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النشر الإلكتروني

EDITORIAL NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

OPINION.

CHRISTIANITY IS ALTRUISTIC IN ITS DISPOSITION TOWARD MANKIND AND in its works of sacrifice wrought in amelioration of human need. To an impartial student of comparative religion the unselfishness of the Gospel must ever remain among its most pronounced characteristics. The genius of the Old Testament, even under the racial emphasis of the Mosaic economy, was one of self-denial for others; the spirit of the New is that of the most complete and perpetual self-renunciation of which redeemed humanity is capable. In the fulfillment also of those scriptural precepts enjoining sacrifice for men the believer is permitted to rejoice that the Church of the past has so nobly realized the divine commands. One may lift the veil of history without poignant fear of startling surprises and new revelations of Christian cowardice, but rather with a feeling of allowable pride in the heroism of the Church through previous ages. Even in the pre-Messianic days the altruistic spirit had its illustrators in a long line of prophets who renounced self-interests for the sake of their times, as Elijah, who braved the wrath of Ahab for the good of Israel; or Jeremiah, who suffered the public shame and the galling pains of the stocks; or Daniel, who faced an agonizing death in the interests of his people. And much more have the years of later Christianity been illuminated by the sacrifices of the exponents of the faith, their life-long abnegations, their physical sufferings, and even their martyrdom for the sake of others. Beginning with the central figure-the great Pattern, whose self-forgetfulness is summed up by Peter in the statement that he "went about doing good" -the long succession of "apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers" establishes the self-sacrificing spirit of the later Church, its irrepressible love for souls, its willingness to "spend and be spent" for men. The distinction between the Gospel and heathenism in this respect, which has often been pointed out, has undergone no modification at the hands of later students of ethics. The false religions of the world are stolid, self-absorbed, misanthropic; Christianity is warm, self-forgetful, philanthropic. To the former, humanity is but coarser clay without exalted quality; to the latter, a clay that may be molded by the divine hand into vessels of enduring honor. But the remembrance of this distinctive characteristic of the Christian faith carries also the thought of its enduring accountability to mankind. In no jot or tittle is the obligation of the Church lessened to the unchurched masses of the world. Among all the departments of Christian toil the call is for the renewed girding up of the loins for service; and so much the more because of the astonishing doors of opportunity that open before the workers of the Church and the dawning of the promised millennium that streaks the eastern sky. That reservoir of sup

plies, the treasury of the Church, should be enriched by the fuller contributions of its membership, bestowed not on the basis of their inclinations -but according to the limit of their uttermost ability. Despite the presence of so many princely givers in the Church it is nevertheless the lamentable fact that too much of the Christian benevolence of the day is sporadic, unenthusiastic, paltry, unprompted by the highest motives of the Gospel. For that systematic, spontaneous, larger, and rightly prompted giving, which is the ideal beneficence, the causes of Christian education, Church extension, hospital service, and philanthropic endeavors of every sort, wait with expectant desire. The missionary movements of the age-so heroic in their spirit and so successful in the harvest of immortal souls already gathered-must find their sustentation in the self-sacrifice of Christian believers. Until the time shall come when the work in any specific missionary territory can be carried on by native converts, new missionary recruits must go forth from the home lands to fill the depleted ranks of the workers. In the spirit of Paul and Silas and Barnabas, these heroic ones must not count their lives dear unto themselves, so that they may finish their course with joy. And it is to the honor of present Christianity that so many workers have already pressed their way to the front, both in the departments of home and of foreign missions, whose apostolic sacrifices and godly toil have made the desert to blossom as the The lesson is an unchangeable one for the Christian Church. Whosoever," said the Lord, "will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." The spirit of this teaching permeates the entire Gospel; its illustration in practical living is the highest privilege of those disciples who follow in the footprints of the suffering Master.

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THE DOCTRINE OF THE PAROUSIA IS AN ENGAGING STUDY FOR THE Christian Church. The explanation of the perennial interest it excites is not impossible. In part it may be that the abstract fulfillment of prophecy is involved, whose realization the biblical student feels to be necessary to the integrity of the Scriptures. Partly it may be because an appeal is made to man's imaginative faculty in the portrayal of an event at once unparalleled, spectacular, and climacteric. And certainly it is in part because the highest interests of humanity are concerned, taking hold on immortality and eternal blessedness. From these and possibly other considerations it is not a surprise that the inquiry of the Christian Church has ever centered around the millennial doctrines, and that eager eyes, as if they might pierce the veil which separates the seen from the unknown, have peered forward to discover these uttermost secrets of eschatology. All post-apostolic discussions of the doctrine of the Parousia to be of value must have a scriptural basis. Whatever teaching is of this nature in the Old Testament, however little, has its force; all that was spoken by Christ with reference to the dispensational close, though intermixed with

many predictions as to the overthrow of Jerusalem; and the much that the Pauline epistles, like the letters to the Corinthians, Thessalonians, Timothy, and others contain on the second appearance of the Lord. That the Fathers were not indifferent to those passages predictive of the end of the world is discovered in all the patristic writings. Therein was the Scripture made the basis of commentary and the ground of radical difference of interpretation. Such a method lends force to the writings of Papias, Irenæus, Origen, Methodius, and others. The Second Advent literature of modern times is also closely critical of the inspired truth, so that none may enter into the fullest understanding of the question who has not made the holy word his text-book. And this is well. So transcendent a question, involving the termination of terrestrial life, the destruction of mundane creations, and the establishment of a new heavens and a new earth, should not turn on merely human speculation or on the capricious and varying scholarship of successive ages, but should have its basis in a predictive word that the great Author of nature and of life has himself inspired. Nor has any age been more advantageously situated in its study of the Scriptures on the Parousia than the present. In its patient and surpassing scholarship, its inheritance of the beliefs and teachings of eighteen centuries of Christians cholars, and its dispassionate desire to know the truth, it is the best age of church history. Through its inquiries the doctrine of the Parousia should reach a more satisfactory definition.

THE CHURCH OF WESLEY IS STILL ON THE FORWARD MARCH. THE statistics of American Methodism, lately issued in bulletin form by the Superintendent of the United States Census, present a forcible setting forth of the steady, persistent, resistless growth of this great denomination. So far as the compilations are now finished Methodism leads the van among the Protestant denominations of America, aggregating the grand total of 2,240,354 communicants, and maintaining church edifices whose total valuation is $96,723,408. There is a sense in which the publication of such statistics, whether of Methodism or of the other great denominations of the United States, is permissible and necessary. Without their regular and somewhat frequent collection there would ensue, both in civic and in ecclesiastical affairs, bewilderment and chaos. Yet there would seem to be a certain immodesty in the gratuitous parading of such statistics before the world, and a definite danger in their too frequent quotation among the workers of any specific Church. The prime purpose of ecclesiastical organization and continuance is not self-aggrandizement, but the conversion of unbelieving men to the Christain faith; and this supreme purpose calls for the exercise of Christlike denominational humility as well as the unwearied industry of the Church of God. To lay undue emphasis on the aggregate of membership and property, of benevolences and Sunday school statistics, as the present tendency somewhat seems to be, is to sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. Methodism in particular, which is a creature of providence, has a far greater mission in the world

than to enter into any unseemly competition with other Churches of different creeds and customs for the doubtful honor of numerical leadership in the land. Her exalted commission to mankind is sublimely set forth in the familiar words of the Episcopal Address: "We believe that God's design in raising up the Methodist Episcopal Church in America was to evangelize the continent and spread scriptural holiness over these lands." If American Methodism has been blessed with numerical supremacy, in the fulfillment of this divine commission, her primacy is the measure of her responsibility to God and man. Whether the causes of her leadership lie in the peculiarities of her doctrine, the zeal of her ministry and lay workers, or are the natural momentum of a great body successfully set in motion, does not enter into the consideration. Or whether she shall continue in the lead of the denominations of the land is not the chief reason for anxiety; but whether she shall nurture in the rudiments of Christian doctrine, and shall lead to the heights of religious experience, the many millions of souls which Heaven has committed to her keeping. To this result should be subordinated the unseemly pride of any enthusiast for Methodism and any exuberant believer in her polity and institutions to whom the late census bulletin already may have brought a large measure of satisfaction. Undue sectarian boastfulness is reprehensible on the part of any branch of Christians as something unworthy the Church of God. Christ should be first; the interests of the denomination should

follow afterward.

THE INGENIOUS THEORY OF HARNACK AS TO THE EUCHARISTIC PRACTICE of the early Church deserves the passing notice of the student of ecclesiastical literature. As announced in the Texte und Untersuchungen, this inquiring student has sought by an appeal to Justin to show that bread and water, instead of bread and wine, were the elements employed by the early Christians in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. In a word, the burden of his argument seems to be that because the text of Justin contains an actual substitution in two instances of the word olvos for ovos, therefore the word oivos in its relation to the eucharist is an interpolation. The theory is at least engaging, though the argument by which Harnack seeks its establishment is not tenable. For its novelty the question is not without its attraction to the student of the recondite. We can imagine that Christian practice would also be to some degree affected were Harnack's argument established by the voice of early ecclesiastical history. Could it be certainly shown that the practice of the early Church was the use of water instead of wine it is not difficult to imagine an attempt at revolution in the method of the present eucharistic celebration, at least on the part of those religionists who in their observance of Christian worship exalt the letter above the spirit. But the student of early church literature turns in vain to the patristic documents to find a substantiation of Harnack's view. The consensus of these historic volumes, on the other hand, so clearly proves the universal use of wine as an element in the celebration of the holy communion as to leave no valid room for difference

of judgment. The assumption of Harnack must be classed among those unscholarly and useless attempts which are sometimes made to base a doctrine or an ecclesiastical practice on a single and even an uncertain word in the original text. Christianity has no need to prove its beliefs or its ceremonies by such doubtful methods.

THE ORDER OF PUBLIC WORSHIP FOR THE USE OF THE METHODIST Episcopal Church, which is reproduced in the Discipline of 1892 from that of 1888, deserves the particular attention of our Methodist Societies at the commencement of a new quadrennium. The abstract propriety of enjoining such a uniformity of worship for a Church, however widely distributed geographically, must go unquestioned. In the actual practice of different denominations maintaining a prescribed form of worship is also found a justification of the theory. Thereby is doctrinal unity conserved, a bond of coherence established between the scattered societies of an ecclesiastical organization, and a fit recognition paid to that sense of harmony which is a basal principle in religious as well as in temporal affairs. Concerning the excellencies of the particular form of public worship contained in the present Discipline there can be no reasonable ground for debate. As is well known, it is an evolution from an order directed by a previous General Conference; and having received the approval of the Committee on the State of the Church and the indorsement of the Conference itself in combined session, it is to be received as authoritative and final. Unhampered by any necessity in the use of a cumbersome ritual, like that upon our brethren of English Methodism, the Methodist Episcopal Church is free to establish such an abbreviated and timely order of worship as the needs of the day may suggest. In the analysis of the particular Order of Service which we mention will be found that proper recognition of the propriety of responsive reading, that simplicity which is not unaccompanied by dignity, and that nice balancing of the liturgical and emotional elements involved in true Christian worship, which will commend themselves to the critical examiner. Without claiming that it is the best possible form of worship that human wisdom may devise-a claim that it would not be the part of prudence to make—its continued recommendation by the governing body of the Methodist Episcopal Church is pertinent, and should be received with a loyal spirit by the separate congregations of our faith. In view of its enjoinment, the disregard that is shown its practice by many of the churches of Methodism is consequently a feature that surprises an observer. The order of worship that is substituted seems sometimes to turn on the preferences of the appointed pastor, sometimes is modified by the artistic desires of the officiating choir, sometimes has been transmitted as a legacy from times immemorial. In any instance it is not proven that these substitutions and emendations are an improvement on the official provision. Loyalty to the established institutions of the Church compels a conscientious regard for the direction of the Discipline. The coming quadrennium furnishes the opportunity for this improvement.

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