utter loathing. They were sensualists and idolaters: "they rebelled and vexed His Holy Spirit "; they proved themselves utterly insensible to all those manifestations of the Divine majesty and goodness it was their privilege to witness; and therefore that generation which is so strangely spoken of as having suffered from "excess of religion," was left, with hardly an exception, to fall in the wilderness.

This leads me now to state, in conclusion, what I humbly regard as the true reason why Moses did not include in his legislative code any reference to a future state of rewards and punishments. The people of the Jews were not then prepared for such a revelation, nor would they have profited by it. Their long and abject slavery in Egypt had wrought its own proper work upon them. Everything leads us to regard the Israelites of the Exodus as having been in the most debased condition. They were, in fact, little better than a barbarous horde, having no noble aspirations, and capable only of being influenced by the most sordid motives. From beginning to end they utterly disappointed Moses. He began his mission to them by rescuing one of their number from the oppression of an Egyptian, and supposed, as St. Stephen tells us (Acts vii. 25), "that his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not." On the contrary, on the very next day he was grossly insulted by one of them, and had to flee from Egypt to save his life. The same spirit continued to be displayed throughout. As soon as they had the least experience of suffering, we are told (Exod. xvii. 3, 4) that "the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our

1 See The Translation of the Psalms, with notes, by Dr. John De Witt, New Brunswick Seminary. The writer remarks that the word here used by God with respect to the Israelites in the desert "indicates great disturbance of mind, displeasure, and antipathy."

children, and our cattle with thirst?

And Moses cried

unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me." Again, when Moses lingered in the mount, we read (Exod. xxxii. 1) that the people came to Aaron, and addressed him in these words of insensate folly, "Up, make us gods which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him." Let me quote only one other passage as bringing before us. in darkest outlines the grovelling and sensual spirit which the people legislated for by Moses displayed. We read (Num. xi. 4-6), "The children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: but now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our eyes." How vain would have been the endeavour to bring high and spiritual motives to bear upon a people sunk so low as this! What cared they about the invisible world! Rewards and punishments in this life they could understand, but, in the language of Scripture, they were too "brutish" to feel the influence of what was future and unseen. And hence it is no reproach to the Mosaic law that it limited its sanctions to the present world. That was the only discipline which could have any good effect upon such a people. We are told by Christ (Matt. xix. 8) that Moses allowed a certain permission to stand in that law which he issued to the Jews "because of the hardness of their hearts." The permission itself was not good, but the evil nature of the people required it. And, following the same analogy, we may say that Moses did not set future retribution before the men of his day because he knew that the thought of such a thing would have no effect upon them; but restricted his promises and threats to this world, because, owing to

their low and ignoble natures, it was only what appealed immediately to the senses that could have any influence over their conduct.

While, however, as a Lawgiver, Moses thus did not take the invisible and spiritual world into account, he doubtless often spoke of the great hope of his own heart to those like-minded with himself. There were still some who clung to the old Patriarchal religion. We find, indeed, that, even in the darkest hour of Israel's history, noble souls continued to cherish the sublime doctrine of immortality, and from time to time gave it more or less definite expression. In the forty-ninth Psalm, the different futures which await the righteous and the wicked are contrasted, and it is said of the one class with respect to the other, "The upright shall have dominion over them in the morning." In the seventy-third Psalm, there is a magnificent outburst of individual faith in the hereafter, when the writer exclaims with reference to God, "Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." The light goes on deepening and spreading as we advance through the prophetical books, while still dimness lingers, and doubt seems occasionally to prevail: it is not, indeed, till Christ appears that all darkness is dispelled as to the existence of a future world, in which every one shall "receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad"; and thus, as the Apostle declares (2 Tim. i. 10), it is He alone who has clearly and fully "brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel."

A. ROBERTS.

390

PROFESSOR DRUMMOND'S RELIGIOUS

TEACHING.

If the influence of a spiritual teacher is to be measured by the number of lives that have been touched to finer issues by his spoken and written word, few if any teachers of the last quarter of the century have been more influential than Henry Drummond. Critics speculate as to whether Natural Law in the Spiritual World and The Ascent of Man will live. Even should these books be soon forgotten, their author has left behind him a far more enduring monument in the thousands of young men in every part of Protestant Christendom who thank God for the spiritual lessons they learned at the feet of the loved teacher over whose early death they are to-day mourning. Widely read as his books have been, their influence has perhaps been inconsiderable as compared with the influence he exercised upon those who were brought into direct contact with the magnetic force of his personality. His teaching was indeed strikingly fresh and suggestive, but the teacher was greater than the teaching. Those who knew him best were the readiest to confess not only that he was "the best of all the men they had ever known," but also that over and above the beauty of his Christian character he was endowed with a rich and strong individuality that fascinated them as by a subtle, subduing spell. There was a unique impressiveness in his platform speaking; there were beauty of thought and charm of diction in his addresses, but the truest secret of his power as a speaker lay in the thousand subtle influences radiating forth from the personality of the speaker. He did something more than present spiritual truth in new lights, and with a wealth of attractive illustrations; he poured forth of his own rich personality into the hearts of those who hung upon his words.

Dr. Stalker has paid a warm tribute to the personal worth of his life-long friend. This is a theme on which all who were privileged to be inspired by Professor Drummond's friendship love to dwell; it was a theme which evoked perpetual admiration and thankfulness to the Giver of all good; but my object in the present article is to draw attention to his religious teaching with special reference to the development which took place in his grasp of spiritual truth.

Professor Drummond began his career as an Evangelist, and to the end Evangelism was the master passion of his life. He was qualified by the versatility of his gifts to play many rôles-to be an expounder of science, an explorer, a man of letters, a social reformer-but the rôle he deliberately chose and adhered to was that of Christ's Evangelist, especially to young men. It is from this standpoint that his teaching ought to be judged. He never pretended to be a teacher of systematic theology, bound to assign its due place to every theological doctrine in a rounded system. His ambition was to win men for Christ and Christ's service. An Evangelist cannot hope to impress his hearers by truth which he has not himself seen, which has not mastered his own heart. One secret of Drummond's success as an Evangelist lay just here-that even at the risk of being misunderstood and criticised, he would not say "what he ought to have said," but spoke with an accent of intense personal conviction the truth by which he had himself been gripped and held. In the eyes of the systematic theologian, he was necessarily one-sided. There were aspects of Christian truth which fell into the background in his message. But in this sense every successful Evangelist is one-sided. There are diversities of Christian experience; and while there are diversities of Christian experience, Evangelists who speak their message not out of a theological textbook, but "out of the abundance of the heart," will show diversities in the emphasis they lay on the different