ment of Christ's ministry to a date which would not agree with His age at that time, as stated by Luke, namely, that He "began to be about 30 years of age," though it might agree approximately with the "fif teenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar" (the other date mentioned by Luke), by counting the years of that reign from the death of Augustus.

COMPARATIVE CALENDAR FOR 13-17 NISAN, a. d. 27-35.

[The Hebrew days commence at sunset, preceding the Roman at midnight.]

PROPHESYING "Speaking by the Spirit of God." (I Corinth. c. xiv ; c. xii: 3.) Teaching of the XII Apostles, c. xi.

"SPEAKING IN THE SPIRIT."

We can well imagine that in the early Christian Societies of Asia Minor, Greece, and even Italy, the mystic doctrines of Christianity, combined with the principles of unselfishness and high morality and charity taught as a part of the new system must have had a profound effect upon the souls of those impassionable people, and that in their religious assemblies extatic conditions of the mind should have often supervened, as indeed, is witnessed in our own times, amongst certain classes of religionists. Persons thus possessed with extatic feeling would naturally indulge in prophetic deliverances, more or less, elevated and captivating-as the subject of the possession was well or only partially instructed, and imbued with high and ennobling spiritual convictions. Such persons would be regarded as "prophesying in the spirit" and under proper restraints, their influence would greatly redound to the edification of the church and to the impression of those not yet connected with it. This class of persons had become well defined in the Apostolic age, as may be gathered from the chapters

referred to. They were still prevalent in the second century as we learn from the Teaching of the XII Apostles, lately discovered by the Metropolitan Bryennios.

Were not the ancient prophets gifted by a like inspiration? No one acquainted with the manifestations of the human mind in religious, and even in poetical directions, can fail to have observed that an illuminated and highly susceptible soul is capable of great reaches of spiritual intuition and inspired sublimity which far outstrip the ordinary operations of the human understanding. Is not this inspiration? Inspiration par excellence? When the mind is in this condition it is less affected by sordid and worldly motives and sees, as is seen on a death-bed, all spiritual things in a clear and steady light. The results of a life of reading, study, observation and reflection, produce a capacity of conceiving truth in its essence, morality in its principles, religion in its highest effulgence-which capacity may be brought into activity by an elevation of mind induced by temporary enthusiasm, and extatic feeling. This inspiration is seen in all branches of human thought. In the science of law the responses of a Papinian are an illustration of it in a certain degree.

April 13, 1890.

LETTER TO AMZI DODD.

January 23, 1891.

DEAR AMZI: Yours received, with the editorial on the Transubstantiation controversy-which is very good and just. Our Puritan prejudices against Romanism are so strong that we are apt to forget that it was the only form of Christianity in the West (with a few exceptional protests) for twelve hundred years.

As to supernaturalism, there are only three forms of belief-three distinct theories on the subject, those of 1. A personal God. Creator of, but distinct from, the World or Universe, exercising a superintending care over it, with occasional manifestations (for moral purposes) of miraculous interference with the general laws of nature.

2. Such a Divine Creator, who has implanted His laws of physical and spiritual being in the system of things created, and leaves them to their own operation without supernatural interference.

3.

Pantheism, which affirms a Divine Being whose only manifestation is in the Laws of Nature, productive of all the phenomena of the World or Universe, as its Soul or formative principle; in other words, that the World is God. Atheism is but another form of this theory, affirming that Nature alone, or an unconscious omnipotent force, with fixed eternal laws, is its own cause, and that of all phenomena.

Christianity, as an institutive religion, adheres to the first theory; as a purely spiritual religion, it admits also the second.

INERRANT OR INFALLIBLE BIBLE.

In a letter to Amzi Dodd, who inquired as to the distinction between an inerrant Bible and an infallible Bible, taken in some of the debates in the Presbyterian General Assembly in discussing the Briggs case, I said that the distinction was an arbitrary one, probably to designate the two great theories of inspiration, the Theophrastic and the spiritual, the former being that every word of Scripture was inspired; the latter, that sacred writers were only inspired with spiritual truth, and used their own words and illustrations to express it, tinged by their environment. The inspiration of each word could only refer to the original Hebrew and Greek, and not to versions in the other languages, and the original texts were liable to errors in transcription as well as in translation, so nothing was gained by verbal inspiration unless we suppose that the copyists as well as translators were also inspired. He who inspired the letter (if it was so inspired) implanted the principle of lingual diversity in the different tribes of men and defeated His own object. Jerome, the greatest translator that ever lived, whose attention must have been frequently given to the subject, said that "Inspiratio non constat in verbo sed in sensu." But I take little interest in the discussion, my views on the subject having been long settled and fixed. According to my view, the manner of revelation may be expressed as follows:

The Spirit of God moves upon the ocean of human thought, ever evolving light and truth, which concreted in words of immortal power, becomes stereotyped upon the consciousness of the nations, consecrated