UNITY IN THOUGHT.

In Mrs. Elizabeth Peabody's "Lectures to Kindergartners" there is an interesting account of a child from whom the mother, for some years, had carefully excluded the idea of a God. It fell to the lot of Mrs. Peabody to take in hand the religious training of this child, and to give him his first ideas of the Heavenly Father. As the record of a mere psychological experiment it is most interesting. For want of any knowledge of an intelligent and loving cause of all things, the mind of this child in early years was on the verge of moral and intellectual chaos. He was constantly depressed, and showed signs of even being non compos. Pleasing natural objects had no interest for him, and ordinary playthings rather distressed than amused him. As soon as the idea of a good and universal Father began to take possession of him, chaotic impressions began to assume shapes of order and beauty. It at once gave to him a unifying conception of life and nature, around which his disordered notions of objects about him, their uses and ends, began to crystallize; and his mental and moral development, hitherto clouded and erratic, began at once to move along clear and definite lines the earnest of a hopeful and happy future.

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Nothing could be more suggestive than this incident. It reveals to us, not only that an idea of God is necessary to all right moral and intellectual development, but that this alone can unify the life and bring it into harmony with its environment. The soul pines after this unity and right adjustment, and is restless and distracted until

it finds it. But to satisfy itself, not only must it know God, but its knowledge of Him must be true and accurate. To conceive of Him as in any way inconsistent with Himself, to suppose that one attribute of His nature is at variance with another, that the claims of His righteousness are at war with those of His love, is to introduce an element of disorder into our inmost nature, and an appearance of discord into the whole order of things around us. We need a right knowledge of God in order to unify our conception of human life, and of the whole physical and moral system under which it is developed. All investigations of science, all speculations in philosophy or theology are efforts of the human mind to arrive at that conception of God, and of His relations to mankind and to the works of His hands, as shall show the whole to be pervaded by the one Spirit of order and harmony.

Men whose notions of God are false, and whose theology gives expression to these false conceptions, are more or less in the condition of the child Mrs. Peabody tells of; they must be either despondent or warped and aimless, without that love and trust which destroys selfishness and brings the man into loving harmony with God and with his fellow-men. The great need of human souls is the true knowledge of God. The great want of the Church is that unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God which shall bring out within it the stature of the perfect manhood in Christ. The prime need of the world is that the earth shall be filled with this knowledge as the waters cover the sea. Any honest effort to break down the distorted notions of God which throw human souls into discord and despair, and to substitute for them those larger

and truer views which bring men into harmony with themselves, and give them an outlook into the order and unity which pervade all God's works in Creation and Providence, notwithstanding the confusion that appears upon their surface, is contributing toward this glorious end when the veil shall be taken away from before the face of God.

The present trouble in the Presbyterian Church is due to the dissonance between her growing conception of God and that which lies at the basis of her Confession.

The mind of the individual and the heart of the Church cry out after such a view of God as shall give unity and peace to all her thoughts of Him and of His relations to mankind, and as shall pervade all her activities and brighten all her hopes with the light of the knowledge of His glory as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ.

NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.

WEST JERSEY PRESBYTERY.-To our great surprise this Presbytery has voted, 32 to 16, in favor of revision. Four years ago, when a member of it, we were able to secure only five votes in favor of the overture we introduced on this subject. Our proposition was indeed more definite and radical than the one now before the Church. It directed attention to the eschatology of the Confession as the seat of the trouble. For our endeavor to correct this, we were advised by this same Presbytery that such an effort was harmful to the peace of the Church and that we ought to leave it. The large majority of the brethren at that time scouted the idea that there was any need for disturbing the Church on account of its Confession. But the hand of God has been at work in the Church during the last two years. She is in the midst of a

revolution. And now a majority of these very brethren join in a movement which they would have deprecated and deemed impossible two years ago.

The Rev. Allen Macy Dulles, in writing to the New York Evangelist against the present revision movement, as tending to destroy the Calvinistic faith, says, however:

"If it were proposed to revise chap. xxxiii, sec. 2, so as to strike out the words, 'Shall be cast into eternal torments,' I should say Amen with all my heart and soul. For these words are not essential to our system of doctrine, and are not so clearly taught, in my opinion, in the Scriptures as to be a necessary article of belief."

THE CHINAMAN'S CREED.-In an interesting letter by Sir Edwin Arnold, describing a recent voyage across the Pacific, he gives an account of the death of two of the Chinese passengers, and the following explanation by his Chinese servant of the reason why that people are so anxious to return their dead for burial to their native land:

"Suppose Wantchee go topside (to heaven) after kill—then Wantchee family make chin-chin joss at grave; suppose no takee bones, no makee grave, no speakee chin-chin joss. Then not belong topside at all after kill; belong hellee.' In other words, an immense value is attached by the Chinese to the prayers and offices of children for parents, and of kinsmen and posterity for their ancestors, and such prayers must be uttered in presence of the dead man's relics, or at the spot where they rest. Hence the extreme anxiety of the Celestial to lay his mortal part in the family soil; nor is there anything which more potently tends to hold China together in her intense and exclusive nationality."

It is worth while for us Christians to inquire whether the Chinaman's faith is so irrational after all, whether this veil of superstition does not conceal a fact, and whether Scripture does not contain some truth on this subject which we have neglected. It certainly gives warrant for the idea, that salvation is not merely an individual matter, but one that relates to families and kindreds, and that these organic ties which bind men together are a principal factor in determining the result. The law of the firstborn, when properly understood, is the key to a whole class of Scripture

teachings on this subject. We have before treated it at length. It is because humanity is connected together and is viewed before God as an organic unit, that our Lord, in taking it, could stand as a firstborn brother of the race for the whole of it. And Christians, His brethren, become "the Church of the firstborn," to act as a royal priesthood toward their captive brethren who have gone down to death and lost their heritage. This is true on this high spiritual plane. But "that which is first is natural." And on this lower plane of life, these ties of nature bind us in some mysterious way in the same bundle of life with our flesh and blood kindred, so that their struggles and perils become ours, and in winning blessings for ourselves we may win them also for them. And when one comes to see the true meaning of resurrection as another opportunity in life, he will come to see how this law reaches over into the life to come, enabling those who are still fighting on this arena of trial and temptation to be “baptized for the dead." We are ignorant of the way in which those who are still in this mortal life may help those who have passed beyond it, or be helped by them, but of the fact of this mutual sympathy and aid we may be well assured, "They without us should not be made perfect." This Chinese race-instinct, therefore, despite the garb of superstitious rites behind which it is concealed, bears testimony to a principle which underlies the constitution of the human race, and to which the Bible bears witness. The race, in its fall and in its redemption, is never viewed merely as an aggregation of individuals, but as a body of humanity pervaded by an organic life, its kindreds and families being branches of the one trunk and not separate shoots, and each race and family linked together in the bonds of a common life and destiny; so that in the fall or the victory of one member all the members suffer with it or rejoice together. If the gospel of Christ could now be preached in China in its true proportions, as the good tidings from God of a race-redemption by the true and Divine Head of the race, who must first of all gather out from all nations a conquering seed through whom all the families of the earth are to be blessed, the records of modern missionary labors there would show a very different result.