of peace with others, in harmony with external nature and with the animal creation, with every want supplied, it only remained that man should be in harmony with God-God, not a fetish, or an idol, but God in the majesty of the Creator, the holiness of the moral Governor, and the beneficence of a Father. And so he was. This is indicated by the fact that God so fitted up this world for him, and presented it to him, and gave him dominion, making him his vicegerent, and blessed him, and after having done this, "Saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good."

Thus do we find imbedded in this oldest record known a marvelous identity of the real with the ideal. Every element logically required for perfection is there, but too inartificially to have been there by contrivance. How came this? Regarded as a mental conception it implies the broadest comprehension, and is at the utmost remove from any possible product of the savage state.

But this perfect state continued only for a time. There came in a state of sin and of disorder. This is our present state. Does the Bible, then, now present to us anything that has come directly from God, and so, according to the theory of this paper, should claim to be, and should be, perfect? Yes. This is true of the Law of God as given on Sinai. That law had no such relation to sin, or to a remedial system, that it could be affected by them. As coming directly from God, as demanded by the moral nature, as showing from what man had fallen, and to what he must attain if he is to be saved, it was logically and philosophically necessary that this law should be perfect. And so it is found to be.

There are those who deny this. They say that the commandments are chiefly negative, and that they are not inclusive of all duty. But the negative implies the positive. When it is said, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," it is assumed that the true God is to be recognized and worshiped. This, on any fair principle of interpretation, no one can deny. And the same is true of the other commandments negative in form. Interpreted thus it will be found that the commandments are a perfect rule of conduct perfectly arranged. They give us, first our duties to God -the object, the manner, and the time of worship. They then make the family the basis and centre of society, and recognize in their order each of the great rights, the preservation of which is essential to human well being, and for the sake of which civil government is instituted. Interpreted spiritually, as it was by our Saviour, this law only needs to be accepted in its positive form to make society perfect; and only as projects of reform are car

ried on in its spirit, and, I may add, under its sanctions, will they succeed. In some of its specifications and details this law is applicable only to the relations of this world, but in its spirit and fundamental precepts it is applicable to all worlds, and is inclusive of all duty." The law of the Lord is perfect.'

But if it be logically requisite that the law of God shall be perfect, it cannot be less so that He who came out from God and would redeem men from sin and its curse should be perfect. If not, He would himself need to be redeemed. Christ came not merely to reveal a doctrine, but to do a work, and in that work his own person and character are central. That work requires that in his relation to the Father as a Son; to the Spirit as procuring cause; to the Law as a subject and a sacrifice; and to man as an example, he should be without sin. Unlike other religions as related to their founders, the person of Christ and his sinless and faultless character are essential elements in Christianity. They are as the atmosphere when vital action is in question.

But that Christ was thus sinless is everywhere assumed and claimed in the Scriptures. He was "a Lamb without spot." "He did no sin." "He was made sin for us who knew no sin." "He was tempted like as we are, yet without sin." He always did those things that pleased the Father. This assumption and claim of sinlessness cannot be denied, and than this there is nothing more marvelous in the Bible. As compared with the conception of a sinless man, as essential to a religious system, and with the presentation of it in real life, in its vicissitudes and under its extremest forms of trial, the wonder of miracles is as nothing. Miracles were needed in the beginning as evidences. They are needed still, but they will be less needed as the world moves on, and the sinless character of Christ shall take its place and shine with its proper effulgence in the Christian system.

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But not only was this perfection required in Christ as an individual, but also in his official capacity. This, too, is asserted and claimed, though it involves perfections and combinations seemingly incompatible and impossible. In his office as Mediator he was not only a man a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," but also one who "thought it not robbery to be equal with God." As a sacrifice he was the "Lamb without spot." As, at the same time, our High Priest to offer the sacrifice, he was not only "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners," but was such an High Priest as became us," for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted he is able to succor them that are

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tempted." In his whole office as "Captain of our salvation" he is "made perfect through sufferings."

What next? With a perfect law, a perfect example, and a perfect Redeemer, nothing could be expected or allowed short of perfection as the standard of individual attainment. And this is the standard. "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." "Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect." Be perfect." "Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." "Perfecting holiness in the fear of God." "Let us go on unto perfection." Moral perfection intelligently attained through the influence of truth, of a perfect example, and by the aid of the Spirit of God - behold practical Christianity behold a rational end proposed to men to be attained by means that preclude priestly domination and all forms of superstition. No priest-craft ever presented, or can present, moral perfection intelligently pursued as its end. No superstition ever pursued or can pursue that end through the influence of truth, of a perfect example, and by the aid of the Spirit of God. Moral perfection, including a perfect manhood to this, and nothing short of this, we must attain. Can Christianity bring us to it? If not, it is a failure. If it can, it must be of God. No stronger argument for the divinity of such a system can be brought than its coincidence with the demands of the moral nature, and its power to bring that nature to perfection through restoration.

But though the law is perfect, and the Redeemer and his example, and the standard of conduct and attainment are perfect, yet so imperfect are the moral results that, looking only at what we see here, the system is a failure. At its best there is in this life much of ignorance and sin and suffering, and it goes out in death. If the race be perpetuated yet the generations pass, and every individual life goes out in darkness and apparent defeat. But the defeat is only apparent. For, "as by man came death, so by man came the resurrection of the dead." In the resurrection of the righteous dead is victory, complete victory, over sin and death. In them we have a new race with a new headshipChrist, the second Adam, and, as we might anticipate, again we have revealed for them a perfect state.

This perfect state, without specification of place, as on this earth or elsewhere, which is not essential, is revealed to consist, first, in that which we have seen to be required, that is, in a perfect moral character for each individual, or in the perfect coinci

dence of the conscience and the will with the revealed law of God. "For they are without fault before the throne of God." "And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie." "When He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

In the second place we have the revelation of a perfect social state. This is a great point, for the highest problem of time is to constitute society so as to approximate this. The social state thus perfect the Scriptures represent under the figure of a city with its facilities of intercourse and magnificence of decoration and appliances for comfort, but with no touch of corruption. This is done from a sublime confidence in the power of Christianity to renovate society. In our experience great cities engender great corruption. How bold the conception, then, of a great city with no touch of that. It is also done from a philosophic apprehension of the higher elements there are in persons as compared with nature, and of their higher power to confer enjoyment when they have become enlightened and pure and righteous and loving. With one common basis of character for all, and yet a diversity beyond that of hill and valley, and river and mountain and sea, there is no beauty like that of such a society, and no enjoyment from created things like that which it can confer. Into such a society shall they enter who shall come from the East and the West and the North and the South and shall sit down in the kingdom of God."

In the third place this perfection is to consist, as in the primitive state, in the perfect adjustment to the sensibility of all its surroundings. There is no hint in the Bible that the two sources of enjoyment, that by action from without inward, and from within outward, will not be continued. It is rather assumed that they will be augmented and perfected. These act and react upon each other, and it is the completion of moral order when they correspond. Through the one there may be an inflow at once into the soul of an outward Paradise, or of the glories of the New Jerusalem; through the other joy and peace. All evil being removed, it is in the midst of such glories that revelation places the redeemed. "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth."

The above we have; but the crowning element is to be found in the revelation by God of himself, and so in the immediate knowledge of Him and communion with Him. "Behold the tab

ernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God." "And the city had no need of the light of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof."

Thus do we have in the Scriptures, in the beginning, perfection; in the middle, sin, struggle, apparent defeat, but still, where it is logically demanded, perfection; in the end, victory, and again, perfection. But so far as we have perfection we have optimism, and, if we allow that evil may enter at all into the best possible system, we have reason, from the perfection which thus runs through the Scriptures, to believe that the system which they present is one of optimism. We have reason to believe that it is worthy of God and the best possible.

From optimism of the kind and to the extent now presented as found in the Scriptures we find a conclusive argument that they are from God. Nothing of the kind is found in any other books claiming, or not claiming, to be inspired; and only as these are inspired can we account for their meeting, as they do, in this regard, both the logical and ethical demands of the human mind.

II. OPTIMISM IN THE WORLD AS IT IS.

Having inquired how far we find revealed in the Bible the best possible system, we next turn to this world as it is, and inquire whether it is in itself, or with reference to any conceivable end, as good as it could be. Clearly it is not such a world as man would have made. It is not such an one as he would suppose God would have made. A perfect world would be holy and happy. But this world is not as holy or as happy as it might be. Neither is it as wicked or as miserable. It is not a perfect world for the production of holiness, or of happiness, of wickedness, or of misery; and certainly it is not a world of perfect retribution.

There is in this world, both in nature and in man, much that is perfect. This we are neither to overlook nor undervalue, since it shows that the idea is not lost sight of; but if we take nature and man as a whole, it must be conceded that there is in nature a strange mixture of beneficent and destructive forces apparently in conflict, and in man an equally strange and a corresponding mixture of evil and of good. Looked at without reference to a future life, this world presents an insoluble mystery. The general tendency seems to be beneficent, and yet the optimist and