admitted. Some time since one of the most distinguished philosophers of this country, Dr. Hickok, was listening to the reading aloud of Dr. Mulford's "Republic of God," a work which Professor Allen of Cambridge declares to be the most important contribution of our times to theology. By the time the book was half read the listener begged that the reading might be discontinued, as he positively could make nothing of it.

Now this philosopher and theologian was one who of all others ought most readily to have comprehended the thought of that work if the thought had been clear. To him the most abstruse dialectics of Hegel were familiar as the paths of his garden: his criticisms of the Hegelian philosophy are among the most acute in our language, and will rank with those of Stirling, of Herman, and of Harris. At the same time the work in question is Hegelian to the very marrow. Surely we may call a book vague when it out-Hegels Hegel.

2. A second characteristic which we notice in the new movement is a mistaken view of what constitutes a Christocentric system. The question in regard to a Christocentric system of theology is not so much, "Is Christ made the centre?" as "How is He the centre?" For even the rationalist makes Him the centre.

The real question is not, "Are the doctrines arranged about Him as the centre?" but when so arranged do they tend toward Him or away from Him? Do they tend toward Him of their own inward energy, or must we hold them there in accordance with a preconception? In other words, are the doctrines centripetal or are they centrifugal? Take, for example, the doctrine of the Incarnation. If the Incarnation was in order to Redemption, if it was for no other end except the salvation of man from sin, then this doctrine seeks and finds the historic Christ with an inward energy which has behind it the whole force of the Scriptures the doctrine becomes centripetal with reference to Jesus of Nazareth, and nothing can shake it loose. But if the Incarnation was not thus primarily and solely, in design and in fact, as the "new theology" says it was not, in order to man's redemption from sin, but was primarily in order to the self-revelation of God the Creator, and only contingently of God

the Redeemer, so that the Incarnation would have taken place even had man not fallen, then the Incarnation as a doctrine does not necessarily seek and find its realization in Christ any more than in Buddha. It is only when we know that it was in order "that the world might not perish" that God gave his only begotten Son, it is only when we know that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world," and thus that the Incarnation was eternally designed for this purpose, to deliver man from sin, not to deliver him from weakness, but to deliver him from guilt,- that the doctrine becomes truly centripetal, and by its own inward energy finds its place in Him who died on Calvary.

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And as the system of Henry B. Smith has been referred to in "Progressive Orthodoxy," it may be proper to say here that his system was Christocentric in no such sense as that implied. "Incarnation in order to Redemption" was the controlling idea of the whole, God coming in the flesh for sin, and on account of sin. This, repeated over and over and over again, was the very burden of his theology. There can be but one true conception of a theology with Christ in the centre, and that has long been known; and to change it reminds one of the change in physiology made by Dr. Sganarelle in one of Molière's writings. "There is one thing," said Géronte, “which strikes me as not quite clear; it is the places you give to the liver and the heart. It seems to me you place them differently from what they are; that the heart is on the left side and the liver on the right side." "Yes," said Sganarelle, "it was so formerly, but we have altered all that, and now practice medicine in quite a new way."

There may be a Christocentric theology where the doctrines. will stay arranged about Christ only so long as the preconceptions and speculations of our system hold them there. Christ is in the centre, but the doctrine is centrifugal.

When we and our fellows are no longer at hand to press them toward the Christ, they will fly from him as far as the east is from the west; they will exhale in a subtle pantheism or vanish away forever, and "leave not a rack behind."

But to those who differ with us we would still say, "Brethren,

we are persuaded better things of you, though we thus speak." Though we do not believe that the present form of the new movement will change, nor that it will lose its present vagueness in a clearing up which will be definite or in harmony with an historic development; yet we do believe that we shall live to see most of those who now welcome it as a new-found stream of life, turn from it when they have examined it and found that it is not a part of that "river the streams whereof shall make glad the City of God." In its stead they will turn to those living currents of thought which ceaselessly and forever pour themselves into the one grand stream of progressive theology, while the mighty swelling and advancing tide of Christian thinking, bearing high upon its bosom the ark of God, will be seen rushing in splendor to its "one far-off Divine event," "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners."

Like a mighty army

Moves the church of God.
Brothers, we are treading

Where the saints have trod.

We are not divided,

All one body we,

One in hope and doctrine,
One in charity.

Meanwhile, what we most need is love. Knowledge puffeth up, but love buildeth up- even in theology. Love abideth; but whether there be prophecies they shall fail, whether there be tongues they shall cease, whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away.

Let us remember that in this life we do not see truth face to face, but only reflected, enigmatically, and in a glass.

Our little systems have their day,
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

WILLIAM RUSSELL SCARRITT.

WOMAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN.

EXTRACTS FROM ADDRESSES BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF

THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION, METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 19-23, 1888.

ANNUAL PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

By MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD.

THE WORLD'S WOMAN'S CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION. As President of the World's W. C. T. U., I have already sent out to every nation the purposes and plans of that society, and there is now no speech or language where its voice is not heard. With Mrs. Leavitt on her way to Africa, after planting the W. C. T. U. in India, Australia, China, and Japan; Mary B. Willard and Mrs. Dr. Stuckenberg devoted to our cause at the capital of Germany, in Madame Meyjerheim and Charlotte Gray in Scandinavia, and a W. C. T. U. organized in the world's wine centre and metropolis, the city of Paris itself; with Alaska explored, thanks to the enterprise of Miss Ackerman; Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and the United States thickly planted with our White Ribbon Societies, we may well wonder at what God hath wrought in fourteen years from the whirlwind of the Women's Temperance Crusade.

I wish this convention would call upon the executive committee for a special report on our relations to the World's W. C. T. U., and also to the National Council of Women, and I hope that we may become definitely auxiliary to both. There are two women whom I believe should visit Great Britain in 1889, and they are Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge, American Secretary of the World's W. C. T. U., and Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, our Superintendent of Scientific Temperance Education. Then, at brief intervals, I would send out Westward Mrs. M. B. Reese of the Puget Sound District, Miss Ackerman of California, and Mrs. Moots of Michigan, the first to Japan, the

second to Mexico and South America, the third to Hawaii, Australia, and Ceylon. All of these will be almost wholly selfsupporting, as Mrs. Leavitt's has been. Meanwhile I would like to see Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant, the foremost speaker among Englishwomen, make a tour of the United States and Canada with the White Cross and White Shield as her theme, going thence on the trip around the world. Judging from the popularity of Mrs. Chant when here, I am confident that she too would be practically self-supporting. Dear sisters, our field is the world, every brain an open furrow, every word a seed sown for the coming harvest. Our world's petition wends its widening way, and is fast becoming the greatest of modern polyglots. Samples of it return to me printed in every language, and foreign to my eyes as the tracing of Jack Frost upon a window pane, but my heart thrills as I remember that always its wording is the same:

Honored Rulers, Representatives, and Brothers:-We, your petitioners, although belonging to the physically weaker sex, are strong of heart to love our homes, our native land, and the world's family of nations. We know that clear brains and pure hearts make honest lives and happy homes, and that by these the nations prosper, and the time is brought nearer when the world shall be at peace. We know that indulgence in alcohol and opium, and in other vices which disgrace our social life, makes misery for all the world, and most of all for us and for our children. We know that stimulants and opiates are sold under legal guarantees which make the governments partners in the traffic, by accepting as revenue a portion of the profits, and we know with shame that they are often forced by treaty upon populations, either ignorant or unwilling. We know that the law might do much, now left undone, to raise the moral tone of society and render vice difficult. We have no power to prevent these great iniquities beneath which the whole world groans, but you have power to redeem the honor of the nations from an indefensible complicity. We therefore come to you with the united voices of representative women of every land, beseeching you to raise the standard of the law to that of Christian morals, to strip away the safeguards and sanctions of the State from the drink traffic and the opium trade, and to protect our homes by the total prohibition of these curses of civilization throughout all the territory over which your government extends.