circuits have their numerous neglected neighborhoods. Even so near as two miles from a village, in full view of the village spires, there are worthy people whom evangelists of other denominations, or "Union" associations, find and evangelize. We have some 12,000 pastors, of whom some 7,000 are preaching in stations, twice a Sunday in one pulpit; and it is safe to say that in the same towns there are 2,000 places where the Gospel ought to be and is not preached, and that in the country. neighborhoods adjacent to these towns, and not embraced in our surviving circuits, there are 5,000 more such places. That is to say, there are probably not less than 7,000 new preaching-places that could be found without effort, and out of these places 2,000 circuits might be formed that would be self-supporting after a brief period of gratuitous service. So much would seem to be easy to an effort which merely turned our attention to matters at our doors. If we could acquire a habit of looking up neglected people, if we were as zealous for the work in the older sections as Chaplain M'Cabe is for new churches on the frontier, it is scarcely too much to say that our total number of preaching-places could be profitably doubled in ten years. We know how to plant a new church in the wilderness, and we know how to abandon one in the city. We can follow a straggling body of settlers to the summits of the Rocky Mountains or the borders of Alaska, and at the same time quietly steal away from a quarter of a million of densely packed human beings in old New York. Some disagreeable speech must be indulged in, and this is a good place for it. The local-preacher problem is half solved if we can confidently say that these habits of ours are fixed-that Methodism will never return to the fields it has half gleaned-will never go back to its abandoned appointments-will never make its circuit a parish nor its district a diocese. When we have skimmed over the land, and there are no longer any frontiers, and no up-town or suburban migrations of our people, we shall have exhausted the force of the impulses which have marked our American Methodism. If these old lines are our destiny, we must have less and less use for local preachers as our churches generally advance to the ideal of self-supporting churches served by able pastors. Whenever we shall get a new impulse to return and glean on the old fields, we shall want the local preacher. The evangelist—in some better form than the common type of well-paid leader of special revival services in wellto-do churches-is a necessity in a Church which seeks to found new societies. We must have an evangelist who does not convert souls at so much a head, nor confine his services to those wealthy quarters where a large reward may be had for doing work. Ideally the local preacher is the best type of evangelist. He is known, accredited, trained, and sent. He is neither a tramp nor a scoundrelly stranger. We take ample measures to identify, qualify, and commission him. The ideal is perfect; the practical workmanship of him would be nearer the ideal if we took pains to send him somewhere and let him feel that he represents us while he does Christ's work at our command. The idea of leaving any preacher to find his work where he may is so un-Methodistic that there can be no surprise if local preachers-who are intensely Methodistic, whatever else they may not be should remain ministerially idle when Church authority assigns them to no duties. We need not dwell upon the fact that our assigned ministers are abundantly employed. Bishops, presiding elders, and pastors have full hands. We cannot expect the neglected neighborhoods to be spied out by a presiding elder who must hold a quarterly conference once in forty hours, nor from a pastor who can with difficulty care for the people who attend his church. It is the stress of our whole system that each man shall do what he is set to do, and the result of our economy of forces is to give every man work enough. We have enlarged the districts on this line of economy, and without any special effort the station has become equally engrossing of the pastor's strength. There must be some official initiative. This might properly begin with Annual Conference committees on neglected neighborhoods, and the General Conference might order new questions to be asked of presiding elders in open Conference, such as: "Are there in your district places where new appointments may be made?" and "Have you assigned work to the local preachers on your district?" Such questions might, however, fail to reach the case, for the reason that it is not often easy to assign geographical boundaries to districts or stations. We need a Methodist map-maker, and some system of grasping the soil, as a guide to so placing our nets as to cover the souls we seek to save. The organization of Methodism, as we have worked it, embraces persons, and not landsthe class-book and the Church-record bound our parishes. If neglected and non-paying quarters are to be cultivated, official action, shaped to employ gratuitous service on a much larger scale, must be taken by the General and Annual Conferences. But are the local preachers qualified to carry on such work? Some are not; many are. We have many unemployed or very partially employed men who are entirely capable of good work. Supply in this matter, as in others, will follow demand. We shall get our best men in the local ranks when we want them again for definite work assigned to them. Out of the wealth of personal power which we have developed, all that we need could be spared from other departments of lay work, if we distinctly called for lay preachers. All the comparative weakness of the local ministry would disappear under systematic cultivation of it as an honored arm of the service. With definite ideas respecting their duties, we should easily build our local evangelist and sub-pastor on the lines of our matchless ideal. We should seek, first of all, to have him a man of much personal force. All defects except feebleness of character may be suffered. One may not even know how to read-to go to the extreme of defective education--and yet be a powerful local preacher; while no amount of drill in courses of study will compensate for the lack of manliness and strength of character. Feeble men are the curse of the pulpit; and feebleness is nowhere else so fatal as in a man pursuing secular callings and preaching to people who thoroughly know him. Whenever we can fill the local ministry with the best brain and sturdiest manhood of our laity, all lesser matters of training and furnishing will be easily settled to our liking and necessities. From every point of view we meet with a yet more important characteristic of local preacherdom. It is unorganized and helpless. An Annual Conference is composed of peers who vote men in and vote men out. The itinerant ministry has its own character in its own hands. The local preachers have not the least organic power over their class. They are recruited by the quarterly conference, and receive the retiring itinerants. They have no word to say in the reception of con any man into their class, and their building has no back door through which they can retire unfit members. It is true they are members of the quarterly conference; but they have no conference of their own, and no status in any ministerial conference. Various efforts have been made to remedy this evil. The original idea of the district conference was a conference of local preachers; then it took the tentative form of ference of all the preachers of a district; but it has settled into our law as a conference of all the official workers of the district, and in this form has conspicuously failed. Presuming that we want an effective unpaid ministry, one step toward getting it might be taken by organizing the local preachers by districts or conferences better, perhaps, by conferences. These conferences of local preachers should confirm or reject the selections of the quarterly conference for new local preachers, retire from the body unfit members, and approve or reject the candidates going up to the Annual Conferences. Other duties connected with their class might be added to the foregoing. Esprit de corps cannot grow where there is no corps, and responsible duties to the Church tend to nourish the will and the capacity to discharge them with credit. It would be just to give these conferences a small representation in the Annual Conferences, and to provide for the election of a dozen or score of them to the General Conference. Such an organization is a radical change in our system, and is not to be too enthusiastically expected. An alternative plan is, to fall back upon the union of all ministers in district conferences, where the local preachers should have a separate vote on the subjects relating to their class. A bolder plan-which would certainly improve the quality of the local preachers-is to make all licensed preachers members of the Annual Conferences. The first plan is most favorable to the development of the lay character and power of the class. A separate organization, with decisive and important duties, would probably tend to build up those distinctive characteristics which make local preachers valuable; whereas the classing of them with the ministry tends to rob us of their power as laymen, and to increase the danger of comparative undervaluing of them as ministers. A preacher who fills a secular place and preaches gratuitously may be, for his special field, the best preacher; but neither he nor the Church should forget that his secular calling is an element of his power. Making him a minister in his modes of address and thinking must generally tend to impair his usefulness. If this study is unsatisfactory, it is because the subject involves uncertain elements. While the writer believes in a lay ministry, such as our Church law provides for, he is compelled to believe that it has declined, and is still declining, under the weight of forces that show no sign of relenting. We should need, to rehabilitate the lay preacher, a large and strong movement and some wise legislation. It may strengthen the small demand for change toward a better care of this arm of the ministry, if we remember that other branches of the Christian Church are feeling their way toward lay preachers. For example, a son of the eminent missionary, Adoniram Judson, having attempted to do a missionary work in the center of New York, has associated with himself three "assistant pastors" who speak the different tongues of our foreign population. With us, also, efforts to recover lost neighborhoods would provoke us to new zeal in cultivating local preachers. But, without such a demand for their services, it seems inevitable that this class of preachers must gradually come to be made up of licentiates and located ministers. ART. III.-WEBER'S SYSTEM OF THEOLOGY OF THE [SECOND ARTICLE.] VIII. ORAL TRADITION. The authentic exposition of the Scriptures.-The written Word of God was accompanied from the beginning with an authentic exposition for the community, called the "Oral Law," which was not to be transmitted in writing, but through tradition. The import and consequences of the divine laws are determined and explained for the community by the wise men in the Halakah; the doctrine and meaning of the historical and prophetical sections of the Scriptures in the Haggadah. The Jewish theology distinguishes the written Law, ¬¬¬ -These expres .תורה שבעל פה,and that delivered orally שבכתב |