man to bag his game. He went from city to city, from province to province, from Asia across into Europe; he took advantage of the opportunities afforded him when he was summoned into the presence of governors, and others in authority; he availed himself of disaster by sea, and of persecutions by land; he pushed his way into the great centers of learning and trade and commerce; he condescended to the lowly; he toiled with his own hands; he suffered want; he endured reproach and abuse in a spirit of a sweet submissiveness, in order to press Jesus and the resurrection on the attention of men. He saw the great masses of mankind astray and alienated from the life of God; he saw souls everywhere defiled and bondaged and burdened by sin, and the impulse took possession of him, and kept possession of him to go forth to the rescue. Unweariedly and everywhere he beckoned men to the Lord. It is but a blind and unsympathetic reading of the life of Paul which finds nothing to awaken intense desire, and to inspire intense activity in the direction of winning men into discipleship. Such an inference is to me wholly unaccountable.

Observe the commission which he told Agrippa he had received direct from the lips of the Lord, and see how it runs: "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." Does not all that look largely toward the preliminary work of securing the conversion of men? Eyes to be opened; feet to be directed out of darkness into the paths of light; souls to be freed from their bitter and degrading bondage to Satan, and brought over into the glorious liberty of the sons of God; the forgiveness of sins to be secured. What else is that but a going out to men just as they are before they have been wrought upon by grace, and telling them the story of the Cross and persuading them to Jesus?

Recall some of the many words in which he gives expression

to his own personal feelings and aims: "To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." It is in this same connection that he says: "Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel." In another place he says: "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart, for I could wish that myself were separated from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." What is the explanation of this language; of these convictions and emotions? Here, surely, is the disclosure of a deep and propulsive sense of obligation; consecration the completest; a yearning which mounts to agony of soul, and what is it all about? What is the specific desire or aim which lies behind and occasions this intensity of expression? To do just this initial work of bringing men into the faith of Christ. It is not the building up work which he contemplates in these statements, but bringing men into such new relations with themselves, and the world and God, through the knowledge of him. who is at once the Way and the Truth and the Life that they can be built up. For that how he struggles!

Then, how came these letters of Paul in which so much is said about character to be written? How came there to be anybody to whom they could be written? How came there to be a Christian church at Corinth? and at Philippi? and at Ephesus? and at Thessalonica? How came there to be Christian churches in Galatia? How came there to be a Christian Timothy? and a Christian Titus? and a Christian Philemon? The churches at Rome and Colosse were not indebted to the labors of Paul for their origin. But these other churches were largely the outcome of his ministry. There were churches in these several cities to whom he could write his Christian instructions and counsels because he had gone before and gathered the materials with which to organize churches. Others had rendered the same service at Colosse and Rome. There were men and women to push forward in Christian growth because there were men and women who had been induced to come into the Christian faith. There were disciples to "confirm" because disciples had first been made. We

know how Timothy was trained; it was a wise and hopeful nurturing, and there is a lesson in it for all homes; but Paul calls him "his own son in the faith." He says substantially the same of Titus. Philemon was led to Jesus by the hand of Paul. The simple fact is that Paul was intent on reaching sinners, and rescuing them from the guilt and condemnation of their sins. To quote Paul in the interest of building men up in Christ as against Paul in the interest of this winning men to Christ, is to "divide" him. It is only half of the story.

In this connection it is not to be forgotten that Jesus Christ came as a Saviour. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins." He was here to seek and to save that which was lost. The gospel is good news to men astray and helpless through sin. When we reduce Christianity to a mere educating force and agency we take from it one of its most distinctive features, and rob it of its crowning glory. Christ distinguished with a sharp severity between form and substance; between a pretense of believing and the real believing which takes shape in character. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father." But that it was a definite aim of Christ to draw men to Him in faith, and in this way to plant in them the germs of a higher and better life, will not be successfully questioned in the face of the open gospel. Paul followed Jesus along this path. He sought with all the earnestness of his nature to bring men into the quickening knowledge of the Truth as it is in Him.

Thus he kept both ends before him, and was faithful in both directions, persuading men to accept Christ, and then establishing and developing them in Christian character.

These are the two halves of the one work still to be done. So long as there is any single soul anywhere away from Christ the winning work must go on. So long as there remains a single believer not yet perfected in Christ the building up work must be continued. The winning supplies the basis for the building up. The building up secures the final purpose of the winning. Both parts belong together, and it takes them both to make the unit of true Christian aim as illustrated in Paul.

The two thoughts, therefore, of acquainting men with Christ, and of carrying them up into likeness to Christ, so that they shall really be the pure and broad and stout men Christianity contemplates, are to be always in the minds and on the hearts of the ministry, and underscored with deepest emphasis in all general schemes of church work. Mischief is done by attempting to separate and antagonize them. One is not to be pushed forward by crowding the other back. kept abreast, outlining our work and beckoning to activity; and it will not be well for us, nor for the cause we serve, if we neglect either of these equally important and equally sacred duties. We are to say "Come," and we are to say "Grow," till all men are the obedient and loving children of the Father.

They are to be

ARTICLE VII.-DO WE NEED AN ETHICAL REVIVAL?

THE question submitted for discussion supposes a radical want or defect to exist in the religious life of our times; a want which is not met, or but very partially met, by "revivals of religion" technically so called. What this defect is, is indicated by the term ethical, or moral, as distinguished from religious, as this word is popularly understood: and the various bearings of the question are suggested by and comprehended in this deep and wide and far-reaching distinction. Perhaps we can best answer this question by considering the fact of such a defect, its causes, and its remedy.

Let it not be inferred in naming this distinction, that religion in its true idea does not include morality, or that the ethical element can be separated from the religious without fatal injury to both; that one can really love God without loving men who are made in the image of God," for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"-that one can truly reverence the divine attributes of justice, righteousness, goodness and truth, and practice injustice, dishonesty, meanness or cruelty, or can be religious and devout in the sanctuary, and be selfish, corrupt, and grinding in the street or in the market. Such inconsistency is possible under heathen systems, and is even consistent with the heathen idea of religion, which has little or no connection with morality, since the heathen deities are as morally corrupt as their worshipers, and the worship of them is a sensual or merely formal, not a spiritual worship, the performance of some outward rite rendered not as an expression of love or reverence-for the love of God is an idea utterly foreign to heathenism-but a slavish task or penance, or expiatory offering.

It is the distinctive excellence of Christianity that morality is a vital and organic part of religion, springing from it as branches from the root and cannot be sundered from it without destroying or fatally injuring its life. The one principle of