all sorts of injustice that spring from superior personal ability, but it encouraged a false spirit of liberty, and weakened the temper of obedience upon which the stability of society largely depends. Ruskin was no democrat. He was in favor of more government rather than less. The function of government, he held, is not limited to the protection of the individual from actual violence. If the State may call upon every man to defend the general wealth, even at the cost of life itself, then it must do all in its power to secure to every man his share in the general wealth. In a word, it is bound to do for the individual everything it possibly can do.

These three objections, variously enforced and illustrated throughout his later writings, are at the bottom of all Ruskin's arraignment of society. And will most men deny that all three are well taken? We may take offense at occasional extravagance in asserting them; we shall certainly dissent from some inferences he drew from them. No one thinks we must travel by stagecoach and sailing vessel again, or relinquish in any wise our command of material energy and product. Probably no one thinks all taking of interest on capital is immoral. These are vagaries of Ruskin's, prompted by an enthusiastic devotion to his principles, but not logically implied in them. Moreover, it may be admitted that the form in which his teaching is put is now and then overfanciful. We should hardly look to find economic truths in the behavior of crystals or in the songs of Shakespeare's "Tempest." A wideranging imagination, overpossessed by a fervid purpose, discovers analogies in most unlooked-for places. But the core of Ruskin's doctrine was sound. It was an earnest attempt to apply the morality of the New Testament to all the business of men. Christian men should not object to that. And if Ruskin's denunciation was sometimes severe, was it not needed? Is it not needed even now? What are the dangers that most threaten us in America to-day-the aggregation of wealth in a few hands; the corrupt influence of great moneyed interests upon legislation; the resistless tyranny of trusts and combinations; the degradation of great masses of our lowest laborers in factories and mines; the disrespect for law; the insolence of our youth; the general lack of the spirit of obedience in

our civilization—what are all these but precisely the threatening dangers pointed out by Ruskin almost half a century ago? And, on the other hand, we may thankfully note that in many ways Ruskin's teaching has already begun to bear fruit. The hard pedantry of the Manchester school of economics, supreme fifty years ago, is now generally discredited. We are finding that government has some other functions than to see that everybody is let alone. State and city have already begun to look after the health, moral and intellectual, as well as physical, of all their citizens; to remove enterprises affecting the common welfare out of the control of private greed; to interfere with the liberty of the individual, in behalf of the general interest, in a score of ways undreamed of half a century ago. Most of all, a new and broader social sentiment is surely pervading modern thought. It is no longer deemed possible that "an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespective of the influence of social affections." That oncedreaded word "Socialism," though still used to cover a multitude of follies, is no longer a red rag to frighten all conservative folk. The favorite study of the scholar and the statesman is social science, and social science is only the attempt to throw a bridge between Christian ethics and political economy. The best thought of the world to-day is being put upon that problem. For all this we are largely to thank John Ruskin. He was no statesman, no philosopher; he was a man of letters. But the man of letters often prepares the way for the philosopher and statesman. Behind every great movement is a great volume of sentiment. In this case it was

Ruskin who embodied this social sentiment in literature.

But Ruskin was not content to serve the cause of humanity merely by sitting in a library and writing books. He lived the life of a missionary-teaching, lecturing, exhorting; founding schools, museums, libraries; giving without stint of his money, his time, his treasures of art; writing multitudes of private letters of advice; giving counsel and encouragement to all who sought it; filled with sympathy for all hardship, with indignation for all injustice; burning with zeal to secure for everybody some share in the real goods of life. In the early fifties he was among the first of a little band of social

reformers to set on foot a scheme of education for English artisans and establish the Working Men's College, of which F. D. Maurice was president, and with which Charles Kingsley, Tom Hughes, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were connected. Miss Octavia Hill always found him her most generous helper in her work of intelligent assistance for the honest poor of East London. He was left by his father a fortune of over £160,000—nearly a million dollars-but he spent the whole of it in charitable uses. Some of his social experiments seemned quixotic, others trivial; but he knew that, as Burke said, if you want to get anywhere you must start from where you are. If he set some Oxford students at making a road, it was probably because he thought it well those young fellows should find out what manual labor is like rather than because he supposed they would make a very good road. His much-derided Guild of St. George was simply a voluntary association of people willing to help him, whenever opportunity offered, in putting some of his notions into practice. The only pledge of the Guild is a simple but noble resolve which any Christian man or woman ought to be ready to make. But, however visionary some of Ruskin's plans, we can find inspiration in the example of the man who at the height of his fame turned away from his chosen studies, gave up riches and ambition to become a prophet and preacher of righteousness. He did not always prophesy soft things. He was sometimes indignant at us, almost fierce; but never in his own cause. There is not the first trace of a mean personal resentment in his writings or his life. It was much to be without a rival in the magic and mastery of language; it was more to have filled near twoscore volumes with beauty and wisdom, with never a line of vulgarity, or malice, or irreverence; but perhaps the historian will give him the highest encomium when he writes down John Ruskin as a friend of man.

C.J. Winchistro

ART. IV.-SOME PAULINE DATA.

In Paul's conversion the full import of the new faith revealed itself; a world-wide revolution was effected in the germ.-Professor George G. Findlay.

Paul was a born thinker. His mind was of majestic breadth and force. It was restlessly busy, never able to leave any object with which it had to deal until it had pursued it back to its remotest causes and forward into all its consequences.-James Stalker, D.D.

In his trained mind Christian revelation took on a more precise form, becoming a body of doctrine so powerfully constructed that it lasts to-day as the basework of all our theology.-The Abbé Constant Fouard.

Should anyone ask me to name the man who, of all others, has been the greatest benefactor of our race, I should say, without hesitation, the apostle Paul. His name is the type of human activity the most end less, and, at the same time, the most useful that history has cared to preserve.-Adolphe Monod.

Great as St. Paul is, his is not the greatness of the founder of a religion. From first to last he gives only what he has received.-Professor James Iverach.

BIBLICAL exploration and discovery for the past sixty years have ranged around four centers-critical, archæological, Christological, and Pauline. They have dealt with matters pertaining to the structure, history, and textual revision of the books of the Bible; with the topography and antiquities of oriental countries, so far as these have had any bearing upon the Scripture; with the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth; and with the character, writings, and mission of the apostle to the Gentiles. In the present paper we propose to outline the last-mentioned field, moved thereto by the conviction that next to the gospels the most inspiring region of study for the ministry is that which includes the life and epistles of St. Paul. He who vivifies that career by prolonged studymastering the details of the great apostle's history, fitting into their proper niche in that history each one of his epistles, analyzing his character, and getting by degrees a clear vision of the scope and worth of his work-will thereby secure a range and an amount of vitalizing and edifying knowledge, of homiletic material and quickening motives, and an apprehension of God's plan for saving men not to be found outside of this field. It is with the hope of stirring up our younger min

isters especially to study the life and work of St. Paul that we have undertaken the grateful task of preparing this paper, whose aim is, first, to indicate the leading English sources of information concerning him; secondly, to organize and outline the data in question so as to give a compact and comprehensive view of his career; and, thirdly, to suggest some of the qualities and elements of his record which make it pivotal and essential in its relation to our faith.

I. Sources of the Pauline data. The main, almost the only, original sources of information concerning St. Paul are the book of Acts and the Pauline epistles. Little is added to our stock of knowledge by the few personal references to him which are to be found in early patristic writings. With the exception of the first eight chapters the book of Acts is almost wholly occupied with the record made by him from his conversion down to his first imprisonment in Rome, at the end of which the narrative of St. Luke abruptly closes. We speak advisedly when we call this book the "narrative of St. Luke," for after a long struggle between hostile camps in regard to the authorship, authenticity, and validity of the third gospel and the book of Acts it has come to be practically acknowledged by critical scholars of nearly every school, except a few of the radically skeptical and destructive sort, that St. Luke, the companion of St. Paul, was the author of both these books. The intimate connection that exists between the history of St. Paul as recorded in Acts and the different phases of his life as alluded to in his epistles, was never fully discerned until Archdeacon Paley, in a work of singular keenness and logical force, Hora Paulina, demonstrated it in 1790, exhibiting in an ingenious fashion a "series of undesigned coincidences" between the so-called writings of St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles "sufficient to establish the genuineness of both."

Up to the second quarter of the now closing century but little thought had been given to the task of constructing a life of the apostle. The attention of Christendom was strenuously called to his career in 1835-50, by the work of the Tübingen school of German theologians, who, with the great scholar Ferdinand C. Baur at their head, assailed the historicity of Acts and the authenticity of most of the epistles of the New