no resistance to the eternal sweep of this great Law, which finds its sublimest field for exercise in the human soul.

Human unfoldment is pressing on towards the supreme ideal of racial love and harmony. The heavenly condition becomes increasingly distinct and complete as the great evolutionary highway is traversed. That love which now flows in a few narrow personal channels will broaden to take in all humanity, and its concentric circles will bring God and all His children together in loving unity.

XI.

FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW.

"In the attrition of theological thought, the harvests of centuries are ground up, and in the winds of discussion a good deal of chaff is blown away. But the elements of the bread of life still remain, and the world was never more hungry for it than to-day."

WHITHER are we drifting? There is an irresistible movement in the realm of religious thought which any careful estimate will show to be of remarkable magnitude. Many are anxiously watching the drift, and some are apprehensive as to the security of what they feel to be foundation principles. Are there substantial verities? and, if so, how shall we distinguish their solid outlines from those temporary forms which are liable to dissolve while we gaze upon them?

There is a growing conviction that the organized church, by slow degrees, is losing its hold upon the community, and that its influence, as a force to mould society, is waning.

The utterances of the pulpit are becoming less authoritative in their tone, and less weighty in their impressiveness upon human thought and conduct. The Bible is receiving such exhaustive criticism and analysis as formerly would have been deemed sacrilegious. The tribute paid to creeds, dogmas, and ceremonial religion, is lessening; and the reverence which environed scholastic theology in human consciousness is slowly fading. Faith in the importance and efficacy of external symbols, ordinances, and rituals, is perceptibly weakening, and ecclesiastical assumptions are being re-examined.

That there is such a general tendency will hardly be questioned, either by those who regard it as salutary, or by others who believe it to be fraught with disaster. Is the world drifting into materialism, and are the spiritual and divine elements in human character losing their power? or is it only a fusing and recasting of old forms to meet the burning conditions. and necessities of the present age? Watchman! what of the night? Do the unrest and confusion presage the dawn of a brighter day?

To determine the significance of the transition, the divergence must be noted between the formulated thought of the past and the actual thought of to-day, which, as a rule, is yet unexpressed in formal statements. The distance already traversed from the decaying but still authoritative ancient creeds varies materially, even among the subdivisions of that great composite body known as the Protestant Church. The influence of the drift in permeating the Roman system is less pronounced, because its unified organization and traditional conservatism render it more impervious to progressive influences. As the tendency of advanced thought is most noticeable in what are known as the Evangelical branches of the Protestant Church, the transition, as seen among them, will mainly be considered.

The letter of formulated theological standards, with few trifling exceptions, has not been modified so as to correspond with actual present belief. The great creeds of Christendom include the Nicene of the fourth century, the Apostles' and the Athanasian which were formulated a little later, and that which is known

as the Westminster Confession of the seventeenth Century. Some less important doctrinal statements have obtained limited acceptance, but the basis for them is generally found in one or all of these great systems. Here and there some minor organizations have rounded the angles; but, generally speaking, nineteenthcentury theological thought has no authoritative form except such as was cast by councils which gathered from two to sixteen centuries ago. The great conservative Presbyterian Church of the United States has felt enough of the "ground swell" to cause it to begin the task of revising its Westminster Confession, which, until recently, was regarded as too sacred to be questioned. Its revision committee, however, has been instructed against any change which would in any degree impair the "Calvinistic system. Time will determine whether or not the tidal wave can be stayed at that point.

While knowledge in every other department is expanding so constantly that new text-books replace old ones in rapid succession, is it possible that during centuries the loftiest of subjects has received no new illumination? Truth