tributed. The Boards are the custodians and dispensers of the offerings of the Church, not the creators of them. Paul had no moral right to pledge to the poor Church in Jerusalem any definite amount. He could only bring to their relief what the members of the churches in Europe and Asia gave him for this

purpose.

But it may be said that this would leave our missionary work in uncertainty and chaos. The answer might be made by asking the question: What else have we now? There is always a way out of the depths, however, if we cry unto the Lord. When Peter, from lack of faith, began to sink into the waves of Gennesaret, his very helplessness in consequence of his lack of faith reawakened faith in him. It was not his cry, "Lord, save me," that the Master rebuked, for it marked the beginning of his rising again. So the want of faith in Christ has brought us into deep waters and if our extremity be the turning point to renewed faith, He who promised to be with His Church to the end of the will be nigh to stretch out His hand for our deliverance. We need faith more than we need money, however, in order to receive the needed help; for if wonderful works are to be wrought through us they will be done according to our faith and not according to our money.

age

The Church of our time has sadly fallen in with the materialistic spirit of the age, and the Reformed Church has not escaped its influence. What a miserable expression of this materialism in the Church is such a sentence as this: "The conversion of the world is, in my opinion, now reduced to a question of money." ("The Path To Wealth," p. 60). But in what, after all, does this statement differ, except in form and directness, from that which we so often hear in our own Church: "Give us the money and we will furnish the men," for the larger missionary operations at home and abroad? Is not this, however, a reversal of the whole teaching of Christ on this subject? With Him it is first the Kingdom, with the assurance that the material things shall be added; first the men, then the support; and first the forsaking, for His sake and the Gospel's, of all world-relationship

on the basis of the natural life, with the promise of a hundredfold return on the basis of the higher life in Him.

His "Follow Me" is to be obeyed without any condition of our making. The minister of the Word who has no faith in the ability and will of Christ to provide for his temporal needs, in and through His disciples, can have but little in His power in and through the Gospel to save them that believe. The two are inseparable. The absence of such faith lowers the ministry to the level of a mere profession. It ought to be the constant aim of the Church to rear men who have not merely the disposition to volunteer to be missionaries under well-defined material conditions, but such men as shall have the spirit and faith which Christ demanded of those whom He first sent as his ambassadors and stewards into the world. When this end is attained, whether such men be called to the pastorate of self-supporting or mission congregations, the first question will no longer be that of money.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that while the missionaries, or rather the missions, both in the home and foreign fields, should by all means receive the financial support of the whole Church, our missionary administration must be conducted on a higher plane than that of the apportionment system. If the Church believes that the law of tithes is still of binding obligation then the only thing to do is to proclaim it far and wide and to bend all energies toward the realization of this God-ordained principle of giving. Many have all along given in this way and the number would be greater if the Church, instead of bringing in the apportionment system, had steadily held before her membership the demand of God for the tenth of what He gives. For the system of apportionments unquestionably has had the effect of encouraging those to self-complacency who give as little as they can, while it has rather discouraged those who give tithes conscientiously; just as the lowering of the moral standard in any case has such two-sided effect upon the morally weak and the morally strong. When the Jews robbed God of the tithes in the days of Malachi, God confronted them anew with the demands of that law. He did not lower the standard of His law to accom

modate their unwillingness to give. And the primary purpose now should not be the raising of more money, but the keeping of this law before the Church as the ideal of God for our giving. This ought to be deemed far more precious than silver and gold. Of course, there are difficulties to be met with in any effort to bring in a general introduction of tithe-giving. But the chief thing is not to shirk the God-ordained law in this direction, and to cultivate a tithe-giving conscience as an end in our system of Christian nurture from the family to the theological seminary. And every one ought to practice what he preaches. If the hearts and the heads, the faith and the knowledge in this direction are once sound, however, the practice cannot be wholly unsound.

VI.

BIBLICAL THEOLOGY.

BY REV. F. A. GAST, D.d.

It is no exaggeration to say that Biblical Theology is a science of fundamental importance. Not only is it the crowning glory of the biblical sciences, presupposing their special, often minute investigations, and gathering up into itself their richest fruits, but it is, at the same time, the starting point of the development of all Christian truth-the basis on which, as on the only true foundation, must rest the doctrines of the Church-and the touch-stone by which must be tested the validity of every dogmatic system. It has a distinct and independent place in theological study, and the results it reaches are so important in their bearings as to demand a clear and definite conception of the object with which it deals, the aim it proposes to itself, the limits within which it moves and the method it pursues.

Yet, strange as it may seem at first sight, the distinctive character of this science is but vaguely apprehended by wide circles of the ministry, especially in this country. To the question, What is Biblical Theology? many could give no satisfactory answer. They may, perhaps, have heard the name, but they have only an obscure perception of its meaning. Generally they confuse Biblical Theology with something wholly different. While one, laying stress on the word "biblical," regards it as a science relating to the Bible and dealing with its origin and literary history, the collection of its books into the canon, the treatment of its text, the laws of its interpretation, and like matters; another, misled by the word "theology," identifies it with the system of Christian doctrines viewed as in accord with and proved by the teachings of the Bible. Both conceptions are erroneous. It is true, the term " Biblical Theology" has at times been employed in

a wide sense to denote that department of theology which has to do with the Bible as its object, comprising Biblical Philology, Historico-critical Introduction, Hermeneutics and Exegesis. But these sciences are preliminary to Biblical Theology and lead up to it as their goal. Not until they have severally performed their tasks does the Biblical theologian begin his work. And that work is not exegetical, but strictly historical. For this, among other reasons, Biblical Theology, as designating a distinct theological discipline, must be carefully distinguished from the doctrinal system embodied in the Church's Creeds and Confessions. It is not Christian Dogmatics. It is not even, if such a science were possible, Biblical Dogmatics. It belongs neither to the exegetical nor to the systematic, but to the historical department of the theological sciences.

After all, however, these popular misconceptions are not surprising. Biblical Theology is a comparatively young science. It attained an independent existence barely more than a century ago. At that time the name was indeed not new, but the science now known by that name had not yet been born. The honor of giving it birth is due to John Philip Gabler, who, in an Academic address delivered in 1787, defined it as an historical science and drew the limits between it and Dogmatic Theology.* Ever since it has been diligently cultivated, especially in Germany, the intellectual workshop of the world. Unfortunately, however, through ignorance of the German language-an ignorance more prevalent formerly than to-day-the rich literature on this important subject has been practically inaccessible to large numbers even of scholarly ministers. Few translations have been published. In the Old Testament division of Biblical Theology we have Oehler and Schultz, from the German, and Piepenbring, from the French; in the New Testament division we have Schmid, Van Osterzee, Weiss and Beyschlag. Much has been done in the way of separate treatment of special topics in Biblical Theology, and

* De justo discrimine theologiæ Biblicæ et dogmaticæ regundisque recte utriuque finibus. Altdorfii, 1787. The address is published in his "Opuscula Academica," second volume.