he believes to be false in order to establish what he regards as true? "We are his offspring," cried the apostle; but the statement was untrue, and he knew it; and yet he grounds an argument for Christianity upon it! Has he been reduced to jugglery with terms? Is his cause weak? Are reasons scarce? Is he a dissembler? Would he speak that which was false to prove that which was true? Is this the method of inspired argumentation? Has God stooped to contend for the mastery with man in the arena of debate? This commentary of Dr. Candlish upon that masterly address before the elite of Athens degrades it to the arts of the sophist and the stump-politician.

This phrase, "we are also his offspring," meant to its author and to the men of Athens, We are the offspring of Jupiter. The very essence of the argumentum ad hominem requires the debater to assume the correctness of the position of his opponent, and then show that his conclusion does not follow from his own premise. It is the opposite of the argumentum ad rem, which assumes that the premise is both materially and formally correct, and deduces conclusions of a like nature. If Paul, on this occasion, was employing the former species of argumentation, he must have employed the quotation from Aratus in the identical sense which it had in the minds of his auditors. If he imported into the phrase any other idea than that which it really involved, then he made a material change in their premise, and so barred himself from reasoning to their silencing. This quotation meant to the men of Athens, we are the offspring of Jupiter; to Paul, we are the offspring of God. The two propositions are substantially different, and the argumentum ad hominem is inapplicable.

Undoubtedly this verse, as it stood upon the page of the heathen poem, was uninspired; but when the pen of inspiration transcribed it upon the page of the sacred volume, and made it a fundamental postulate in an argument against idolatry and for the truth of Christianity, it was canonized. There the words were the vehicle of a heathen idea; here they are the vehicle of a divine doctrine. Inspiration changed their meaning, for Paul did not quote Aratus in the sense in which he wrote. We are his cast-off offspring.

III. Dr. Crawford adduces the parable of the Prodigal Son as a proof of "the general paternity of God." (Luke xv. 11-32.)

"It seems to me impossible to put any fair or just interpretation on this parable, without assuming that general paternity which God, as our creator and preserver, may be held to sustain towards all men as his intelligent creatures, and recognizing the subsistence of this relation as at once a most serious aggravation of their sins, and a most powerful motive to urge them to repentance. On the opposite assumption, the parable ought to have begun thus: 'A certain king had two subjects,' or, 'A certain master had two servants.' But who, in that case would have discerned in it the same matchless power and pathos by which, as it actually stands, it is characterized? Evidently its whole point is lost and its scope perverted, if we suppose it to be in any other character than that of a son who had wandered from the paternal home; that the person represented by the prodigal is joyfully welcomed by the Great Father when returning to him." (P. 44.)

To this exposition Dr. Candlish objects on both critical and doctrinal grounds. He charges this exegesis with violating that canon which forbids "drawing doctrinal conclusions from the minute and incidental details of illustrative narrations or stories." It is true that there is an interpretation which deduces too much from the parables and figures of Scripture, and there is another interpretation which falls short of extracting their full meaning. A safe exposition, therefore, must content itself with following these accepted laws of interpretation.

1. The central truth of the parable must be given a controlling influence over all details of circumstances and incidents. Meaning is to be given to the details, consequently, only as they may minister to the main doctrine.

2. Regard must be had to "the analogy of faith"-the great trend of revelation—and particularly to the immediate context. Consequently, those details may have meanings which are in harmony with the spirit of the Bible and of the immediate context.

3. Whatever is circumstantial and incidental in the parable cannot be made the basis of a doctrine not elsewhere revealed. Such matters can be used only as collaterals.

4. "We should not assume anything to be non-essential except when, by holding it fast as essential, the unity of the whole is marred and troubled." (Trench.)

Now, will the application of these rules bar Prof. Crawford's interpretation? By an application of the principle of the adage,

"A man is known by the company he keeps," the scribes and Pharisees sought to break down the influence of Christ: "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. If he be not like them, why does he keep such associations?" To defend his character against this reproach, he spake the parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, and the Prodigal Son. The argument in the latter is: If it is not disgraceful for the father to receive the prodigal son with such assurances and exhibitions of welcome on his repentance, it surely cannot be disgraceful in Christ to associate with sinners with a view to persuading them to return to their divine Father's house. The doctrine of the parable is the doctrine of reconciliation, but the reconciliation of a father and son, rather than of a king and subject. The divine paternity is the very pith of the parable, and violates none of the foregoing rules, but harmonizes them all.

Dr. Candlish expounds the parable:

"Let it be conceded that the prodigal represents sinners generally, the sinners with whom our Lord was accused of being too familiar. The parable is his defence against that accusation, and nothing more. And what is his defence? Virtually it is this: He is the elder brother in the Father's house. He puts it to his accusers to say whether he best sustains the character and does the part of the elder brother, by acting as he is wont to act, in the way that seems to them so objectionable, or by behaving, as they would have him behave, like the elder brother in the parable." (P. 131.)

The elder brother in the parable has usually been regarded as representing the carping Pharisees and scribes, who blamed Christ for associating with sinners; and the view of Dr. Candlish, which makes him represent Christ as, in the opinion of his accusers, he ought to be, is peculiar and surprising. It can hardly be that all commentators have so badly missed the passage.

IV. Biography delights to point out the marks of similarity and difference between the descendants of a common parentage. Traits of mind, methods of thought, forms of expression, characteristics of heart, habits of life, inclinations of the moral nature, physical features, are all made the subjects of comparisons. The qualities of the parent are expected and sought for in the child; and when one man shows decided marks of likeness to another, we are disappointed if there is not a blood-relation between them.

The fourth argument for God's fatherhood of the race, as distinguished from his special fatherhood of believers, appeals to the family-likeness between God and man, and quotes the text: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." (Gen. i. 27.)

It is this divine image, imprinted in the very morning of his creation, that mainly differentiates man from the balance of creation, and constitutes the ground of his sovereignty over all lower orders of earthly creatures. As the image and superscription upon the Roman coin determined the question of allegiance and tribute, so do the image and superscription of God upon the indestructible soul of man determine his position and duty before God. Bearing that image, he owes obedience and tribute to him who had the right thus to stamp and subscribe his moral character. Bearing that likeness (sadly defaced, it is true), not merely as a coin, but as a person, the natural expectation would be that he was the child of the Being whom he so closely resembles. We could rest in this belief if it were not contradicted. Nowhere in the Scriptures is it contradicted. Of course we are writing about Adam as he was, and man as he ought to be.

In the regeneration we are "renewed in the whole man after the image of God." The qualities which are renewed are those which were lost, "knowledge, righteousness and true holiness." (Col. iii. 10; Eph. iv. 24.) It is universally conceded that in regeneration we become the sons of God; but the qualities which are communicated in regeneration, and expanded in sanctification, are "knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness," or the elements which go to make up the image of God. But Adam was created in the image of God, and so possessed these three constituents. Now, it is difficult to see why the re-creation of man in the image of God constitutes him. a son, while the first creation of him in the very same image constituted him only the servant of God. Why does the restorationin the regeneration of the Spirit-of the lost qualities of "knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness" evince the regenerate to be sons of God, when the very same qualities, given in the first creation to Adam, proved only a servile relation? We cannot answer. If the possession of the image of God by the regenerate is the evidence

of their sonship, then the possession of the very same image by Adam ought to evidence his sonship. And furthermore, the regenerate are imperfect. The image does not, at the beginning at least, stand out with perfect clearness and beauty; and yet these imperfections do not destroy the fact of their sonship; but Adam and Eve, as they came fresh from their Creator's hand, bore the divine likeness without spot or blemish. If the possession of an imfect image of God by the Christian proves him to be the son of God, the possession of an immaculate image of God by Adam and Eve must prove them to be the children of God.

We have been writing about Adam as he was, and man as he ought to have been. We turn now to man as he is; and the formula which expresses his relation to his God since the fall is, A proscribed subject and an outcast son. As a judge, God has withdrawn from him the rights and privileges of a citizen, and left to him nothing but the contents of the curse; and as a father, he has ejected him from his house, disinherited him of his patrimony, and made him a stranger and an alien. These were the acts of a righteous Judge and Father predicated upon human guilt. Man's present status, therefore, reveals the enormity of human guilt, the pathos of human sorrow, and the glory of divine grace. The guilt was of that heinous and parricidal nature which constrained a just and loving Father to banish his son with one final word of command forever from his presence; the misery is that of a wicked and abandoned son, who might have stood but a little lower than an angel, starving among swine in a foreign country; and the grace is that of Christ, which regenerates the heart of the degenerate son, and reinstates him in his Father's house and heart.

The sentimental theology of to-day prates much about "the fatherhood of God" and "the solidarity of the race" as constituting the ground of atonement and of the universal hope of mankind. But this theology forgets far more than it remembers. It forgets that "the fatherhood of God" was completely disrupted by the fall, and vacated of all its contents to man, except wrath and indignation, which were emptied upon him without stint. It forgets the "solidarity of the race" is only in sin, and that it is electing grace alone which has broken up that "solidarity." It forgets that, while