CURRENT DISCUSSIONS.

AN EDITORIAL DEPARTURE.

As those who hear the toll of funeral bells and uncover their heads in presence of the solemnities of death the readers of the Methodist Review will turn the pages of the present issue. Unexpectedly to most, Dr. James W. Mendenhall, Editor of the Bimonthly since May, 1888, has finished his earthly journey and has passed beyond the limits of mortal sight. However prepared for this exodus his nearer friends may have been, to the general Church the announcement of his departure will come as tidings for which no adequate warning had been given. As men love life he has met the most appalling experience of personal history; as workers reckon death he has gone prematurely; as the Church estimates its servants, one of its leaders in versatile scholarship, in philosophic inquiry, and in finished composition has gone into the heavens.

It is the melancholy pleasure of the Review to present, as the leading article of the current number, a biographical notice of the life and work of Dr. Mendenhall. In his own purposes for the September copy of the Bimonthly he had not included such a memorial article, since no editor ever plans for his own obituary. Yet such a memoir, which is made necessary by the inexorable force of circumstances, and which stands as a sad commentary upon the uncertainty of mortal plans, is now inserted in the issue following Dr. Mendenhall's decease. Had he received warning of his near departure undoubtedly he would have chosen as his biographer Professor Whitlock, the author of the accompanying memorial sketch. In harmony with what would have been his wishes, his bereaved family have therefore turned to the friend of many years for the performance of this sad mortuary service. For thirty-two years Professor Whitlock had known Dr. Mendenhall, first as a student in the university halls, and afterward in the close relationship of Conference association. So that his memorial has not only the quality of literary excellence, but also the merit of that detailed description and that reliable analysis of mental powers which are only the result of long fellowship. Nor will the friends of Dr. Mendenhall alone welcome with mournful satisfaction this exhaustive and commanding review of his life-work. But in this attractive story of struggle up from obscurity to prime position in the Church-involving the most painstaking application, the closest husbanding of time, and the consecration of great powers to definite lines of work-many of the younger men in the Methodist Episcopal Church will find lessons of evident value. To such younger and gifted men, whether in our preparatory institutions, colleges, theological schools, or in the active itinerancy, this life-story of one of the busy, achieving leaders of present Methodism will come as a magnificent incentive. Being dead he yet inspires the living by his example. Added to which the unusually excellent, almost speaking portrait of

Dr. Mendenhall, which accompanies the memoir, looks out like a face from the immortals to give emphasis to his written story.

It is not our present purpose to add anything to the record of Dr. Mendenhall's life, already so clearly outlined in the periodical literature of the Church, and now so amply told by Dr. Whitlock in his memorial article, nor to undertake any further analysis of those unusual mental endowments which gave the late editor of the Review his prominence in the councils of our Methodism. A word, however, from the editorial room itself, where so lately he sat as a master spirit in fellowship with the great thinkers of the Christian world, may not seem an unbecoming addition to the numerous memorials that have already appeared in the current literature of the Church.

Loyalty to the truth was one of the noticeable characteristics of Dr. Mendenhall to be learned from close association with him in the editorial office. Time-serving did not enter into his life as an actuating motive. In his official and important relation to the new movements in religious and scientific thought which had their prevalence within the bounds of different denominations and on both sides of the Atlantic, his predominant disposition was that of allegiance to the right. Truth was to him of more importance than men. In the construction of some of the polemic editorials upon the great issues before the Church which his convictions led him to publish during the quadrennium, the writer was led to mark his self-poised spirit and his fearlessness of consequences under the overmastering conviction of the call of duty. Living in an earlier age, such a spirit would have won and worn with joy the martyr's crown.

Dr. Mendenhall also seemed, to those associated with him in the editorial office, to command a wide horizon in his vision. A theologian by choice and training, he was nevertheless in no inferior sense a student of all sciences. Whatever was truly great in every department of human research, even though it had the charm of newness, had in him a most interested observer. He coveted the largest things in theology, sociology, philosophy, science, and archæological discovery for the pages of the Review. The field of research was for him not narrow. In untiring inquiry he swept over the seas to the corners of the earth, investigated all continents, and on restless wing moved out into the distant places of the universe in his search for truth.

Of his religious experience, although he was usually reticent in testimony, an associate now and then had a glimpse even amid the cares of editorial work. A few times have we heard from his lips words of devoutness that seemed not only the overmastering conviction of a giant intellect, but also in their candor as the simple faith of a trusting child. And the memory of these chance testimonies in the midst of editorial distractions now abides like a benediction.

Dr. Mendenhall's plans for the coming quadrennium-the Church having just returned him to his editorial position-were generous and far-reaching. Our patrons will turn to the July-August Review and reread with melancholy interest his last official utterance, in the article entitled, "Some

Editorial Questions." His salutatory was also his valedictory. Its composition, as Dr. Whitlock has said, occurred during the session of the General Conference at Omaha; its revision and a particular request as to some important verbal changes, sent to the office from Colorado Springs, were the final acts of his editorial career. Since his death it has been asked what he left in manuscript on the questions suggested by the debates of the late General Conference. Nothing of this sort has he bequeathed as a legacy to the Church. Three short fragments of a miscellaneous nature, published in the last Review under the head of "Opinion," to which reference is elsewhere made, are all that he found opportunity to write on General Conference matters before death ended his busy career. Yet it is certain that he would have spoken, and that he would have spoken with the conscientiousness and the vigor of a prophet on these questions at issue in the councils of Episcopal Methodism.

Dr. Mendenhall worked until the last. We have not seen the fact remarked in any obituary notice that he was present at the closing session of the General Conference on Thursday, May 26. Though sometimes absent during the month from physical necessity, he maintained his interest in the great gathering and remembered his obligation to his constituents until the last. A reference to the official record shows that at the roll call preceding final adjournment he answered to his name, thus working on until he passed into the shadows.

For the second time in the history of the Methodist Review its chief editor has died in active service. In August, 1887, Dr. Daniel Curry, full of honors and venerable in years, entered upon his reward. His successor in the responsibilities of the most dignified editorship of the Church has now joined McClintock, Whedon, and Curry among the immortals. Too soon, it would seem, for his best work, he has gone away. His first quadrennium of preparation would, perhaps, have been eclipsed by his second of performance. Like a bold warrior who falls before the sudden arrow of the archer, he has passed into the eternal silence. He rests from his labors. The sight of his daily battle with disease was an unusual spectacle. We do not so much think of him as having entered upon the higher activities that may pertain to the heavenly world, nor as having joined the illustrious company of the spirits of just men made perfect; " we rather conceive of him as having thrown aside his bruised and suffering body, after an heroic struggle with conquering ills, and as being evermore at rest.

Into the mysteries of his present experience we may not enter. His own brief memorial of Dr. Fry, in the May-June number of the Review is, however, expressive of his then views on such surpassing themes as the perpetuation of personality, the consciousness of the departed, and the future activities of the righteous. Notwithstanding the first reference of his words to Dr. Fry, they have an application none the less pertinent to the new and unapproachable experience of Dr. Mendenhall himself:

[He] still lives, and in a conscious state, with faculties disenthralled, himself free of encumbrances, or Christianity is a misrepresentation. Gazing inquiringly toward the heavens, as did the men of Galilee when the Master ascended, infidel

ity turns our vision backward; agnosticism but dims the tearful sight, and scientific argument simply bids us pause and think. Only in revealed truth do we see, and yet as through a glass, darkly; but we see. . . . Living, [he] suggested the past and the present; dead, he suggests the future. Formerly interested in his life-work, made up of business, teaching, authorship, and editorship, covering many years, we are now interested in his new life, the occupation of which, even to our faith, is a mystery, but the glory of which partakes of the radiance of the Eternal. As living, he becomes a reminiscence; as dead, he is the subject of our inquiries and the proof of our teachings. It is one of the compensations of the death-catastrophe that it awakens profound questions, arouses into recognized energy the immortal instinct, shakes off for the moment the inertia of matter, stills our reveries of time, and abjures us to consider eternal realities. . . . In life [he] taught us lessons of life; in death, he impresses us that we are immortal; and so by his last act teaches more, inspires more, comforts more, than by the aggregated toils and sacrifices of [forty-seven] years. Friend, brother, farewell until the break of the morning!

In the latter part of April, with his destination the General Conference, Dr. Mendenhall went out from the editorial rooms of the Methodist Review forever. For those who remain behind there is a strange stillness and the sense of the withdrawal of a master spirit. For him has come emancipation, glorification, coronation. -ASSISTANT EDITOR.

THE NATURE AND THE PLACE OF PREACHING.

AMONG the many enduring institutions of society the preaching of the Gospel holds a peculiar and a distinguished place. No student can contemplate the custom in its structure or its application without discovering certain inherent characteristics which distinguish it from all other human performances. Its etymological basis is an instructive study and a proof of its superior claims. As to its antiquity, history shows that its earliest practice was contemporaneous with the founding of the New Testament Church. Its relation to the holiest impulses of the human soul clothe its frequent performance with veneration. Its aim in the regeneration of the heart and in the ennobling of the individual life lifts it above all merely secular employments, however dignified. Following its unbroken observance down the centuries, its present practice is well-nigh universal. Its plainness of speech and its boldness of utterance suggest an unwavering, unnatural, unearthly courage on the part of its exponents. Its sublime consequences in the reformation of men and the transformation of national life are a proof of its unique place among the institutions of mankind; and its constant observance, with its perpetual influence upon personal life, give an enduring charm to its contemplation. To write of its nature and its mission is, therefore, a pleasing task, and one that is always germane to the pursuit of theology.

As an institution preaching is divine in its origin. The most casual examination of the Old Testament Scripture proves the claim that it was not a part of the patriarchal system or a custom of the Jewish dispensation. Neither the official words of the judges, the poetical compositions of David,

the oracular and valuable utterances of Solomon, nor the arousing messages of the later prophets to the rebellious people might be denominated preaching, in the scholarly signification of the term. The word has a place only in the Christian vocabulary, as the practice has had its observance only in the Christian ages. The familiar words of Eadie have a new force and beauty as bearing upon this position:

The inspired men under the Old Testament did not preach. They proclaimed the will of God in a variety of forms. Moses enacted statutes, prescribed and predicted national results as patriot and legislator; Joshua after his sword was sheathed swore the nation to fidelity; Samuel judged and taught with divine authority; David sang as saint and king, and gave utterance to emotions common to the Church in every age; Elijah challenged and battled for God in days of idolatrous degeneracy; Solomon embodied his experience in pithy and pointed sentences. The prophets, as a body, portrayed present obligation and future crises. The burdens pronounced by Isaiah ring over Babylon, sweep through the wilderness, and are borne up the Nile. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel interest themselves with national affairs and theocratic history. Obadiah seals the fate of Edom, and Haggai and Malachi censure the selfishness of their age. These old seers foretold Messiah, but did not exhibit him. They pictured him, but did not preach him.

But with the establishment of a new Church, which is to be time-long and universal, a new order of evangelism was instituted by the great Founder. In his assignment of specific duties to men the underlying thought of the New Testament record is that of their ambassadorship. They were not to speak for themselves; they spoke for another; they spoke for the Almighty. As an intimation of the divine establishment of preaching—and it is sufficient to point this out in suggestion rather than to attempt its proof by elaborate argument—the significance of such a New Testament form as npúσow is pertinent and forceful. Translated more than fifty times in the English version of the New Testament as "preach,” and occurring more frequently in the original than any other term, unless it be evayyeli, its meaning is that of publishing or proclaiming, as of one "acting by authority." The preacher is a "herald," crying aloud to the sons of men the message of the King. Of a similar force is such a form as ȧñоσтéλλ, occurring in such a forcible passage as Rom. x, 15. The early apostle was "one sent forth" to the Gentile world on a mission whose transcendent importance baffles human thought. Nor to linger on verbal forms and peculiarities of etymology, though the critical study of the Greek text is of prime value, the whole genius and trend of the Gospel are in line with the thought that the preacher is a sent man. The command to him is "go." The extent of his service is that he go "into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

In pursuance of the thought that the preaching of the word is thus a divine institution it is instructive to notice the detailed provisions of Almighty wisdom for its best performance. A definite place has been provided in the divine economy for Christian preaching. To secure its uninterrupted delivery and to separate it from the distractions of the world in order that it may have its full effect on men, a sanctuary has been raised and dedicated to its holy uses, into whose quiet the merchant man