The record-union., 1896-03-14

pret the character and will of God, says
the ngregationalist'' of Boston.
Moses, David, Elijah, Jeremiah. Peter
indeed, all the Apostles-made mis-
takes that have been recorded in the
Bible, and sas thus recorded affect the
history of divine revelation. Only one
personlin the Bible claims to have made
no mistakes. He was in the bosom of
the Father, and no one, he said, knew
the Father but himself and those to.
whom he, the Son, declared him. We.
may be sure, then, that no man in the
past except Jesus Christ, the divine
man, has perfectly known God. Our
appeal to holy men of old is never to
what is in itself a final authority inde-
pendently of the Holy Spirit illuminat-
ing our own minds. They learned and
declared great truths suited to bring us
into fellowship with God, and sufficient
to our salvation. But the exhaustive
word concerning the character of God
and his will has not yet been spoken.
From these statements it is only a. nat
ural step to say that the Bible is the
record of a progressive revelation, con-
tinually revising, correcting and enlarg-
ing what went before
GAS rule, endowments for churches
are not wise or best" says the North
western Christian Advocate" (Meth.)
of Chicago. They generally under
mine personal effort and induce those
who are willing to give money to abate
their gifts. At any rate, such endow-
ments operate to diminish if not to de-
stroy that degree of beneficence which
needs the stimulus of persuasion The
eager givers of any church are in the
minority, and the aggregate of neces-
sary cash comes from those who re-
quire more or less of argument and re-
peated urging. Those who give for any
tcause, with ready or unready con
sent, alike have increased interest in
projects in behalf of which they part
with their treasure. Therefore, a policy
that decreases the number of benefac-
tors diminishes the number of people
who would give their hearts to the
cause because it has commanded their
dollars. Through that simple but un-.
falling law, all endowments tend to rob
the church of both followers and money.
God loves a cheerful giver because the
latter is cheerful, and not alone because
he has opened his pocket .
Human nature, which is declared by
all writer's who have given any atten-
tion to the matter to be prone to self
deception, deceives us at no point more
constantly than in the matter of the
authority and worth of the individual
temperament" remarks the New York
Outlook" Exact and matter-of-fact
people are very prone to regard all
imaginative and enthusiastic people
with a little contempt, fancying that
truthfulness and accuracy reside only
with themselves. There is often among
people of such a nature a little pat
ronizing touch when they speak of 9TH
ers who possess different qualities In
like manner, the man of scientific tenn
per is prone to speak lightly of his
brother of poetic temper-to treat him
as visionary whose impulses are good
and whose dreams would be attractive
il they were only true, while on the other
hand, the man of poetic nature is
quite likely to underva1ue his brother
of the scientific bent because he is so
given up to the drudgery and the mat
ter-of-fact side of things. Every tenn
permanent is born with a certain conf
dence in itself which is wise and sound,
but there is a constant danger that con-
fidence may expand into a kind of con-
ceit, and that the man who possesses a
peculiar quality may come to feel un-
consciously a little superiority over the
man who possesses another quality. AS
Q. matter of fact, it not only takes all
kinds of men to make the world, but it
takes all kinds of natures to see the
world. Each nature has it's special
quality, it's peculiar insight. and the
world lies complete only as it is discern
ed in the vision of all these different
types of mind and soul. In this matter,
as in all other matters, sound judgment
is a very rare quality, and it is much
better to understand our own type
clearly than to attempt to judge of the
types which surround US"