With this gon
It has always

fort that must be held at all hazards. nothing left worth contending for. widest sympathy with the intellectual and moral de of all the ages. It has sought and found a golden the ing all ages and nations together. Travelers are firmly bound together in crossing the ice-fields and g the Alps than the nations and ages are to each othe far have others gone with us. But shall the end of th thread dangle hither and thither, or shall it be place pierced hand that unhinges empires and gives new d to travailing civilizations? Our Church insists that the only Potentate, and He is now ordering all things in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the under the earth. The kingdoms of this world are (not shall, or will, but are become) the kingdoms of o and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever

Another feature of this loyalty shows itself in insisti Christ is ever present in the Church. Though He enter that which is within the veil, yet is He with us alway unto the end of the world. The mystical union of Chri believers, the immediate personal relationship of Chris His people, all and singly, has been insisted upon with priestly solemnity and prophetic earnestness that c aroused in consecrated men of God.

Much of the so-called Christian thought of the past has cold and heartless. The chilling influences of Deism and nosticism have percolated into every sphere of church Christ has not even been thought of as walking on the in darkness, when the angry winds from the desolate shor doubt are vexing the deep on which the Church of God is ing. He is hidden in the clouds. He is not held in sy thetic touch with tempted and tried humanity. Many a gry soul might justly say: "They have taken away my I and I know not where they have laid Him." If not this, can say: "Who shall ascend up into heaven to bring C down? or, who shall go down into the deep to bring Christ u

If they have not put Him in the heavens, and thus exalted im so far above men that He is totally indifferent to them, ey have not gone with Him beyond the cross; they are still gering there. They are listening to the awful groans; they e watching the terrible darkness that is gathering over the rth, and trembling as the rocks and hills are shaking upon eir broad foundations. Reformed theology has not been different to all this; but it has gone out of the chill of Good riday. It hurries forward through the three awful days in hich the sanctified body remained in the grave. It caught e life-giving breath of Easter morning, and shouted with a bice that it hoped would girdle the earth and fill the whole eavens, "The Lord is risen, indeed, and become the first-fruits them that slept."

It is with this living Christ that it deals. It thinks of Him s immanently present among the people, and as ready to disribute to the necessities of the saints as when He walked by he shores of Galilee. He is as certainly speaking to those -ho can and will hear as when He commanded the disciples to hrust out a little from the land, and poured the beatitudes pon the waiting throngs that lined the shore.

Thought now becomes living. Words about Him and to Him and for Him are instinct with the breath of God. With his key a thousand otherwise impenetrable mysteries are unaveled. Standing securely upon this Rock, a thousand cruial, critical questions are shorn of their terror. The new and ving way opened up for sin and uncleanness to the house of David becomes easy and plain. We have found the Messiah. of whom Moses and the prophets did write, and the Lion of the ribe of Judah who shall break the seals of the book, and shall lirect all the energies of all the centuries in the whole volume of the book of time. The weary eye sweeps the boundless horizon, but finds no place in heaven or in earth where the enlightening and enlivening influence of the Star of Bethlehem s not felt. The true Light has come, and He lightens every man that cometh into the world.

(2) ITS CATHOLIC SPIRIT.

It was our Zwingli who first insisted that infants d baptized should be saved. When he came to make up logue of the saints, he numbered among them Socrate Marcus Aurelius and the rest of the heathen world lived up to the light that had been granted unto them. Zwingli began to preach, he loved to expound the gospel ter by chapter and word by word. Some of the oth formers were more interested in the Epistles than in th ords of the perfect life. If our minds will ever widen that breadth that can believe all things, hope all thin endure all things, there must be a return to the study perfect life. One of the latest works to make a sen closes with the thought that a new study of the life of will bring men nearer to each other, and nearer to the problems that clamor for solution in these waning years century.

There is no other Church which can so easily fellowship other Churches as the Reformed. It will reach out the of friendship farther than any other. It will grasp the fered hand with a heartiness precluding the faintest id conventionality. It has no theological crotchets that it im on others. It has no shibboleths that have lost the spirit the form of which brings into bondage those who try to nounce them. It has but one creed, short, incisive and poi and upon this it insists-"Believe on the Lord Jesus C and thou shalt be saved." It could not be Christian wit this; from this it will not vary one single hair's breadth; this it extends a hand of welcome to all who may knoc its doors. It never holds itself aloof from any movement can be called Christian. It looks with some jealousy upon effort that will not acknowledge to the full the need of Chr life and power to reach an end which will be at all comm surate with the needs of sinful men. There are reforms t are simply of the earth, earthy. They do not propose to rea

Why am I Reformed?

"*

231

ything beyond the betterment of the present state. While aritably the Reformed people may give these the benefit of Le doubt, and may say, with the Rabbi of old: "Let these en alone, for if this thing be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, at if of men, it will come to naught;" yet they insist that less men are made Christians they cannot be the sons of God. It holds that Christianity must touch every sphere of human ctivity. "There is a breezy atmosphere about this religion. It meant for every-day use among the affairs of men. Its ultiate object is practical. If it aspires to soar on wings of faith to the heavenly abyss of the divine decrees, it always comes ack to earth with a message of innocence and purity and jusce between man and man.' The Reformed Church was orn in free Switzerland. The mountains were her sponsors, nd the fountains and rills, flowing from the eternal snowy aps, fashioned and won their nursling with their smiles. Having been blessed with the ideas of freedom, and of that ugged spiritual health, from communion with the great and rand in nature, it went forth to gladden all the earth. It ound a home in several important parts of Germany, as the Palatinate, the lower Rhine and in Brandenberg and other rovinces of Prussia. But it was yet far more vigorously and ully developed among the maritime and freer nations, especilly the Anglo-Saxon race, and follows its onward march to the West and the missionary fields of the East. Every historical tudent has heard of the Reformed Church of France; the Reformed Church of Germany; the Reformed Church of Switzerand; the Reformed Church of Holland; the Reformed Church of Italy; the Reformed Church of England; the Reformed Church of Scotland; the Reformed Church in America; the Reformed Church of the United States. "The Reformed Church had a large number of leaders, as Zwingli, Ecolampadius, Bullinger, Calvin, Beza, Knox, Cranmer; but not one of them, not even Calvin, could impress his name or his theological system upon her. She is independent of men and allows * Beard's Hibbert Lectures, p. 241.

fall freedom for national and sectional modifications an tations of the principles of the Reformation." * in its relation to the medieval Church, Luthera: more exservative and historical; the Reformed mire progressive and radical, and departs much farth the traditionalism, sacerdotalism and ceremonialism of The strength and beauty of the Reformed Churches aggressive energy and enterprise, power of self-gover strict Hiscipline, missionary zeal, liberal sacrifices and devction, even to martyrdom. It has produced Purit Congregationalism, Methodism, Evangelicalism (in the of England), the largest Bible, Tract and Missionary So has built most churches and benevolent institutions.† old mother has remained at home, somewhat circumsc practicing the same economy, living in the same simp while some of the daughters have gone out into wider sp of activity and have attained much larger proportions. glamour of their triumphs must not blind us to the vigor virtue and glory of the old homestead from which they out. Cosmopolitanism is always in danger of spreading to and wide. It may become a stream, having no banks, in of consecrating its energies and carrying on its broad bosou welfare of the world. This same spirit, unless carefully guar is in danger of multiplying sectarian divisions. Having little respect for authority or sacred traditions, private ju ment may run riot, and the lessons of history be turned into wives' tales or cunning fables. But these perils only prove catholic spirit which underlies the whole movement.

The Reformed Church watches with consuming interest growth of the Evangelical Alliance. In harmony with first Council at Jerusalem and the last Assembly of the Ev gelical Alliance, it insists that no unnecessary burdens imposed upon Christians, in order that they may have fello ship one with another. And it could fairly have shouted Schaff's Creeds, vol. 1, p. 219.

† Ibid., vol. 1, p. 216.