is more than ever apparent that there must be a speedy remodeling of the theological curricula, in such a manner as to enable the student to prepare himself to do that which he will be expected to do, and intelligently to take advantage of the strategic opportunity of his work-the moral and religious fashioning of the child and the adolescent.

The minister is the key to the situation and the Sundayschool stands as the open door. When our ministers are trained to be teachers of teachers, we shall have entered the way to realizing the ideal of Dr. John M. Gregory, who said that "the Sunday-school ought to be the best and most successful of all schools, because it is openly, freely and fearlessly religious. The whole moral and religious nature of the child is open to its work. Its education ought, therefore, to dominate, inspire and consecrate all other education. Through the Sunday-school Christianity is free to pour its faith into all other schools. So soon as it becomes strong enough and skillful enough in its teachings, it will color and control all learning with its own higher ideals and hopes. The true interests of mankind, as well as the progress and final success of Christianity itself, demand that this shall be done."

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

VI.

THE MISSION TO SAMARIA AND MODERN

MISSIONS COMPARED.

BY THE REV. HENRY K. MILLER.

Stephen, one of the seven deacons ordained by the Apostles to care for the poor widows of the new Christian community, by his zeal in preaching Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, succeeded in arousing a storm of hatred that not only cost him his own life, but also scattered the members of the Jerusalem church throughout Judea and Samaria. Among these refugees was another deacon, Philip the Evangelist, whose interest in the faith was of such an active kind that it could not be limited to a mere performance of his official duties. Reaching the chief city of Samaria, then called Sebaste in honor of the Emperor Augustus, he proclaimed the Christ, reinforcing his words by mighty deeds of exorcism and healing. The result was that great numbers believed his message and were baptized. Indeed Philip's mission was so successful that the Apostles Peter and John were sent from Jerusalem to assist him. These latter, through prayer and the laying on of hands, conferred upon the newly baptized converts the gift of the Holy Spirit, that is to say, the converts received power to perform certain wonderful deeds which in those rude times were almost universally accepted, not only as unmistakable proofs of the Spirit's presence and power, but as evidence of a person's Christian status. Among those who came under the influence of Philip's evangelistic campaign and were baptized was a magician by the name of Simon, who had been accorded almost divine honors by the superstitious populace.

He was greatly impressed by the miracles that he saw Philip perform. Simon the magician thought he saw an opportunity to improve his business by learning what to him was a new art practiced by the Apostles. He therefore attempted to buy the power of conferring the Holy Spirit upon whomsoever he should lay his hands. Peter administered a sharp rebuke to him, in a manner excommunicating him and urging him to repent.

Political exigencies and national misfortunes almost inevitably made the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel a prey to pagan influences. No sooner had the first king, Jeroboam, succeeded in firmly establishing his throne, than he adopted the policy of undermining the people's religious attachment to Jerusalem, the capital of the rival kingdom. He, therefore, set up two calves of gold, one in Bethel and one in Dan, saying: "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Later King Ahab's marriage to the Tyrian princess Jezebel became the occasion for introducing into Israel Phoenician idolatry. In B. C. 722 the Assyrian king Sargon captured Samaria and overthrew the Northern Kingdom, transporting many of the people and replacing them with colonists from Assyria. Alexander the Great, nearly four hundred years afterwards, also settled Macedonians in Samaria. to replace the inhabitants that he had killed. Still later Roman influence made itself powerfully felt. Thus the population of the district of Samaria became mongrel and their religion also became a mixture of pagan and Jewish elements. The Jewish religion, among its many excellent points, was a foe to sorcery, but this bulwark against superstition having been weakened, the many black arts that inevitably accompany paganism seemed to have gained complete control over the Samaritans. We read that all gave heed to Simon Magus, from the least to the greatest, saying: "This man is that power of God which is called great."

Such was the soil into which Deacon Philip sowed the seed

of the Word. Looking forward to the coming of the Messiah who was to usher in the kingdom of heaven, or, as we should say, the golden age, still remained with the populace as an inheritance from their Jewish ancestry. Philip met this expectation by announcing the Nazarene Jesus as that very Messiah for whose appearance they had been waiting, and the people received the announcement favorably. Not only so, but, steeped as the people were in superstition, their very slavery to sorcery is an eloquent testimony to their belief in superhuman, spiritual powers. When, therefore, Philip reinforced his more or less welcome doctrine by the performance of miracles-exorcising demons and curing the sick-he became irresistible. Nothing that their "great power of God"-Simon Magus-had done could equal the new teacher's deeds. Here was power, indeed, in the presence of which all, including the great sorcerer himself, were filled with awe. It was like Moses confounding the Egyptian magicians at Pharaoh's court by performing greater wonders than they. It is not strange, then, that there was a pretty general acceptance of the Gospel, and that the work proved too great for Philip's strength, so that the Jerusalem church sent Peter and John to assist him.

With the advent of the two Apostles, the revival in Samaria entered upon a new stage. Though the converts had received Christian baptism, they yet had not been officially invested with the peculiar powers and privileges that in those early days attached to membership in the Christian community. By prayer and the laying on of hands the Apostles conferred upon the new members the Holy Spirit—that is, those special gifts of the Spirit of which a list (not necessarily complete) is given by St. Paul in I. Cor. xii., viz., the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healings, workings of miracles, prophecy, discernings of spirits, divers kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues.

At this point let us pause to consider the bearing of such miraculous gifts upon missionary work. The ancients in their crude way saw evidences of supernatural power or powers

everywhere. No doubt, owing to their ignorance of physical science, they mistook many natural phenomena for divine acts. To them the marvellous was the miraculous, as the etymology of the word "miracle" indicates. Nowadays the sphere of the natural in men's thoughts is being constantly expanded, and that of the supernatural correspondingly contracted, so that we are perhaps not in a position fully to appreciate the attitude of heart and mind to which the Apostles and early Christian preachers addressed their message. It is safe to say that the spiritual development of the times was such that no new religious teaching, no matter how inherently reasonable, could ordinarily secure a hearing unless authenticated by the external evidence of miracles. When a great teacher simply systematized what was generally accepted as true, when he merely acted as mouthpiece for the body of an ethically organized society, as was probably the case with Confucius, there was no particular need of supernatural attestation in the form of miracles. But when a sage appeared who was in advance of his age, whose doctrine transcended the moral consciousness of his generation and was intended to guide the community upward and onward to a higher stage of moral and spiritual development, miraculous authentication was absolutely necessary. Otherwise the new system could not have been gotten into working order. We see the same thing even to-day in the case of the numerous impostors whose profit is found in trading upon the credulity of their fellow-men. The followers of Dowie represent a type of humanity, one that was generic in our Lord's day and before, but that now, in an age when a new type of mind-the scientific-is becoming universal, merely survives as a species. In ancient times most great leaders into new paths, true as well as false, on account of their psychological environment, were obliged to resort to the performance of marvellous deeds in order to obtain a hearing. Thus Jesus Christ and His early disciples were perforce compelled to demonstrate by miraculous power the divine character of their message. The age could not have believed the