aid future investigations, which cannot fail soon to be made in view of the wealth that is anticipated in this enterprise. The value of this author's work on China is being every-where acknowledged, and this is the fourth volume that now appears. Many of his finest specimens have been brought to the Museum of Berlin, and are there attracting the attentions of capitalists and scholars. And the intelligent Chinese must themselves soon see the importance of these discoveries, and continue these explorations, by force, if necessary, against the prejudice or superstition of the masses.

For twenty years there has appeared in Naples a serial publication, entitled a "Collection of Religious and Entertaining Books," and one of the latest of these is a work called "A Romish Catechism concerning Protestantism," and which proposes to inform the Catholics of Italy of the character and tendency of Protestantism in popular style. In the preface the anonymous author designates Protestantism as the invention of a barbarian, and promises to show it up in all its monstrosity. The first chapter treats of the origin of Protestantism, which is here characterized as a rebellion of conceited men against the Christ. An apostate monk, by the name of Martin Luther, was the originator of it, because the Holy Father had granted the right of issuing indulgences to the Dominicans, and not to the order to which Luther belonged. The author grants that this rebellion was caused by certain abuses in this matter, but declares that the Church was on the point of correcting these when the rebellion began as a "proclamation of liberty of the flesh," etc. It is affirmed that it is difficult to give the doctrines of Protestantism, because they vary with the moon; but, on the whole, they may be defined as terrible in theory, immoral in practice, hostile toward God and man, destructive to the entire human race, and in contradiction with common sense and natural modesty, for instance, God forces men to sin, and he is thus the originator of sin. Men do good or evil from inevitable necessity. No wonder, then, that the inquirer declares that these teachings fill him with horror, and are, in some regards, worse than those of the heathens. You are right, says the priest, neither the heathens nor the Turks have such godless doctrines as these. Naturally the men who originated such teachings were of the worst sort. Their end corresponded to their accursed lives; for Calvin died in despair of a shameful disease, being devoured by worms, cursing God, and calling on the devil. The book seems to be written mainly to influence the people in regard to the supporters of Protestantism in Italy, who are declared to be only bad Catholics, and to come from the dregs of society. Protestantism in their hands is declared to be only a means to an end, which is to introduce into Italy irreligion, libertinism, and unbelief, and thus communism and socialism. Under these circumstances it is asserted that the men that go over to the Protestants are of the worst sort, "the scum of rascality and immorality. If these men gain the upper hand Italy would become the arena of a civil war; blood would flow, and the proud monuments of the land would be razed to the ground.”

The literary event of the period in France is the publication of the Souvenirs of Renan. Pressensé is very severe on them, and says: "I frankly confess that I feel myself a barbarian in reading such a book, except the admirable portion devoted to Brittany and St. Sulpice. I am completely insensible to the exquisite beauties of this style, more enchanting than grand, and I would willingly trample all these perfumed flowers under my feet, so much do I detest their moral poison. I can no longer resign myself to this enchanting negation of the truth and virtue, and to this philosophical legerdemain which makes to appear and disappear before our eyes the good and the true with the giddy rapidity of the jugglers playing with an orange."

In the French theological line there is a goodly number of new books announced: "Fifty Years of the Life of the Protestant Church of Lyons," by Leopold Monod. "The Beauty of the Protestant Ministry," by Lacheret, pastor at the Hague. "The Idea of the Pre-existence of the Son of God," by a member of the Theological Faculty of Strasburg. • "The Republic of Christ, and the Monarchy of the Pope," by Charles Picot. "Christianity and the Experimental Method," by Lagrange, preceded by a letter from Naville.

In addition to these, we notice several English theological works announced as on sale at the Protestant book-store of Paris, showing an increasing tendency in France toward the study of English scholars in theological literature.

ART, XL-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

The Relation of Children to the Fall, the Atonement, and the Church. By N. BURWASH, S.T.D., Professor of Theology in Victoria University. 12mo, pp. 31. Toronto. 1882.

This brochure, delivered before a ministerial body as a lecture, is an important utterance; alike so from its timeliness, its theological, exegetical, and rhetorical ability, and the position of the author as a Canadian Methodist theological professor. It is a timely manifesto as containing a virtual repudiation of the questionable dogma of "HEREDITARY GUILT." And it is a cheering sign that we receive such a manifesto almost simultaneously from Professor Tillett and from Professor Burwash-from the South and from the North, from the Vanderbilt and from Victoria.

Dr. Burwash gives in full, from the Ninth Article of the English Church, the statement of the doctrine of original sin and its results. We wish he had placed it side by side with our own

Wesleyan-Arminian Seventh Article, that the Calvinism and the Methodism of the subject might stand face to face. We say the Calvinism of the subject, for there can be no reasonable doubt that the dogma of "hereditary guilt" was interpolated into that article by the advocates of Genevan predestination.

THE ANGLICAN NINTH ARTICLE. ORIGINAL SIN standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk,) but it is THE FAULT and 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 is of bis own nature inclined to evil, and, therefore, IN EVERY PERSON BORN INTO THIS WORLD IT DESERVETH GOD'S WRATH AND DAMNATION.

OUR WESLEYAN SEVENTH ARTICLE.

ORIGINAL SIN standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk,) but it is the [fault and omitted] 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 is of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.

It will be seen, on comparison, that Wesley struck out the word FAULT, thereby repudiating the idea that our inborn nature is our own responsible Fault. Second, he struck out, and thereby repudiated, the dogma that for being born of Adam every born descendant of Adam DESERVES GOD'S WRATH AND

DAMNATION.

We may say, therefore, conclusively, that these dogmas are not Methodism; and no authority has a right to teach them as Methodism. We may say more— -that Methodism does not merely ignore this dogma, but gives it a positive rejection and expulsion; so that it may be pronounced as, relative to Methodism, scarce less than a HERESY. We may say still more—that it stands in direct contradiction to the fundamental axiom of our Arminianism, that all responsibility and ill desert take their immediate or remote origin in a previous free, voluntary act, the act, namely, of the inculpated agent and no other; and it thereby nullifies all our arguments and protests against fatalistic reprobation; and, finally, it furnishes full justification for the abhorrent dogma of infant damnation.

It is true that our Twentieth Article, after the Anglican, attributes to Christ a "perfect... satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, both original and actual." And this term original is susceptible of both a Calvinistic and Arminian interpretation. It might be made to coincide with the universal inborn desert of damnation which Wesley repudiated; and that meaning is, of course, to be by us rejected. It might mean that only Adam's own and one "original sin," and not that of his posterity, was expiated by Christ's satisfaction. But, more acceptably, it may mean that this

satisfaction expiates also our original sin or corruption of nature as voluntarily made our own by our actual sin and our rejection of regenerating grace through the atonement. Thus the dogma of "hereditary guilt" is more than eliminated from Methodism. Dr. Burwash teaches that we do derive "sin," " a principle of sin," from Adam. He denies that Paul asserts "that we are objects of divine wrath apart from the manifestation of our sinful nature in actual transgression." But he holds Paul as affirming this "principle of sin" to be latent in infancy. "The doctrine of these words seems to be that the existence of this principle of sin within is not manifest until we arrive at that stage of moral development which brings us into conscious contact with the law of God." Yet Professor Burwash takes decisive issue with the doctrine of infant justification or infant regeneration. The child is unjustified, unregenerate, yet untouched by the wrath of God until he commits actual sin. He does not know how infant salvation can take place. And, in accordance with this, baptism does not attest the regeneration of its personal subject. In fact "the Church is not composed only of those who have already entered into the kingdom, but of all who are seeking it." "She baptizes all who are looking for remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost"!

While seconding our professor's non-acceptance of the dogma of "hereditary guilt" very heartily, we are obliged to say that to some of his positions we must enter an earnest dissent.

Very delicately must we criticise his application of the word "sinful" to our original moral state; for it is authorized by general theological use. But it is an ambiguity pregnant with mistake. If it mean guilty of sin, sin-guilty, we deny its application. If it mean sinward-tending, we concur. And this term sinward, with its derivative sinwardness, is with us a most expressive and explicit key-word. The predicate sinful ordinarily means guilt; the term sinward means a tendency which is not in itself guilty. Sinwardness expresses that tendency to sin which our Seventh Article describes as our depraved moral state. "Depravity" is sinwardness. Nor do we like the term "principle of sin," as if there were deposited within us a positive entity of sin, a substance or a lump. Our depravity by the fall is, as Watson says, "a depravation by deprivation." It is an original sinwardness consequent on the original deprivation of the Spirit. Before the fall the divine Spirit, the regulator over the soul, pointed man with easy and predominant preference to the

rightful course. That divine regulator lost, man's passions become unrestrained, and run chaotically wild. Before the moral agent in this world after the fall the ways of wrong set open by selfishness and by specific sensations and passions are a thousand, while the way of right is one. Nor is this sinwardness a tendency to sin as to a one positive individual object; it is a tending, regardless of the divine regulator and the divine law, toward any preferred object of gratification. Sin is not necessarily chosen as sin, but it is chosen, regardless of obligation, as gratification. The object or course of action most gratifying to the individual's feelings becomes predominant, and forms a habitual "bent to sinning" in that direction. This sinwardness is rather a settled state of the soul than an inwardly deposited "principle."

We must, next, call the professor's attention to his extraordinary misunderstanding (p. 10) of our interpretation of the words "all have sinned" in Rom v, 12. He names us as holding that clause to mean "all have personally sinned;" which is just the reverse of what we do say. We there adduce several instances of Paul's aorist as signifying "a uniform general fact," a "normal action," very uniformly taking place when the occasion presents itself. Men do, when the probational alternatives of right or wrong present themselves, very uniformly, apart from grace, land in the wrong, soon or later. Hence there is so uniform a sinning that men are, by unsanctified natural state, called sinners. And so St. Paul says all sin, and the many are made sinners. This is just the sense of Wesley's words in our above-quoted Seventh Article, "of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually."

Professor Burwash does not, like Professor Tillett, merely omit to state the process of infant salvation, but he goes further, and declares that process to be unexplainable. Like Calvinists generally, he finds in it a deep mystery. That does not seem to us an honorable Arminian ground. Our theology furnishes all the premises, and nothing is needed but a clear deduction of the solution. Let us see.

First, let us carefully note that it is one thing to be bad, and another thing to be responsible or guilty for that badness. If we are created by God, either immediately or through the medium of birth, depraved, we are truly depraved, but not, therefore, responsible or guilty. The infant, therefore, possesses depravity, but not guilt. That is a key-saying of Wilbur Fisk's: "Guilt is not imputed until, by a voluntary rejection of the Gospel, man makes the depravity of his nature the object of his own choice.