INFANT DAMNATION.-That Calvin believed this doctrine is made plain by a quotation from his treatise, De Occulta Dei Providentia, cited by Dr. Henry Vandyke in the New York Evangelist. In replying to an objector, he says:

"You deny that it is lawful for God to damn any mortal, except for actual transgression. Nevertheless numberless infants are removed from life. Put forth, now, your virulence against God who precipitates harmless new-born children, torn from their mother's breasts, into eternal death."

Speaking in reference to his recent sermons in New York, the Rev. Phillips Brooks says:

"We are on the verge, I believe, of a mighty revolution. Men are advanced in thought nowadays. They are thinking and reasoning. Mankind, under the stimulus of education and of the agents of modern civilization, has mightily advanced. Men will no longer accept assertions unless they are convinced. They will reason and discuss, and it is right that they should. Christianity has nothing to fear from such a disposition. It should rejoice to meet it. It will not do now to say to men when they ask you why Christianity claims this or that assertion to be the truth, that it has been maintained by the Church and by Christian men for five hundred years, and to regard that as a sufficient answer. They will ask you why it has been maintained for five hundred years and why it was first asserted; and they ought to ask you that if it is their purpose to decide upon so important a measure for them as the manner of right living. I think it is very likely that it is this spirit of inquiry and this restlessness of human thought and this desire to find the truth which is accountable in some measure for the fact that so many business men are willing to spend an hour each day in attending these services."

DR. STORRS' "TIN BLADE."-In his recent letter upon the "Coville case," Dr. Storrs speaks of the sending of a missionary who believes in probation after death into the foreign field, as a going forth to the conquest of the heathen with a tin blade instead of the sword of the Spirit. Such a missionary, he says again, would be like a man setting forth to run a race with a ten-pound shot tied to each ankle.

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In the way Dr. Storrs defines this theory he finds some ground for this comparison. He represents the thought of such a man to be "that the heathen, provided he does not go to them, will in the future have vast opportunities for repentance unto life, which may be sacrificed by now listening to him.”

It must be confessed that the Andover theory of future probation leaves itself open to some such charge as this, because it overlooks that there is a definite condemnation and a definite sentence to death which men can escape only in this life. There can be no future gracious dealing in the case of any who die in their sins until they have suffered the penalty attached by the law of God to sin. But what is this penalty? The Bible uniformly answers-death. It is because men do not see that His law cannot have two sentences for one thing, and that the eternal fire must be the agent for executing the one sentence, that their minds are so bewildered on this subject. When once it is seen that men through the gospel may now pass out of death into life, and that men who in this life are unsaved by it must go down into the darkness and bondage of death, there is at once a motive for their immediate rescue. But there is also room left for those redemptive operations which essentially inhere in resurrection from the dead. This prime provision of the gospel becomes henceforth a hope and not an infinite curse. Moreover, this bondage and this rescue must always correspond with men's moral condition, and be dependent upon it. For this message of life from the dead carries with it the quickening to righteousness of them that obey it. Moreover, this gospel of resurrection from the dead relates not merely to the salvation of individuals, but of races and kindreds who have died without the sight. Those who now yield thẻmselves to this Saviour of mankind become, with Him, baptized for the dead. If Dr. Storrs would therefore look at this matter of probation after death as really a new opportunity of life after sinful men have suffered the sentence to death and hell from which the gospel now offers them escape, he would find motive enough for preaching to the unsaved, both at home and abroad. The notion of hades as a place of extended probation before final judgment we repudiate with him. But after judgment has been rendered and the death sentence visited, and the captivity in hell

endured, to say that the grace of God cannot again take up the case of these banished ones is to be blind to the true meaning of resurrection from the dead, and of the gospel of which this is the corner-stone. Dr. Storrs needs, therefore, to rise to a larger conception of what the gospel is, before he thus peremptorily decides that it contains no hope for the dead who in this life were unsaved by it. We grant with him that there is no hope for this class before judgment, and that such must go down to death and hell. But we beg him to give himself to a fresh and candid examination from the whole of Scripture of this question-Why has God provided for all mankind a resurrection from the dead?

A Presbyterian minister sends us the following criticism: "THE TERRORS OF THE LAW."-In a recent number of the Herald and Presbyter, Dr. C. E. Babb, one of the editors, replied under the above caption to the inquiry of a correspondent why the terrors of the law and future punishment are less preached at the present day than they were forty or fifty years ago.

Dr. Babb confesses that he knows of no one who now preaches such sermons as he heard when a boy, aiming "not so much to convince or persuade as to alarm," many of them "cast in the mold of that terrific sermon of Jonathan Edwards on the text, 'Their feet shall slide in due time.'

One reason for the change given by the editor is no doubt just, that there now prevails "a better appreciation of the relation of the law to the gospel," and of the truth that the law is our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.

Recognizing a measure of truth in the article, and that it evidences the tender spirit of the writer, we cannot but see in it a sample of the playing fast and loose with the testimony of the Scriptures, too common with the advocates of the old dogma of eternal torment. The A. V. or the R. V. is quoted, according as one or the other may best suit the writer's purpose, not for accuracy of rendering. So Dr. Babb gives no hint that Jonathan Edwards' text has disappeared in the R. V. and that it is at least questionable if the sermon is in the text.

Further, Dr. B. says: "There are terrors in the law. But the great apostle preached the gospel. He tells us what he did.

'Knowing the terrors of the law, we persuade men.' The knowledge of the fearful things in his commission as an ambassador gave tenderness and earnestness to his appeals. So should it be now," etc.

Now, Dr. Babb cannot be ignorant that according to the revised version Paul said no such thing; that the better rendering now is: Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord;" that long before the R. V. was made, Dr. Charles Hodge had approved this rendering, explaining "fear" as "pious reverence." So also others of the best expositors. But this truer rendering is ignored, because with it the editor could not make his point. Is any other reason possible? Is THE TRUTH in need of such defense?

We fully agree with the writer, that future punishment should be taught, as it is plainly taught in the Bible. But when he says: "Hell is simply the pest-house of the universe, nobody need go to it unless he wants to, for to every sinner God says: 'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,' we question, How has God said this to every sinner, when as yet He has proclaimed the Gospel message to only a comparatively small portion of the human race, leaving countless millions to perish in their ignorance and sin?

Dr Babb concludes: "Preach hell because Jesus did. But be sure to preach it as Jesus did." Why did not Jesus Himself give that commission to His disciples? And if He did give such a commission, not recorded, why did they not obey, and “preach hell”? Why the absence from their spoken or written teachings of any mention of hell by way of warning?

"But be sure to preach it as Jesus did." Well said, indeed! If it only might be! But will one holding Dr. B.'s views preach hell as Jesus did? In the pages of this magazine attention has been frequently called to the fact that the preaching of hell by Jesus, with all its terrors, was especially to His disciples-warning needed by and suited to them. Manifestly Dr. B. takes no note of this, but his idea is that hell should be preached as a warning to the impenitent, which is true, indeed, but only a part of the truth, and in Christ's mind, evidently not the most important application. Here it is that Christ and Dr. Babb differ-a vital difference.

WORDS OF RECONCILIATION.

VOL. VI.]

MAY, 1890.

THE REVISION MOVEMENT.

[No. 5.

The Revision movement in the Presbyterian Church has now advanced so far that something must be done: retreat is impossible. The ground upon which its opponents are resisting it is, not that the Confession may not be improved, and be made a more truthful expression of the faith of the Church, but that the movement may go too far. It is pointed in a direction which looks toward a breach in the integrity of the system, and—the argument amounts to this-the only raison d'être for the separate existence of the Presbyterian Church is as the bulwark of a well-defined historic doctrinal system. This argument, we regret to see, is the one largely relied upon. by President Patton. It implies that the proper function of that church is to preserve and hand down unimpaired the system of doctrine received from the past, irrespective, first, of whether it is precisely true in itself, and to the present faith of the Church in all particulars, and, second, of whether the best interests of the whole Church of Christ require that a separate body should be set apart for its preservation. We deem it self-evident, that it is incumbent