inactivity he busied himself with brief religious and practical articles for our Church weeklies. The only book from his pen is a small volume on Formalism in Religion—a series of lectures delivered, first before the Central Ohio Conference in 1865, and then before his own Conference, and published at their joint request. The subject and the treatment show the staid and practical character of his mind.

Early in his presidency Professor Merrick had the honorary degrees of doctor of divinity and doctor of laws conferred on him, but for conscientious reasons he declined to wear them. His friends respected his scruples; but the title of doctor nevertheless fastened itself upon him, and he finally acquiesced in the inevitable.

He never repined at being laid aside from the active duties. of his place in the university and from the busy occupations of life, and he cheerfully saw himself superseded in all the work of the school in whose founding and upbuilding he had borne so large a part. Once officially released from the responsibility, he never assumed to exert any influence, or even to make suggestions as to the duties of the place. Dr. Payne says that, instead of finding a jealous critic in the retiring president, "no successor ever had a more appreciative supporter and a more tender counselor than he found in Dr. Merrick." President Bashford thus describes his first interview with Dr. Merrick, after coming to assume the presidency :

On entering

Dr. Merrick sent for me when I first came to the college. his home he introduced me to several friends, and then asked them to excuse us and led the way to a private room. After we entered his bedroom, which seemed to be his holy of holies, he turned to me with such a look of tenderness and solicitude as can be given only by a father to a son or by one soul which has been praying for another soul. He said in substance: "I am so glad you have come to the college. The work is great. The responsibilities will be heavy. I have craved the privilege of praying with you." I shall never forget that prayer. It was full of reverence, like his public prayers which I heard later. But it was more tender and familiar than any other prayer which I ever heard him make. He talked with God. I realized for the first time how the university had become a part of his very life. At one moment I felt as if a dying man were committing his family to me, for the students were the children of his heart; the next moment I felt as if a prophet were ascending to his home, and I craved his mantle. That bedroom was a Bethel.

Professor Merrick married, in April, 1836, a lady whom he first met as a fellow-student at the Wesleyan Academy, in Wilbraham, Mass.-Miss Sarah Fidelia Griswold, of Suffolk, Conn. Their married life together of nearly fifty years was uneventful and happy. Mrs. Merrick died in July, 1883, deeply beloved and mourned by all who knew her, and most of all by her husband, to whom she was a guide and inspiration by her beautiful Christian life and a comfort and support in all his duties and anxieties.

Professor Merrick's Christian life was beautiful and exemplary. He was a man without guile, transparent, saintly, revered by all as a living demonstration of the truth and power of the Gospel. No one ever heard a reproach against his uprightness or any question of his motives. All voices, even of ungodly men, bore willing and emphatic testimony to the irreproachableness of his life. Professor Seeley, in that remarkable book, Ecce Homo, which so moved the Christian world a quarter of a century ago, said:

Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet "holy."... Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country, since the time of Christ, when a century has passed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better and has been felt at times like the presence of God himself.

I am sure that every one who knew our venerated and saintly Merrick feels that he completely filled out Seeley's conception of "this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness." With his stanch New England training and convictions, he was scrupulously exact in the duties and services of religion. His piety was constant aud consistent. He was habitual in his attendance upon public worship, even when his friends thought he ought to spare himself; and until he was past threescore and ten he kept his place as a teacher in the Sunday school. He was a man of thought on the verities of the faith; he never was a man of doubts. He believed in God with the simple faith of a child; and he accepted the Bible, the whole Bible, as God's revealed word. He was joyful in his religious ex

perience and had no clouds above his pathway. A friend, who visited him almost daily during his invalid years, found him always on the delectable mountains. But, unlike Bunyan's pilgrim, he needed no perspective glass to catch a sight of heaven. His unclouded vision took in the gates of the celestial city and some of the glory of the place.

Though increasingly feeble as the years wore on, he kept himself cheerful and content with such occupations as he could find in his family circle, in his books, and in his pen. His infirmities prevented him from getting about, except as he was assisted; but it remained his greatest delight to be carried over to the college chapel, where he could look into the faces of the students and join in the devotions. At the last commencement he was present at almost all the exercises; and at the dedication of Gray Chapel he took part in the services, gratified that he had lived to see this noble consummation of a half century of working and of waiting. He took great delight in reading, and during the last few years he went over the entire Bible again and again. To the very last, before his prostration, he read much and wrote something every day, if nothing more than letters to his old friends. For many years it was his habit to write annually to each of the old students who had gone into the missionary fields abroad. He thus kept himself in touch with the choice spirits who had passed under his molding influence in the university. His students are found now in all lands, and the tidings of his death have carried grief to many homes where his name is gratefully remembered.

W.G. Willian

[Judging that the long, useful, and saintly life of Frederick Merrick should have some memorial record in the Review, we invited Professor Williams to prepare a suitable biographical sketch. He has furnished the article here printed, a large part of which was delivered at Dr. Merrick's funeral.-ED.]

ART. II. ETHICAL MONISM.

DURING the month of November last, and under the significant caption of "Ethical Monism," three articles appeared in the columns of the Examiner, of New York city. They were from the pen of Dr. A. H. Strong, who for twenty-two years has been the president and a theological professor of the Rochester Seminary, whose friends claim for it a certain preeminence among the Baptist theological schools of this country. He has always been known as a conservative thinker and theologian, as thoroughgoing in his Augustinianism and Calvinism as the late Professor Shedd. He is the author of one of the very best of handbooks of theology, which even Princeton recognizes as an authority and places in the hands of its students. The articles are startling in their significance, as coming from one who is not a novice, but a mature man, a man of disciplined intellect, who is not given to careless and hasty composition, who weighs his words, and whose judgment commands wide respect among his brethren. That they have been read with incredulous amazement is very plain; and that their influence is regarded with alarm, as likely to be very injurious, is evident from the criticism which they have already received. That criticism, it seems to me, cannot be too searching and incisive; and though the discussion properly belongs to the denomination with which the author is identified, yet, as a graduate of Rochester and for more than a decade of years afterward a Baptist pastor, it may not be presumption for me to subject the doctrine of these articles to a critical examination. Baptists have not, thus far in their religious history, disclosed any disposition to court the alliance of philosophical pantheism; but if these articles represent or secure any considerable following a theological revolution among the Baptists is impending. It is not likely that such will be their effect; and they are more apt to find sympathetic readers in other denominations than in the one to which their author belongs.

In the caption the noun plays the prominent part. The adjective appears throughout the discussion as subordinate. The emphasis is on "monism." A thorough discussion would demand a careful and critical eview of all systems of philosoph

ical monism, for which there is no space in this article. It must suffice to state that the word dates from the time of Wolf, and that for nearly two hundred years it has had a very definite meaning. Primarily, it represents a certain theory of knowledge the relation which the conscious subject bears to the object of consciousness in every act of cognition. In every such act there is an I and a not-I. Is the I anything more than a modification of the not-I; or is the not-I anything more than a modification of the I; or are the I and the not-I anything more than dual modifications of an anterior and ultimate I or not-I, in which I or not-I, subject and object, coalesce in absolute identity; or are the I and the not-I distinct, separate, and irreducible by analysis? What is the relation between the ego and the non-ego? The debate, in the end, is an inquiry into the relation between matter and mind. Are these two, or are they one? The question does not concern their logical priority, but their essential identity. Consciousness refuses to identify them. It insists that the relation between matter and mind is one of difference; and if, in problems of philosophy, consciousness is the court of last resort monism is discredited.

But monism insists that reason cannot rest in the natural dualism which consciousness affirms, but must postulate an original and essential identity to satisfy the rational demand for unity. Some make matter basic, regarding mind as its evolution or secretion; and this is materialistic monism. Others regard mind as basic, and matter as its externalization, whatever that may mean; and this is idealistic monism. Materialistic monism eliminates the ego; idealistic monism eliminates the non-ego. The first makes mind, the second makes matter, an appearance and shadow. The first buries mind; the second sublimates matter. Others insist that equal justice must be done to matter and mind, but that both must be regarded as manifestations of the same primal energy, which is at once subject-object, as when Tyndall urged a new definition of matter which should, also, include mind, or as when a recent writer calls this primal being "dynamic reason "—for which we might as well substitute "rational dynamic." This may be called the monism of absolute identity. This is the prevailing monistic doctrine at present; and it gets rid of the dualism in consciousness simply by making it original and eternal. Its watchword