having new institutions and a new civilization fitted upon it as a tailor fits a coat. It is the people who must be fitted to the civilization. Give to a savage a sewing-machine, or a power-loom, and the gift is useless. The man must be educated up to the machine, or he cannot use it, nor, indeed, have any occasion to use it. The same is true of political institutions. They do not create or mould the life, but are the outgrowth of the life. It is as useless to force free institutions on a people not educated for them as to tie artificial flowers on a rose-bush in the winter. The right of selfgovernment in the hands of Paris communists is a curse to them and the world. Christianity is itself the most effective agency in awakening the savage to progress towards civilization, by stimulating the habit of acting for ulterior ends, and subjecting impulse to the control of reason; and in purifying and renovating heathen civilization by introducing and mak ing effective spiritual truth and a regard to spiritual reality.

Besides, all that is distinctively Christian in civilization is the result of Christianity. To insist that the apostles ought to have taught the civilization of modern Christendom in Jerusalem, Greece, and Rome, before teaching Christianity, or that modern missionaries ought to teach American civilization in China before teaching Christianity, is to put the effect before the cause. Christian civilization can be produced only by Christianity. Christianity must first be preached, in order that Christian civilization may be possible. The only real progress of society is the progress of the men and women who compose society. Society advances only as the men and women composing it advance in knowledge and culture, in wisdom, in self-control, in purity, truthfulness, and justice, in Christian faith and love.

This position is confirmed by the fact, constantly recurring in history, that the contact of civilization with barbarism or an inferior civilization, unaccompanied by Christianizing influences, is injurious to the inferior.

2. In reference to the personal character and duty of converts, the missionary is not to withhold Christian truth

and its application out of deference to the errors inherent in the civilization of those to whom he preaches. It is one thing to admit that Christian truth taught to a people, by teachers participating in their civilization, will be slowly and gradually apprehended and applied; and quite another thing to say that Christian teachers, having the clear knowledge of Christianity belonging to the highest civilization, are to accommodate their teachings to the prejudices and customs of heathenism; for example, to admit members to the church while practising polygamy and observing the rules of caste. This is of the type of pious frauds, and of the adoption by Christians of heathen usages and festivals under Christian names, which early corrupted Christianity in the attempt to propagate it. The justification of it involves a false interpretation of the parables of the new patch and the new wine; as if they meant that a patch must be found for the old garment as rotten as it, and for the worn-out bottles wine as weak as they. They mean the life must be invigorated, or a new life created capable of receiving the new institution. It is the statesman's business to adapt laws and institutions to the existing condition of society, just as the physician adapts medicine and food to the weakness of the patient. But the missionary is in the position of a prophet; it is his business to proclaim the truth which will create a new life. He is not to attempt the immediate subversion of existing institutions; but he is to declare Christian truth as the law of personal Christian action. Otherwise, the people cannot be educated in Christian truth, and prepared for Christian civilization. The missionary and his disciples may suffer persecution, and even martyrdom, for their fidelity; but these, if they must come, are themselves powerful agencies in educating the world in Christian ideas.

3. The missionary will introduce the arts of civilization incidentally, as he has opportunity and the people are prepared for them. These are educating influences which will help him in his Christian work. And in this respect he will be aided by the intercommunication of thought and of commercial products among the nations.

ARTICLE III.

ON "THE MAN OF SIN," 2 THESS. H. 3-9.

BY PROF. HENRY COWLES, OBERLIN, OHIO.

This is a passage of acknowledged difficulty. The fact of difficulty should not deter from its investigation, cannot excuse crude speculation or reckless disregard of the legiti mate laws of language; but may invite to the exercise of candor, not to say charity, toward any well-meant endeavor to fathom its mysteries. Such an endeavor promises well and deserves candid attention only as it shall apply faithfully to the passage all the means at command for bringing its salient points to the surface, and drawing the line between the known and the unknown.

As to the value of the results to be sought for in this passage—if it be a chapter of the future history of our race; if it tells us of the "last times," immediately preceding the final coming of the Lord; if it opens new and most extraordinary developments in the great sin-problem of this fallen world then, surely, the truths it has in it, if we may but reach them in very deed, must have momentous interest to every Christian mind.

The passage proposed for special consideration from Paul's second Epistle stands related to these words: "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are

alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words " (1 Thess. iv. 13-18).

Paul is here exhorting the brethren against excessive grief for those who "sleep in Jesus." To this end he testifies that these sleeping ones are at no disadvantage compared with the saints living at the time of Christ's final coming, because all the pious dead will be raised before any even of the living will ascend to meet the Lord, and so all will ascend together. This point is put in its strongest light by tacitly supposing that the glorious coming were to break upon themselves the "we" of that generation. Even in such an event, the saints then living must needs wait for the raising of the dead before they can ascend. Hence they had not the least occasion to bewail the comparative loss of those who "slept in Jesus." There is no such comparative loss or disadvantage.

Apparently some of the Thessalonian brethren missed the real thought of Paul; took his supposed case as direct teaching; and therefore understood him to say by authority that the final coming of Christ was then near at hand. This view begat an unwholesome agitation of mind; they were undesirably "troubled," and were in danger of being seriously misled. Hence Paul hastens to write his second letter, in which we read thus:

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Now, we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first [ý ȧrooтaola, the great apostasy], and that man of sin [ó avoрwπоs τŶs ȧμаprias] be revealed, the son of perdition [ỏ viòs tŷs àπwλelas], who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing

himself [άπodevúvтa čavтóv, pretending to prove] that he is God. Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work, only he who now letteth [holdeth back] will let until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked [ó avoμos] be revealed, whom the Lord. shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders."

The major points made here are: (1) That the final coming of Christ was not then near at hand; (2) That "the great apostasy" must precede that coming, in which apostasy a somewhat, designated as "the man of sin," "the son of perdition," "the wicked one" (vs. 8), bears a principal and leading part; (3) That this " man of sin" will immediately precede Christ's final coming, inasmuch as the blaze of that coming will be his destruction.

I would class the following as minor and less important points in the passage: (a) What is meant by "the mystery of iniquity"? (b) In what sense was this mystery then already working? (c) What was the withholding agency? (d) How and when was this to be "taken out of the way"?

The

Of the major points, the first needs not a word of argument. It was Paul's main proposition - the very thing he wrote this letter to say and to prove. And to us the revelations of history sufficiently confirm his doctrine. second point is Paul's great argument in proof of his main proposition. Christ cannot come yet, or soon, because there must first be "the great apostasy," and "the man of sin must be revealed." The third point locates this "man of sin," in time, immediately before Christ's second coming. This point should have special attention. The important words are: "Whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming" (vs. 8). That this "coming" [Tapovσía] must be the final one, his coming for the general resurrection