come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. ii. 3, 4). The opinion of Augustine and of Calvin is that God wishes that among all men there should be those who are saved. Arminius affirms the universal and impartial love of God for all men, but admits that some are able to win a sad victory over His good and holy will. Can we believe that the will of God will be defeated-that He will be only partially successful in carrying out His gracious designs-that His purposes of love will not merely be temporarily foiled, but in the end actually modified and restricted? Calvin could not admit this. To him the idea of a powerless will was dishonouring to God. Those elected by His love were sure of salvation. It was impossible to believe that any who had been purchased by the blood of Christ would become the prey of death and hell. This is indeed a side of Calvinism which is true and full of powerful consolation.

But along with the doctrine of predestination to holiness and life is that of predestination to sin and death, which has cast so deep a slur upon the name of Calvin. This double predestination leads to the frightful dualism of eternal life and of punishment not less eternal. To it we oppose the theology of Etinger and Bengel, which teaches that over and above the special predestination of "the first-born there is a general predestination of all men to everlasting life. The purpose of God is one of love. This love of the Father, who stretches out His arms towards His wandering children, is represented by Jesus in the parable of the shepherd seeking until he finds his lost sheep, and in the kindred parable of the lost piece of silver.

The Gospel distinguishes between first and last among men. The one, the "first-born," have honoured God by responding to His summons and believing His Word, and become fellow-workers with Christ in saving their brethren. This is one of the great privileges of their spiritual primogeniture. The others, despising the counsel of God and the appeals of His love, have been cut off because of their unbelief. But they are not to remain in unbelief; they are to be grafted in again, "for God is able to graft them in again. . . . . God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all."

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Two RIVAL CONCEPTIONS OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. By C. BYSE (Revue Chrétienne).-A Reply to M. Steinheil.-The foregoing article on the future destiny of the wicked is assailable from many sides. I wish, while cherishing the highest respect for the character of the author of it, to criticize the point of view from which he examines the great problem.

Scientific exegesis cannot conclude from the phrases, "until he find it " and " until she find it," in the parables of the lost sheep and of the lost piece of silver, that all sinners will ultimately be saved. It is not permissible thus to deal with a similitude. The words certainly teach the persevering goodness of God, but a comparison is not an argument. The sheep and the piece of silver only give an imperfect representation of the soul of man in rebellion against God. The innocent and gentle animal when once retaken by the shepherd, does not think of resisting him and of rushing off again. The piece of silver is still more passive; it is lost, not through its own fault, but through the carelessness of its owner, and once it is shut up again in the purse, it cannot get out. It is otherwise with fallen man. When he is found again by his rightful Lord, he can either refuse to follow Him or resolve to yield to Him. The two parables depict the history of sinners who yield to the power of Divine grace, but they have nothing to say of those who persist in their rebellion against it. The same holds good of the prodigal son. His eyes are opened by suffering, and he resolves to return home; but, then, suffering does not always produce this result. We may see the folly of sin and yet persevere in it. The prodigal might have

yielded to a false pride and remained in his degradation and perished in it. In that case the love of his father would have profited him nothing.

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The merciful designs of God are said to embrace "all men "; but we must bear in mind that in Scripture, as in ordinary language, the word all" is often used in a vague and general sense, and does not exclude exceptions, and that in each case the precise meaning it bears must be determined by the context of the passage. It is impossible, therefore, to go on the principle that the word is always to be interpreted literally. As used in Rom. iii. 32, it is evidently from the context to be understood solely of the Jewish people and not of mankind.

The idea of a general predestination of all men to everlasting life by a Divine decree which nothing can impede is, no doubt, very consoling, but what Scripture proof of it can be alleged? In the very few texts where the doctrine of predestination is referred to, the subjects of it are those who, in this life, have accepted the Gospel. These are the elect-successors of those heroes of faith whom God has chosen in all periods of the history of revelation to receive a higher knowledge of His purposes and of His requirements. The elect are at first certain individuals—Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses-then the nation delivered from Egyptian bondage, especially the priests and prophets belonging to it, and at last Jesus and all those who receive Him as the Christ and are devoted to His teaching and to His person. The elect are always a small class in comparison with the mass of men-unbelievers, pagans, and the indifferent-who walk in the broad way and remain strangers to the Divine life.

This election of a faithful minority does not, as Augustine and Calvin have dared to affirm, imply a definite rejection of the immense majority of men. By the choice of some, God labours to awaken and convert a larger number. And so the Christians chosen (elected) after the apostasy of the Jews are commanded to preach the Gospel to every creature, and to extend the frontiers of the kingdom of God. And so election implies in every case a corresponding responsibility—a providential mission. It is a temporary privilege granted to some in the interests of all; a natural means to which the Divine wisdom has had recourse to attain the redemption of a great multitude of sinners.

None who receive the Scriptures can reject or pass lightly over the many declarations, from Genesis to Revelation, that death is the penalty of sin. They plainly assert that an obstinate violation of the revealed law must be punished, not only by physical death, which is common to all, but by the destruction of the personality of the finally impenitent: just as the life promised as a reward to the righteous is not limited to a long and prosperous career on earth, but consists essentially in a second existence, enriched with eternal happiness in a heavenly world. That the utter destruction, and not the endless punishment, of the wicked is taught in the New Testament, and especially in the synoptic Gospels, is asserted by many critics of high authority, who have no intention or desire of supporting the doctrine of conditionalism. According to D. H. Meyer, Sabatier, and Renan, this utter destruction of the impenitent is taught by Jesus.

Universalism is not a Biblical doctrine: it is a theory that rests upon a false interpretation of texts, and dates from a period more than two hundred years after the latest writing in the New Testament. It can never be established while the menaces recorded in Scripture are accepted as a positive revelation from God.

M. Steinheil fears that the idea of annihilation, so far from exciting a salutary fear, may fill some with a false security. I know that there are those who say that they hail with joy this prospect of final and complete deliverance; but I am not sure of their sincerity in saying so. Even if their sincerity is above suspicion, the

pessimism which inspires it is to blame, and not our doctrine. Pessimism is just another name for unbelief. Let a man believe with us in the survival of the human spirit, in the infinite mercy of God, in the possibility of being admitted into a world of supreme and eternal realities, and he will not be such a fool as to desire annihilation, that is to say the loss of a future existence of happiness far beyond all that we can at present conceive.

In short, annihilation as we find it in the Bible, is not a "final deliverance"; on the contrary, it is the just wrath of the Almighty bearing down upon incorrigible rebels. It is a chastisement preceded by the most fearful torments of soul and body between the time of the first and second death, and accompanied and followed by the ignominy which will for ever attach to the memory of the reprobate. Certainly this lamentable end-this eradication of personal existence-can be desired by none. It is a very different thing from that peaceful absorption into

the infinite-that delicious nirvana which has such a deceitful charm for Buddhists of the East and West.

Is universalism likely to check evil and to reform society? Who can believe it is? It scarcely lays any stress upon punishment for sin, and promises a pardon which it will never be too late for any one to seek and obtain: it offers a heaven into which any one will be gladly and honourably received whenever he chooses to enter it. Conditionalism, by the emphasis which it lays upon the severe chastisement which impenitence must draw down upon itself, has incomparably more moral weight, and it, no less than universalism, appeals to the higher motives of hope and love.

THREE LIVES OF JESUS (STRAUSS, RENAN, AND KEIM). By A. PORRET (Revue de Théologie). Concluding article.-After several preliminary volumes bearing upon the history of the Founder of Christianity, Theodore Keim published his great work, entitled The History of Jesus of Nazara in His Relations with the Life of His People (1869-72).

He denies absolutely the authenticity and historical value of the fourth Gospel. He places little reliance on Luke, especially as regards matter peculiar to that Gospel, such as the narrative of the journey to Jerusalem (ix. 51—xviii. 14). Matthew is the most ancient and trustworthy source. According to it the ministry of Jesus was confined to the year 34 or 35. His only visit to Jerusalem was that terminated by His crucifixion.

His work was to purify the hopes of Israel by making the kingdom of God to consist in righteousness, and by insisting upon an inward moral change as a condition of its advent. He communicated to men the highest knowledge of God: He revealed the heavenly Father and the true nature of worship. Religiously speaking, He was without error or stain, but only after conflicts from which He always emerged victorious.

Keim does not reject the miraculous element in the history of Jesus. One thing, he admits, is certain, and that is that eye-witnesses believed in His possession of special power, and several acts, reputed as miraculous, are indissolubly connected with sayings and discourses that are undoubtedly authentic. He considers that we must make some allowance for Oriental imagination in considering the narratives in which those acts are described. Yet it is certain that Jesus wrought cures. These, he thinks, are to be accounted for to a large extent by His moral influence. Who can measure the power of a perfectly healthy mind over a mind that is diseased, and even, by reflex action, over bodily disease? With regard to other miracles wrought in the sphere of nature, such as the multiplication of the loaves and the stilling of the tempest, Keim's utterances are capricious. He denies the former and admits the

latter, because the one contradicts, and the other harmonizes with, a preconceived idea of what must have been the prevailing characteristics of the life of Jesus.

The resurrection of Jesus is regarded by him as a case of hallucination affecting both mind and eyesight-the result of love protesting against death, and calling up the object of affection in places where everything reminded the disciples of their Master. But this hypothesis raises most serious difficulties. The latent enthusiasm which it takes for granted as existing in the disciples only two days after the terrible blow of the death of Jesus, with its depressing effects, is psychologically impossible. How, too, on this theory, can we understand the fact of the visions so soon coming to an end? Would not the enthusiasm which created them perpetuate them?

The teaching of Keim with regard to the person of Jesus is that, so far from His being a Divine Person Incarnate, we see in Him an expansion of the Divine element in man. Since God has made us in His image, there is in our nature a Divine germ, the seed of a higher life-which it is our duty to bring to its full growth by the harmonious development of the faculties of the soul. This end, which we all come so lamentably short of, was attained by Jesus. He was the ideal Man, foreseen and loved by God from all eternity. He is the spiritual miracle. In Him" God has become human, man has become Divine." And as He is the type of a life harmoniously Divine and human, of an ideal realized by various conflicts and crowned by victory, so is He also the pledge that we too shall succeed in realizing the same ideal by following in the path which He has opened up.

If Keim's conception of the life of Jesus does not seem to us a happy one, and if we regard his Christology as imperfect, we do not, for all that, despise the value of his labours. His method is the true one, and if he had followed it more faithfully he would have obtained decisive results. He has the great merit of breaking away from criticism of the Straussian order. He has understood the principle which is simply an application to history of the fundamental law of thought: "nothing in the effect which was not previously in the cause." A great effect implies a powerful agent. The conquests won, the transformations wrought by Christianity, originate in its incomparable moral and religious value, and this, in its turn, implies the unique greatness of its founder. The paltry character of the personage whom Baur and Strauss evoke from their researches, the piquant, soiled portrait drawn by Renan, sin against this law and are shattered by it. A sublime work demands and proclaims a sublime author. To set forth the living and complete figure of that author is the end which free and impartial criticism has in view. The works of Keim occupy a place of honour. They have marked out the course which henceforth the historian must take, and in which, sooner or later, he will succeed in calling up the figure of the true Son of Man, as One who both came down from heaven and has ascended into heaven.

He who aspires to write the life of Jesus ought not only to possess scientific aptitudes, but ought also to have moral virtues-affinities with his subject. He must love Him and live in holy communion with Him, or else his work is doomed from the beginning to be a failure. His first labour will be the careful investigation of sources, including along with the Gospels and other New Testament writings, which occupy the place of honour, everything that can cast any light on the society in which Jesus lived, and on Jesus Himself. And then from the crucible in which his materials have been fused together will he bring forth the work of love and of art-the history animated by the breath of life. From the background of His country, His people, and His time, Christ will stand forth as a figure at once real and ideal.

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CURRENT SWISS THOUGHT.

THE DOCTRINE of the KingDOM OF GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. Rev. J. VAN GOENS. (Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie.)—Concluding article. (See THE THINKER for September.)-We have now come to the first manifestations of the kingdom of God. It is the appearance of Jesus which determines the coming of the kingdom of God on earth. That kingdom is therefore not something in the future, but something already present. When the Pharisees ask when the kingdom of God should come, Jesus replies, "It is within you," or, as the words might be translated, "it is in the midst of you"; on another similar occasion He declares that the fact that He casts out devils by the Spirit of God is a proof that the kingdom of God is come unto them. But this manifestation is only a beginning-an entrance into the world: it is the scattering of seed which may yield many different kinds of fruit; its growth escapes observation, but it obeys an inward irresistible power, and is independent of all the labours of the husbandman (Mark iv. 26-29). The parables of the grain of mustardseed and of the leaven recall the outward expansion of the kingdom, and its power of penetrating the hearts of men (Matt. xiii. 31-33). The idea of the development of the kingdom of God, as opposed to that of an immediate appearance of it in a complete form, characterizes the thought of Jesus and differentiates it from that of His time.

We must not confuse the kingdom of God with the Church. One may be within that kingdom and not within the Church, and conversely. But this is the connection between them: for the kingdom of God to become a power in the world it was necessary not merely that isolated individuals here and there should accept the principles laid down by Jesus, but that the Messianic King should gather in one a community of devoted subjects. This, Jesus had in view. As soon as He saw a response to His summons He chose the Twelve-a number symbolical of the true people of God. That which at first bound them together was their common love for the kingdom preached by Him. But from the time when they were convinced that their Master was the Messiah, the confession of that fact became the distinctive characteristic of the Church: they are "the children of the kingdom" (Matt. xiii. 38), and the kingdom of God is within them (Luke xvii. 21). But as yet there does not exist any religious organization properly so called. These "babes" (Matt. xi. 25) are only the Church in germ. As for Jesus, at first He felt His mission was to be the Messiah of the chosen people, but little by little the experience suggested by the centurion (Matt. viii. 10) and the Syro-Phoenician woman (xv. 28) opened up vaster horizons to Him, and convinced him of the universality of His religion. Besides, for the breaking down of national distinctions it was only necessary for moral and spiritual renewal to be made the essence of religion; Pagans could fulfil these conditions as well as Jews. It is this experience which finds expression in the parables of the wicked husbandmen and the barren fig-tree (Matt. xxi. 33-46; Luke xiii. 6-9), and the curse pronounced upon the actual tree which bore leaves only (Matt. xxi. 18, 19).

By rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, Israel excluded herself from the kingdom of God. The adherents of Christ formed henceforth a separate community, faithful to ancestral customs, but distinguished by their Messianic faith. In this way the Church came into being. The name éккλŋσía, used in the LXX. as a rendering of the Hebrew , is only found twice in the synoptic Gospels. In Matt. xviii. 17 it describes an organized community with judicial powers. Now, nothing like this existed in the