13.

A failure to discriminate between a declaration of the great principles of righteousness which are found in the Old Testament, and special precepts adapted to the needs of the Hebrew people, as civil enactments adapted to special conditions, has often obscured the judgment of men as to the morality of the Old Testament. The moral law, requiring love to God and love to man, is distinctly announced in the Old Testament, as clearly even as in the New; but when practical legislation for the government of society is introduced, the precept seems often to fall below the standard of absolute righteousness. For example, the law of divorce, "If any man will put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement," was a precept given, as the Saviour tells us, because of the hardness of their hearts; no higher statute could be wisely enforced. So with the provision of the cities of refuge, to secure to a homicide a fair trial against the avenger of blood. Why was not Moses directed to establish a court, and provide a trial by jury, for the supposed offender, near his own home? Such provision was impossi-. ble. The people had not attained that degree of selfrestraint and fair consideration which made such a proceeding available. The same is true of the system of servitude among the Hebrews; it unquestionably had some of the elements of barbarism in it, and was in itself undesirable; but the undesirable system could be regulated, and some of its evils abated. Thus, in all legislation for human society, many things must be tolerated, and regulated, that are not approved, and that are at length to pass away.

14.

The failure to discriminate the historical element in the Scriptures, from the didactic, leads to a misunderstanding of their ethical teaching. The practices of good men of old are stated as facts; their polygamy and other imperfect arrangements are presented, but they are not enjoined upon us, or endorsed. These practices may not have been sins to them, because of their comparative darkness;

What Abra

of duty for us; infer that what

but they are not presented for our imitation. ham and Isaac and Jacob did, are not rules and it is a false application of Scripture to God does not seem to condemn in them, he approves of our doing. The attempt to justify slavery and wine-drinking from the Scriptures, rests upon such a misunderstanding; and many well-meant efforts to bring the Bible to bear against slavery, and in favor of total abstinence, involve a similar misunderstanding. The Scriptures were not given to solve the problems of social life, or of every-day personal duty, for all time, except by presenting the great principles of duty, of service to God and man, and offering the highest incentives to its performance. The questions which gather about the subject of amusements, in our day, are settled in the Scriptures, only by inculcating the true spirit of the Christian life, and leaving the practical form of that life to the common Christian judgment. If the Bible had undertaken such a work as is often required of it, it would have been a failure; because it could not be adapted to all men and all times.

15. To the superficial reader of the Old Testament, the conquest of Canaan by the people of Israel, at the command of God, appears offensive and even monstrous-repugnant to Christian morality, and dishonorable to God. A more careful study of the situation will show that the Canaanites were an apostate people with whom the Lord had long borne in their idolatry and oppression and cruelty. He had restrained Abraham and his descendants, for generations, from taking possession of the land, “because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full." The Lord might have swept the people from the land by a famine or a pestilence; but who can say that it was not a necessary lesson to the people of Israel, that they should be called upon to cooperate with Jehovah in his judgment upon a wicked and abandoned people? It was a necessary part of their disci

pline, as it is to-day necessary for every people that they should be required to inflict proper punishment upon crime in their own land. If they are excused from such responsibility, they will themselves lapse into corruption. It is quite possible that, in carrying out the divine command, some of the people might conduct themselves as plunderers and murderers, instead of ministers of the divine judgment. Such men, like Achan, would fall under the condemnation of God.

The Imprecatory Psalms and similar Scriptures are often a stumbling-block. They belong to periods of violence, when righteous authority was in deadly conflict with rebellion and crime. They require stirring external conditions to bring out their appropriateness. During the war of the rebellion, Christian men appreciated them as they had not done before. We needed such a lesson read in the church every Sabbath morning, to prepare us for the services of the day, and the life of the week. The Bible would have been deficient to us, if these parts had been omitted.

16. In general we need to distinguish between objective morality and essential righteousness, in order to explain the conduct and the character of men as presented in the Scriptures, and even the divine requirements. That Abraham, for example, should have been called upon to offer up his son as a burnt offering, is shocking to our later views as inconsistent with the goodness of God; and we are inclined to reject the idea that he could have made such a requirement. It brought no such shock to Abraham. That God required the sacrifice was all that he needed to know, and all that a good man would need to know to-day. In the interpretation and use of the Scriptures, all such facts and principles are to be borne in mind. Revelation and inspiration do not relieve us from the exercise of our judgment as to what is permanent and what is temporary, what is general and what is local; and, practically, such judgment will be brought to

bear, and will guide us in our use of the Scriptures, whatever our theory of inspiration may be.

Having considered, thus, the authority of the Scriptures, we may henceforth employ them, without reservation, in our study of God, his attributes and providence and government, and of man's relations to God.

ARTICLE II.

SOCIALISM IN ITS BEARINGS ON CAPITAL, LABOR, AND POVERTY.

BY THE REV. JAMES MACGREGOR, D. D., OAMARU, NEW ZEALAND, LATE PROFESSOR IN THE FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, EDINBURGH.

CHRISTIANITY, as it does not make believers to be judges or dividers over men in temporal things, confers no special qualification for judging in them. And if in such matters we take it upon us to lay down the law in the name of Christianity, the antichristian arrogation may bring discredit on the usurped name. The present matter is one of science: which reminds us of the case of Galileo's judges, condemning science to be silent, and the earth to stand still. They had no Joshua's power: the earth moved on; and ever since then there has been a perpetual motion of the tongue of infidelity, jeering at Christianity on account of that old stumble of men who took it on them to judge in the name of religion where it has not authorized them. Still, there are aspects of the received economic order which Christianity is specially called upon to consider for its own guidance. And, not assuming to be judges authorized to lay down the law, we will look at matters with a view to seeing what may be the duty of Christians in relation to them, as compared with what socialism prescribes in relation to them.

AS TO CAPITAL.

Socialism proposes to abolish private capital as "a grinding tyrant." And some who are not socialist yet blame the existing system of capitalist employment of labor as bring