Hebrew. But the Hebrew word (and so the Chaldee) came, in process of time, to mean world among the Rabbins. The manner of this derived signification may be explained, as it seems to me, by a reference to such passages as Ecc. 1: 4, "The earth (i. e. the world) abideth forever." To call the world perpetuity, then, was an easy matter; and may be viewed simply as an attributive designa

tion = the perpetual. The same may be said of air. Sometimes the secondary sense becomes enlarged, and means the world with its cares, temptations, sins and sorrows. In this sense it is called an evil world, Gal. 1: 4, and Satan is called the god of this world, because it is evil, 2 Cor. 4: 4. Looked at in this direction, aiov seems at times to be equivalent also to the world of men; as when we say: 'The whole world knows or does so or so.' We can hardly give it any other sense in Eph. 2: 2, than wicked generation of living and acting men. Did the disciples so use it? This seems doubtful. But the Apostle (1 Cor. 10: 11) speaks of ensamples under the Old Testament dispensation "for our admonition, on whom và réλn zor aioroor have come,” i. e. plainly the end of the Jewish world or dispensation. He speaks as though this were a familiar mode of phraseology. If so, then why, after all the instruction which Christ had given his disciples about his new kingdom and new dispensation — why may we not reasonably suppose that the disciples meant to ask a question pertaining to that alov, which was about to end? Plainly this would be altogether consonant with the drift of the preceding questions. There is nothing in the preceding part of Matthew's gospel, which leads us to the supposition, that Christ had taught the apostles, or that they believed, the final end of the world was to come at the commencement of the kingdom of heaven. He taught them, indeed, that there would, at some time, be an end of the world, and a general judgment, Matt. 13: 36-43. In Matt. 16: 27, "the Son of man coming in the glory of his Father, with his angels," and distributing rewards according to works, probably refers also to his final coming. But there v. 28 asserts another and a different thing, viz. that there" were some standing there, who should not taste of death till they should see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." The kingdom of Christ was then taking its rise, commencing and growing slowly during his incar nation. After this it was to come with power. Hence the duty of praying: Thy kingdom come! This is one of the ways, the first one, in which the Son of man was to come. A second way is the coming to take each disciple to himself, when he dies, John 14: 3. Another is the coming to destroy Jerusalem. Another is to be at

the Millennium. Then there is a final coming in the glory of his Father, to raise the dead and judge the world. I regard v. 28 here as serving merely to confirm what had been said in the preceding verse. It is as much as to say, the proof that he will finally come and judge the world, may be gathered from the fact, that his kingdom, according to his declaration, shall be firmly established before the generation then living should pass wholly away. This first coming would be the earnest or pledge of his future judicial proceedings and of his rewarding the righteous.

I know not whence then the conclusion is made out, that the disciples believed the judgment-day to be contemporaneous with the destruction of Jerusalem. There is nothing in chap. 24: 1-4 which leads to such a turn of the question on the part of the disciples. It is quite inapposite, unless we can make out a good reason to believe, that the disciples cherished the opinion attributed to them. And I cannot see why we should assume such an extravagant belief on their part, one which was plainly in contradiction to all the current opinions of the Jews of that period on this subject. They expected the Messianic time to continue, at least a thousand years. It was to be the sabbath of the world. Where did the apostles get the notion, that this period was to endure only one generation? Not from Jesus; he taught no such falsehood. Not from the Old Testament; for a long and prosperous reign is everywhere there given to the Messiah. Will the advocates of this notion, then, show us where the disciples could obtain it? Until they do, I must content myself with believing, that the end of the world means what it does in the mouth of Paul, 1 Cor. 10: 11, as quoted above. If so, then all is consonant and harmonious.

But let us go on with the discourse. False Christs are to come; wars are to be frequent; persecution will arise; false prophets will come; the Gospel will be preached wide abroad; the Roman army will invade Judaea; the disciples must flee for safety; false prophets will in vain promise the appearance of a Christ, i. e. of a deliverer; and finally, the coming of Christ to the work of desolation will be sudden and unexpected. The Roman eagles will pursue until they light upon the carcase which they intend to devour.

Thus far as an introduction to verses 29-31, on which I have now been commenting. Then comes the scene of the devouring. It will be a day of awful gloom, as if all the luminaries of the skies were extinguished. The signs that betoken the impending doom will fill the land with bitter mourning and lamentation. But in the midst

of all this, the elect, the true-hearted disciples of Christ, will be safe. His angels will guard them. He will gather them under his protecting winy; "gather them with his arm, and carry them in his bosom."

Here we have a beginning, a progress, and an end. At the end is comfort to the elect, and destruction to the wicked and malignant persecutors.

[To be concluded.]

ARTICLE VI.

THE PRACTICAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY.

By Rev. Charles White, D. D., President of Wabash Çollege, Ia. DIVINE revelation may be regarded either as a body of truths for intellectual inquiry and admiration, or as a collection of rules and motives for the guidance of human life. These two aspects run into each other, but may be properly conceived of and spoken of sepa rately. For its contemplative uses, religion cannot be too greatly esteemed and respected. Its lessons and influences, however, for this real, acting world, where we spend the preparatory portion of our being, are more immediately important and indispensable.

It is the happy feature of our time that religion, like science, has left her cloistered retreats and her abstruse speculations, and passed into the earnest, matter-of-fact concerns of mankind. This decided assumption of the practical on the part of religion, marks the present as a signal era, in her aggressive movements toward the conquest of the world. This was to have been unhesitatingly looked for by all the pious students of the Divine character. A visible and effective industry is a distinguishing attribute of the great Author of Christianity. Said Christ: "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." This, that is, the Divine example, is the great principle of the universe. Christianity without practical bearings would have been an anomaly and a contradiction in the Divine dispensations.

We proceed to consider the fact and the advantages of a practical character in Christianity.

I. First, the fact of such a practical character.

One proof of this may be found in the mission itself which religion is to fulfil in the world. That mission is, in brief terms, to carry light, purity, happiness to the entire family of man. Its great work in this universal sphere is to wake all the immense tract of intellect that slumbers in the nations; to purify all the moral spirit that heaves and glows underneath it; to effect an intellectual and moral creation striking and illustrious like that of the six days of Omnipotence in the beginning. There is included, it is perceived, in such an immense accomplishment, a mission into every heart of a thousand millions, a mission into every such heart, as a place of evil spirits to cast them out, as a place of death to raise the dead, as a place vacant of all moral goodness to settle a family of affections fit for heaven. Such a mission to all that dwell on the face of the earth, a mission charged with such social, intellectual and moral regenerations, leaves no doubt of the character of religion being that of a great practical instrumentality.

A glance at the almost insuperable difficulties to be overcome in effecting the meliorating religious changes indicated, will serve farther to establish the practical nature of Christianity. The contentedness of ignorance with its own darkness; the depth of moral corruption; the inveteracy of human prejudice; the tendency of men to fatal forms of error; these present obstacles and resistances which nothing but an agency most practical can remove. What pains and prayers and incessant persuasions are required to train one child to virtue? What practical power then is wanted to enter a world and cleanse all human thought, all human feeling, all human action? It is to be remembered that the world besides being purified is to be kept clean. Each thirty years presents another thousand millions for the action of Christianity. It has the same great regenerations to effect for each successive generation down to the end of the world. Religion, in order to such a vast and continued accomplishment, must be a perpetual as well as an immense activity.

The practical element in the system of Divine ethics appears in the prominence which it gives to the individual as a responsible actor. Pantheism absorbs man in the Deity. God, according to this form of Atheism, is the immense ocean including all existence; man is a single drop of the grand universal mass, undistinguishable and irresponsible. Other forms of infidelity extinguish all but a single point of man's existence, by cutting off all of it lying beyond death, thus robbing him of immortality. To a being thus narrowed to a

hand-breadth, action or inaction, industry or indolence, have but a slender importance. The Socialists are in danger of sinking and paralyzing the individual by lodging in a community nearly all his independent motives and responsibilities.

In all society constructed under despotisms, monarchies, titled aristocracies, the individual is generalized and much obscured in a great amalgamation known as the national character, will, government. In respect to all private interests, as well as public, the visible organ of authority, the representative of the empire, speaks, arranges, decides; the individual is scarcely known, consulted, cared for. Like one of the boxes or packages of a ship's cargo, he goes with the rest and partakes of the general destiny, not of his own will or wisdom, but simply because he chanced to be stowed away in the hold along with the common mass. Religion contemplates specially our individuality. It clusters upon man a large family of individual duties. It does not overlook his relations to society, nor remit or diminish one claim resting upon him to mingle and move with the mass of the community. But here, in this his social position, where he is wont to be counted, not as a whole but as a small augmentation of a whole, as an infinitesimal of the common mass of public feeling, public opinion, public influence—even here religion follows out her element, her commingled drop, arrests it, and legislates for it as a unit, an isolation! She invests her individual with full, undivided responsibility. She never permits him to merge himself with his fellows, corporate or non-corporate; she never permits a single particle of his conscience to be yielded up on his entering any fraternity; she never permits one item of service to be withheld on the plea that copartners are under equal obligation to perform it; she proposes to bestow her full glorious rewards on him singly, if he singly be worthy; she proposes all her woes to him singly, if singly he be unworthy. By thus separating men from masses and amalgamations, by thus setting down each man apart and constituting him an entirety accountably to breathe, to think, to desire, to will, to act, to attain, religion holds an influence in producing human activity of vast and incalculable power. Left with none to depend on but himself he must act, or gain nothing, he must act, or lose everything. No man has an oarsman to push him while he is asleep. He must up and strike for himself; lustily and alone must stem the tide or be swept on hopelessly into uselessness, ruin and oblivion. The associated fact, ever recognized in the Scriptures, if not by statement certainly by inference, that the great ends of life, not attained personally, are not attained at all; that who VOL. IX. No. 34.

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