hereby the absolute merit from which all human merits must in the first instance flow; and his person and life have in humanity and for it-as its absolute sacrament-the absolute, universal worth. The atonement for sin through him is therefore essentially conditioned upon this absolute merit of his; and if we by means of the atonement for sin receive forgiveness for our sins through him, this is accomplished by means of the reckoning of his merit to us; that is, God looks upon our sin as taken away, not because the real possibility and absolute guaranty of their future removal lies in ourselves, but in the Redeemer (by virtue of our relation to him) and in that which he has wrought for us by his means for this moral end.

The atonement for our sin made by the Redeemer naturally continues, like himself even in the condition of his exaltation, a real power to accomplish in us the forgiveness of sins and furnish us his grace afresh as often as we need it. It also assures those who are already related to the Redeemer, in respect to the faults which still overtake them, of the renewed forgiveness of their sins. This is suitably expressed by the idea of the representative or mediatorial office of the Redeemer.

ARTICLE VII.-IS DEATH AN ACCIDENT? A METAPHYSICAL INQUIRY.

[NOTE.-In the discussion of the question of a possible post mortem probation, the phrase "the accident of death" has been used to anticipate the purely exegetical discussion in this way. It is said, “it is irrational to suppose that an event so accidental as death should be the boundary of the soul's probation." This statement, if accepted, vitiates the argument from the Scriptures that the probation of the soul is limited to this life.]

THERE is a well known picture of Albrecht Durer's that represents a Knight completely armed and well mounted, riding through a thick forest. At his side on a sorry horse rides Death. As is so often the case with Durer's master-pieces, the meaning of the picture is an enigmna. Many stout contentions have been held over it, but the true intent of the artist remains unknown. Who is the Knight? What perils are before him in the forest? Is his elaborate armor adequate to protect him? If so, why does Death ride at his heel? Is the relation between the two only accidental and external, or is there some more intimate connection, some half-suggested reality, which gives to the bony finger of that grewsome skeleton a power of fateful touch the moment it shall be extended?

The discussion may be long continued before the whole truth is known. But, in face of the problems which the serious thinking of the day is pondering, the picture may have a significance which, in its depth of meaning, again reveals what has so often been discovered, that to the master minds of every age is given a spiritual insight which unites them to the brotherhood of seers, and makes them teachers for all time.

The philosophical as well as the religious question of the day is, "Is death an accident? It may be found that in this picture of Durer's we have at the hand of one who has left abundant testimony that he thought profoundly on many themes, an intimation of the correct answer.

The phrase "The accident of death" is a happy one. It meets the requirements of that wise saying of Montaigne's, ac

cording to which he had observed that when serious evils are called by light names they are more easily borne. If death is indeed an accident, then it can be met with something of the fortitude with which strong men meet the other serious pains and haps of life. It comes to us, but is not of us. It can pinion the arms and palsy the tongue, but it cannot bind the free spirit or conquer the resolute will. It is but an incident in the ebb and flow of circumstance. Assured of this, we can

as calmly go with the dying Socrates as we could with the storm-tossed Ulysses, who, with all his miseries, was not to die.

Nor is the term "Accident" limited to what comes by chance. Extend it in the widest sense, until it embraces anything that may befall, that does not stand in some direct and intimate relation with our very self, still we may ride on bravely. Only when that grim skeleton is in some way an emanation from myself, or rides behind, the witness of a destiny which I myself am fixing, is he a terror.

If the one view is correct, we may hang the ancient picture before us at our feasts; it declares that stout hearts have little to fear. If the other is the truer, we might better take it to the place of prayer.

The ultimate truth of the matter it may be given only to God to know. It is, perhaps, primarily a question of revelation, and the final word will remain one of exegesis. And yet it may be possible to help the exegesis, or at least prepare the way for it by pointing out the bearing which some of the fundamental facts of man's nature, and more particularly of his will, have upon the problem.

Whatever else the stout Knight in the picture may represent, he is a man; he has a character. He has made himself what he is. His coat of mail declares that he is impervious to injury from without. If Death successfully assails him, it must be through the avenues he opens himself. If such avenues exist they must be in the substance or the nature of his Will. It is the purpose of this paper to show that they are there.

An examination of the nature of the Will yields this as the first noticeable fact: the Will is transcendent in its origin: i. e., it cannot be accounted for by any known forces of nature, and

there is that in it which removes all ground for hope that it ever can be so accounted for.

Dr. DuBois Reymond, in his Leibnitz Festival address, "Ueber die Sieben Welträthsel," takes this position, that the Will is as absolutely transcendent as are the existence of matter or force, the origin of motion, and the origin of sensation. All these lie so completely beyond the range of cause and effect that they are entirely and permanently out of the field of strictly scientific investigation. From the standpoint of the physical scientist, the Will must be regarded as extra-temporal. It exists at the beginning in possession of all that constitutes it Will, and can be conceived only as so existing; just as force does. At all stages of its existence it is the same in its essential qualities; and those essential qualities have no recognizable relations to any other existence in the world about us.

The same conclusion is reached in another line by the metaphysician. The late Professor T. H. Green, of Balliol College, one of the most brilliant of the younger English scholars, makes this fact fundamental in his system of mental philosophy. Self is something other than a series of perceptions or sensations. It lies back of both; it is that through which both are possible. Self consciousness is, therefore, not an event or a chain of events. "We are only 'selves'in virtue of the presence in the succession of our feelings of something which is not in itself successive or in time. While all experience is in time, that which experiences all experience is not in time. Time is one of the modes of self-experience." "Back of all in us lies a divine self-consciousness, the source and bond of the ever growing synthesis called knowledge."

Dr. Mulford, in his Republic of God, starts from the same position as fundamental. "Personality in man," which is but another name for self-consciousness, "exists among the limitations of the finite, but it has not its ground in these limitations. It is not prescribed and determined by physical conditions. It is not the consequent of its circumjacent condition,— and this among finite forms, would make it only a contingency. It is not the result of certain potencies in a physical sequence; this would leave it in their operation merely a residuum.

has not its end in a determination, or a dissolution into the elements of the physical process."

Ulrici (Gott und die Natur) holds the same position. Selfconsciousness lies back of all knowledge.

Turning again to Green, the thought advances in this way. The possibility of morality "depends on the existence of this self or personality which is not an event, which does not happen, but which acts and is present to all that happens." "The freedom of man, that is, the fact of his being an underived self, is not merely a postulate of developed morality, but is already implied in the most rudimentary act of intelligence." "A motive presupposes a self which can regard its own satisfaction with pleasure." "The fact that we do so present objects to ourselves (as motives) is the ultimate fact upon which morality depends; without it there would be no sense in say ing we act,' but only something happens.' Freedom, then, is one constituent element of personality, it is personality in one of its aspects. Eternity is another element of it, or in another aspect, personality is eternal being. That for which events pass and things change cannot itself pass or change, any more than that which is the source of a conditioned series can be itself conditioned."*

Thus it will be seen that according to the latest word both of physical science and of pure metaphysics, the will is by nature and origin transcendent, or extra-temporal. Time may be an arena in which the will moves and acts, but in no sense is time an element of its being. In pronouncing final judgment, therefore, upon an individual character, i. e., upon a Will-a Self-the question whether it lived for a longer or a shorter time in any given outward conditions is wholly non-essential. But in the second place, the Will is also spontaneous in action. Whatever may be held concerning the greater and the less apparent good, and the action of the will with reference to it, the freedom of the will is not apparent, but real. In the last analysis, be the motive what it may, I decide, and it is I who decides what I decide. This is a primal fact of consciousness;

Professor Green's Prolegomena of Ethics is not yet printed. This account of his positions is taken from the report of a writer in the Contemporary Review for May, 1882, who had access to his manuscripts.