special revelation from God. To lead his auditors to appreciate this, Dr. Kinns mentioned that a clock beating seconds would take over thirty thousand years to tick a billion times; and that if any fifteen different events could be written down once in every ten minutes, it would take twenty-four millions of years to write all the variations that could be made in their order, writing them day and night without intermission, and further to illustrate it, he distributed slips of paper for each to write down the first fifteen letters of the alphabet in an order known only to himself, something in this order: g mh dajbk cfeniol and not one corresponded with his. He told them that if all the people in the world were to try to imitate his unknown order, there would be still a thousand chances to one that the whole twelve hundred million attempts would be incorrect. Or, in other words, if all the people in a thousand worlds, each having a population equal to our own, were to try, there would still be a probability that not one list would agree in sequence with the unknown list. After this he asked, How will the skeptic explain the marvelous-nay, miraculous— accuracy in sequence of the Mosaic cosmogony?

What is true of Moses is true of other sacred writers. Indeed, Moses has been the object of the most virulent skeptical attack, because his writings were considered less impregnable than the rest. Nevertheless, when all his mistakes are summed up, and weighed in the balance of honest and intelligent criticism, there will not be found enough of them on which to hang a plausible objection.

Rev. Bostwick Hawley, D. D., has called attention to a letter written in 1855 by Lieutenant M. F. Maury, of the United States Navy, and one of the foremost scientific men of that time. Its essential points, which Dr. Hawley arranges, show the "distinct traces in the Old Testament of scientific knowledge, both of the winds and ocean currents."

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1. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?' Whoever wrote these pregnant words, it is conceded that he lived and flourished at a time somewhere between Abraham and Moses, long before science had assumed any definite and systematic form. Scientific theories were then unknown. Lieutenant Maury says: It is a curious fact that the revelations of science have led astronomers of our own day to the discovery that the sun is not the dead center of motion, around which comets sweep and planets whirl; but that it, with its splendid retinue of worlds and satellites, is revolving through the realms of space at the rate of millions of miles in a year and in obedience to some influence situated precisely in

the direction of the star Alcyon, one of the Pleiades. We do not know how far off in the immensities of space that center of revolving cycles and epicycles may be; nor have our oldest observers or nicest instruments been able to tell how far off in the skies that beautiful cluster of stars is hung whose 'influences' man can never bind. In this question and the answer to it are involved both the recognition and exposition of the whole theory of gravitation.

"The word Pleiades is from a Greek word meaning to sail, and is applied to these seven stars because Greek navigation began at the rise and closed at the setting of this cluster of stars. The Hebrew word

means a heap, a cluster, especially a cluster of stars. Alcyon is the chief or central star of the group and may be the center of that portion of the stellar universe to which the solar system is more immediately related in its immense revolution. That this name is given to this star because of its importance and influence, finds an illustration in the Greek fable where the bird known as the king-fisher bears the

same name.

"2. The lieutenant takes and well uses another saying of Job: 'He maketh the weight for the wind.' Quite equal to Galileo-who knew, but did not dare in prison to say, that the reason why a certain pump of that day did not lift water higher than thirty-two feet was because the 'weight' of the atmosphere is only fifteen pounds to the square inch-Job thousands of years before him enunciated the fact in this brief sentence.

"3. The fact that the patriarch of Uz was somewhat familiar with the principle though not with the theory and definite laws of gravitation is seen in this peculiar expression: He stretcheth out the north. over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.' 'Here is another proof,' says Maury, 'that Job was familiar with the laws of gravitation, for he knew how the world was held in its place; and as for the "empty place" in the sky, Sir John Herschel has been sounding the heavens with his powerful telescope and gauging the stars, and where do you think he finds the most barren part-the empty place of the sky? In the north, precisely where Job told Bildad, the Shuhite, the empty place was stretched out. It is there where comets most delight to roam and hide themselves in emptiness.'

"4. As to the order and days of creation Mr. Maury was himself in harmony, and represented Moses to be with the latest and best theory of modern geology and cosmology. He says: The history of creation is written on the tablet of rock and in the Book of Revelation. In both the order of creation is the same; first the plants to

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afford substance, and then the animals; the chief point of apparent [and only apparent] difference being as to the duration of the period between the evening and the morning." "A thousand years is as one day," and the Mosaic account affords evidence itself that the term day, as there used, is not that which comprehends our twenty-four hours. It was a day that had its evening and morning before the sun was made.' If the lieutenant means by made, created, we of course join issue. But if he means was made, or had become the source of light and the measures or rules of time to the then inchoate and cloud-enwrapped earth, we accord with him.

"5. Coming down to a later time and writer, Maury affirms that 'Solomon in a single verse describes the circulation of the atmosphere as actual observation is now showing it to be. That it has its laws and is obedient to order as the heavenly host in their movement, we infer from the fact announced by him and which contains the essence of volumes by other men: "All the rivers run into the sea; but the sea is not full unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again;" a passage that somewhat obscurely refers to the evaporation from large bodies of water, particularly in the temperate and torrid belts, then rising to form rain-clouds which fall again in the rain, and also to the flow of streams, caused thereby, to the sea again for other and continuous evaporations and circulations. To investigate the laws which govern the winds and rule the sun is one of the most profitable and beautiful occupations that a man, an improving, progressive man, can have. The field of astronomy affords no subjects of contemplation more ennobling, more sublime, or more profitable than those which we may find in the air and the sea. Wayward and fickle as seem their movements, they are orderly and subject to laws. 'When the morning stars,' says Maury, 'sang together, the waves also lifted up their voice, and the winds, too, joined in the almighty anthem. A discovery advances; we find the marks of order in the sea and in the air that is in tune with the music of the spheres, and the conviction is forced upon us that the laws of all are nothing else but perfect harmony.'"

The revision of our English Bible, which was completed in 1885, is especially suggestive of its wonderful accuracy even in the smallest particulars. For fifteen years a large company of the most learned scholars and divines, both in Europe and America, in the light of modern developments of science, carefully weighed every word and phrase of the sacred text, yet not one doctrine or duty was obliterated or disparaged by the revision, and very few changes, even of

minor significance, were made. Such a result, in these times of conflict and criticism, may well serve to strengthen the faith of men in the purity and authority of the written Word. It reminds us of the language of a certain Oxford professor, who died in 1874, and who began in very early life his researches into the exact and delicate meanings of the Greek tenses, moods, prepositions, and particles, and who in mature life displayed a complete mastery over the structure of the Greek language, and a perfect admiration for the strict truthfulness of the Holy Gospels. We refer to Rev. Wm. Sewell, D. D., who gave utterance to the following: "A very minute investigation of the Greek of the New Testament, studied grammatically, with a careful consideration of the real and true meaning of every case, tense, and mood, of every particle, even of the very order of the words, so far as my knowledge of the niceties and exquisite discriminations of the language has enabled me to master the subject, has only served to deepen the conviction that the Holy Scriptures are indeed, in very truth, the Word of God, inspired by his Holy Spirit; that they are in the original minutely, scrupulously, marvelously exact in every word, syllable, and letter. I can not express too strongly the awe and admiration with which I rise daily from this microscopic study of the New Testament. The more minutely I look into the force, the exactness, the deep meaning even, of single words, the profounder becomes my reverence, the more awful my sense of the importance of every jot and every tittle of Holy Writ. Deeply and awfully convinced I am that the Scriptures are not merely the work of good, holy, inspired men, but that they are really the voice of God; that we must approach them, therefore, with the confidence, the reverence, the unshaken belief in their correctness, truthfulness, depth, importance, and infinite wisdom due to words which issue from the mouth of God himself."

THE BIBLE NOT OUT OF DATE.

All this talk about the Bible being out of date on matters of science is so much nonsense. Let us have done with it, then, and let us ask: How does the Bible stand its own ground? How does it accomplish the object it sets before it? Is it out of date as a book upon sin, upon righteousness, upon salvation, upon God?

All other books on these subjects, except those that have taken their inspiration directly or indirectly from the Scriptures, were either out of date at the time they were produced or became out-dated in a

very few years. Where are the ethical and religious productions of those who made their researches and recorded their researches apart from the Scriptures? Where are the moralists and philosophers of Greece and Rome? Their works, indeed, are on the shelf of every scholar in Christendom; but in what capacity? As authorities? Not at all, but simply as monuments of eloquence and chapters of intellectual history. Who would ever think of giving to the question, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" this answer: "By taking heed, thereto, according to Aristotle's 'Nicomachean Ethics."" And yet Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" is the very best ever produced on the subject without aid from revelation.

Who would ever think of expecting a soul-satisfying solution of the problem, "If a man die, shall he live again?" by reading Plato's "Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul," glorious as it is? Is there a single Greek or Roman classic on the subject of man's condition and prospects that would be of the slightest use to a soul burdened with sin or oppressed with the weight of this most solemn of all questions: “How shall a man be just with God?" They are all out of date, cold monuments of genius, dead relics of antiquity, almost forgotten attempts to sound the mysteries of life and death. Does any one suppose that the new "Data of Ethics," by Mr. Herbert Spencer, or the more recent "Science of Ethics," by Mr. Leslie Stephen, is likely to be the Sunday-school book for the next generation or require an immense society to supply the exhaustless demand for it? And if those who are trying their hands at helping out the Bible and working along the same lines get so soon out of date, what shall we say of those who fight and write against it? They go into still swifter and darker oblivion.

Where are the authorities of our intelligent skeptical friends of the present day? They are all amongst the writers of the last few years. What of all the race from Celsus and Julian downwards? They are all out of date, and most of them can not be seen; they have gone to Milton's limbo, where all vanities are said to go. Where is a skeptical writer of two thousand, or one thousand, or five hundred, or fifty (and I am almost tempted to go down, like Abraham, to ten) years' standing, that our intelligent skeptical friends will stand by as we stand by Moses and David, and Matthew and Paul? They are all out of date, and their works are to be found, if found at all, amid the dusty, decaying, and moth-eaten volumes of the past in the British Museum, or on the antiquarian's book-shelf. Who will venture to predict a time when you will ransack a library to find a copy of the