work out their salvation in some worthy fashion. Are we to understand that those remaining outside are the supersecular elect, awaiting the revelation of some new principle of spiritual salvation more suitable to their superior position? Alas! in sober truth, brother literate non-church-goer, you shall find no other road to salvation than that which has been trodden by obedient feet in all the times of man. Righteousness is salvation. To perceive and obey the eternal laws, the moral order of the universe where you are at school,- this is the task to which you are set, along with your illiterate and humble brother, from whom you are differenced only by your larger responsibility. Righteousness is salvation; and unrighteousness, though it be reading, thinking, active, and covered foot-thick with culture, is damnation!

It is freely admitted that some of the criticism directed toward the church-dogmas and practices is keen, sound, wellplaced, and thoroughly deserved. Much of it, and much of the strongest of it, is from within. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend." The Church is not Christianity, but an instrument for the administration of Christianity; and we very well understand that "we have this treasure in earthern vessels." But much of the outside criticism comes from pure ignorance of the forces actually operating in the Church. Some critics assume a decline of power, for no other apparent reason than to have the pleasure of explaining it. They say society is getting worse, and the Church is failing to arrest the degeneracy. They forebode evil, see rocks ahead, and raise the doleful cry of Cassandra a; but the maggot that troubles them is in their own brain. Some minds are dazed over the magnitude and intricacy of modern civilization. But bewilderment is not likely to be clear-sighted. The man who feels safe in a row-boat, would, when transported to the deck of the great iron steamer in mid-ocean, be agitated by strange alarms. Mighty and mysterious forces are throbbing around him; he does not comprehend them; he distrusts, and apprehends disaster. Yet is the great steam-ship safer than the row-boat, carries more, and carries better, moves faster, and, with a firmer precision guides its huge bulk across the vast sea-mountains to its appointed haven. Danger, indeed, there always is, but it is danger better guarded against.

We hear talk of the decay of faith. There is no decay of faith-there is a change for the better in its objects. Nowhere in

history will you find an age of faith, if this is not one. Timid souls idealize the past, long for the old days, and hug the old ways; but the new are better. Men speak of the decline of religion; but there is no decline of religion. There is a change in theological belief; but that is in the interest of religion. We are to have fewer formulated beliefs, but we are to believe them, with perfect conviction, through and through. There is a rising of other potencies by the side of religion, but they will only relieve it of its usurped functions, leave it free for its appointed work, and become its firm allies. Within the Christian Church to-day, the Augustinian theology is undergoing extensive alterations and improvements, not in deference to outside clamor, but in obedience to that law of progressive self-development which has kept the vast and beneficent organization of the Church flourishing in undiminished potency through so many secular changes. The Church is strengthened, not weakened, by such changes. The Holy Ghost is not a spent force, although

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

Pending these theological reforms within the house, sundry brethren are camping out under temporary shelter-tents, called theism, agnosticism, and the like; while certain others, mistaking the busy sounds of renovation for the tumult of destruction, are shifting as best they can "in the open," awaiting the final downfall of the church, after which they think likely they may take a hand in the edifying of a better one. But the great storm that is to complete the destruction does not come; and on the part of those who have suspended their religious operations to wait for it, there can now be detected a kind of Wigginesque disappointment, so to speak, and a growing disposition to build the tomb of the prophets who have misled them.

The truth is, the wave of doubt and negation, generated by the sudden and vast increase of our knowledge of second causes, which hid from bedazzled eyes for the moment the great first Cause this wave has spent its force without institutionalizing itself outside the Church. It has washed away much superstition; it has greatly accelerated the change of theological sentiment within the Church. And it has left the real lights of science and philosophy in such a mood of intelligent common

sense that, were a crisis to declare itself, in which the only issue was "the Church or no Church," they would rally to the defense of the Church at any cost, and against all enemies. It is probable that most of the non-church-goers would do the same; and the really deplorable thing in the present situation is, that they do not, without waiting for a crisis, at once abandon their untenable position, come into the church, and use their intelligence, respectability, and whatever other power they have, where it belongs and can be made effective. For it ought not to escape their intelligent attention, that the Church is really in the hands of the laity. The great Reformation gave the world that boon, and set in motion the forces that will destroy forever the hateful dominance of the priestly hierarchy. In our reformed churches, men of intelligence, character, and convictions readily become influential, and can shape church methods to the needs of these better times. Not that they can successfully meddle with that pure gold of truth which has on it the divine stamp. "Anybody," said the smart and confident student to Dr. Wayland, "can make such proverbs as those of Solomon." "Sit down and make a few!" blandly responds the doctor. There are possibly some things in the Church which even an intelligent and eminently respectable non-church-goer could hardly better. But the laity can put a stop to the "war-whoop" style of preaching. They can abolish all unworthy and beggarly "side-shows." They can change the aspect of the "money-test" concerning which they are so sensitive. In fact, however, such reforms as these, where they were needed, have already been largely accomplished. There is plenty of preaching that is equal to the highest intellectual demands. In mind, scholarship, variety of culture and accomplishment, and in intelligent interest in human affairs outside the dogma, the Christian ministry has never stood so high as now. The supersedure of the priestly by the manhood function of the ministry has greatly increased its influence and value. There are few communities and few intelligent individuals who do not recognize the worth of the Christian minister to society and life.

There never was a time in the Church when character counted for so much and mere money for so little; nor when the man of moderate means could join the congregation with his family, and worship in peace and self-respect at so little relative money-cost.

JAMES M. PULLMAN.

REV. DR. RYLANCE.

"A Non-Church-Goer" has been a keen observer of certain แ signs of the times" affecting the organized religions of the day, and tells his conclusions to the world in a vigorous style. He never condescends to nice qualifications; sees no merit in the subjects of his criticism; seems not to have the slightest suspicion that anything worth hearing can be said on "the other side." But that sort of temper is apt to carry a man beyond the bounds of discretion, in dealing with questions that touch his antipathies, the judgment being biased by angry feeling. We have evidence of some such disturbing influence having been at work in the mind of "A Non-Church-Goer" in his severe castigation of the religious societies about us. His hatred of the deficiencies and follies he sees in those societies has blunted his power of discrimination, men and things being condemned wholesale, so to speak. He starts timely and serious questions for our consideration, but there is little of the judicial temper shown in his discussion of them. Sometimes they are handled in a way that, to many fair and liberal minded men, will appear offensive, I suspect. In such estimate we may fairly hold, I think, his somewhat contemptuous "fling" at the clergy as a class, as being made up of "intellectual light-weights,"-only "the mediocrities of the seminaries" betaking themselves to the pulpit as a calling. So, too, may we esteem his unqualified charge, that the Christian Church "proscribes thought and free inquiry," and that it 66 cramps the brains of its ministers"; "the superstitious, the narrow, and the morbid" almost wholly composing its congregations to-day, from which "the masculine sex" is rapidly "disappearing." This implies, by the way, a very humiliating reflection upon women.

Now these things are not only in bad taste, but, to a large extent, they are untrue. All professions have weak representatives in their service, the Church having its full share, no doubt; but to speak in a scornful way of the intellectual ability, the learning, the general culture, the liberality, and the broad, pliant sympathy of men in the clerical profession that one could name by the score or by the hundred, is to betray an extraordinary amount of ignorance, or a serious lack of moral honesty. But "A Non-Church-Goer," on second thought, I am sure, would not so speak.

Simply remarking that an exaggerated importance is attached

to the financial impediments alleged to lie in the way of the men who would, but who do not, go to church, I pass to the consideration of matters of serious importance: for there is so much of pith and point in the contribution of "A Non-Church-Goer," and so pertinent are many of his animadversions on existing conditions and tendencies in the religious world, that we can well afford to overlook indiscretions into which his impetuousness has led him.

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Some of the things he emphasizes and complains of it were well worth while for the churches of our time to take heed to. It is high time that their rulers should cease to assume that men and women outside their "folds "9 are totally depraved"; or that a defective creed necessarily means an immoral life; or that eternal damnation inevitably follows from refusing to accept all that the Church prescribes as essential to salvation. Let preachers have done with casting discredit upon "mere morality"; let them frankly and at once give up all of what tradition has handed down to us that a sober criticism has proved to be incredible; and let the "fundamentals" of belief be reduced to a minimum, leaving "ample room and verge enough" for inquiring minds to play freely round all matters of "uncertain obligation." Touching these things, I heartily sympathize with the feeling of "A Non-Church-Goer," the fact being obvious to an honest discernment that there is a vast amount of fine intelligence and of moral worth in the world which acknowledges no allegiance to ecclesiastical authorities, and for which the Church must provide some fitter doom than the "final fire."

I accept, also, the leading assumption of "A Non-ChurchGoer" as in the main sound; for it is notorious that a very considerable number of men in Christian countries are to-day indifferent to the claims and calls of the Church, and it may be-though this I am inclined to doubt-that the number is rapidly increasing. I care not to go to statistics or to census tables for proof or disproof of the assumption. Every Christian pastor knows, to his sorrow, the reluctance of men to submit themselves to any sort of ecclesiastical yoke. Fathers and sons are often absent from church, when mothers and daughters are there. Or if now and then present, from motives of expediency, men very often stand aloof from the real worship and work of the Church, or they look on with a sort of distant