places, and are disputing amongst themselves how much more should voluntarily be surrendered to the ever-advancing pressure of an insistent criticism.

The present
Position.

How do we stand to day? Having broken with the traditional teaching, we are driven to dispense with the old formulæ. The battles fought during the middle of the past century are as much out of date as the Wars of the Roses. New fields of contest have been forced upon us; new weapons have to be employed. The armouries which furnished us for the old contests are now little better than theological museums. Men and women no longer go through life tormented by the dread that they have committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Like the early Hellenist disciples, they have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. Are we, however, called upon to make a rag fair of our theological clothing and conventions? Attenuation of belief is not the same thing as reformation. A science multiplies as it proceeds from its root to its branches. Theology is bound to follow in the same course. Retreat will not deliver it from having to reconsider its first principles. It is a case in which "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence" and the violent must take it by force. Christianity has fallen dumb before the mysteries of life. It is not enough to mutter the old comfortable formulæ, that God is too wise to err, too good to be unkind. We must know more than this.

We cannot expect the Churches to be re-filled if our worship be addressed to a Deity about Whose

personality we have doubt; or to One Who governs the world by fixed laws and general benevolence. The intelligent teacher is affected by the tacit demands of the intelligent hearer. The scientific training of to-day compels a man to justify his professional knowledge. No wonder that he endeavours to apply the same method to Religion. The meditations of a fairly-cultured preacher about the hopeful possibilities of the life beyond will not claim the interested attention of his audience. In all directions churches are marking time, waiting for a re-statement of the Faith in an atmosphere of modernity, but finding that every such attempt so far has diminished the volume of the teaching, and weakened its practical utility.

The position of the Christian teacher to-day is not an easy one. He finds that Science, insolent with good feeding, disdains to give him help. He has received his theology much in the way that we all accept the fundamental truths of a science. He presumes a general acquaintance with those arguments which have hitherto served to buttress his creed. He assumes that the generations of experts who have built up the Christian theology are sufficient for its support. If there are ominous signs of settlement in the building, he will leave the work of shoring up to the scholar. But an age which has produced so many theological experts has failed to secure unanimity amongst them, and the conscientious teacher is therefore compelled to become a critic and a judge sorely against his own wish. The prevailing atmosphere of Scepticism is around him. Whatever judgment he propounds can only

be upon a balance of probability, and therefore must prove but a temporary resting-place for his own faith, and for his public teaching. He cannot be expected to go to the stake on behalf of such provisional truth. Martyrdom would appear ridiculous if after consummation it might be shown that the persecutor was really nearer the truth than the one who had suffered.

Christianity in simplest terms.

In simplest terms, let us consider

the teaching of Christianity as contrasted with those philosophical systems which confront it as competitors and alternatives. If neither Christianity nor the other competing philosophies offer a satisfactory solution of the phenomena of human existence, it is possible that a closer comparison of all may contribute some better interpretation.

Christianity adopted the Hebrew authorities as to the beginnings of things, and assumed an almighty Creator and moral Ruler of the universe, immanent in His creation by way of operation, and transcending it as a self-conscious Power. This Faith explained that the world was originally created for goodness, but that Sin entered and perverted the purpose of the Creator. In order to save man from the consequences of Sin, the Son of God, the eternal Word, the second person of the triune Godhead, appeared upon earth as Jesus of Nazareth. After three years of public ministry Jesus was crucified by the Roman Governor of Judæa, rose from the dead on the third day, appeared to His disciples on many occasions, and was visibly received into the skies. He ever lives at the right hand of

His Father, making intercession for men, comforting them with His presence, and restoring them to God. He committed His gospel to a society called the Church, which He promised to teach, and therein to dwell. He appointed certain ceremonies as sacraments, symbols, or channels of grace. He promised to return, either in vision or in bodily form, and has prepared a place in heaven for all those faithful to him.

The Universe

according to

modern Science.

On the other hand, we are assured by modern Science that the world was not originally made in a better condition than at present, but that it has been the scene of constant development, through long ages, both before and since the arrival of man. One type of life has been evolved from another by laws whose operations can still be found in the world to-day. Instead of an ideal condition from which man, through his own folly, has fallen, the human being has been rising from lower types of existence to higher. Particularly during the time of his developing consciousness has he availed himself of natural law to improve and extend his own knowledge and powers. These laws, the survival of the fittest, adaptation to environment, sexual preference, are, in the opinion of one school, sufficient to account for the introduction of an intelligent and governing race into a world of sentient life. This school argues that nothing has happened on this planet differing, except in detail, from what has occurred in other parts of the universe, and that the birth of a world and the cry of a new-born babe belong to one and

the same organised and inter-related system of life. To these interpreters the universe is no longer the mystery that it was to our forefathers of even a century ago. The immense distance, the millions of years, are after all measurable and comprehensible. The groups of stars and nebular systems follow ordained courses across the heavens. They have been identified, called by their names, and the area in which they move, however stupendous, is consequently limited. Beyond, there is an unfathomable darkness in which no stars are revealed.

The genesis of each system has been demonstrated. Its first condition is that of a gaseous cloud. In that cloud lie sleeping all form, colour and life, as we understand them. It is composed of minute atoms perpetually in motion. There is a mutual attraction between the atoms which tends to draw them into a nucleus. This original energy, or kinetic motion, in turn creates thermal motion, or heat, a source of light and further movement. From this revolving centre are thrown off, in the process of cooling and contracting, globular masses, which in their turn shrink to a less fluid condition, and become attendant planets of the parent body. This divisive force sometimes continues until the planet in its turn sets free smaller masses which accompany it in its orbit, a little court of moons or firefly satellites. The whole system with its central sun is moving on its own account through space. At a certain point in the cooling of the globe individualised life appears, and, taking the earth as an example, may be developed to a remarkable