attach to the following personal reference made by the bishop: "If spared a few months longer, I shall have completed twelve years of service as superintendent of our missions in southern Asia. For reasons well understood by you all, it may be taken for granted that the General Conference will not again ask me to assume alone a responsibility which is manifestly beyond my strength. Whatever changes may or may not be made, I assume without question that I am about to lay down, in part, at least, a burden which was beyond the strength of any one man at the outset, and which has been steadily increasing ever since. It is not probable that the peculiar conditions which have prevailed during these twelve years will be repeated; and it may even be that this brief period will take its place in the history of our mission as, in a manner, a preparatory episode, during which we have learned many invaluable lessons, and in some measure, at least, it may be hoped, have learned how to adjust ourselves to the stupendous task which will confront us in the early years of the new century."

MISSIONARY STATESMANSHIP.

KARL LUDWIG KRAPF is a name destined to perpetual remembrance in connection with the redemption of Africa. With him and his associate, John Rebmann, began the wonderful discoveries of the last half century of African exploration. They were a year ahead of Livingstone, the South African factor in unveiling Africa. Rebmann's discovery of Mount Kilimanjaro, in 1848, was the stimulus of Baikie and Barth, of Burton and Speke, and even of Livingstone's discovery of Lake Nyassa; for, without knowing that Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza had been discovered, the latter pressed on to find the inland sea of which Rebmann had heard.

Krapf was a missionary statesman as well as hero. Fifty-five years ago, his wife and child having died, he dragged himself from his fever bed to superintend their burial, there being no one else to do it. He went back to his bed, not disheartened, though his heart affections lay buried. He was lonely and still ill, but if he could not work he could think. Think and plan he did. Some thought his plans were those of a fevered brain, chimerical at the best. One of these plans-wild-looking enough then-was that a chain of missions should be established straight across Africa from Mombasa to the Gaboon on the equator, West Africa. That "chain" is not yet realized. If anything, it is as little or less probable than it was when Krapf, two months before his death, in 1881, wrote that missionary agents must "not faint and not rest until a chain of stations has connected East and West Africa, whatever the world and our own incredulity may have to say against this great missionary scheme." That was thirty-seven years after he worked out the thought on his sick bed, by the new grave of his wife and child.

But a great idea is a species of inspiration-if not of revelation—

though the discoverer rarely gets more than a crude conception of what is to be realized from his idea, whether in the department of geography, economics, science, or government. The fundamental plan that Krapf cherished was to biscct the continent. Girdling the continent was already in the plan of evangelizing Africa. From Cairo to the Cape the concept of a line of missions was gradually evolved by Henry Venn and David Livingstone. The lateral line of bisecting was Krapf's-singlehanded or single-headed. Its application, on the geographical basis Krapf conceived, was not found to be the providential way, but the suggestion of a great line of cleavage through this gigantic heathenism was as masterful as that which led to Sherman's march to the sea. It was statecraft or military strategy of the highest order.

By the leadings of divine Providence this conception of Krapf has now almost become a reality-not from Mombasa to the Gaboon, nevertheless, from "salt sea to salt sea. "" The section map of Africa from longitude ten degrees east to forty degrees, and from three degrees north latitude to seven south latitude-that is, of South Central Africa for ten degrees of latitude and thirty degrees of longitude-exhibits a continuous waterway from Mombasa, where Krapf had his vision, to the mouth of the Congo on the Atlantic coast. What would not Krapf have given for such a map ! A hundred years ago the ablest geographers said that Africa was "penetrated by no inland seas, nor overspread with lakes, like those of North America, nor having in common with other continents rivers running from the center to the extremities." Fifty years ago a president of the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain said, "All beyond the coast of Central and Southern Africa is still a blank in our maps." But if Krapf had had the present map, his fancy of a chain of missions across Africa would not seem so extremely bold.

But what have we on this map that casts light on Krapf's apocalpytic vision of a "chain" of missions from Mombasa to the Atlantic? The chain lacks only the filling of two small gaps to enable one to go from Mombasa to the Atlantic and find quarters at a continuous line of mission stations! The American and English Baptists have such stations from the mouth of the Congo to the primeval forests. These touch the Congo Balolo Mission, forming thus an "effective chain" across precisely one half of the continent. A distance of two hundred and fifty miles intervenes-not wholly without missionary operations, but without a mission station-and then we come to the great Scotch and English missions of the lake system and thus to the sea at Mombasa !

There will be no yielding of Krapf's concept till one can travel across the continent on foot and find shelter each night in the habitation of native Christians. It will take time to organize the results of this great missionary cleavage, and we may have to "bequeath," as Krapf did his idea, to those coming after us the filling in of this outline, but it broadens the mind and stimulates the soul to take in these large views of evangelization. It is meat to feed on by which one grows strong.

FOREIGN OUTLOOK.

SOME LEADERS OF THOUGHT.

Erich Haupt. In a commentary on the epistles of the imprisonment-Kolosser-Philemon-Epheser-Philipper-brief, kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament (Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, and Philippians, in the Critical-Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)-Haupt defends the Pauline authorship of those letters, and claims Cæsarea to have been the place of their composition. He has no doubt as to the Pauline authorship of Philemon and Philippians, though he finds it somewhat more difficult to assure himself-which he finally does-that Paul wrote Colossians and Ephesians. The genuineness of these two he tests in three ways: First, by a comparison of the form and contents of their doctrines with those of the acknowledged Pauline letters. In this respect he finds no special difficulty in ascribing them to Paul. Second, by a comparison of the style of these with that of the acknowledged Pauline letters, which he regards as decidedly diverse. Third, by a comparison of Colossians with Ephesians. He thinks that the literary style of Ephesians is so different from the genuine Paulines that its Pauline authorship can be defended only if we are able to account for the new psychological condition which must be attributed to Paul, if we are to suppose he wrote the letter. The first element in Haupt's argument is that the prison letters were written during Paul's imprisonment in Cæsarea. According to him, it was natural to a man of Paul's active intellect to employ his time-probably two or three years-of enforced inactivity and relatively meager intercourse with his congregations while at Cæsarea in thinking through the content of the Gospel and deepening his conception of it. He thinks it natural under such circumstances to suppose that all the earlier and peculiar positions emphasized by Paul-such as the relation of law and Gospel, faith and works-should appear less important, while his evident penchant for the construction of a sort of philosophy of history with the person of Christ as its middle point should come to the front. There can be no doubt that the same man's thinking will be materially modified by his situation and by the demands made upon his thought. If one is plunged into active life, where the needs of the hour must be met, he will be likely to exercise his mind in a common-sense way, and for the purpose of adapting his thinking to the situation. In other words, both the form and the content of the thought of a practical man will be largely determined by the exigencies of the hour. On the other hand, when one is bent upon thinking and has no concrete problems to call forth thought, he will be much more likely to indulge in speculations springing from the

fundamental beliefs of the soul, and the results will probably be quite unlike those of the same individual's more practical life. Hence Haupt feels the necessity of placing these letters during the Cæsarean imprisonment, if they are to be ascribed to Paul. Some critics see insuperable difficulties in the way of Haupt's hypothesis. To this writer these difficulties do not exist. Still, Haupt's hypothesis is but an hypothesis.

Erik Stave. His work entitled Ueber den Einfluss des Parsismus auf das Judenthum (On the Influence of Parseeism on Judaism), Leipzig, Horrassowitz, 1898, is probably destined to lead the way for investigation relative to the origin of later Judaism for some time to come, though we doubt whether his conclusions will be sustained. In order to prove the alleged influence he first calls attention to the contact of the Jews in Babylon, during and after the exile, with the Parsee religion, and to the friendly relations which subsisted for several centuries between the Parsees and the Jews. In addition to this, he claims that during the same period the Jews learned to think more kindly and more justly of foreign peoples, and that while one portion of the Jews became more narrow, others give evidence of a decided widening of their horizon. Thus he prepares the way for the ready acceptance of whatever evidence there may be of Parsee influence upon Judaism. He first compares Ahura-Mazda with Jahweh, and while he finds decided differences, yet he discovers that the former is more like the latter than is any other foreign god. But it is chiefly in reference to eschatology that Stave thinks the dependence of Judaism on Parseeism is to be seen. He shows that in the Gathas-that is, in the oldest portion of the Avesta-there is found a faith in the general resurrection from the dead, in the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked, and in a renewal of the earth after a definite term of years. He thinks that the doctrine of the resurrection of the pious to a reward, and of the wicked to retribution, might have been the product of the Jewish principles, but that such could not have been the case with the apocalyptic and historical-philosophical opinions of the Jews. The Jewish apocalyptic is two-sided: on the one side, the hope of the establishment of the kingdom, the restoration of the splendor of Jerusalem, peace and earthly happiness, and an earthly king; on the other line of ideas it contrasted this world with that to come, resurrection, judgment, heaven, and hell. This second circle of ideas, which does not well fit primitive Judaism, was complete in Parseeism at the time when the two religions were in such close contact, and before they made their appearance in Jewish literature. So that, while some of these ideas might have sprung from Judaism, it is, Stave thinks, practically certain that they were introduced into Judaism from without, that is, from Parseeism. In the latest portions of his book Stave compares Jewish and Parsee angelology and demonology, and concludes that here also the Jews were influ

enced by Parsee ideas. We are not of those who object to the theory of outside influences in the development of the Jewish religion. God may have given other nations some ideas earlier than he gave them to the Jews, and in order that the Jews might at length receive them, modified by the divine Spirit. But the question is one of fact; and it appears that the Jews in Palestine, before and after the exile, were too determined to keep themselves free from contamination to allow such influence as Stave supposes.

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

La morale chrétienne (Christian Ethics). By A. Gretillat. Neuchâtel, Attinger Frères, 1898. The two volumes which constitute this work were preceded by two on propedeutics and two on dogmatics, the six volumes together forming a complete theological system. As Professor Gretillat died in 1894, the work now under consideration was published, as he left it in manuscript, by some of his friends. In the first part of the treatise the author considers the teleological question of the chief end of man. He begins by seeking to answer the question as to how a fundamental moral principle can be discovered. One by one he takes up and rejects the nonreligious foundations of morality, as those also which have no genuinely religious constitution, and reaches the conclusion that the normative principle of all human activity is the glory of God, for which end God brought man into being. Man can best glorify God by loving him, and in Christianity man loves God in Christ. In this part also the author distinguishes the moral law from the law of nature, and from human law, and treats of the various relations which man sustains to the moral law. He concludes that there can be no real conflict of duties. In the second part he treats of anthropology, or man as a moral agent. Man is shown to be in the image of God, a distinction being made between the ontological image of personality and the moral image in conscience. Conscience is primarily an inborn recognition of the fact that there is moral right and moral wrong. In this sense the conscience is infallible; but the moral judgment as to whether a given act is right or wrong is fallible. Throughout his discussion of the original nature of man, the fall, and the effects of the fall, the author is essentially conservative, and, we think, rightly so. In the third part, or the ethology of the subject, he deals with faith as the primal duty of man, of regeneration and sanctification, and of the duties growing out of the relation of love to God and man involved in Christian ethics. This part, which is the main part of ethical inquiry, is relatively too meager. We note also that the ethical relations include the individual's duties toward himself and toward his neighbors, but not toward God. This is, indeed, the ordinary conception, man's relation to God being generally regarded as religious rather than ethical. But, as a matter of fact, God cannot be thus excluded from the sphere of man's ethical relationships. All sentient being, at least,