any theological school, even the most unprogressive, as late as the year 1889 should have failed to maintain a chair of instruction devoted to these pressing, these immensely important themes.

Especially should Unitarianism be alive here. Our pulpits and theological schools may well lead off as strongly in the direction of a wiser practical religion as they have done in that of a more scientific exegesis of the Bible or of a more rational and ethical theology.

THE BIBLE NOT ONE BOOK, BUT MANY.

There is a unity in the Bible, but it is not of the kind that a shallow piety has imagined. These books (some sixty-six in number in our Protestant version) contain much of the spiritual and material history of the Hebrew race for more than thirty centuries. They are the history, literature and jurisprudence of a nation. The only connection between the books, beyond the fact of their being gathered into a single volume, is found in that spirit of national genius which pervades them all. If you take the poems of Spencer, the dramas of Shakespeare, the romances of Scott, the histories of Macauley and Gibbon, and the songs of Shelley or Burns, you would have a volume exactly analogous, as to form, to the Hebrew Scriptures. A clear knowledge of this most important fact is necessary to the proper understanding of the Bible. It is the wildest and most hurtful folly for people to talk about every part of the Bible as having an equal claim upon our belief and practice, or to assert that some parts are not of greater moral and spiritual weight and authority than others. It is

morally hurtful to accept such statements as true. Some of the books are evidently and obviously the utterances of a wandering, uncivilized, uncultivated people. Others spring from the best culture and highest enlightenment of the Hebrew race. We must, in imagination, break up the Bible into its several parts - assign each part to the age and the national condition from which it took its rise, before we can lay the foundation for an intelligent study of the Scriptures:

Being separate and widely different books, the statements of one have no essential connection with the others. Each book of the Bible must stand upon its own merits. This is a truth of the most tremendous importance. Once recognize it, and we are under no obligation, in defense of a theory, to reconcile contradictions and inconsistencies in fact and spirit, which exist between the different books. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes was a skeptic, a materialist, a voluptuary, a distruster of God. His mournful utterances chill the soul and benumb its energies. But his sad gloom can take no value from the crowding multitude of passages which glow with childlike trust of God and Man, which are all on fire with the eloquence of the loftiest inspiration.

The God of David and Joshua is not the "Father" of Jesus and John and Paul. The spirit of some of the Psalms is far from being the spirit of the Beatitudes, and any attempt to spiritually and morally reconcile these things, in accordance with a preconceived theory of Biblical unity, must end in the saddest moral confusion. They bear no spiritual relationship. When Samuel slew the false priests of Baal and hewed Agag in pieces, when Joshua tramp. led the heathen to death in the promised land, and David turned in rage upon his enemies, his mouth full of cursing, it was poor, hunted, baited, sorely tried human nature, acting in accordance with the light it possessed in its day and generation. But the whole body of such records can and ought not to have the slightest weight in our conduct of life, or our religious faith.

Take all the follies, cruelties, mistakes, tyrannies, cursings which are woven into the woof and web of some of the older books of the Bible, and say, as many orthodox theories do say, that they are all of equal weight and moral authority, all religiously binding upon our consciences, that they stand in the same spiritual attitude towards us as the most priceless revelations of God to the race, say this and you utter a terrible blasphemy against the heavenly Father. A bold, bad theory has with held the true Bible from the eyes and hearts of men, and thrust its own fancyings and imaginings in its place.

The Bible, through wise and genuine reverence, can be restored in all its matchless beauty to the keeping of the human mind. If we would go to it as we would approach any other noble work of God and humanity, we shall be richly repaid. It is full of splendid examples of heroism and devotion. It is glittering, as the midnight heavens glit. ter with stars, with words of immortal wisdom. It is a portrait gallery of some of the world's noblest men and women. Deathless hymns, that raise the soul into the higher atmosphere of the spirit, gleam from its pages. It is the blessed consolation of the suffering, the crossbearing. It is the hope of the dying. No age has ever exhausted the mine of its riches. No nation ever held these riches as a treasure without being made happier and holier in the conduct of national life. All the attempts of infidelity, ancient and modern, cannot lessen the true glory of the book. Nay, infidelity has had a wholesome and salutary influence upon the study of the Bible. Just as some ignorant old monks of the middle ages would whitewash an exquisite fresco which an earlier, finer age had left on their chapel walls, and which a wiser future would clear and restore, so infidelity has helped, unconsciously, to restore the Bible, which a crude, ignorant, and superstitious reverence had whitewashed with its disfiguring theories. The men of this modern day who have studied the Scriptures with unbiased, honest and sober minds, still declare that they stand pre-eminent

But now the Central Council in New York announces that the order is orthodox, sending out the following creed:

"In answer to the repeated question that comes to us, 'Do you belong in any way to the other Tens,' 'Lend a Hand Clubs,' 'Look-up Legions,' etc.? we desire to clearly state that we have no connection with any other orders whatsoever.

"The Daughters of the King recognize that they are indebted to these friends for admirable suggestions, which they have thankfully adopted. Ours is distinctly a spiritual organization, based on strictly evangelical principles. Our foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord, in whose atonement alone we rely for our salvation, and by whose power and in whose name and to whose glory all our

work is done.

Let

"Our order has assumed unexpectedly large proportions, and we feel that God has chosen his daughters as instruments of great blessing to multitudes. us not limit the Holy One of Israel.' God has promised to pour out his spirit on his hand-maidens in these latter days. Let us be emptied vessels that he may fill us, and use us to the pulling down of Satan's strongholds and the bringing in of the kingdom of our Lord, 'whose we are and whom we serve.' Let us see to it that our basis be distinctly understood, that we may have the confidence and co-operation of all with whom we are in a common faith in the ever blessed trinity,-God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

Under such unexpected developments of course the question arises among the circles of King's Daughters which have been formed in Liberal Christian churches: What is to be done? Having been induced to join an order under the representation that it was broad and unsectarian, "welcoming all Christians," shall they quietly consent to the running up of a creed-banner which changes radically the nature of the organization, putting them in a false position, if not excluding them and all who cannot subscribe to trinitarian orthodoxy, no matter how much they may love the Master, or desire "to help the world in Faith, Hope and Love"?

Three possible courses of procedure seem to be open to Liberal Christian circles of King's Daughters.

(1). One is to retain their connection with the order and with the Central Council, and go on as heretofore, saying nothing. Communications received from the General Secretary seem to indicate that they will be allowed to do this. The objection to this is, of course, that they thus put themselves in a false light. They are not trinitarian or orthodox, therefore they cannot honestly belong to an orthodox trinitarian organization like the King's Daughters, any more than they could to an orthodox trinitarian church. If individual circles of King's Daughters anywhere wanted to adopt a trinitarian creed, that would be a different matter; that would not affect the character of the general organization, and liberal Christians could still remain connected with it, without dishonesty. But when the General Council declares the general organization itself to be orthodox and trinitarian, then the situation is changed, then for Unitarians and Universalists to remain connected with it, is for them to consent to appear before the world as what they

(2). A second course open is, for each Liberal Christian circle to send its individual protest to the Central Council, and withdraw, thus leaving the order to change its character as the Council seems to desire, while the liberal circles surrender the name and seek a broader fellowship under some other designation.

(3). A third course is (and it is strongly advocated by some active workers) to say to the Central Council in New York: We joined in good faith, on your own representation that the order was to be broad and liberal and to include "all Christians." And now having done so we cannot consent to be virtually driven out, neither can we accept any ex post facto orthodox creed. Moreover, we believe we have a right to the name "King's Daughters" so long as we remain true to the principles on which the order was established. We propose therefore to retain the name, and continue to work for the objects which the order set forth at the beginning. And if the Central Council in New York (which by the way we suppose to be self-elected) persists in keeping its creed, we see no other course than to elect a Central Council of our own, if not in New York then in Boston or elsewhere, to represent not only Unitarians, Universalists, and others who take the distinctive Liberal Christian name, but also such orthodox circles as desire to continue to work in the broad and unsectarian lines which the order laid down at first.

Now, when old sectarianisms are tending to fade away, when the better minds in all churches are feeling out after a wider fellowship and co-operation, it seems a poor time for an order which began in noble non-sectarian breadth to narrow itself down to a creed that shuts out some of the best Christian workers that this age has produced. It is a time when we expect the narrow to grow broader, but not the broad to grow narrower.