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the very top, the beautiful thick trees which, with their benificent broad boughs, protected him and his little congregation from the hot June sun when he preached at noon near a farmhouse in Westmoreland, and when, as he records, "a little bird perched in one of them and sung without intermission from the beginning of the service unto the end." Such beauteous earthly things our great apostolic evangelist takes note of while he calls sinners to repentance and invites human souls to shelter under the Tree of Life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

The sacredest thoughts we Christians can have about trees belong to the life of Him "who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree." In 1853 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley wrote from Jerusalem:

I have now been inside the garden of Gethsemane, and cease to wonder at the emotion it inspires. It is not the situation. It is those aged olives, the more striking from their total unlikeness to all the others. They could not have seen the agony. No! But they have seen the tears of generations of pilgrims, and more than anything else in or about Jerusalem, except the everlasting hills themselves, they carry you back to that night of superhuman anguish. Of all the trees that I ever saw or shall see they are the most venerable.

Next to the calm unimpassioned narratives of the evangelists the one thing fittest to be read in Gethsemane or repeated in a sermon on the Agony in the Garden, is Sidney Lanier's "Ballad of Trees and the Master," which by its tender and devout simplicity stands alone in uncanonical literature and must unavoidably conclude this essay :

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.

Into the woods my Master came,

Forspent with love and shame.

But the olives they were not blind to Him,

The little gray leaves were kind to Him,

The thorn tree had a mind to Him

When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,

And he was well content.

Out of the woods my Master came,

Content with death and shame.

When death and shame would woo Him last,

From under the trees they drew Him last:

'Twas on a tree they slew Him-last

When out of the woods He came.

THE ARENA.

"NESCIENCE OF GOD."

AN article, by Dr. M. S. Terry, on this subject in the January issue, displays its author's well-known clearness of thought and expression. He deprecates the "tendency among Arminian Methodist theologians to look with favor upon the idea that the foreknowledge of God may be limited." This tendency is likely, nevertheless, to intensify and widen, for Dr. Terry's reasons why it should not are far from conclusive, though they admirably summarize the best stock arguments in favor of his view. 1. He says that omniscience is "the knowledge of all things." This is no more true than that omnipotence is the power to do all things. It is the power to do all doable things; and so omniscience is the knowledge of all knowable things.

2. God's failure to foreknow a contingent future event is not the result of choice on his part, but of the necessities of the situation; for an event, contingent on a free choice not yet made, is apparently unknowable.

3. Dr. Terry says that God's nescience of contingent events would seem to involve the acquisition of knowledge on the part of God when they occur. We reply that God now knows all the choices which can be made; and therefore the one which finally is made, being already familiar to him, cannot increase his knowledge. It simply becomes a fact, instead of a possibility. If this does increase his knowledge, it is an increase similar to that he receives when he knows an event has taken place which he knew would take place; he never knew before that it had taken place; this, therefore, is new knowledge. Such new knowledge has been pouring in upon him from the beginning, and does not invalidate his omniscience.

Dr. Terry attacks Dr. L. D. McCabe's proposition that "divine nescience of future contingencies is a necessity," and says:

1. "This is not a self-evident proposition," that is, it is not mathematically self-evident like the assertion that two and two equal four. But many great thinkers have affirmed it to be logically self-evident. Bishop E. O. Haven declared himself unable to conceive the contrary. Bishop Wiley said virtually the same. Dr. Jonathan Edwards and Chalmers and all the leading Calvinistic writers admit the impossibility of infallible foreknowledge of contingent events; while Watson, Whedon, and most Arminian theologians confess that the existence of such foreknowledge is an insoluble mystery."

2. If Dr. McCabe's proposition is true, says Dr. Terry, God "cannot be omniscient." But he can be, if omniscience is the knowledge of all knowable things and a contingent event is unknowable, for as soon as it becomes knowable he knows it.

3. The proposition, says Dr. Terry, "must needs apply to all God's future free volitions." Certainly, and we have abundant evidence that it does. "And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth... And the Lord said, I will destroy man" (Gen. vi, 6, 7). Did the Lord intend to destroy man when he created him? Such a supposition is incredible.

4. This brilliant exegete questions "the competency of any finite mind to affirm " God's nescience of contingent events. Why then does Dr. Terry affirm God's prescience of contingent events? It requires no more mental competency to make the first affirmation than to make the second.

5. "The proposition assumes a notion of what time must be with God," declares the doctor. But, if we have no notion of that, there is no basis for either argument or theology. Dr. Clarke was evidently mistaken when he said that with God past, present, and future are one "eternal now; " and John Wesley when he said, "God does not know one thing before another, or one thing after another." To say that God did not know that the battle of Waterloo was being fought, and did not know afterward that it had been fought, sounds irrational. An "eternal now" is to us unthinkable. The weight of both evidence and common sense favors the idea that "time is an objective reality." Professor Bowne says: "Change is real, and change cannot be conceived without succession. In this sense the world process is in time, . . . and God himself is in time, so far as the process is concerned; this involves sequence in both action and knowledge."

Dr. Terry also declares that Professor McCabe's arguments are not convincing, and says:

1. If future contingencies are nonentities so are future necessities. This is not self-evident, for while a future necessary event is a fact a future contingent event is only a possibility, and may never exist.

2. He also avers that God's responsibility for existing evil is not relieved by nescience of contingent events. But that is not the way we judge men. One who foreknows that his child will inherit dipsomania or insanity or leprosy has no right to become a father. It is different if he sees that his child will have an equal chance with others. If we can say that God foreknew on general principles that free agency, with uncertainty, would be better than mere automation, we can say that he is good, though evil exists. But if God could foreknow that any particular soul would suffer eternally it would be diabolical for him to create that soul.

3. If, says Dr. Terry, "Knowledge of contingent events impeaches God's sincerity in exhortations and warnings," then "omniscience unfits the Eternal for the creation and government of the moral universe." This is not very conclusive, and not at all self-evident; it looks like a non sequitur.

In closing our writer quotes and indorses Dr. D. D. Whedon, who says, "The real difficulty . . . is to conceive how God came by his

foreknowledge." If he had added, "of contingent events," all would respond, "Yes, such foreknowledge is too wonderful for us!" But foreknowledge of events that are planned and predetermined is not difficult to conceive. Omniscience could easily grasp an infinitude of such events. Human intelligence does not stumble over such an idea. It is generally believed that the whole universe of matter is under God's absolute sway. He foreknows eclipses and cataclysms and earthquakes. He probably rules, also, in a general way, over our race. Quite likely there have been "men of destiny," such as Moses and David and Paul and perhaps Cyrus and Washington and Lincoln. It may be that no one is absolutely and always a free agent, for "the wrath of man shall praise him." Nevertheless, as Arminians we affirm that, down in the depths of his soul, each man is free to choose good or evil. How God can foreknow what a free choice will be is indeed an "insoluble mystery." A contingent event being, according to Webster, dependent on something "unknown," we cannot comprehend how it is possible for it to be known; being dependent upon something "undetermined," how can it be predetermined? And "not being certain to occur," how can it be foreknown as certain to occur? A thing cannot be unknown and foreknown, undetermined and predetermined, uncertain and certain at one and the same time. Why should we cling to a theory which involves such glaring contradictions?

Dr. Whedon made a brave and very brilliant attempt to render belief in the foreknowledge of contingent events plausible. The chief corner stone of the logical edifice he rears is the following sentence, "It is certain that there will be a one particular course of future events, and no other." This sounds truer than it is. Marvelous thinker though he was, Dr. Whedon begs the question when, in referring to contingent events, he says there will be a one;" he should only say, "There may

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be either one of several." To particularize is to select, and the one who alone can select is supposedly not yet born. If God selects for him then it is God, not man, who chooses. The grotesqueness of the edifice reared indicates the awryness of its chief corner stone. It consists of an imaginary "record, perfectly accurate, of all futuritions." Concerning this record Dr. Whedon says, "It is absolutely impossible that it should not be true," and then adds, "It is perfectly possible that the events it contains should not take place." In other words, the same thing is at one and the same time both possible and impossible.

See also the pitiful situation in which it places both man and God. Here is a prospective free agent whom God from all eternity has known would be lost. He at last appears on the scene, and reads Dr. Whedon's account of the "record," and finds that all he will say or do or even think has been eternally foreknown and certain. His final fate is recorded, and is inevitable. It makes no difference to the poor victim whether his fate is a necessity or a certainty, as the result is the same. What motive has he for trying to do this instead of that, or that instead

of the other, so long as the "record" is made and he knows it is "impossible that it should err?" To render the situation increasingly painful God approaches this reprobate and, with crucifying anguish, cries, "Turn ye, turn ye . . . for why will ye die." Who can blame the man for retorting, "Lord, thou knewest I would before thou created me, and thy exhortation is insincere." Who would not draw a veil over the doctrine which neccessitated a situation so distressing? Milburn, N. J.

WESLEY'S MAGGOTS.

J. S. BRECKINRIDGE.

Nor entomological specimens, but a curious little book-five and three fourth inches by three and one half inches, with one hundred and ninety pages, beautifully bound in whole calf and gold, doubtless the original binding-is before us as we write. It is an exceedingly rare specimen of seventeenth-century literature, the date being 1685. It is peculiarly interesting to us because it is the first book published by Samuel, the father of John and Charles Wesley, at that time the coming rector of Epworth and Wroot. The author was then in his twenty-third year, and had been at Oxford University about a year. The register of Exeter College says his "Deposit of Caution Money was made September 26, 1684. Born in Dorchester, in Dorset, at the close of 1662, there he lived until March, 8, 1678, when he removed to London to continue his education which had been so well begun in the Free School in Dorchester, of which Mr. Henry Dolling was the head master from 1664 to 1675. To him his former pupil dedicates this, his first published book.

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The Epistle Dedicatory occupies two and a quarter pages, and is headed, "To the Honoured Mr. H. D., Headmaster of the Free School in D, in the county in D-." Then follows "The Epistle to the Reader," occupying nine pages. In this, after playful references to the bookseller, Mr. Wesley claims originality for the book, saying, "All here are my own pure Maggots, the natural Issue of my Brain-pan, bred and born there, and only there." He anticipates sharp criticism, pleads his youth, and offers to add a beard to his face if some one will furnish it "and be at the charge of grafting it on." The frontispiece has an anonymous portrait of the author. He looks like a boy of about fourteen years, but with a face much older. The poet's wreath is on his brow, and on it, in the middle of his forehead, is a good-sized maggot in the act of biting. He is standing at a table on which rests a manuscript and an open book in which he is writing. Underneath the picture is written:

"In 's own defence the Author writes
Because while this foul Maggot bites

He nere can rest in quiet

Which makes him make soe sad a face
Heed beg your worship or your grace
Unsight unseen to buy it."

41-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV.

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