THURSDAY, 5th July 1888.-Forenoon.

EXETER HALL, 5th July 1888.-The Council met in the Upper Hall, according to adjournment, at eleven o'clock. The Rev. Dr. CHAMBERS, New York (Dutch Reformed Church), was called to the Chair, and opened the meeting by devotional services.

Dr. DYKES gave in a report from the Business Committee, recommending that after the first three papers to-day, there should be an interval for discussion, and a further time for discussion after the other papers. It was also recommended that the Rev. Dr. Murkland, Baltimore, be Chairman of the forenoon meeting on Friday, and Hugh M. Matheson, Esq., London, of the evening meeting. On motion the report was approved.

Dr. Dykes intimated that the Presbyterian Board of Publication. had sent 250 copies of a Sketch of the History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, by the Rev. William Henry Roberts, D.D., Assistant-Clerk of this Council, for acceptance of the members of the Council. It was also intimated that 400 copies of the volume of the Proceedings of the last Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England had been placed at the disposal of the members. The Council accepted these gifts with thanks. Further, it was announced that the minister of St. Columba's Church, Pont Street, Belgravia, invited the members of the Council and other Christian friends to join in the service of the Lord's Supper on the afternoon of next Lord's Day at three o'clock. The intimation was referred to the Business Committee.

The Council proceeded to the order of the day, "The Duty of the Church, with reference to Present Tendencies of a more Intellectual Kind bearing on Faith and Life."

The first address was delivered by M. ED. DE PRESSENSÉ, D.D. (Free Church of France), Member of the Senate. Dr. de Pressensé spoke in French; but the substance of his remarks was afterwards given in English by M. Clement de Faye, Geneva.

He said :- -Allow me to offer first of all to the Presbyterian Council the respectful salutations of the Free Evangelical Churches of France, more and more attached to the Presbyterian type in its breadth,

and which endeavour in their weakness to realise its principles while they try to offer the everlasting Gospel to their countrymen.

Having been requested to bring before you a subject of Apologetics, I have chosen (in order not to dwell on generalities) one of the points, the most often attacked to-day, in the Christian field. I am anxious to answer this objection that Christianity is but a product of the religions which have gone before it.

Great strides have been made in recent times in the study of the history of the religions of the Old World. New access has been gained to the original sources, to the sacred books of the ancient East. The Book of the Dead in Egypt, Greek and Latin Epigraphy, the discovery and interpretations of sculptured hieroglyphs, all have contributed to resuscitate the great religious part of humanity.

It has been asserted that these investigations lead to the conclusion that Christianity was the natural outgrowth of the past, and that it is easy to discern what it borrowed from the great dead religions, blending all in one vast synthesis. Our aim is to point out briefly some decisive objections to this view of the question.

In the first place, let us define what we mean by Christianity. Christianity is not essentially either a doctrine, or a church, or a book, but a great fact, the manifestation in a person of the love of God reaching out to save a lost world. Christianity is Jesus Christ. This is the witness of its most authentic documents. Herein consists its originality, its essential difference from all the religions of the past, even the best and purest. It may exhibit analogies of teaching with some of these, but there always remains between it and them just the interval which separates the idea from its realisation, while the idea itself shines out in the atmosphere of Christianity with new and unalloyed brightness.

In the second place, between Judaism and the Gospel the analogies are numerous, for the one was the direct preparation for the other; but even between them there is the scarcely measurable distance that separates the stage of preparation from that of fulfilments. Moreover, the institutions of Judaism were designed for the education of a particular people, and all that was exclusively national and sacerdotal in them was destined to disappear with the accomplishment of the work of Redemption. It is impossible, therefore, to identify the Judaism of the decline with primitive Christianity. Between the two rise the Cross, and the Apostolate of St. Paul. The more scientific study of Christianity in recent times has only vindicated its originality and unlikeness to anything going before.

In the third place, the religions of the Gentile world have their dim foreshadowing of the religion of Christ; but they only succeeded

in raising an altar to the unknown God, a symbol at once of their aspirations after Him who was to come, and their powerlessness to evolve a salvation for themselves. In their teaching they never shook off the fetters of dualism, and always regarded mind and matter as inherently opposed to one another, like good and evil. They never rose to the conception of a holy God distinet from His creation, though some glimpses of this truth seem to have been gained by their great philosophers. Their aspirations far outran their intellectual conceptions. Groping in darkness they sought and cried aloud for the unknown God, and tried to appease Him by their religious rites, in which sacrifice occupied the foremost place. The moral consciousness bore its unwavering testimony through all the ages to the reality of evil and the necessity of redemption. From the pathetic penitential psalms which rise from the plains of Chaldea down to the choruses of the Greek tragedies, we catch the same sorrowful wail of a burdened conscience. Hence the attitude of expectancy common to all religions. But this inward prophecy never fulfilled itself. In spite of all the burning desire for reparation and salvation the moral decadence went on in the ancient world. Thus both by the analogies which it reveals between the human soul and Christianity, and by the picture it draws of man's abortive efforts to save himself, the science of religions is a commentary on what Tertullian calls Testimonium animæ naturaliter Christiana. The more one's conception of Christianity is freed from the scholasticism of all the creeds, and centres in the fact of redemption and in the Person of the Redeemer in His divine humanity, the more we recognise that no formula, no mere symbol can contain this living Truth, the more shall we be convinced of the originality of Christianity as compared with all antecedent religions, and, at the same time, of that responding to the deepest needs of the human soul, which is the truest apology.

In this part of apologetics, as well as in the whole of the discussion, the important fact is not so much demonstrating Christ as showing forth His influence in the lives of Christians and in that of the Churches. Christ living in us is the master-thought of the Gospel, which thus becomes a living experience in our souls.

The second paper was read by Dr. ELLINWOOD, New York (Presbyterian Church of U.S., North), on "The Duty of the Church with Reference to the Speculative Tendencies of the Times."

He said-In this paper on the Duty of the Church in respect to current Scepticism, I shall not attempt to discuss any department of speculative philosophy or criticism, but shall simply deal with certain practical questions which arise in this age of intellectual conflict.

Such questions are not new in the Presbyterian body. Our whole history has been associated with education in the broad sense of learning all that was to be learned, and of defending intelligently the faith once delivered to the saints. This has been a leading element in that so-called Hebraic character which modern criticism has been pleased to ascribe to us.

The forms and methods of unbelief which have been encountered from first to last have been legion. Blasphemous denunciation, scathing ridicule, travesties and burlesques in literature and art, wild ravings of Communism, thin and vapid theosophies, have all done their utmost to overthrow the faith, and yet it has constantly strengthened its hold and extended its conquests.

In considering the duty of the Christian Church thereupon, it will not be necessary to assume any apologetic grounds; Christianity is not beleaguered; it is out upon the field with advancing columns. Yet, like all armies of conquest, it should make thorough reconnaissance of the enemy's position and forces.

There are just now three general lines of sceptical assailment. First in science-particularly in Biology and Metaphysics. By wide inductions of selected facts, and the skilful grouping of certain principles supposed to control all activity and all life, science claims to have reasoned out a universe without Creator, Ruler, or Judge. Consciousness becomes simply a molecular movement of the brain fibre; intuition is but the garnered experience of former stages of our animal history; the human soul itself is the growth of the ages.

Beholding our faces in a glass, we see no longer the image of God, but instead there are shown in the corner of the eye, and in the rim of the ear, slight traces of our long-gone types of animal life. Looking up longingly for an Infinite Father we see only a "death's head" of Agnosticism in the blank heavens, and the only Providence is "a stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Instead of anticipating an eternal kingdom in which we shall be like our Divine pattern, we are told that our immortal hope must be found in the solidarity of an advancing race: we shall be drops in the everflowing sea of humanity.

A second line of attack is that of Destructive Biblical Criticism. It seeks to undermine the Sacred Record. It hunts for contradictions, discredits anthorship, questions chronology, but is reasonably confident of its own theories.

A third field of warfare is that of Comparative Religion. Christianity is allowed an honourable place in the pantheon of ethnic faiths. Its records are acknowledged to have been inspired, as all

works of genius are inspired. And the Great Teacher of Nazareth is admitted to have been superior to Confucius or Gautama— although that superiority is ascribed to Evolution. Thus, in the curriculum through which God has educated the race, He has employed all religions as successive grades. Fetischism was the Alphabet; Brahmanism and Buddhism, as well as Judaism, were among the "divers manners" in which "God spake in times past unto the fathers," while in Christianity He hath in these last times spoken unto us by His Son. Nothing is more specious than this: yet by its plain logic the great work of missions is not a struggle between the false and the true, but simply a rising from the lower to the higher. "The stocks and the stones," as well as the tabernacle and the cross, are among the appliances of Redemption.

Besides these general departments of unbelief there are various unclassified Scepticisms, whose methods are less scientific, but more direct.

Secularism, with great plausibility urges the paramount claims of the present life. In popular fiction or in flippant lectures it ridicules the illusions of Christian hope, and calls for a helping hand to-day. It points to the world's poverty and wretchedness, and rails at the Church for its failure to elevate and relieve, yet itself offers no relief. It poses as the emancipator of men from priestcraft, and the tyranny of an imaginary unseen Ruler. With its bright

"Hellenic culture" it would "throw open the shutters of the soul to the sunlight of the world," and make life genial and interesting now and here. But with the masses the emptiness of all this fine sentiment soon appears. The Secularism which they want is bread and wages. Thus it enters naturally into alliance with all social discontent. In its more violent moods it is mad against God and man. It would confiscate this world and gain possession, and it cares for no other. In the last analysis it is nihilism, and that is always atheism.

While it is admitted that there are multitudes of sincere and honest doubters who are entitled to respect, yet probably nine-tenths of all the positive scepticism of mankind, from Gautama to Schopenhauer, has found its spring in rebellion against the real or imaginary hardships and inequalities of human allotment. The followers of Ingersoll blaspheme against the God of the Bible, but on precisely the same grounds the school of James Mill are equally violent against the Creator of this actual world whose dark mysteries they cannot deny. Both alike have failed to recognise the terrible factor of sin, and the glorious truth that abounding sin and death are met by superabounding grace.