of men. More has risen than can be computed by human arithmetic, or compassed by human imagination, or comprehended by human thought. Where did it come from? Where did it subside? At what point did it disappear to rise again in such overwhelming volume, and such sweeping and far reaching influence? We go back through eighteen hundred years. We are standing in Jerusalem. We hear conflicting reports of a strange, daring young man. At length he is pointed out to us. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance. He is a Jew. He was born among the poor. He is not noted for culture. He has no social position. He has no money. He has no political power or prestige. He has no army at His command. He has no philosophical system. He is connected with no academy. He is only thirty-three years old. His words are contained in no books. They are simply in the memory of His disciples. He is misunderstood. His own disciples do not know what to make of Him. Finally He is arrested, and tried, and condemned, and crucified. He dies between two thieves, scorned, scoffed, buffeted, and friendless. Keep in mind the principle we are considering. All force can be measured. No more force rises up than subsides. Action and reaction are equal. We are seeking to account, in accordance with this principle, for the vast amount of force Christ has poured into the institutions and thought of humanity. Is this young man's life, seemingly so insignificant and weak, the exact equivalent of all the churches, schools, colleges, arts, literature, homes, governments, sacrifice, heroism, good works, martyrdom, patience, love, and hope that have by general consent resulted from His existence in the world? If so, was He only a man? Multiply thirtythree years by poverty, toil, contempt, sorrow, and crucifixion, and you have one product. Multiply nineteen hundred years by millions of churches, schools and homes; by millions of books, paintings, and poems; by social position, wealth, and power; by success, triumph and conquest; by love, mercy and truth; by a hold upon humanity unequaled, and by an influence on home and thought unrivaled, and you have another product. The question is, Does one of these products seem to be the equivalent of the other? Does not the outcome surpass by an infinite

degree the income? Is not the evolution out of all proportion to the involution? Has not a great deal more force risen up than seemingly subsided? Is there not much more power seemingly on this side the cross than there was on the other? Manifestly and clearly Christ's life and work can not be accounted for by the principle of the correlation of forces.

Mahomet's success and disciples we can understand. He succeeded by the ordinary methods by which men succeed. He appealed to men's love of fame, conquest, wealth, power, pleasure. He offered men, as a reward for their fealty to him, a great earthly kingdom, and such a heaven beyond the grave as would regale the senses, please the fancy, and gratify the appetites. He simply organized and applied the latent earthly forces already existing in his countrymen. His success is in line with that of Cæsar and Bonaparte. The kingdom which he proposed to establish was merely an earthly, sensual kingdom. His methods were carnal, the motives to which he appealed were sensual, and the hopes which he inspired were carnal. Christ, on the other hand, condemned men's love of conquest, power, fame, riches, and pleasure. He made the conditions of discipleship to consist in the denial of self and in the relinquishment of all earthly hopes, gratifications and prospects. "If you find your life in My Kingdom," said He, "you must lose it in this." He proposed to build up a kingdom as wide as the world and as lasting as eternity, without adopting a single method, or utilizing any of the means ordinarily relied on for success. Not only did He propose a new kingdom, but to populate it with new men, motives, hopes, and conceptions, and opinions. Hence to come into His Kingdom men were to be made over. They were to die to self, to the world, to pleasure. So Christ's work and influence in the world, not only forms an exception to the principle of the correlation of forces, but here we have an unparalleled amount of force rising up when, to all human appearances, none subsided at all.

A poor young carpenter dies. He goes down in ignominy. Amid the jeers and contempt of the multitude, he goes down into the grave. But from that moment commotion begins. Forgiveness of sin in the name of Christ is preached; disciples are

won; churches are built; books are written; civilizations are touched: movements are inaugurated; persecutions bloody and relentless are waged. The fires of hate are kindled, storms from all round the social, political, and religious sky gather, and howl and empty their fury upon the new movement. Nothing impedes it; fire can not hinder it; persecution intensifies it; death does not alarm it. Now we submit, does not such a movement, starting from such a source, and moving out with such vigor, and becoming intenser and deeper as it is extended, form a remarkable and singular exception to the principle we are considering? Is there any rule among men by which it may be estimated and classified and labeled? Can any human, or logical, or philosophical formula or principle, measure the multiform and widely diversified facts in this case? Does it not form an exception to all rules and human methods of measurements? Do we not augment the difficulties of accounting for the work of Christ by minifying Him, and calling Him a mere man? Is not the easier way to account for Christ's work, to accord to Him all that He claims for Himself and all that His disciples claimed for Him. He said, "All power is given to me in heaven and in earth." If we accept this as true, we can account for His work. But in this view we will see that His life was divine and one with the Father of us all. Then we will see that He was the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the incarnation of the divine mind, and wisdom and power. It is impossible to account for the life and work of Christ by the principles with which physical force and merely human force and thought are measured. The sun is the centre of the system of nature, a system destined to end. Any system the centre of which is gradually losing its force can not last. Christ is the centre of a spiritual system totally different from the system of nature. By all the force the sun parts with to the worlds about it, by so much less has it. It is gradually losing itself, to find itself no more forever. Christ is pouring His force into the system of which He is the centre, but by such a process He is not losing His force, but increasing it. By losing Himself He finds Himself. The universal law of the system of which He is the centre, is the law of communion. The force He gives away comes back to Him augmented by the personality of

all who partake of it. Instead of becoming poorer by giving, He becomes richer. This great truth St. Paul saw when he said, "All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

A CASE OF DARWINIAN INFERENCE.-Dr. Pierson points out that men who are very accurate in observation and classification, may be very unsafe in their induction from facts. Witness the following from "The Origin of Species," p. 165: "In North America, the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale!" Mr. Darwin was eminently deficient in logical ability. To make out his hypothesis he sometimes forgets even the facts of nature, and makes facts, as in this passage he gives to the cold arctic waters the insects which can live only where there is warmth. But the theory required the fact, and if the latter did not exist so much the worse for the fact.

A LITERAL GENESIS I. IN THE LIGHT OF PRESENT KNOWLEDGE.

[A Paper read before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, May 5, 1887.]

BY CHARLES B. WARRING, PH.D., POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.

THIS

HIS story has been in existence a very long time, certainly much more than 2,000 years, and perhaps goes back to Adam. For convenience, and not as indicating any theory, I shall speak of it as the work of Moses.

In the present paper, I propose to ignore all questions but one: Do the physical statements in this story agree with, or contradict, the facts which have been revealed by the labors of astronomers, geologists and others? Is their order the same? I say "physical" statements because the account contains many of a different character; such, for example, as "God saw," or "God said." As science has no means of deciding whether God actually saw or said, these are outside of its field, and I shall pass them over in silence.

The physical statements are quite numerous, and the author of the account has placed them in a certain order. It is within the limits of scientific inquiry to ask whether by any chance they describe conditions which once existed, and events which actually occurred, as well as whether the order in which they are placed, agrees with the real order. These questions are not to be settled by a priori reasoning, nor by any theory as to what the account was, or was not, intended to teach, but by its own words, and by comparing what it says with our world's history.

No violence must be done either to science or to Genesis. Its statements must be taken to mean just what is authorized by the grammar and lexicon, and with complete independence of our theological beliefs, or unbeliefs. Our English version is authori

tative only so far as it is a perfect translation. In other words, Genesis must be permitted to tell its own story in its own way, and, for purposes of comparison with science, I propose to take it as literally as I do the multiplication table. This is a severe test,