Church assert that "in Adam all die spiritually, and every creature of Adam is guilty and depraved, before the electing love of God hath prepared a restoration of part of the guilty race, and that part are, by the grace of God, renewed, justified and received into the kingdom of God."

They assert the condition of children to be one of sin; but, at the time, assert the election of all who die in infancy. Inasmuch as there are those who suppose "original sin" to be a peculiar doctrine of Calvinism, I quote from the Discipline of the M. E. Church: "Original sin standeth not in the following Adam (as the Pelagians vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and, of his own nature, inclined to evil, and that continually."

Next, attention is called to the Confession of Faith. The clause to which so much attention has been given, "Elect infants dying in infancy," asserts that children dying in infancy are elect and saved by the merit of Christ. How are they called to salvation? The passage occurs in the tenth article that treats of this point. Having declared that the chosen of God are duly called by the Word and Spirit, and quickened by the Spirit, that they may answer the call, the question naturally arose, "But how, then, with those who die before they can apprehend and accept the call of the Word?"

The Confession proceeds to declare that such are regenerated in virtue of the atonement, without the call of the Word, by "the Holy Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth;" therefore, the infants elect are saved just as adults are, by the blood of Jesus, securing their gracious renewal.

If it be insisted, however, that the use of the word elect necessarily implies non-elect, if elect refers to the saved, and non-elect refers to the unsaved; then, inasmuch as the term is used in the M. E. Church Discipline, in the prayer at the baptism of children, our Methodist brethren are not the parties to bring charges of infant "non-elective reprobation" against us. If it is to be construed in the limited sense accorded to it by them, then they and we stand upon the same platform.

The language of the Discipline is: "Grant that this child, now to be baptized, may ever remain in the number of thy faithful and elect children."

In this discussion we have studiously refrained from counter charges against teachers in other churches. That there has been advance in the study of theology, no one can or cares to doubt. That Calvin sometimes expressed himself in extreme terms it is true. But it is well observed by Dr. Warfield that the erroneous teaching of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism is responsible in the slow development of the scriptural views upon this subject. It is they who forced, by their bitter antagonism to the doctrine of original sin, much of the vigorous expressions of evangelical writers. It is they who are responsible for the misinterpretation of much that was said and they who have entailed upon Calvinism of the nineteenth century the unpleasant task of the rebuttal of false and slanderous charges. Even to-day, though the generous coworker for Christ admits that the Calvinistic churches do not now teach infant damnation, the admission is often made by others with a whisper and intonation that imply something, not expressed in words.

It is further true: "Calvinism, as distinguished from Arminianism, encircles or involves great truths, which, whether dimly or clearly discerned, whether defended in scriptural simplicity of language, or deformed by grievous perversions, will never be abandoned while the Bible continues to be devoutly read, and which, if they might indeed be subverted, would drag to the same ruin every doctrine of revealed religion."-Isaac Taylor.

W. L. NOURSE.

VII. NOTES.

SOME ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES AND KINGS.

UNTIL recent times the book of Chronicles has had comparatively little interest for the commentator. Its close similarity in many portions to the older historical books, and its dry statistical form have discouraged separate study, and have led the exegetes to regard it as a kind of supplement to Samuel and Kings. Beyond the treatises of Lavater, Clericus, Rambach and the two Michaelis, there are no important discussions of this part of Scripture to be mentioned before the beginning of the present century. Since that time, however, it has attained a new interest and significance through the rise of the modern school of Old Testament criticism. Chronicles is inextricably bound up with the Pentateuchal question from the fact that it traces the whole law back to Moses, and represents the Levitical cultus as in full operation from the time of David onward. Consequently, it forms the great bulwark of the traditional view of the Pentateuch, and the unity and the antiquity of the law cannot be assailed without first impugning its historical credibility.

Vater's Commentary on the Pentateuch, published in 1803, in which he attempted to prove its composite character and late origin, was of necessity followed by De Wette's attack on Chronicles in his "Kritischer Versuch über die Glaubwürdigkeit der Bücher der Chronik." Since that time, the controversy over this book has gone on steadily and has gained continually in importance. Graf's epoch-making work, The Historical Books of the Old Testament, which appeared in 1866, turned the history of Israel upside down and put the law at the end of the process of development, instead of at the beginning. This theory, of course, left no room for the statements of Chronicles, and that book was summarily rejected. Wellhausen and the rest of Graf's followers have accepted this conclusion, and pronounce it destitute of historical value, a mere priestly fiction designed to carry back the provisions of Ezra's post-exilic law-book into preëxilic times. The Chronicler re

gards the whole law as Mosaic, and represents its institutions as observed through the entire period of the kings. If he is right, the Graf theory is wrong; no possible modus vivendi between them can be devised; one or the other must go to the wall.

The main object of attack in the Book of Chronicles is, therefore, naturally its representation of the cultus. Samuel and Kings have little or nothing to say about the observance of the law, while Chronicles is full of it. In itself this does not necessarily constitute a contradiction, for the different point of view from which the book is written may determine the different selection of material. Chronicles is composed wholly from the priestly standpoint, while the Book of Samuel is interested in the establishment of the theocratic kingdom, and the Book of Kings in the work of the prophetic order. The mere fact, therefore, that Chronicles presents a different picture of the religious life of the preëxilic community does not in itself warrant us in rejecting it as unhistorical. The critics themselves feel this, and have, therefore, made great efforts to show that in other matters the Chronicler has perverted history, and that consequently his statements in regard to the cultus are not to be trusted. It is with this side of the controversy that we wish to busy ourselves in this article. The question whether the ritual observances of the law can be traced before the exile is far too vast a one to enter upon here. We propose only to investigate those cases in the parallel narratives of Kings and Chronicles, in which the Chronicler is accused of distorting or misunderstanding the civil history. There are a number of passages in which the two narratives apparently contradict one another; is this really the fact? and if so, does the contradiction prove that the author is unable to write history, and cannot be trusted where he makes independent statements in regard to religious usages?

The investigation has not merely a critical interest for determining the credibility of Chronicles, but has also an important bearing on the great questions of the inspiration and the infallibility of Scripture. These very passages that we are to examine are often cited as proof of contradiction within Scripture itself, and therefore if we can show that they are reconcilable, we shall be rendering service to theology as well as to Biblical criticism. For the sake of brevity I have omitted from the discussion all those discrepancies between the two narratives which rest upon textual corruption of one or both of them. Such cases are numerous, particularly in numbers and names. When, however, the true reading is restored the difficulty disappears and therefore these

cases do not affect the real problem. We shall limit ourselves to those remarkable passages in which Chronicles seems flatly to contradict Kings, and in which textual criticism gives no solution of the difficulty. We take up the passages in the order of their occurrence.

1. SOLOMON'S PREPARATIONS FOR THE TEMPLE. The parallel records in 2 Chronicles ii. and 1 Kings v. show a number of curious divergences, and these have been seized upon by the critics and pronounced to be contradictions. Part are simply supplementary items drawn from the common source of both Chronicles and Kings, and can be regarded as contradictions to Kings only on the false hypothesis that Kings was the only source that the Chronicler used for this part of his history. Part offer difficulties of a more serious nature.

The various discrepancies between the two accounts are summarized by Graf', page 127 ff., and by Wellhausen on page 190. Wellhausen begins with the following charge: "While Hiram and Solomon, according to the older record, are on a footing of equality and make a contract based on reciprocity of service, the Tyrian King is here the vassal of the Israelite and renders to him what he requires as tribute." For this extraordinary allegation no proof is offered, and, as a matter of fact, there is none to give. A careful perusal of the narrative does not yield the slightest hint that the Chronicler regarded Hiram as a vassal who was called upon to pay tribute. The whole tone of Solomon's communication is one of request and not of command; and as for there being no reciprocity of service, what shall we do with the statement in v. 10: "Behold, I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil." In reality exactly the opposite charge could be made with a good deal more color of probability, namely, that Kings represents Hiram as a vassal, but Chronicles makes him an equal sovereign. According to Kings, Hiram sent messengers to Solomon immediately upon his accession, but Chronicles says nothing about this, and represents Solomon as taking the initiative in the matter. Besides this Kings alludes to no compensation in Solomon's requisition for timber. It does indeed mention later that the king gave Hiram some wheat and some oil, but on Wellhausen's principles we might infer that this had nothing to do with the furnishing of cedars and firs, but was due to Solomon's generosity. Chronicles, on the