pend upon "the inward work of the Holy Spirit." These claims rest upon their own proper evidence. This evidence may, and frequently does, compel the assent of the understanding, even when the person so convinced refuses to believe with the heart. How great a perversion would it be of the teachings of the Confession to say that, because it declares that "faith is a saving grace," therefore it teaches that the validity of Christ's claims rests upon an inward operation of the Holy Spirit. It is equally perverse to wrest the language we have been considering into meaning that the only evidence of the canonicity of a writing is the testimony of the Holy Spirit by and with it in the heart.

But it is time to leave this theory. Taking a parting glance at it as we turn away, we find that its claims are in curious contrast with its real character. For instance, it poses as the persecuted and disowned heir of our Puritan fathers and the Reformers. Doubtless, could they rise from their graves, they would be surprised at the company this descendant of theirs is keeping. It claims to do special honor to the Holy Spirit, and yet it opens the door of the heart for every lying spirit that may choose blasphemously to impersonate him. It pretends to stand alone in recognizing the claims of the reason and religious feelings. But it deprives the former of its primary, proper, and well-nigh sole function in matters of religion, by refusing to permit it to sift the historical evidences of Christianity, and making it the dupe of every inner voice or light which human fanaticism or Satanic cunning may ascribe to the Holy Spirit, and at the same time it deprives the religious feelings of their only norm and safeguard, by virtually making them sit in judgment upon the claims of the word. It professes to give the only ground for certitude in regard to the canon, but as a matter of fact invests every book and every paragraph of Scripture, from the first chapter of Genesis to the twentysecond chapter of Revelation, in uncertainty. It professes to be the great bulwark and protection of the Christian system, when, in fact, it saps the system at its foundations, by calling into question the validity of the historical and miraculous testimony upon which it rests, and substituting for these a line of evidence which at best must, in the end, rank it, among intelligent men, along with the systems of Swedenborg and Joe Smith. WILLIAM M. MCPHEETERS.

III. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD.1

IN the controversy between Principal Candlish and Professor Crawford, the main question of disagreement was as to man's original relation to God.. Dr. Candlish affirmed that Adam, in Eden and unfallen, sustained to God the servile relation alone; while Dr. Crawford contended that he sustained both the servile and filial relations. The one denied and the other asserted God's common fatherhood of the race.

Our question goes back and inquires about Adam as he was and man as he ought to be.

But in the interests of clearness, it is incumbent upon the discussion to expound the two relations, noting the specific differences between a son and a servant.

1. They differ as to their genesis. A servant may become such in a great variety of ways: by birth, by divine creation, by free choice, by misfortune, by purchase, by theft, by war, and the like. A son, on the other hand, can become such by the following methods alone: by divine creation, by generation, by regeneration, by adoption. The possible ways of superinducing upon a human creature the servile relation are almost infinite, while those by which the filial relation is constituted are very few.

2. They differ as to the character of the moral government under which they live. Both are under moral government, but the servant is under that moral government where the rectoral feature is prominent, while the son is under that moral govern

The Fatherhood of God. Being the first course of the Cunningham Lectures, delivered before the New College, Edinburgh, in March, 1864. By Rob. S. Candlish. D. D., Principal of the New College, Edinburgh, and Minister of Free St. George's Church, Edinburgh. With a supplementary volume containing reply to Dr. Crawford, with answers to other objections and explanatory notes.

The Fatherhood of God. Considered in its general and special aspects, and particularly in relation to the Atonement, with a review of recent speculations on the subject and a reply to the strictures of Dr. Candlish. By Thomas J. Crawford, D. D., Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.

ment where the disciplinary feature is outstanding. One is under rule in the state, the other under rule in the house. One is under God's magisterial government, the other under his fatherly government. To the servant, God is Lord and Master; to the son, he is Father and Friend. The subject of rectoral moral government may at the same time be the subject of disciplinary moral government. The two relations, the servile and the filial, may co-exist upon the same person at one and the same time. There is no inherent incompatibility. Christ was both the Servant and Son of his Father.

3. They differ as to the regulative motive of obedience. Both are under law, and the obligation of perfect obedience presses equally upon both. The servant is just as much bound to obey his master as the son is to obey his father. Fear-it need not be slavish, and in Adam unfallen and in Christ it certainly was notis the inspiring motive with the servant. He dreads the consequences of disobedience. The penalty everywhere and always obtrudes itself upon him. The drawn sword is to him the final reason for obedience. However much pleasure he may find in service, he can never forget that it is duty. The requirements of his master may be anything else than irksome, but he can never forget his position; he can never forget that he has a master who holds a lash with the authority to use it. The supreme motive is a sense of duty. On the other hand, love is the ruling motive with the son. The injunctions of a parent rise into privileges rather than into cold duties. There is a sympathy between the father and the child. There is between them a community of blood and heart. Of course sin has made, among men, the normal abnormal, the natural unnatural; but in the glorified state, the saints, as servants, will obey out of a holy reverence for and pleasure in authority, and, as sons, from a motive of holy love to the divine Father.

4. They differ as to the ground of their expectation of reward. The servant pleads his work; the son his privileges. The servant is dealt with upon the naked principle of justice; the son according to the riches of paternal goodness. The servant fixes his eye upon his merits; the son upon his father's heart. The servant regards himself as a wage-hand; the son as an interested partner.

The servant presents his claim, and points to the contract; the son expresses his wishes, and appeals to his father's love. Both expect rewards for their work; but the servant stands upon right, and claims his in the name of the contract; the son stands upon paternal goodness, and asks in the name of fatherly affection. Both have rights to their respective rewards; but the right of a servant grounds itself in the justice of a law-court; that of a son in the justice of a father's house.

5. They differ as to the design had in their punishment. The offending servant is dealt with in the name of naked justice. The officer of law takes him in hand. Retributive justice pursues him with sword in hand. The design in inflicting punishment upon him is simply and solely to effect the righteous and necessary connection between guilt and punishment. All other consequences are incidental and secondary. The good of the offender is thrust into the background. He is punished because he deserves punishment. The offending son, on the contrary, is dealt with in the name of fatherly discipline. His sufferings, as caused by his father, are not punitive in their nature, but corrective. The object is the son's improvement. There is a heart of love behind the hand which deals the stroke. The child's sufferings, as inflicted by his father, are not penal and rectoral, but reformatory and beneficent.

6. They differ as to the freedom and fulness of access into the presence of their superiors. The servant may be intimate, but he is less so than the son. There is not the same wealth of communion, the same nearness of approach, the same confidence. The servant is farther from his master than the son is from his father. The one is received in some presence-chamber; the other at the familiar fireside. The one must stand with head uncovered, or kneel in humble reverence; the other may move in and out, through the rooms of the mansion, and frequent the hallowed places about the dwelling. The highest attainable position of the servant is that of the unfallen angels who minister as flames of fire about Jehovah's burning throne; while the redeemed son is admitted into the mansion on the light-covered hills beyond the stars, and permitted to pillow his head on his Father's bosom.

The position of the servant before the throne is sublime; but the position of the son in the Father's house is indescribable.

Now, the precise question is, What was man's original relation to his Creator? Was he a servant only? or was he both a servant and a son? Manifestly, if there were an inherent incongruity between the two relations, the question could not be asked; but the foregoing marks of contradistinction show that no such incongruity exists, and that the same person may, at the same time, be the son and subject of his father. The Prince of Wales is at once the son and subject of Queen Victoria.

Upon this question the Scriptures are the only competent and credible authority. Reason, as a source of information on the subject, is to be ruled out, because incompetent to speak to the question. The fact of creation proves man to be the responsible subject of the Creator; but it gives no intimations of the sonship man, for all lower animals are the creatures of God, and it is incompetent to argue from their creaturehood to their sonship. Reason cannot disprove the fatherhood of God. On this question it is silent; it can speak neither to the one side nor to the other. It can accept whatever the Scriptures may teach.

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Dr. Candlish undertakes to disprove the original paternity of God by an argument ingeniously constructed and very readable:

"Whatever God as Creator makes, he must rule. If it is not to rule him, he must rule it. And he must rule it in all its actings and workings; through all the stages of its development. If it is inert matter that is to be ruled, the law

will be of a material or physical kind, whether mechanical or chemical. . But now, let what is to be ruled be, not inert matter, but beings possessed of animal life, having the capacity of feeling and the power of voluntary motion; with the sensational propensities we call instincts, and the dawnings of intelligence, which render them teachable, as they are unfolded in growing shrewdness from the lowest to the highest order of brutal tribes. The sort of law by which such beings are ruled the law of instinct, and, it may be added, in a measure, of experience, -is adapted to their sentient and motive natures. But if the creatures to

be ruled be possessed of intelligence and conscience, his rule becomes government, properly so called; government worthy of himself; a rational and moral government, by means of a law and judgment of which reason and the moral sense take cognizance. . Thus it would seem, from the nature of the case, creation implies rule and government. The Creator must, of very necessity, be a ruler and governor, unless his creation is to be independent of himself. And as regards his intelligent creatures, his rule or government must be, in the proper forensic sense, legal and judicial, if it is to be adapted to the constitution and relative