body" or, "receive the things which are through, or done in, the body." The moment it is admitted that tå d. 7. o. is a prepositional phrase with a participle, "being," or "done," it matters not which, the whole question is simply one for a school-boy in Greek grammer; and there can be but one answer, namely, that dia 7. 6. cannot be taken out of this inseparable phrase to qualify a remote verb, but must qualify the participle which is to be supplied. The supplying of őrta, being, which Dr. Miller favors gives a phrase which can only be resolved by a relative clause, thus, "That each one may receive the things which exist, or arise, through the body." This would be the literal English of the Greek, as Dr. Miller would have it. Now what shall be thought of the exegesis which will make this out of that sentence: "That each one may receive through (in) the body the things."

Another expression of Dr. Miller's, however, is more perplexing still. He says, "taking there the whole phrase, (the things which are through the body) as the object of the verb receive, it denotes not only the reward received, but the source or instrument of it, namely, the living body." But what can be meant by "the things which are through the body, as source or instrument of reward and punishment?" Mere physical pleasures and pains! Paul thus teaches that the judgment-seat of Christ is set up to dispense the torments and delights of the body! In this judgment each one receives the things through his body" according as he has done good or evil! And these "things through the body are the awards of the spiritual kingdom of Christ! And in this degradation of the Pauline eschatology the body is made the "source or instrument" (which?) of the reward and punishment of moral acts, so that a deed of charity is rewarded, perhaps, by a good digestion, and a slander punished by a rheumatic pain! "I suggest that an exegesis" which leads to such conclusions," should be abandoned at once."

I see no reason, then, from all that Dr. Miller has been able to urge, for abandoning the old interpretation which has the support of almost all the great exegetes of ancient and mod

ern times. I still hold in spite of the solitary authority of Meyer that did has here its temporal meaning, and that "during the bodily life," or "in the body," is the only correct rendering of διὰ τ. σ. The verb xouiorra carries the sense of "receive reward for," for which a genuine Pauline usage is established by the parallel passages. The fact that this is not a classical usage has no weight against my position. Numerous examples of peculiar and original New Testament meanings of many words might be adduced. I still hold. also, that nengayueva, "done" is the proper participle to be supplied in the prepositional phrase διὰ τ. σ. The participle to be supplied in all such phrases is the one which the context requires. Usually it is the appropriate form of or, “being”; but in the case before us the thought is directed to the acts of moral agents, and the following clause, noòs a engažev, “according to what he hath done" irresistibly suggests, nay even, one may say, requires, "done" in the antecedent clause. The translation which this text receives at the hands of the authors of the revised version is perhaps as nearly correct as the best scholarship can make it: "For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

With any but purely exegetical results I am not concerned in this discussion. Whether the conclusion which I have reached is in accordance with the prevailing " Orthodox " exegesis or not is a matter of no moment to me, for I am interested only in ascertaining what is the meaning of the apostle in the text. The genuine seeker after truth knows neither orthodoxy nor heterodoxy, being satisfied and abundantly rewarded if only he has found the truth. To such an one it is unspeakably painful to see any of his great and honored brotherhood charged with perverting the truth for the sake of a dogma. When, therefore, one accuses such men as Meyer, De Wette, and Noyes, to whom scholarship was a sacred calling, of falsely interpreting the Greek text of the New Testament because they "firmly believed that the Bible teaches

the Orthodox eschatology," I have no answer but silent indignation. The true scholar (and the Christian church has not produced trucr scholars than these) is controlled by a high moral purpose, and his work is wrought in the love of man and the fear of God, since he believes that he must render an account both to man and to God, and does not forget that "we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body; according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

Pres. 0. Cone.

GENERAL

REVIEW.

Nature and Providence.

The Foundations of Religious Belief: The Methods of Natural Theology vindicated against Modern Objections. By W. D. Wilson, D.D.. Presbyter in the Diocese of Central New York and Professor in Cornell University. D. Appleton & Co.

Natural Theology deals with the proofs which Nature furnishes of the existence of God, His character and action as Creator and Ruler of the universe. Paley undertook to prove from the phenomena of the material world the existence of a God of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; while Butler in his, famous Analogy, attempted to demonstrate that Christianity is in harmony with human reason and the constitution and course of Nature. Dr. Wilson in the work named above endeavors to show that the truths of Natural Theology, and the legitimacy of its Methods furnish the only foundation on which we can rest for a satisfactory presentation of the evidences of Christianity.

His first chapter, which has a historical as well as logical value, is occupied with describing the two methods, subjective and objective, and attempting to show up and dispel the illusions created by the speculations and assumptions of metaphysicians and physicists. And he has some very clean and clear reasoning here, and very happily calls in Spencer to meet the assertions of Hamilton and Mansel. And, as he says, it is "a piece of grim irony," a strange spectacle, this of "Spencer, the confessed agnostic, trying to convince these pro

fessing Christians, on purely philosophical grounds, that God is not an abstraction or a mere negation, but is rather a most positive Reality, a reality without which nothing else can be real, and declaring that all their arguments are absurd. and elaborately suicidal.'"

In the following chapters Dr. Wilson takes up the Physical objections to the existence and government of God, discussing with equal force and perspicuity the theories of evolution and causation the Metaphysical objections including the various theories of knowledge proofs of the reality of mind as an entity distinct from matter, and the limits to the certainty of Knowledge the Logical objections grounded on the forms of reasoning and the use of words, with a review of Kant's Theories-the Attributes and Personality of God, in which he insists that all the arguments and all the methods of argumentation by which we claim to prove the existence of God, prove also His Personality - Miracles and Inspiration, noting specially the miracles of Creation or Beginning, the Origin of Species, and the Origin of Man; and, in the matter of Inspiration, touching the difficulty of discriminating as to character, and making time and results the test of its reality-and lastly, Providence and Moral Government, a chapter of special interest for its independent thought, breadth of view, and the Christian character of its philosophy, as contrasted with the encouragement given to scepticism by some late attempts to compel nature and history into the service of the orthodox exegesis of Scripture.

It is the teaching of this last chapter which has chiefly attracted our attention, and which, coming from such a quarter, is entitled to more than an ordinary book notice. At the same time any one of the chapters would furnish ample material for a separate article, but we cannot afford the space. Only two or three points can be touched, and that briefly, before coming to the last.

1. Origin of Species. No origination of a new species is known to have occurred in the human period, nor in any past period of the world's history. Evolution, therefore, can be held only as an hypothesis, a conjecture awaiting proof, while facts and considerations of the most stubborn and unyielding character stand against it. The advocate of Evolution refers to the order of development from the Zoological point of view, and arranges the several species in that order, beginning with the lowest and running up to the highest; and even if there are breaks and "missing links," he insists that, give time enough, they will yet be discovered. But the difficulty with this

is that the geological or chronological order does not correspond to the zoological series. Dawson says, on page 260 of his "Chain of Life in Geological Times," that "Groups of species as genera and orders do not usually begin with their highest or lowest forms, but with intermediate and generalized types, and show a capacity for both elevation and degradation in their subsequent history." The following facts bear on this point:

"Let the Zoologist range his group in the order of the numbers from one up to as many thousands as he may happen to have, and it is seen at once from the Geologist's order of succession that these species did not make their appearance in the same order as the Zoologist's classification demands. Instead of their making their appearance in what is the Zoologist's order, 1, 2, 3, etc., they come in a very different order. It may be that he has made, and must make in fidel ity to his science, a succession in which what the Zoologist calls the first did not appear on earth until after what the Geologist has called the fifth, and the sixth of the Zoologist's order was not the next to make its appearance in the order of time, but was perhaps the fifteenth or twentieth rather. Hence we have to account for the changes, not from the first in the Zoological Series to the next one above it, but to one that is many degrees removed from it. 'In the vegetable world mosses are inferior to the lycopodia and ferns, but they come in later. Ganoids are among the earliest of the fishes, and yet they are of the highest orders. Trilobites are crustaceans of a high order, and yet they are among the very earliest. Monkeys, although much higher in the Geological scale, appear before the ox family.'

"The Machairodus is an obstacle to any theory of mere evolution. It appeared in several species in widely separated districts, as Nebraska, (N. A.), Brazil, (S. A.), in France, in Greece, and as far east as India. It was of the cat family Felidæ, as large as any known lions or tigers, more "specialized" and perfect in form than most of the later species. It appeared early in the Tertiary at or near the close of the Eocene period, and with nothing before it in that great family from which it could have been derived by any process of mere evolution or development."

Dawson says Palæontology furnishes no direct evidence, perhaps it never can furnish any, as to the actual transformation of one species into another. And even Huxley, who, in his address in this country in 1876, trusting to Prof. Marsh's series of the Equide, boldly declared that the doctrine of evolution was as well established as the Copernican theory of the solar system, said two years later in his address in Dublin: "It is a difficult question, and one for which a complete answer may be looked for in the next century. In what