rianism; pledge yourself to no school; cut your life adrift from all party; be a slave to no maxims; stand forth unfettered and free, servant only to the truth." "Do not tremble at difficulties and shoreless expanses of truth, if you feel drifting into them. God's truth must be boundless."

แ

That such teachings should draw upon him suspicion and abuse from the narrow minds as numerous about him as about all like him, was inevitable; but for this he cared not. "Once these things moved me: it is strange how little I care for them now." 'Do you know what don't care came to, sir?" asked one of the many women who called to correct him. "He came to Calvary," was the quick reply. "It seems to me a pitiful thing," he said, "for any man to aspire to be true and to speak truth, and then to complain in astonishment that truth has not crowns to give, but thorns."

It is unnecessary too for us here to consider his strong protests against confounding clear ideas with righteousness, intellectual culture with moral good, the prominence which he gave to the doctrine of the spiritual discernment of spiritual things, his condemnation of merely curious inquiry in matters of religion, his conviction of the limitations of the common scientific method, of the enormous falsehood of the necessarian scheme, of the vanity of a mere economic progress. However freshly and brilliantly his ideas here are clothed, they are only what are universally accepted by religious men. I have sought only to present those views of Christian doctrine which may be considered original or peculiar, and which have exposed him to the criticism of such men as Mr. McCrie.

Many of Robertson's friends and brothers in the Church, over anxious to vindicate his orthodoxy, have said that in all his teachings there was really nothing new, that he only removed the dust and rust from the currency of the church, only translated into common human words the familiar terms of Christian doctrine, that he did not so much enlarge the horizon of our vision, as illuminate what already lay within the field of it." This is untrue,-and for himself Robertson would have scorned to make any defence. Mr. McCrie is right. The doctrines are new, if by new he means irreconcilable with the views which gave birth to the Thirty-nine Articles and the Westminster

Catechism. Common enough indeed in the pulpit of to-day, at the roots, as he has shown, of all that is highest and most powerful in our literature, they are new, if by new he means as far as the east is from the west from the religious standpoint from which he writes. If those things be vital to religion which he declares, then verily has Robertson drifted far from true religion and Tennyson and Carlyle, and Martineau and Emerson, and all who have made the characteristic thought of this great age of ours what it is. Never was an age before when the great underlying current of earnest thought was untrue, never an age when the results of a broad survey of the world's literature were misleading. If this be so, are not all men called loudly to think twice and to think deeply before accepting, with Mr. McCrie's facts, his conclusions? Not what is new, nor what is old, but what is true that is the question. God's truth indeed is boundless; and if Robertson or any of the world's great philosophers, poets, priests, or prophets, have enlarged the horizon of our vision, let us be reverently thankful for what they have shown and for what they have shadowed.

ARTICLE VII-SHALL WOMANHOOD BE ABOLISHED?

A WRITER of progressive sympathies remarks that "this question has often been settled by learned exegesis, and argument that appears impregnable. But it does not stay settled. We cannot see how to confute the argument, but the conclusion does not harmonize with sanctified common sense." Whatever may be thought as to the sanctified character of the common sense, which, though itself not clearly in a majority in weight of character if in numbers, persists in practices which both Scripture and reason condemn, the fact thus admitted is a significant feature of the present state of the question before us. Masses of compact argument, certainly deserving of serious attention, have been placed before the public, to be quietly ignored, or met with vague sentiment, or exegesis which excites a smile on the face of every expert. It is not inspiring, to be obliged to repeat again and again considerations, which ought to have been either answered or respected long ago, yet such work sometimes has to be done. In the present case the field is so wide that the more salient points only can be touched in a single article.

And in the first place, let the true question be understood. It is not whether the sphere of activity usually occupied by women may not occasionally be considerably enlarged. This has always been conceded. Society was not agitated by the career of Caroline Fry, or that of Mary Lyon, or Catherine Beecher, or Delia Bacon. Nor is the question whether new forms of activity may not offer themselves to women as to men, yet without trenching upon the essential idea of womanhood.

Much more than this is now demanded. Women are crowding into the public gaze, and men invite them there, without necessity or special occasion. Publicity for its own sake seems often sought; praise and flattery are lavished; vanity and the love of admiration awakened; the religious conscience is enlisted, and told that this is the natural, if not necessary

expression of love to Christ; the reason why the cross has not conquered the world more rapidly is said to be, that woman has not assumed the harness of public fight; the laudable ambition of maidenhood is directed into this channel; a distinctive idea of propriety for woman is denied, and the rule substituted that she should do whatever she is able to do, or whatever can be done for Christ, or whatever she herself thinks fit; in short, not modification but revolution is aimed at, and is accomplished, to an extent that leaves surprise struggling with grief, in many, if not most of the clearest and most farseeing minds. Those whose eyes are opened to what is going on know, that the conception entertained by our mothers as to what is true womanhood is rapidly dying out. Not merely certain acts or customs, but the very atmosphere of time is changing, and the instinctive sense of delicacy that forms its oxygen, so far as female character is concerned, is charged with poison.

The terms of our title, therefore, present the true issue. Shall Womanhood, as the civilized world has hitherto understood it, be abolished?

The central utterances of the New Testament upon the subject are well known. "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church." "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man; but to be in silence," 1st Cor. xiv, and 1st Tim. ii. This language is perfectly plain, and has been considered so by the church generally in all ages. Of the twelve or fifteen commentators whom I have consulted - including Bengel, Rosen-Muller, Olshausen, Lange, Bloomfield, Alford, Conybeare and Howson, Barnes, Robinson, and others more recent, not one seems to regard any other exegesis as possible.

But in an age which has produced, and with Christian pretence, grave arguments in favor of polygamy, and the unre strained intercourse of the sexes; and against the received principles of geometry, the spheroidal figure of the earth and

the right of individual property, persons are found to make "no" mean "yes" in the passages before us. Various interpretations of this sort have been proposed, no two of them agreeing; each more absurd, if possible, than the others, yet some of them elaborate and exhibiting a show of scholarship, but collapsing as utterly, on examination, as ever did bubbles blown from the lips of childhood. The once notorious “λalɛœ” argument, for example, giving to that word a meaning which. would make Christ, the Apostles, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father himself "babble" throughout the New Testament, seems to be given up, yet persons who passed for Greek scholars have urged it in its day; and many an honest Christian still feels the influence of that strange vagary, with the ridiculous history of which he is unacquainted.

There is a kind of work in the field of exegesis, which depends upon a critical knowledge of New Testament Greek, such as few besides professional scholars can be expected to possess. But the next best thing to the possession of it, is to be aware of the want of it, and thus to avoid making one's self ridiculous.

Not being an expert in this department, I have taken pains to obtain the opinions of men who, by position or reputation, are responsible to the world for the judgments they give. The commentators have already been cited. Others have been consulted, and especially, for the sake of definiteness, as to the exegesis of 1st Cor. xiv: 34, 35, proposed by a writer in the New Englander, for Jan., 1877. The answers in writing, of seven men, all of them occupying, or having done so for years, some of the highest chairs of instruction in New Testament Greek in the land, are before me.

Several others, known to be among the first non-teaching Greek scholars, are to be added to the list. One of the writers, -a member of the American committee for the revision of the New Testament, says: "The exegesis (in the New Englander), first amused me, and then provoked me. The whole article is an attempt to fit scripture to the exigencies of the times." Another, also a member of the same committee, says: "It is melancholy to me, that a man should spend so much time and thought as the writer in the New Englander has done, and