fair and fruitful plain, the elder Abraham, under all the circumstances, should be willing to stay upon the less luxuriant highlands. And with such friendly separations left open to be made, it is not certain that it would be needful or wise to make any essential change in the constitution or the general policy of the Board.

We may fail to consider how much nearer all the earth has been brought to us since our foreign missionary work began, and how much more easily we can pass out upon all lands. Tourists go round the circle of all continents and seas, counting lightly the days. Commercial houses have their branches or their correspondents on all shores. We may have been slow to follow with a like vivacious spirit of Christian enterprise. We may have waited too far for others, and for movements of great combinations. Mexico and the South American States are almost at our doors, and they are drawing yearly nearer. Nothing in distance or hard approach need hinder planting great schools or branch churches in those lands, if we were ready to do it. We can get at the world if we wish to. We have thought, to be sure, that it was safer to commit our gifts mostly to the care of some wide-looking and well-known and thoroughly responsible agency; and this may still be true for the larger part. But there are other modes of watchfulness that may be made available; and the smaller enterprises, with their closer individualisms, may have some fuller use than in the past, and may answer in some things better to the changing and quickening times. The earth at least is open and close at hand; and it need not be reckoned a sheer debarment from entrance, nor in any wise an utter grievance, if some men should go out in a particular association together while all the rest may go in any way besides as they choose.

There was a notable instance not long ago of the sending a missionary abroad by a particular church in an Eastern city. The step seemed bold. Many thought it ill-ad

vised; and some special circumstances connected with it gave rise to a measure of unfavorable comment. But waiving all question of these, the main proceeding was surely not unChristian nor un-Congregational. It was a reversion to Congregationalism in its original type. Thus the Congregational church at Antioch sent forth its missionaries, Paul and Barnabas. Yet it is not clear that they were sent even by any formal action of the church. It is certain that there was no council nor body of churches concerned. Paul was not the agent of churches. He was the maker of churches. The great apostolic Congregationalist went forth, called of the Holy Ghost and followed with prayer and blessing by the company of Christian believers, and the churches of Asia and of Europe flashed into life where he set his steps. Organizations came afterward. Christian men of other denominations got all these churches well tethered together, and drove them on in solid organic form down the heavy roads, with the harnessing straps drawn across their eyes. But that trim and smoothly-handled order of procession has been much broken up in these later times, and the churches have gone on again, numbers of them in a goodly company, as men with sight restored and able to walk and leap and give thanks for themselves to God. They can go now or send where and whom they will and as the Spirit moves them; as was done from Antioch.

The brief record tells us too that there were in the church at Antioch "prophets and teachers, . . . Symeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen the foster-brother of Herod," along with Barnabas and Paul; so that the enterprise began according to what has become an accustomed manner in Christian awakening and enlargement, with a group of men praying and conferring together and stirred by the Spirit of God. So our American Board began. This way of successful undertaking in things small or great

is still open wherever two or three of kindred purpose may be found to enter it. And if one like Paul were again among us, and if our Board were to refuse to send him forth to the missionary fields within its charge-if the supposition may be made—we cannot easily picture him to ourselves as a whit disheartened or set back from going. The Missionary Board, moving or standing, does not block all the highways of the earth. And that any of us forming a body of considerable numbers should be profoundly concerned to go abroad only by its conveyance and hopelessly cast down if we failed of passage by it, is as if an army of men marching on the Western plains were to crowd and push to walk by a single buffalo track, or were to sit down by great companies in despair if their luggage were not to be put all upon a single wheelbarrow. The comparison does a wrong to the accomplishing capacities of the great society, but it does not exaggerate the weakness that would appear with us. We could march over open fields to the conquest of the globe if we had a mind to go, and if the fire of war were in us.—If these sentences convey an admonition concerning the spirit by which we are moved, the writer of them desires to take to himself a larger measure of reproof than he would be willing to put upon any of his brethren.

And now there may be with us many unlike views respecting the exigencies of the present time, or concerning measures of relief or steps of progress. But from our place as Congregationalists, as we look abroad in anywise widely about us we must all have thoughts of gratitude and courage. We are free toward all opportunities. Shining providences have gone before us. The earth is full of the glory of the Lord, as believing men have seen it-a glory which all the faithful have helped to shed upon it. We have ourselves some stock of Christian forbearance and human sense. We observe the distinguishing principles of our denominational order, clear

We con

and gracious wherever they are seen in full action. sider our rights, our independence, our fellowship, all in one circle of thought. We mind but little of rights except for liberty that we may do good to one another. We care but little for independence only that we may be more free to go comfortably together. And we value nothing in fellowship saving as each of our brethren may walk of himself in all the light that falls truly on him. We shall live together in patience and thankfulness and hope. Our forms we make for use and not for observation. Our methods are for powers and for paths to walk in, and not for walls about us or for weights upon us. We shall not ride much upon horses; nor call the work of our hands our gods. We shall grow as in the springtime, by forces both gentle and strong. The Most High Himself will be unto us as the dew unto Israel. Our Congregational branch shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon.

ARTICLE IV.

OLD WINE IN FRESH WINE SKINS.1

BY THE REV. HOWARD OSGOOD, PROFESSOR IN ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

ALL criticism is an incitement to criticism. In the democracy of literature there are no lords with feudal rights and there ought to be no boors. All have equal rights to life, liberty, and the printing of opinions. It is an international democracy in which each one owes allegiance and service only to the truth as he sees it; even in his service respecting the rights of those who do not agree with him. Whatever is said in the following criticism pertains solely to the opinions expressed in the works reviewed, and not to any supposed further opinions by the authors.

These works in many respects have much in common. They both represent the same school of criticism. Their authors are eminent men who have won high rank by their abilities, attainments, and productions. These volumes were written in the past few years under limitations of space by the publishers, and were issued from the press about a year apart. It is not too much to say that both in England and Germany the best man of his school was chosen as the author. If one wishes to learn what is the present accepted criticism of the Old Testament in English and European

1 An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, by S. R. Driver, D. D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1891. (Pp. xxxi, 552.)

Einleitung in das Alte Testament, von Carl Heinrich Cornill, Dr. theol. et phil., ordentlichem Professor der Theologie an der Universität Königsberg. Freiburg, i. B. 1891. (Pp. xii, 325.)