down to Jericho represents, they say, humanity. The brigands among whom he fell represent the devil. The priest and the Levite represent the law and the prophets. The Samaritan is Jesus himself. The oil and wine represent divine grace; the ass, the body of Christ; the inn is the church; the inn-keeper, its bishop. Jerusalem is heaven, and the expected return of the Samaritan is the final advent of Christ. As a piece of ingenuity this is a striking exposition. If we concede the allegorical method of reading the word, we cannot say the parable does not mean just this. So with literalism. If, by electing among the many thousand events that exemplify the providence and judgment of God, we make to-day a happy selection of them so related as to harmonize with the outstanding angles and corners of prophecy, and to fit some key, or glossary, or measuring rod adopted for the solution of the symbols of prophecy, and so develop an order and chronology of events yet to be, no one can refute that chronology, or question it otherwise than by questioning the whole method of literal interpretation; by denying that prophecy was ever intended to be a syllabus of history anticipated, or the concealment of God's wondrous purposes only to be unravelled and disclosed by methods of guess work. The glossary of prophetical words given by Dr. Charles, and in high favor with the calculators of prophecy, and their right to apply it regardlessly to any and all passages, and measure from just any and every starting-point of history that their hasty judgment may settle upon, crossing from this nation's history to that, and finding intimations of events both mighty and minute, needs verification. He should prove his "key." He may be satisfied he has the "combination" which unlocks the great future. Others have been equally satisfied before him. The future alone can reveal the true measure of sagacity displayed in this latest guess. The key, however, gives out and is discarded when our author comes to expound the seventh vial.

The relation of events, causal and successive, in the pre-millenarian eschatology, while a favorite with many, and to some minds a very fascinating one, is not that usually held among Protestant Christians. It is not the prevalent view among Presbyterians.

It is not the view taught in the Catechisms or in the Confession of Faith of our church. On the other hand it is there expressly disavowed. Standard writers on systematic theology, who necessarily take the comprehensive view of God's gracious plan, almost to a man discard this order as one which cannot be made, in its varied elements, to square with itself or with the most definite teachings of Scripture. It assumes that the second advent will usher in the millennium, when our Lord will reign on the throne of Israel in Jerusalem as did King David. It foresees a brilliant reign whose splendors are to be sensuous and Jewish. It avoids those passages of Scripture which connect immediately the coming of Christ and the final judgment of all the world, and which affirms that this coming is a coming to judge. It holds to a separate resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, one at either end of the millennium, a doctrine that rests on one verse in the midst of a mysterious and symbolical passage, and on a construction of that verse that is not only not necessary but is in the highest degree improbable; since, in addition to being out of analogy with the rest of Scripture, it assumes without proof that the resurrection of the souls there spoken of is a resurrection of the body, and further, that it is a resurrection of all the righteous dead; a meaning not only not in the passage but expressly precluded by the fact that it is of certain martyrs who had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus that the evangelist in writing. The theory of two resurrections, that apex upon which the whole millenarian scheme, as an inverted pyramid, rests, is not an affirmation of Scripture but an unwarranted inference. The closing verses of the twentieth chapter of Revelation describe a general judgment of all the dead, small and great, as they stand before God and the great white throne, and a general resurrection of all the dead, to the end that they appear before that august tribunal. Now, I cannot place these events nor can I know what is meant by the last "great day," if I postulate the theory of two resurrections as it is usually held. A prominent editor of the church in commenting on this phase of the teachings of this book, says: "We note again, what has before been observed, that there is small place for the doctrine of the general judgment of the great

day, of which our Lord speaks in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and his servant on Mars Hill. Page after page, chapter after chapter, are given to the description of his advent to crush the world powers and begin his personal reign in Jerusalem, and the imagery belonging to the judgment is indiscriminately appropriated to the description of his advent to rule, but the great day of the Lord seems to be put in a corner, and we are left in doubt as to whether our Lord is to come a third time in the clouds of heaven to publicly judge every creature in earth, heaven, and hell." In fact, so great difficulty is experienced by some premillenarians in finding a proper place for the last great day when all the quick and the dead shall be judged, that they make it begin with the first resurrection and the judgment of the righteous, extend all the way across the vast millennium and include the second resurrection and the judgment of the wicked. But if by any stretch of language this can be called a day, it is such a departure from the principle of literal interpretation which lies at the basis of the whole system as to utterly vitiate and refute the principle, and deprive the system built upon it of all claims upon our serious consideration. With how much greater difficulty must this protracted period be fitted to the words of our Saviour in John v. 28, 29, "The hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth-they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."

We would distinguish between the mediatorial kingdom to which our Lord was exalted after his resurrection, when all power in heaven and earth was committed to his hands, and the kingdom of glory which he will exercise on the earth after his personal return. With the former dominion, which extends over all principalities and powers, he was invested for the purpose of carrying on his work to its consummation, of gathering in the number of his elect. The latter will succeed the general resurrection and the final judgment, when having subdued all his enemies he will deliver up the former kingdom, as having now accomplished its office, and will no longer "reign over the universe as Mediator, but only as God." His headship over his people will endure for

ever, and in that glorified office he will reign with the saints on the earth. We would put the millennium under the former reign, and distinguish between it and the kingdom of triumphal glory which will follow the second advent. But the premillennial advocates view the millennium as falling within our Lord's final reign of glory. In the view of some, the mediatorial work will not yet be past, nor his mediatorial reign terminated. The race will be propagated (though the risen saints may not marry), and souls continue to be saved and gathered into the kingdom that now fills the earth with blazing glory. Instead of enjoying at his return the unspeakable blessing of his completed kingdom with the whole number of his ransomed, the work of gathering home the elect will continue throughout his personal reign on the earth.

The number of the elect will not be complete at his return, but his return will be to set up and inaugurate more efficient methods of subduing the world to faith and holy living. But if, as others hold, the race will not be propagated in successive generations in the millennium, but all, the risen and those who did not taste of death, are to be as the angels, then the number of the elect will be complete at his coming, and as that event is assumed to be nigh at hand, is doubtless near completion now, with but a limited portion of the earth in subjection to its rightful king, and an abrupt terminus put to all further extension of his kingdom by his coming and calling halt to those spiritual and missionary agencies that are now daily expanding the number of his subjects. In either case, though our ascended Lord is to-day clothed with all power in heaven and on earth and is abundantly exercising his omnipotent resources to the accomplishment of all the divine. and gracious purposes with reference to the church, yet his kingdom as administered to-day is soon to experience a change of methods. The dispensation of the Spirit will be succeeded by that of the Son. Present methods will be discarded and abandoned as futile or no longer necessary. The Holy Spirit must abandon his ministry with the greater part of that wondrous mission on which he was sent unaccomplished. In spite of all affirmations to the contrary, this scheme as presented by its advocates is dishonoring to the Holy Ghost and to the present dispensation

as administered by him, in that it is to terminate in confessed failure. There is to be no truly world-wide conquest save that which comes by slaughter and destruction of the enemies of the King. The gospel contending against the forces of evil is engaged in a woeful battle, which it will never triumphantly win, unless the Lord come and revise the methods of his administration. From gazing fondly on the glory that soon must dawn, the present comes to be pictured as days of darkness and gloom, and the church as enveloped in solitude and sorrows by reason of the absence of its Head, as though that Head were not now with us in conquering power and fulness of saving energy and grace, as though his kingdom were not now marching on with ever-increasing strides to the ultimate conquest of the world. The truth is not weak, but is proving, even under this lame ministration of the Spirit, effective to the salvation of myriads of the elect. The Crucified sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied. Yet we hear brethren cry out for our Lord's return because the present dispensation is too slow and its victories too meagre a return that will check further enlargement, save the conversion of the Jews. And this virtual imputation of failure to the blessed dispensation of the Holy Ghost can only be denied by minimizing the purposes of this dispensation and in holding, as Dr. Charles does, that the world is not to be converted by agencies now operative, and that the gospel is not to be preached to the ends of the earth with any expectation that it will convert the world. For its fullest power, for anything like adequate power, it will require the mighty miracle of the second advent, coming down upon men in millennial force and energy. Not to save and transform the world, but simply for a witness is the gospel to be preached among all nations. And this "preaching for a witness" is too generally spoken of as though designed simply to lay such a basis of knowledge of God and his gospel as will establish and consciously convict the nations of their guilt in rejecting Christ. It is to give such a knowledge of Christ as will make men fit subjects for condemnation for turning away from Christ. "The fulness of the Gentiles," who must be brought in before blindness is lifted from Israel, is not, according to Dr. Charles, a general conversion