Christ is finally to judge will previously have had Christ offered to him, before or after death? He may be entirely in error, in entertaining such a hypothesis; but shall that debar him from preaching Christ to the benighted pagans? Why should it, when to the living, whom he addresses, he can make every appeal which would be made by any of us? And in speaking of a missionary appeal, it is a significant fact, that the excellent discourse before the Board at Springfield, by that firm conservative, Dr. Noble of Chicago, contained not a sentence which could not have been uttered by one of the minority, or even by an Andover Professor! In the whole array of motives for carrying on the missionary enterprise with holy zeal, he did not include one inconsistent with the Andover hypothesis. And yet we must not send out a missionary, who could accept that missionary sermon in its entirety, unless he would add, what the preacher did not, a denial of Andover peculiarities! Think of debarring a man, on so slender a ground of difference, from carrying the gospel to the living pagans in Africa or India, in China or Japan! And we do debar him, so far as we are concerned, as a denomination, if the only agency we have for foreign missionary work refuses to send him. It is not as when, on the home field, a local church declines to call a man to be its pastor, or a local council declines to settle him over that church, leaving 4000 other Congregational churches to call him, if anyone of them should please. There are indeed various missions of the Board, which would call these rejected candidates, if they might. But not a single mission or mission church on the foreign field can act in the matter. The Prudential Committee, at Boston, stands between the whole heathen world and these young men, so far forth as the Congregational churches are concerned; assuming by its own close corporation to represent them, although declining to accept their action made according to their established usages. This adoption of a standard different from any which the churches have authorized, raises a grave ecclesiastical question for the Congregational churches to consider; for it plainly and practically touches the question of their fellowship. The Board indeed disclaims being one of our Congregational benevolent societies. But how can it do that, when no other churches support it, and when, for sixteen years,

it has sent one of its Secretaries to sit in our Triennial Council, under § 4, of Article II. of the Constitution, to wit: "Such Congregational general societies for Christian work and the faculties of such theological seminaries as may be recognized by this Council, may be represented by one delegate each, such representatives having the right of discussion only." It is too late to back down from its virtual denominational position, to serve a purpose. To do so is to bring on a controversy as to the way in which we shall succeed in having a Congregational foreign missionary society; whether by remodeling the American Board, or by organizing a new Society. But it would be the action of the conservative majority, which would bring on the controversy. Already many of them are favoring some modification of the Board, to avoid this serious objection.

And now what shall be done by those dissatisfied with the action of the Board at Springfield? Some of the majority are urging us to leave it, and to organize a new Society on our own principles; and here and there a man of the minority may be inclined to act upon that advice. But the writer, judging from a membership of twenty years and an observation of the Board for over forty years, sees no sufficient reason, at present, for taking such a step. It would involve great and unwise expenditures of money and labor, to create and operate a new agency, and it would carry bitter controversy into everyone of our 4000 churches. Nor is such a step probably necessary to the ultimate triumph of the liberal policy. The meeting at Springfield did but increase its strength, and every day will add to the number of its defenders. We must not be in too great haste. Good men, confronted with new questions, must have time to adjust their thoughts, to rectify their mistakes, and to modify their methods. The American Board has changed its policy on other disputed questions; notably on that of slavery. It will do so again; either by giving new directions to its Committee, or more probably in the practical way which such bodies have, of allowing the present new and unfortunate policy to fall into "innocuous desuetude." The Board will be brought back to its old methods for which we contend. Never before has it assumed to decide theological controversies among its own constituents, and it will not long continue in so perilous a path.

Our churches will not divide, and the Board will not be wrecked, although for a time there will be earnest discussion. Time, argument, prayer and providential events will bring everything right; for they are true Christian men, equally devoted to the missionary cause, who are having this honest difference of judgment; and the Spirit of God will lead them eventually into "the truth as it is in Jesus," whatever that may prove to be. Surely, when we think of the savagery and cruelty of heathenism, of its moral abominations, of its utter impotency for good in life and its despair in death, of the dishonor which it heaps on God, and its ignorance of his love for this lost world as revealed in Jesus Christ, and remember our Redeemer's last command, to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," we have motives enough for missionary effort, without touching the disputed point over which this controversy has been waged. And so let us close up the ranks, and move unitedly to the battle-field against "the powers of darkness," led by Him, who "hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS." And then will the vision of John in Patmos prove itself true: "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds and people and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hand, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb!" Amen.

WM. W. PATTON.

ARTICLE II. THE PHYSICIAN OF TO-DAY AND OF THE FUTURE.

PROBABLY the point of time when the graduate in medicine has the greatest confidence in the efficiency of drugs in the cure of disease and in his own ability to use them successfully, is when he receives his diploma and before he has met his first patient. Probably, also, the time when he has the least faith in the healing power of medicine is when at the end of a long and a so-called successful practice he looks backward and considers the question;-not how many patients have recovered under his treatment,—but how many lives have been saved by the administration of medicine, which, without it-would have been lost. Experience has taught the old physician that the number is small in comparison with that which he had been led to anticipate when younger. The recent graduate commences practice with the confidence and expectation appropriate to youth; he often retires from it with the cynicism and disappointment of old age. The popular belief in the efficacy of drugs in which at first he shares, the instruction of medical teachers and authors, the great variety of drugs at his disposal, at the beginning of his career inspire him with the hope of positive and possibly magnificent results. He meets his first patient, and with judicious care selects the drug which his text books assign as the remedy for the disease. He administers the dose and in direct violation of theoretical rules his patient dies. He meets his second with confidence diminished, and now to his surprise the patient recovers. He continues his career and gradually experience forces upon him the unwelcome conviction that, in spite of remedies a certain number of his patients will inevitably recover, and a certain number will as inevitably die, and that the result in either case seems to be but little dependent upon the medicine administered. Years of practice lead him at last to the unsatisfactory conclusion that the drug administered does not play the important part in the cure of disease which his patients imagine-as he once did

also-and he finally becomes convinced that the restorative power of nature, or some other inherent agency, effects the cure which is ascribed to his own skill, and that a lack of such recuperative energy causes the unfortunate results for which he is sometimes unjustly held responsible.

It becomes a question of interest whether the physician is correct in the conclusion to which experience seems to have driven him, whether his patients are wrong in their unquestioning faith in the efficacy of drugs, to what abuses the popular error has led, and what should be the aim of the physician of the future.

Without professing that a mathematical or even a logical demonstration of the fact can be absolutely made, the assertion is ventured nevertheless that the effect of drugs simply in the cure of disease long has been and still is greatly overestimated.

Those who have the best opportunity for observation should be called upon for their evidence.

It is likely that the intelligent, observing, and honest physician, if questioned, will admit that in the majority of diseases the medicine used, if it does any good at all, is a non-essential adjuvant simply in the recovery of the patient, and that it is doubtful whether the list of mortality would be materially increased if the physician should abandon all so-called curative drugs, while continuing to use the same means to support and strengthen his patient, and to secure due attention to the rules of hygeine. He discovers early in his practice that he is aided by a most important principle, the "vis medicatrix naturæ," whose tendency is to sustain the patient and expel the invading disease. He notices that in every ailment this agent essays to effect a cure and generally succeeds even when the medicine which is supposed to be the important instrumentality, by some chance happens to be withheld long enough to permit the experiment. The more experienced he becomes, the more ready is he to assist rather than to interfere with nature's indications, and the more convinced is he that many, if not most diseases are "self limiting." The physician, and the layman also, cannot fail to notice that the savage contrives to maintain his health or to recover from ailments which come, and to reach