laws? The very fact that He did not interpose is proof that He could not. Even in such an individual instance, we can still say that "God is not willing that any should perish." How could we love God if we thought Him to be a Being who allowed any evil to occur which could have been prevented, or whom we thought indifferent to our fate and unmoved by our troubles? Many years ago, in discussing this subject with a friend who avowed himself to be agnostic, I said, on the impulse of the moment, pain and suffering are certainly indisputable facts, but, on my assumption of the truth of revelation, God Himself came in the person of Jesus Christ into the world and bore a share of that pain and suffering. So it is that the death on the cross has touched the hearts of men in all ages, and still calms their doubts.

My views of natural theology-of God as the Divine Artificer--would be incomplete and disproportionate if we did not give full consideration to what His labour has been-if, when regarded as "a best possible," we were forgetful of what that labour-that "best possible"actually is.

This world of ours is a most marvellous concurrence of adaptations in order to become the home of man. In all of them we find

evidence of benevolent intention. Provision is made not only for the necessaries of existence, but for its enjoyment. Our being endowed with the faculty of delight in music cannot be explained on any other ground than as a gift contributing to pleasure. Flowers and fruits are especially gratuitous, even although they are known to serve other ends than the gratifications of our sense of colour, form, and perfume. The beauty of scenery, of mountain, valley, and stream, overarched with the canopy of sky and changing cloud, its "majestical roof fretted with golden fire," can be no result of mere fortuity. Our family and social instincts are a blessing to us. All life is full of the deepest interest, with its domestic dramas of love and marriage, of births and deaths, or its larger spectacles of political events. And how much does "this goodly frame the earth" contain of things that minister to our wants. Not only have there been provided during countless ages the stores of iron, coal, and the like, but the gold and silver, the marbles and

gems, of which the purpose is embellishment rather than utility. The woods of the forest, many of the properties of matter, the qualities and powers of the domestic animals, are evidently all instances of Divine benevolence. And all these efforts of ingenuity are so planned as to be subservient to moral discipline. The world is a school of virtue. To that end there are liabilities to abuse of the appetites whose proper end is good. The desire for food, necessary for the life of the individual; the desire for procreation necessary for the continuance of the race; controlled are a source of pleasure; uncontrolled a fountain of miseries. Yet we often magnify and nurse the ills which are chiefly of our own making until we make ourselves believe that this world is a place of woe, "a vale of tears," and we the inmates of bodies we call vile. What is worse, we take merit for these depreciations, as if that would be a recommendation to the Divine Author of them all. How much more noble, how much more masculine, is the spirit of the Psalmist when he exclaims, "Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, for His wonderful works to the children of men."

FOURTH ARTICLE

THE authority of the Holy Scriptures in matters of religious belief is the subject of the Fourth Article of the suggested creed.

To all men who are observant of the drift of opinion during the last half century it must be evident that we are passing through a revolution of thought as great as that of the 16th century. The Reformation was a revolt against the authority of the Church. To-day, men are challenging the authority of the Bible.

The Church of Rome claims to be the one only true infallible Church by whose sanction the Scriptures, and in particular that translation of them called the Vulgate, are certified to be the authentic inerrant words of God. The Reformed Churches protested against and repelled the

assumption of the infallibility of any Churchthat of Rome or any other-but asserted in their Confessions of Faith that the Scriptures were infallible, going so far as to say in our Scottish Presbyterian document that "it pleased the Lord to reveal Himself," etc., "and afterwards to commit the same wholly unto writing" -and they adduced "the entire perfection thereof” as an argument giving evidence that it is "the word of God by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages”—adding further that "our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and Divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word. in our hearts."

We can easily see how naturally the Reformers, in rejecting the authority of an infallible Church, sought to substitute the authority of an infallible Book. But if our attitude of mind be the noble one of reaching truth at all hazards, and at any expense of sentiment, it is as competent for us to-day to dispute the Dogma of an infallible Book as it was for Luther and his colleagues to dispute that of the infallibility of a Church. I propose