HEN Jehovah promised Abraham that in him and his seed all families of the earth should be blessed, there was planted the germ of that faith which has constituted the chief element in the life of his posterity, both natural and spiritual, from that day to this. Very early in the history of his descendants the impression began to unfold itself that it was the purpose of God that they should in the end become the rulers of the world.

      In the time of David this conviction had taken root in the national mind, and was already strong enough to express itself with great distinctness. It constitutes the subject of some of the sweetest songs of the shepherd king. Especially is it the foundation of inspiration of that splendid vision of his illustrious son, in which he beholds upon the throne of Israel a monarch to whom "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents; the king of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts; yea, all nations [48] shall fall down before him; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; all nations shall call him blessed." The spirit of this prophecy was the faith of the nation--a faith which was so deeply rooted in the hearts of all faithful Israelites, that no change could possibly remove it. About three hundred years after David had established his throne in Jerusalem, had blended his spirit with Hebrew literature; and, with the deep faith of his own heart, inspired the songs of the people, came the prophet Isaiah. But not until the fortunes and future prospects of Israel were darkly changed. The kingdom was rent, and both parts of it were in ruins. The royal seed of David, the priesthood, and the people had apostatized, until not a trace of the glory of the reigns of David and Solomon had remained. Assyria, Babylon, and Persia were successively spoiling Samaria and Jerusalem. Even Edom, Moab, and Tyre scorned and insulted the degenerate children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet, from the depths of such hopeless ruin, the son of Amoz, with exulting eloquence, proclaims the hope of Israel: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. In that day there shall come a root out of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious." "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have [49] set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law." "Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will lift up my hand to the Gentiles and set up my standard to the people, and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders, and kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their queens thy nursing mothers. They shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth and lick up the dust of thy feet." "Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of thy Lord is risen upon thee, and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." "For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted." A hundred and fifty years after one of the seraphim had touched with a live coal from off the altar the lips of Isaiah, and long after the heavens were opened to Ezekiel, among the captives of Israel by the river Chebar, and the eye of Jeremiah had trickled down without ceasing because he saw the city solitary that had been full of people, appeared the prophet Daniel, the counsellor of Nebuchadnezzar, and the ruler of the province of Babylon. The Assyrians had made the mountain of Ephraim a wilderness, and "Judah had gone into captivity because of affliction and because of great servitude." "The Lord had covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel." Her enemies had passed by and clapped [50] their hands at her. They had hissed and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying "Is this the city that men call the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?" Her princes, her priests, and her people had "sat down by the rivers of Babylon; yea, they had wept when they remembered Zion. They had hanged their harps upon the willows in the midst thereof," and mourned in songless silence over the buried hopes of their wasted nation. Thus when the Hebrew nation was destroyed, when, according to the calculations of human sagacity, even the hope of its reorganization and of its human triumphs had utterly perished; when the monarch of the world's empire, who had carried them into captivity and dispersed them through the provinces of Babylon, that their name as a people might be forgotten, was lying in his palace and dreaming of his future greatness, his spirit was troubled by the appearance of a great image, whose brightness was excellent and the form thereof was terrible. And when all the wise men of his kingdom failed to show him his dream or the interpretation thereof, then there was found a man of the captives of Judah who showed the dream, described the great image, and revealed the interpretation. The interpretation of the king's dream was a sublime procession of the great empires that were to fill the then inhabited earth. As these vast monarchies, with their subjects, provinces, and captive nations passed in stately session across the field [51] of the prophet's vision, what could a captive Hebrew, whose nation as such had been swept away by their power, hope for the future of his people? Yet, while Daniel was still beholding the last and greatest of them all, devouring, breaking in pieces, and bruising all the nations of the earth, the deathless faith given by promise to Abraham, sung by David and proclaimed by Isaiah, came out of his heart in these remarkable words: "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these other kingdoms; it shall stand forever."

      This great man seems to have been intentionally placed by Providence in the position most favorable for observing the movements of the kingdoms and empires of earth, that from these he might educe his prophecies concerning the future history and destiny of all nations in all coming ages, by a sort of divine sequence. Standing at the right hand of the throne of the greatest power on the earth, he lived to see the rise and fall of some of those mighty kingdoms whose fortunes he had beheld in his wonderful visions. In the first year of the reign of Belshazzar, King of Babylon, there was given him another vision of the four great empires, at the close of which he expressed, still more clearly and strongly, the faith and the hope of Israel: "And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom [52] under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and all dominions shall serve and obey him."

      These predictions and a multitude of others like them, formed the ground on which rested the expectation of the Messiah. It is true that, by construing the prophecies literally, the Jews misconceived the nature of the kingdom promised them, and then of necessity the character of the king who was to fulfill these sublime predictions. But it can not be said that the faith which filled the Hebrew heart, from which, as from a never-failing fountain, has flowed all Hebrew life, which gave form and color to all their literature, and which time and its revolutions have found to be indestructible, was wholly false. The final domination of Israel over all the inhabitants of this globe is as clearly predicted as the coming of Christ, and belief in the fulfillment of the one involves belief in the final fulfillment of the other.

      The actual coming of the Christ has not changed the fact of such a faith in the hearts of men, but only the form of it. From the day that Jesus called to him, from their boats on the waters of Galilee, the sons of James and Zebedee, there has been in the hearts of his disciples a deep and ever-increasing conviction that the human race would in some way or other be brought under his dominion.

      Listening daily to his words and witnessing his mighty works while he was with them on earth, the [53] confidence that it was he who was the blessing of Abraham, the Son of David, the King foretold by Daniel, was growing stronger and deeper. The disappointment expressed in those touching words of some of the disciples, "We trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel," shows the strength which their faith had attained; and after his resurrection was known by them, and they had collected again about him, the question, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" reveals the same faith still looking to the supremacy of Israel over the nations of the earth, but expecting it now through him.

      Precisely in harmony with the prophecies to which we have referred was the commission received by the apostles from him who was now come to fulfill them. Sanctioned by all authority in heaven and upon earth. It read: "Go ye, therefore, disciple all the nations." They waited in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high, and then in the fulness of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with the higher interpretation of the Hebrew prophets, and with the whole life of Christ brought afresh to their remembrance, with every act and word with all its mighty import to them and to the world lying forever open before the eye of the soul, they went forth armed to the conquest of the nations. And when they saw the whole creation travailing and groaning together in pain under the weight of its inward evils and outward griefs, and felt that [54] the grand purpose of their mission was to make known the life, the death, the resurrection and the coronation of him who had come to bring glad news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to open the prisons, of them that were bound, and to set at liberty them that were bruised, is it not wonderful that they should have thought such a message, before such a world, would draw all men after their Redeemer and King?

      Can the language of the Hebrew prophets, illuminated and extended to its true signification by the Dayspring from on high, and the vast meaning and purpose of the life Christ expressed in the words of the commission of the twelve apostles, fail to establish in the hearts of all who receive the Old and New Testament Scriptures as true, the belief that it is the clearly expressed purpose of Jehovah to give the empire of the world to the saints? Such, we have already seen, has been their faith and their hope in the ages past, and such it must ever be until the trumpet of the seventh angel shall sound, and there will be great voices in heaven saying: "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever." If it be said that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual, and therefore has nothing to do with the kingdoms of this world as such, it will be enough to reply, that to the extent to which the reign of Christ over the spirits of men shall become universal, to that extent will it become outward in its [55] manifestations. This thought is so well expressed by Trench, that I am induced to avail myself of his language. Alluding to the examination of the Savior by Pilate, he says: "The practical Roman saw as much as the natural man could see of this in a moment, that the question at issue between Christ and the world was not a question of one nation and another, but of one kingdom and another; and seeing this, he came at once to the point: 'Art thou a king then?' And that empire which tolerated all other religions would have tolerated the Christian, instead of engaging in a death-struggle with it to strangle it or be strangled by it, but that it instinctively felt that this, however its first seat and home might seem to be in the hearts of men, yet could not remain there, but would demand outward expression for itself, must go forth into the world and conquer a dominion of its own, a dominion which would leave no room in the world for another fabric of force and fraud!"

      With the word of prophecy made more sure by voices from the excellent glory, and with a commission bearing with it the authority of Him whose power they had so often witnessed, and whom, after he had led captivity captive, they had seen ascend to the right hand of the Majesty on high, giving them, as he arose, a pledge of his presence and co-operation to the end of the world; let it not surprise us if, with these transcendent facts immediately before them in the freshness, and power of their faith, and the [56] strength and splendor of their first hopes, they contemplated the conquest of the world as near.

      This lengthened introduction will prepare us for some questions which will constitute the real subject of this article. Have the prophecies, that shone in starry beauty over the darkness of those long past ages, ever found their fulfillment? Or, have the hopes which put forth their blossoms in the dawning light of the rising Sun of Righteousness ever found their realization? Christianity has been in the world now nearly 2,000 years; how far have the results of the labors of all those long centuries corresponded with the promises made at the beginning? Has the world ever been converted to Christ? The thoughtful reader of the history of Christianity is compelled to answer: No. Notwithstanding the nature of the message contained in the glorious gospel of the blessed God, the preaching of the apostles, the sufferings of martyrs, and the toil and sacrifices of the disciples in succeeding ages, but a comparatively small fraction of the human race has ever acknowledged the power and authority of Him who was declared to be both Lord and Christ.

      Still another question meets us; one which, most of all, commands our interest, namely: Does the present condition of the religious world point to the fulfillment of our hopes? The religious powers now at work on the globe, do they give us any assurance that they can convert any large portion of mankind to Christ? A serious examination of the available [57] data necessary to render a candid answer to this question turns our hearts into sadness. Truth compels the statement, however solemn and painful to Christian philanthropy, that the world, considered as to its whole population according to its best calculation that human wisdom can make, is not even in the process of being converted to Christ. Does this startle you, Christian reader? If so, wait and hear me. If true, it ought to startle and alarm all Christendom. Look with me at a few facts, and then think.

      In the April number of the Millennial Harbinger for 1863 is published the latest statistical report that has come under the observation of the writer. The facts published in that paper purport to have been taken from a table prepared by Prof. Schem, editor of the National Almanac. In that report the total population of the globe is estimated at about one billion, 300,000,000 of which, the total Christian population, counting in all the sects laying claim to the name, is about 357,000,000, leaving the earth's unconverted masses about 943,000,000. Now in all the estimates made in the early part of this century from the best data that could be furnished from all sources, the latter number was set down at 800,000,000, so that if such estimates can be taken as even approximately true, the unchristianized population of the globe has gained on all the churches in the world, nearly 150,000,000 in a little more than half a century. But if we take what is here called the Christian population of the globe, and subtract from [58] it the unconverted, the result is more painfully discouraging. For if we should say that but a small proportion of the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic, and some of the other national establishments of the Old World, into which children are born and grow up as they did in the Jewish Commonwealth, are converted, facts would sustain the statement; but, if we subtract one half, we have only 178,500,000 out of the entire population of the globe converted, and who will say that there is even that number? Leaving 1,250,000,000 of the earth's inhabitants, of whom it can be said every moment, so far as Christianity is concerned, they are dying unsaved.

      What is Christianity doing to convert America today? The census of the United States shows that in the decade between 1900 and 1910 the population of our country increased twenty-one per cent and Christianity increased twenty-one per cent. In the land most favored by the Christian religion we have barely held our own with the increase in population. Going into more detail, I notice that the great Methodist Episcopal Church during the year 1912 increased only about two members to each congregation. This is one of the most vital, aggressive and active religious bodies among us today. The average increase in the membership of the Northern Presbyterian Church is a little over one for each of its churches. The average increase in the Protestant Episcopal Church is a trifle over two for each church and the Disciples of Christ would probably number [59] about the same. According to Dr. H. K. Carroll, the average increase in all the Churches in America for the year 1914 was only two per cent. This much for Christianity in America.

      What is its condition in England? A religious census recently taken by one of the large daily papers of Liverpool shows that in the previous decade the Anglican Church made a decline of 9,900 members, the Non-conformist bodies made a decline of 14,200 members; among these the Congregationalists show a decline of 1,850, the English Presbyterians of 1,500, the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists of 400, the United Methodists of 700, the Primitives of 150, the Wesleyans barely held their own; the Roman Catholics held their own with the increase in population.

      If we leave England and go to the heathen countries we find a still more startling condition of things. When William Carey, after careful study, made a report one hundred and twenty-five years ago, he gave the population of the non-Christian world at 550 millions; Warneck today gives the population of the non-Christian world at 1,050 millions. If these figures be correct, the heathen world has increased since foreign missions have been prosecuted 500 millions of people. Allowing for mistakes in Carey's estimate, we can safely put the increase of the non-Christian world at 300 millions.

      In short, after one hundred and twenty-five years of our missionary propaganda, we find less than [60] three millions of converted heathen and three hundred millions more heathens than when we began; and these facts are no reflection upon our foreign missionary work. We have accomplished in that direction all that could be hoped for under existing conditions. (I am a hearty supporter, with tongue and pen and purse, of our foreign missionary work, but I must recognize the fact that for every heathen that has been converted to Christianity, heathenism has brought 100 others^* into its darkness.)

      These are a few of the facts that have forced the melancholy and startling statement already made, namely, that the world, looked at in relation to its whole population and the religious potencies now operating upon it, is not even in the process of being saved. Preachers and other religious partisans who hasten every year to report the numbers they have gained in particular communities, and to publish the rate of increase in their respective little parties, fail to tell how much the great world outside of the churches has grown at the same time. It is certain that the most favorable estimate in behalf of the churches of Christendom will show that the world is gaining on them every year.

      What then! Have the promises to Abraham, by which he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, proved, after all, vain illusions? Shall the sweet strains of the Hebrew [61] enraptured visions of Isaiah, by which his soul was borne away from the evil days of Ahaz to behold with exultant joy the coming of the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Father of the everlasting age, and the Prince of Peace, to be regarded as the fantasies of a wild imagination? And those most marvelous dreams of the prophet Daniel, by which the tears of the exile were dried, and Jerusalem still remembered above his chief joy, are they to be considered as nothing but dreams? Have all those holy men who walked by the light of these promises, seeing them afar off, being persuaded of them and enduring as seeing Him who is invisible, lived and died in a vain faith? And is it in vain that the Redeemer has come to Zion travailing in the greatness of His strength, mighty to save? Has He borne our griefs and carried our sorrows--was He wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, and yet not to see the travail of His soul and be satisfied? Have the everlasting doors been opened wide to receive the King of Glory, and yet is the dominion under the whole heavens not to be given to Him? To all of these questions we say: No! They do not form the conclusions to the premises stated above. But there is an answer to the question, what then? which is so palpable and overwhelming that it is forcing its way into the minds of the best thinkers of the age. [62] It is this: The present religious organizations of Christendom have no power in them to save any large proportion of mankind. It is not that Christianity is a failure. The gospel is adapted to all the wants of human nature. It is the power of God for salvation, and it can and will save all men who believe. But the religious powers on the globe, after having ample time to make a full trial of what they can do to save the human race, have demonstrated clearly the fearful fact that they are wholly inadequate to its accomplishment. To a thoughtful mind this conclusion is solemn beyond expression, and it forces from the heart the painful inquiry: Why is this? Is it a revealed purpose of God that any large part of mankind is to be converted to Christ, or are we to be driven to the dreadful alternative that nearly all of our race are to be excluded from the great redemption? Who is prepared for this conclusion Y If so, what means the Old Testament by all those promises, to some of which we have referred? What means the commission to the apostles? Have the inspired men of both Testaments, and the great and good who have believed their teachings in all ages, indulged in a faith which is groundless? And cherished hopes which are to have no realization? If it is not so, whose fault is it that so few comparatively are being saved?

      This seems to us the most ponderous question which can engage the minds of this generation; to its investigation, therefore, we now propose to direct [63] the attention of the reader. The apostles themselves, in the course of their ministry, encountered this gloomy difficulty. And, perhaps, if we attentively examine the reasons assigned by them why all were not converted to whom they preached, we shall obtain some assistance in finding the right solution.

      The apostle Paul has left on record the inspired account, which he rendered to himself and the world, of the rejection of the gospel by the two classes of men to whom he preached it. We cannot think that such a record was made without a special design, or that it was intended for only the age in which it was written. In the first letter which he wrote to the Church at Corinth he makes the following statement: "For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." These are the causes which prevented the Jews and the Greeks from receiving the preaching of the cross. The devotion of the Greek to the pursuits of philosophy, and his proud confidence in those systems which the surpassing intelligence of the great thinkers of his nation had produced, was that which made the promise of life through a crucified Messiah seem to him foolishness. The Jewish scribe also had his eye fixed upon a system of life derived from the study of the law and the traditions of the elders, and in it his confidence was so great that he demanded both from the Saviour and his apostles a sign from heaven before he would consent to hear them, and [64] when the cross of the Crucified was placed in the pathway of his self-righteousness he stumbled and fell. It is not without special significance that the spirit of inspiration has pointed out these two great divisions of mankind, and fixed the attention of the reader of the New Testament upon the central point in the life of each as the reason of their rejection of Christianity.

      Nations do not come into being by accident, nor is the part performed by each one in placing its link the chain of universal history a mere fortuity. There is a divine plot in the great drama of the world's national life. Each nation has its part to perform, some the great principle to illustrate before the eyes of humanity, which is necessary to make up and bring out the final denouement. Now here are two nations that have performed their parts and have passed away. The curtain has fallen behind them ages ago. What were they here for? In the great plan of God's providence, what principles have they illustrated and given to the world?

      To understand this question, let us first place before our minds the two great departments of human nature, namely, the intellectual and moral; then let us glance the eye along the line of human history, and behold humanity struggling to comprehend itself, and to work out its destiny at one time on the ground of its intellectual strength, and at another on that of the force of its moral integrity. Then let us look at the two great divisions of the human race [65] mentioned by the apostle Paul, each representing its side of human nature, and throwing its light on the solution of the vast problem of humanity.

      In reference, then, to what the civilization and national life of Greece meant for the world, while the politician seeks his solution in her forms of society, in the annals of her struggles and her failures, her triumphs and her defeats, in the examples of her statesmen, in the genius and heroism of her generals, and in the eloquence and patriotism of her orators,--while the philosopher finds his in the achievements of her transcendent intellects, the teachings of Socrates, the dreams of Plato, the reasonings of Aristotle, Zeno, Pythagoras, and their successors,--and while the poet and the artist has each his department in the matchless beauty of her literature and ruins of her imperishable art,--let us, as Christian philosophers, while conceding that the remains of that marvelous people have been precious to the world in all these respects, maintain the higher stand-point given by the apostle to the nations. Instead of regarding either of these departments as a life within itself, let us contemplate the meaning of the whole problem of Greek life in its relation to the redemption and destiny of man in the book of revelation.

      Man has ever been saying, especially among cultivated nations, that he can rely upon the achievements of reason to discover the truth which he needs, to find a remedy for his evils and sorrows, and the source whence to supply all the wants of the soul. [66]

      Knowing that this perverted confidence is so deeply imbedded in his nature that nothing but experience can detach him from it, the Author of his being, in wisdom and kindness, has permitted him to make the experiment. For that purpose he gave the Greek mind, invested it with powers such as he has bestowed upon no other people, and these he touched with a perfection of finish never equalled since that nation perished. With such intellects, in the midst of circumstances most favorable for their full development and free exercise for a period of more than 500 years, or, if we estimate the whole time which measures the history of Grecian literature as necessary to the culmination of their intellectual perfection, more than 1,000 years, was the experiment being made. When the apostle was at Athens and Corinth it was complete. The immovable superstition which he found in the former, and the moral corruption in the latter, proclaim the result. The conclusion is palpable. No intellectual endowments, no effort of human reason, however stupendous and far-reaching it may be, has any power to lift the burden of guilt and sorrow from the heart of man, or, in the summary of the apostle, the "wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" needed by him is utterly and forever unattainable by any system of human philosophy. But if man has become vain in his reasonings, his foolish heart, by its proud confidence in the strength of its virtue, has been darkened; hence, as a warning against this [67] universal danger, another people, with a different cast of mind and another form of civilization, has left him its history and the lesson which it teaches. If in Greek civilization the intellect always and everywhere predominates, in the Jewish the moral nature is developed to an extent never found in the history of any other people. In Greek literature, the order, symmetry, and beauty which intellect creates reigns supreme in poetry, history, philosophy, and the arts. In Hebrew we have the instincts of the heart, the longings of the soul for the unseen and the infinite, the movements of which are too sublime for the regular processes of logic. Hence, if in Hebrew we look in vain for the unity and harmony of Sophocles, the philosophical order and graceful arrangement of Thucydides and Xenophon, the always studied conciseness, grace, and energy of Demosthenes, and the perfect logic of Aristotle, still less shall we find in Greek the deep natural pathos of Job, the simple unapproachable sublimity of Moses, the heart-gushing lyrics of David, or the spontaneous and never-wearied flight of Isaiah. The natural orbit of the soul described by the movement of such spirits as have given us our Hebrew Bible may be irregular, yet it is inconceivably above that of Greek intellect.

      With a people thus constituted and exactly adapted to it, was the experiment made for the moral nature of man. That it might be perfect, they were transferred to a country isolated from all others by [68] its natural boundaries; the mountains of Lebanon on the north, the Desert of Arabia on the east and south, and the Mediterranean Sea on the west. To make the isolation more perfect, the rite of circumcision was given them, which separated each individual from all other peoples. Then, to test the moral strength of human nature, there was given them a law, holy, just and good, which they were exhorted to keep, by the promise of every material and moral good, and against the breaking of which were threatened the severest penalties. They were commanded to teach it to their children on all occasions. It was illustrated daily in the Temple worship, and afterward read in their synagogues on the Sabbath day. They were allowed fifteen centuries to make the necessary trial, and when Christ, "the end of the law," was in Jerusalem, her moral condition was almost, if not quite, as sad as that of Athens and Corinth. The highest classes of her people, Scribes, Pharisees, and lawyers, he likens to whited sepulchres. The Temple itself was made a den of thieves. The testimony of Josephus, their own historian, in innumerable passages reveals the melancholy fact that the nation was a moral wreck without the hope of recovery. The conclusion becomes inevitable, that man has as little power in his moral nature to save himself as was shown to be in his intellectual.

      When this great argument of God with man, one of whose premises was fifteen hundred years being formed, and the other more than a thousand, was [69] complete, these civilizations began to pass away. There was nothing more that they could do for the human race. They had taught all that they were sent to teach. The national life of the Greek and of the Jew was done forever. They had revealed the utter helplessness of man on both sides of his nature, and made known the mournful fact, that there was no remedy either in the one or the other that could reach his condition. Then it was time for Peter to appear in Jerusalem, and Paul at Athens, preaching Christ and him crucified; though to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness, yet, to them that believed, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

      By the light of this great demonstration, we may now return to the question: Why are so few of the earth's unsaved millions being converted to Christ? We are now prepared to affirm that the greatest of all reasons--that which has stood in the way of the world's conversion for ages, is the fact, that the warning of these departing nations has been unheeded. The apostles, and those who immediately succeeded them, by preaching the cross of Christ proved, by the successes which attended their efforts, that the gospel has life and power in it enough to save the world. But a little more than two centuries after the last apostle was dead, the Church began to try to improve on the apostolic method. It was determined to put Christianity into what is now termed a scientific form--to convert it into a [70] system of doctrines, which could be stated in logical propositions. Each of these was made an article of faith. The seat of Christianity was removed from the heart to the head. These systems, and the intellectual conflicts which forever spring from them as inevitably as leaves and blossoms from buds, took the place of the simple, living, loving trust of the soul in the person of Christ. The old Greek life which had engulfed in moral ruin, not only themselves, but all nations which had derived their civilization from them, began to be repeated in principle, and then began that tremendous apostasy which culminated in the dark ages, and left the world Romanish as the final result. This failure, more appalling in the moral depravity which it produced than both the others, was the result of an experiment made from the union of Greek philosophy and Jewish legalism.

      When human nature was so deeply outraged by the dreadful corruptions, cruelties, and abominations into which it had been dragged by this perverted system, that it could no longer tolerate it in silence, began those indignant protests, called reformations, from which have grown up the Protestant denominations of Christendom. Each one of these in its turn, noble in its origin, and great in its first progress, promised to realize the hopes of that kingdom of truth and love which the hearts of men have cherished in spite of all failures, which the deepest abysses of darkness and woe into which they have fallen could never entirely wrest from them. But so [71] deeply rooted in our fallen nature is the old vanity of the intellect and the pride of the heart that every sect in the world has fallen into the same fatal error, is repeating the same sad experiment, and is promising to mankind the same mournful failure.

      Without regard to chronological order, we select one of these systems, which, in respect to the point to be proved, represents all. The history of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith is as well known as that of any denomination. It was produced by a body of men possessed of as much ability, piety, and learning as could at the time it was made have been collected on the globe. It is the result of deliberations and discussions of more than a hundred ministers, besides distinguished laymen, continued, without intermission, for a period of five Years--from 1643 to 1648. It is not necessary to our purpose to discuss the truth or falsity of its doctrines; so far as the argument is concerned, we might assume them all to be true, the simple fact that we want to use is this: That it consists of a set of abstract propositions, supposed to contain, in a scientific form, the teaching of Christ and the apostles.

      Now suppose we grant that these propositions were formed by men of the greatest minds and the most profound learning then on the globe; of course, the greater the mind and the deeper the learning, the more abstruse will be the propositions in which they affirm their conclusions. It is notoriously so in this case. It requires more study and time to master the [72] Assembly's Confession and catechism than to become well acquainted with the life of Christ. But the argument is especially concerned with the nature of the process. When you put the Confession of Faith into the hands of a child, you have given him a set of abstract propositions to study which it required men of mature minds, some of them of immense learning, years of profound thought to produce. Now the faculties which he exercises in obtaining a knowledge of those propositions are the same that he would employ in studying a problem in algebra or geometry, and the process is precisely that by which the mind acquires a knowledge of the abstractions of Plato or Pythagoras. It is simply the exercise of the intellectual powers.

      The same can be truthfully affirmed of every Protestant sect. The Episcopalians have thirty-nine of these abstract propositions; the Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, etc., many. Every sect has its view of Christianity made into a scientific form, logically stated, in propositions, which, when taken together, make up its denominational system. Each system has for its object to convince the intellect that it is true and all others false; and in this conviction there is no religious element whatever.

      The result is as patent as it is mournful. Among the thousands claimed to be under the influence of these systems, a large proportion have intellects thoroughly convinced-are intense partisans of some religious philosophy, while their hearts have no [73] living faith in the living Christ, and they do not even profess to be Christians.

      But it will be said that a certain proportion of the adherents of these theories do confide in Christ crucified. This is freely admitted; we are thankful for all the faith that any human heart reposes in the Messiah, and pray that it may abound more and more; but this does not change the historical fact that there is even among those who so believe an element in that every belief which has for its object the intellectual system which each has embraced, and to this element is attached the chief importance.

      It is a fact that the chief labor in denominational seminaries is bestowed in the preparation of young men for making proselytes to these theories, and, as a necessary consequence, a large amount of the talent, the learning, and labor of the whole protestant pulpit is expanded for the same purpose. Hence out of the whole number converted to these systems only a comparatively few are converted to Christ. Here, then, we find the answer to the question: Whose fault is it that so few of our race are being saved?

      Jewish legalism tried for fifteen centuries on the side of man's moral nature to accomplish the salvation of the race, and ended, as we have seen, in a mournful failure. Human reason for more than a thousand years held the brilliant torch of Greek philosophy over the pathway of humanity, and then threw it down in grief and despair. Romanism, combining both of these, with some of the elements [74] of Christianity, tried for a period of 1,200 years to save the human race, and plunged both the intellect and the heart into an abyss of darkness.

      Protestantism has had nearly 400 years to test its power in the conversion of the world, and its failure is becoming painfully intelligible to the best minds' in both the Old World and the New. The world has already obtained from it what good there was in it. There is but little more that it can do. And yet those prophecies that have planted in the human heart a deathless faith in the universal dominion of Christ seem as far from fulfillment as ever.

      If, now, from this position we turn our eyes toward the future, and inquire what must be the next great movement that may affect the destiny of our earth's population, there seems to be, from the whole premises now before us, but three things possible The mind of humanity may return along one of the/ two great routes over which it has traveled to its present position, or it may find some other way in which to move forward; that is to say, the human race may return to Romanism, which has absorbed into itself the experiment of Jewish legalism; or it may fall back into rationalistic infidelity, which is only a new version of Greek philosophy; or it must move forward, walking by faith in Christ. The moral condition of the human race at the time when Christianity was first introduced reveals the possibility that under the perversion of false systems a large proportion of mankind may become infidel. [75] The condition of Christendom before the birth of Protestantism proves that a large part of the human race may become Roman Catholic; and the condition of the civilized world before Christianity was corrupted, by being converted into a mixture of false philosophy, religion, and superstition, shows that the whole world may become largely Christian. Leaving out the question which is the most probable, these three things alone seem possible; for with the history of Protestantism before us, and its present condition, to believe that any greater proportion of the human race will ever become Episcopalian,. Presbyterian, Baptist, or Methodist is now simply impossible. Intelligent men in these denominations may hope that their churches may increase in numbers in some particular localities as the population of the earth grows; but that any intelligent man can seriously imagine that Protestantism can ever gain on that population we can not believe for one moment.

      Another consideration already hinted at may be mentioned confirmatory of this position. If there is to be any further progress of the human race at all, it must be along some line not described by the movement of either Romanism or Protestantism. From created fountains the streams all flow down, never up; so of all systems created or arranged by the human mind; the forms of life which have flowed from them have ever tended downward. Even Judaism produced its best fruits soon after its establishment; after that it degenerated to its close, as a civilization. [76] Greek philosophy exhibited some splendid examples of manhood at its beginning,, and then sank lower and lower to the end. So of Romanism; we must go back more than 1,000 years, to find those men who were termed the fathers of the church. Lutheranism too; think of the characters it produced in the sixteenth century, and then of what it is doing now. Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, Baptistism, Methodism have all done their best work long since. In the fruits which they may continue to produce they can never ascend. It belongs; to uncreated, infinite, and eternal truth to move in lines ascending forever. If, then, there is ever to be any coming, in the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, it must be in a way marked out by something else than these systems.

      If, then, the present religious organizations of Christendom are to continue, the conversion of the world is an absurdity, and the millennium a dream; no conclusion, it seems to us, can rest on a more solid foundation than this. But the Scriptures tell us that "the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdom of our Lord and His anointed." Now the only power which. Christ has, in this dispensation, of winning for himself the empire promised Him is by gaining the faith and love of the human heart. It is only through these that he can exercise dominion over the souls of men. It was in view of this fact, and the great failures of human nature to which He alludes, that the apostle Paul so earnestly affirmed [77] that the only thing left for man was "to preach Christ and him crucified; to plant the faith of mankind, not in wisdom of men, but in the power of God." He knew that the diseases of human nature were too deeply seated to be removed by any system of philosophy or of law-keeping morality. They require a person, a living being; hence he brought no persuasive words of human wisdom, but the Healer of the woes of the human heart--Jesus the Christ. The world had said to him, when He came to bind up the broken-hearted: "Physician, heal thyself;" and having shown them that he was a man of sorrows like themselves, suffering before them even unto death, He came hack from the grave the Great Physician, healed, able now to help all who were tempted. It is no abstract proposition, no doctrine, no process of logic, that men need; but the Almighty hand of this living and ever-present Helper, and this hand is laid hold of by faith, not in a system, but in Him.

      When the soul is alarmed by its guilt and torn by remorse, its agony is too awfully real to be reached by any proposition stated in human speech. It never calls for a creed at such a time, but for an Almighty living friend who can take that guilt away. When we feel the ties that bind us to life giving way, and see the grave opening beneath us with no power on earth that can keep us from sinking into its darkness, it is not a theory bound up in a creed that we want, but One who has been in the grave and come out of it again; the hand that has burst the bars of death, [78] that it might deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Whoever heard a dying man ask for a doctrine or system? Again: When we follow to the grave a father or mother, a husband, wife, or child, and see the body let down into its vault, and the earth begin to close over it, to whom does the whole heart turn in that awful moment? Can imagination conceive a more hollow and heartless mockery, than to speak to it then of "the doctrines of our church?" If the soul's deepest longing at such a time could express itself in words, it would contain the question: Who will give me back my dead? And who can answer this tremendous question, daily and hourly crushed out of the heart of humanity? Neither Moses nor Plato ever mentioned it. Belief in systems of doctrine has nothing to do with it. But there does come One, not a creed, but a living person, in that dreadful hour, holding in his hands the keys of the unseen world and of death, and laying his right hand upon us, He says: "Fear not, I am the first and the last. I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold I am alive forevermore." "All that are in their graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth." You shall have your dead again. Neither the law nor philosophy can say this. Of all that have lived on this globe, Jesus alone could speak thus to a broken heart. God has literally shut up the soul of man to faith in Christ, and obedience to him as its last and only hope. [79]

      Men only call for a creed when they wish to wrangle with and hate their fellow-men. To be indoctrinated into the abstractions of any system of church doctrine is to shut up the heart and embitter it against all who, by their training or mental constitution, are compelled to think differently. It is impossible to think of a kingdom of Christ in which there shall dwell a universal brotherhood, heirs of a common inheritance, without for the time losing sight of these systems, and falling back on the broad ground of simple faith in Christ and conformity to His will.

      One feels tempted to exclaim: How long have these vain systems, born of the pride of reason and of the heart, yet to trifle and to mock the great wants and woes of the world? How long shall the souls of the dying millions of our race cry out against those who, with these obsolete systems, stand in the way of the world's redemption?

      The premises before us are now wide enough to indicate the highest duty of the true men of this generation. It is to call men from these dumb idols to serve the living God; to work and pray for the annihilation of every system which stands in the way of the world's conversion to Christ. The position which we have taken as a people, involves nothing less than this. Our antagonism is not to men, but to systems as such. With these there can be no compromise. If there is a man among us who thinks of the possibility of such a thing, he understands [80] neither the principles which he represents nor the people with whom he is identified. If God has given us as a people any mission in the world, it is to turn men from systems--which can not convert any large part of mankind, but which only make religious partisans--to Jesus the Christ, who can and will save to the uttermost all who come to God by him. It therefore behooves every true-hearted man to gird himself for the work, to put on the whole armor of God, and enter the contest as if the salvation of the world depended upon his personal success. [81]

[NTC2 48-81]