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him in his thoughts, heart, volition. If there be such a personal Power thus related to man, we should expect that he would reveal himself somewhere distinctly to man in his works, rather than that he should obliterate (even to the seeker) all traces of himself. And are not the primal rise of life-vegetable, animal, on a globe emerging by evolution (by immanent force) out of molten lava, and the sudden unheralded (by closely allied transition forms), mentally, linguistically, morally, religiously, rise of a new God-recognizing, God-enjoying life, man, God's image, one method this Creator, Father, may, fitly with his character and man's nature-imperatively cause-demandinghave chosen to speak to his intelligent, reflective creature, of something outside of mere immanent force in matter and creature life controlled in its aimless workings by the "struggle of life and natural selection," able (that outside force) to create perturbations, new beginnings along the terrestrial life-scale, inexplicable by anything seen in that scale; a Power outside, higher than the originator of all creature life, God, our Father, "who hath life in himself," from whom we have proceeded, and to whom (keeping our right orbit) we tend? Where more fitly than in the two beginnings of life could the Source of Life have revealed himself?

VIII. Scientists and Theologians.

Scientists assert that specialists are best able to judge in matters of their own department. This is true; true of the science of God, theology, as of the science of his works. And yet, how ready some. men are to dogmatize in theological science, whose only fitness for it is, that they have studied men's bones, flint implements, the tailfeathers of pigeons, or animal's courtships! Carpenter gives such persons a merited rebuke: "When [natural] science, passing beyond its own limits, assumes to take the place of theology [science of God], and sets up its own conception of the order of nature as a sufficient account of its cause, it is invading a province of thought to which it has no claim, and not unreasonably provokes the hostility of those who ought to be its friends." All are ready to accept from the physicist well-established facts; but the accepting of his philosophy, theology, hypotheses and fancies must remain optional.

Physicists complain of the "cant" of theologians. Scientists are not guiltless here; e. g., Tyndall calls the Mosaic cosmogony a "grand old story"; the Bible statement of man's creation a "grand old legend." Says Huxley: "In the nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrews is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the

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orthodox," and speaks of "breaking in pieces of the idols built of books" as one of the improvements of modern religion. So Herbert Spencer: "Ask any tolerably informed man whether he accepts the cosmogony of the Indians, the Greeks, or the Hebrews, and he will regard the question as next to an insult." Says Büchner: "As regards Christianity, or the Paulinism which is falsely called Christianity, it stands by its dogmatic portion or contents in such striking and irreconcilable, nay, absolutely absurd contradiction with all the acquisitions and principles of modern science, that its future tragical fate can only be a question of time." And Georges Pouchet, after saying there is nothing new anatomically in the human body, says, ex cathedra, "In order, therefore, to justify the admission of the existence of a new and essentially peculiar faculty in man, e. g., religiousness, at least a peculiar anatomical tissue for it would have to be specified."

Now all this, to the specialist in the science of God, is the merest cant-stirring his pity as deeply towards the specialist in the science of nature, as ever pity of the physicist was moved towards the theologian twaddling in physics. Mr. Darwin is to be honored for abstaining from the cant of natural science.

IX. Not yet prepared to speak Dogmatically.

Any hypothesis as to the method of the evolution of the life of our globe, must, in our present state of knowledge, be regarded simply tentative and provisional, and probably must ever remain so, undemonstrated by science-as evolution itself-as proof or disproof of creationism.

Says Huxley: We cannot at present profitably discuss the "commencement of life and the nature of the successive populations of our globe, which so many seem to think are already decided." He thinks it may be well for the palaeontologist to "learn a little more carefully that scientific ars artium-the art of saying, 'I don't know.' Agassiz, in a letter during his recent (1872) scientific tour, decides, at present, "discussion of the origin of organized beings" is premature. Speaking of the Islands of Galapagos, he says:

They belong to our time, geologically speaking. Whence, then, do their inhabitants come, animals as well as plants? If descended from some other type, belonging to some neighboring island, then it does not require such unspeakably long periods for the transmutation of species as the modern advocates of transmutation claim; and the mystery of change, with such marked and characteristic differences between existing species, is increased, and brought to a level with that of creation.

If they are autochthones, from what germs did they start into existence? I think that careful observers, in view of these facts, will have to acknowledge that our science is not yet ripe for a fair discussion of the origin of organized beings.

While these "facts" accord better with my hypothesis than with Darwinism, yet modesty of utterance in our present state of knowledge ever becomes us. Let us not ex cathedra dogmatize till we know. Let us work and wait. Naturalist and theologian alike may rest assured, when guesses and prejudice and ignorance from nature and theology are finally dissipated, the genuine Florimell shall in her beauty stand forth, shaming gainsayers, acknowledged by all, wearing once more (as she alone ought) her "belt"; while the pseudo Florimell, by the "witch" imagination, built of frail "snow"hypothesis-will "vanish into naught." (Faerie Queene):

Then did he set her by that snowy one,
Like the true saint beside the image set,
Of both their beauties to make paragon
And trial, whether should the honor get.
Straightway, so soon as both together met,
Th' enchanted damsel vanished into naught:
Her snowy substance melted as with heat,
Nor of that goodly hue remainéd aught

But the empty girdle which about her waist was wrought.

Where facts are wanting, why not all learn the ars artium of modestly saying, "I don't know"? Then could the specialist in nature join with the specialist in the attributes and works and words in grace of the Author of Nature, in laying the harmonious, mutually illustrating, unified fruits of their labors, culled by each in his own special department of research, upon the one altar, tribute of praise to the One Worker-the "Mind universal in nature"-who is the Power underlying every law (making it what it is), the Originator of terrestrial life and its method of evolution, the Sustainer and End of universal being-GOD.

ROCHESTER, N. Y.

E. NISBET.

THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.

THE

HE apostolic church was planted amid powerful and opposing influences. Its two greatest enemies were infidelity, under the name of philosophy, which flourished in the celebrated schools of the Greeks, and in all the learned and refined circles; and heresy, under the name of tradition, which held the Jewish mind in stern opposition to the divine origin and claims of Christianity. And during the lapse of eighteen centuries, this opposition has not diminished, though Greece has long since fallen from its greatness and glory, and the Jews are a dispersed and powerless people. Other nations have arisen, fruitful in foes to the church, who mainly have arrayed themselves against her, under these two banners.

Formidable as infidelity is against religion, with all its forces of subtle and refined philosophy, it is evident that its hostility is far less dangerous and fatal than heresy which corrupts it.

For tradition comes to the church as a friend, in the livery of the Christian religion; raises the standard of Jesus Christ; exults in the cross; and, unlike bold infidelity, battling openly outside, comes into the church with all its traditional dogmatisms in its train; multiplies its deceptions; palms off its impostures; sits down on it like an incubus of evil, smothering all that is divine and spiritual, and hatching out its various broods of false doctrines and ordinances,

gathering them all, when assailed, under the murky, musty wings of antiquity! We propose to consider

1. What is an apostolic church? It is well known that some sects claim to be the church. The Church of England and of Rome both claim this supremacy. In regard to such a claim, it is the right and privilege of every one to examine the foundation of such an assumption in the light of the Scriptures and of history.

It is generally granted by all candid Biblical scholars, that the word ezziŋcía, translated church, is properly used only in two senses in the New Testament, viz., the church universal, composed of all believers in every age, in heaven and on earth-"the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven;" and also a visible church or company of Christians, associated for public and social worship, walking together in the doctrines and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we read, in the New Testament, of the churches in Asia, or of the church in Antioch or Ephesus; or, when Paul addresses letters to the church in Corinth, Phillippi or Rome, we understand the word "church," in this last sense. Each church was an independent body. The church in Jerusalem had no ecclesiastical authority over the church in Corinth, or Antioch, or Ephesus.

The authority we now see exercised, by ecclesiastical bodies, in Europe and in our own country, with popes, cardinals and bishops at their head, in whom supreme power is vested, did not then exist. The early history of apostolic churches contain no precedent of the kind; and it is only by an unwarrantable wresting of the Scriptures it is attempted. This unscriptural assumption of power, as history plainly shows, has been used for very different purposes than that for which Christ set up his kingdom on earth. The sad records of such a perversion are found, all along her history, in stains of criminal intrigue, relentless persecution and rivers of blood.

But though all this is true and proven, there still are those who claim the right to form an alliance between church and state, and call it, in the face of all Scriptural dissent and truthful protest, the church. Queen Victoria is the head of the Church of England, and Pius IX, of the Romish Church, with the extra claim of infallibility and supreme temporal power over all the nations of the earth.

But, if we look into the records of the apostolic churches, we learn that an apostolic church, whether it existed in Jerusalem, Antioch or Rome, was simply a company of baptized believers in Christ, united in love and Christian fellowship, walking together in the doctrines and ordinances of the gospel. The officers of these

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