is taken in when the mind is aglow, when it has by some means acquired an eager appetite, will make a much more permanent impression than that which is placed upon a dulled palate or received from a mere sense of duty. Hence reading by topics is generally better than by authors or centuries. Well-written biographies, entertaining travels, and truthful adventures should be freely supplied to the young until they are sufficiently mature for that which is more solid and difficult.

2. Read with reflection. This applies somewhat even to books of entertainment, and is absolutely essential where those of the two higher classes are concerned. The mere act of reading will not be followed by lasting good, any more than the mere act of eating. What is taken into the mind must be meditated on and talked about until it becomes completely assimilated with previous stores and made one's very own. The process of transformation may and must go on until the thoughts and facts received are no longer foreign substances, but have become thoroughly incorporated with the intellectual system. Various things will help this. Notes can be taken and abstracts made. This will greatly assist review, which is of primary importance. Friendly discussion about the things read is also of great value. Nothing clarifies one's ideas and gives point to one's opinions so quickly as an endeavor to make them plain to others or to uphold them in argument against an objector.

3. Read for results. Results will come very largely in proportion to the clearness of the purpose and the steadiness of the aim with which the undertaking is pursued. He who works up a subject with the design of presenting it in a systematic form in an essay, a lecture, an article, a pamphlet, a book, or a debate before some association will take hold of it with a zeal otherwise unattainable, and will feel little fatigue after great labor. He has before him a definite end; and in this there is much stimulus. Random reading, on the other hand, rarely yields results, and is in most cases little better than a waste of time. It should certainly not be made the staple of one's days.

Happy the man who has learned how to eat paper and drink ink. Most happy he who has fully grasped the thought that through books he can have the range of the best company in the world. There is no society so select but he may enter it with this magic lamp. It will bring him, even from other lands and ages, those that held themselves most carefully aloof from all familiar intercourse with the common throng. These intellectual aristocrats

may be made, for a few cents, to utter in our ears their most brilliant sayings. We can have them with us when we please and as long as we like, and when we get tired of them they can be dismissed without rudeness. We can summon Plato from Greece, Cicero from Rome, Bacon, Browning, Tennyson from England, and they will come. We can drink in their wisdom, delight ourselves with their pleasantry, and be filled with their society.

The lover of books has an unfailing resource. Rainy days do not grieve him. He finds solace amid the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The loss of friends does not leave him friendless. He can make new acquaintances even in old age, and he can at any time renew his intercourse with those that were dear to him long ago. Gibbon's declaration, "My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for the treasures of India,” has found an echo in many a breast. A few well-selected books carefully read, thoroughly chewed and digested, go far to constitute a good education. Books are the tools of those who work in the realm of mind. He who has learned how to use them to the best advantage has multiplied his power a thousandfold. Good reading-by which we do not mean elocution, but the power to get out of a book all there is in it, if not more—is almost as rare as good writing.

The day of better Christian experience in our churches will dawn when church members in general find out what an invaluable help to growth in grace is contained in devotional books. When the holiest men and women have embalmed themselves in print so that their remains have come down even to distant generations, when the distilled and concentrated extract of their thinking and living for half a century has been poured into a small, convenient phial for our daily use, when what God has taught them, as they have lain prostrate before him for many a weary night or served him in the thick of combat for many a fateful day, has been put into type and passed on to us, we show little wisdom if we are unwilling to spend some portion of our time and funds in the acquisition and enjoyment of the rich legacy. Spiritual reading is the oil which feeds the lamp of prayer. It is the mother of devout meditation, without which no character can grow solid and strong. And the high place of reading in every true life is sufficiently vindicated once for all in the great fact that it is by the study of the book of books-not the mere formal perusal, not the careless conning of chapters, not the routine, regulation recital of verses that we become wise unto salvation.

THE ARENA.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

PLEASE permit a layman to suggest a few thoughts on the doctrine of the kingdom of God, as defined and taught by "the people called Methodists," and also by the greater part of the Christian denominations. I am led up to this writing by certain frequent utterances in our assemblies by ministers and others, who seem to regard this kingdom as a condition of the heart, utterly ignoring its future territorial and glorious aspects. Cradled in Methodism, I, of course, know what Methodists think and teach on these lines; but after many years' prayerful study of God's word I am persuaded that we do not fully understand, if we do not wholly misunderstand, the glorious truth that the Saviour would have us learn through his use of the phrase "the kingdom of God."

According to the accepted view all Christians are now in the kingdom, or the kingdom is in Christians. May I ask, then, Why did our Saviour teach us to pray, saying, "Thy kingdom come?" Docs Christ expect to make no better conquest of the world than what we now see in so-called Christian lands? Is not the wealth of the world in the hands of worldly men? Were the Armenian Christians, so recently assassinated, in the kingdom of God? Were the slaughtered apostles and holy martyrs in the kingdom of God? Is such a kingdom, exposed to the bloodthirsty violence of tyrants, "the hope of our calling?" Did Jesus have no better climax of joy to offer as an encouragement to his disciples when he informed them that many should come from the east and west and should sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven? Have we not missed the true definition of the kingdom in our anxiety to have men converted and to give importance to the Church? John the Baptist preached, saying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” He did not say it was here, but at hand. Jesus sent the twelve forth to preach the same Gospel. The twelve were not in the kingdom, neither was the kingdom in the twelve; it was a future event-"at hand." Jesus informed the apostles that they would be hated, scourged, imprisoned, and put to death. Does that look like being in the kingdom of heaven? It looks rather as if the apostles were in an enemy's land. But the Saviour promised that "he that endureth to the end shall be saved." They came out of great tribulation, not out of the kingdom of heaventhose who had on the white robes and palms in their hands, as seen by John in vision. Did not our Saviour instruct all his disciples to seek first the kingdom? But if Methodist doctrine is true the disciples had the kingdom already in their hearts. Then why seek it?

We are told that the Church, also, is the kingdom of God. This is often affirmed by scholarly writers and preachers; but the Bible nowhere calls the Church the kingdom. Two separate and distinct terms are al

In the New

ways employed when Church and kingdom are mentioned. Testament the Church is spoken of about one hundred times, but never as a kingdom. The word "kingdom" occurs about one hundred and five times, and never means the Church. The original terms are never used interchangeably. Why, then, do we presume to make them synonymous? The Church is a company of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who are waiting for his appearing and kingdom. In the series of parables recorded in Matt. xiii concerning the kingdom all have their climax in the final result. It is a harvest, a grown tree, a leavened whole, the end of the world. All other steps were but preparatory, leading up to the grand finale—the kingdom of heaven. The mother of Zebedee's children had, in some respects, a proper conception of the nature of the coming kingdom when she requested of Christ that her two sons might sit, the one on his right hand and the other on his left in his kingdom. This is seen by the Saviour's reply: "To sit on my right hand, and on my left, is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father." The baptism of blood must first precede the reign of glory.

The kingdom of God was a literal kingdom on the earth during the Jewish dispensation. The Jewish kingdom was a type of a better kingdom under Christ. It is taken from the Jews and given to a nation-mark the term "nation"-bringing forth the fruits thereof. This nation is yet to be manifested. It will be made up of men of all ranks, colors, and ages, Jew and Gentile, bond and free, learned and illiterate, rich and poor. The kingdom of God is represented by the Saviour in Matt. xxv, in the parable of the ten talents, as being simultaneous with his second advent. His appearing and kingdom are chronologically simultaneous events. The servant is now increasing his talents, if he is faithful, while the employer is traveling in a far country. The reckoning day comes apace. The "well done" is pronounced, and the servant is made a ruler. This teaches the return of our Lord and his coming kingdom. "When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. . . . Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." This text shows when the kingdom comes; it is at the judgment. How then can a Christian be in the kingdom now? Christ says in another place, "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." This is another text showing that the kingdom is future, and is not the Church, and is not in the hearts of believers. The so-called spiritualizing tendency of our age ignores the literal meaning of these texts and simply regards them as various forms of the same thought--the kingdom of God in our hearts! The literal sense of the Scriptures must always be held, unless the language is manifestly figurative. Prophets, angels, the Lord himself, and his apostles all teach a future kingdom.

If the kingdom of God is in our hearts, why does the apostle James ex

hort us to patience in the presence of oppression? Are our oppressors our slaves? Peter tells us that our inheritance is reserved in heaven, ready to be revealed in the last times. He does not teach that we have it now in our hearts. Christians are exhorted to diligence in order to secure an abundant entrance into the kingdom. The kingdom is promised to them that love God. James says God hath chosen "the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him." Daniel tells of terrible persecutions of the saints; but he adds, "The Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom." "But," says one, 66 are we not told that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost?" Yes; these are the characteristics of the kingdom. Napoleon said that the empire was peace, meaning its policy. "But," declares another, "Christ said, 'Is not the kingdom of God within you?'" If we believe that the Pharisees whom the Saviour denounced as hypocrites had the kingdom within them, then may we have it. The proper understanding of that expression is said to be that Jesus, the King, was in their midst. I simply desire to bring the matter to the notice of our denomination for the purpose of securing better instruction in this department of our faith and doctrine. J. DAVISON. Chicago, Ill.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR IT?

IN some strong words by a writer in the Literary World, in which sincere regrets at the recent decease of certain wholesome authors are expressed, we find the following: "There is something very sad in these two, strong for righteousness in their different manners, leaving us now, when books which it is a sin and a shame to write, to publish, or to read are flooding the London book market. There have been some books published here in London this season fouler than any leprosy, and we are threatened with more of the same sort. Sin wrought in passion is evil enough, but at least it is human; but for those who in cold blood write books that will appeal to the basest part of human nature, that will corrupt innocence-for these books are published by reputable publishers and circulated by the libraries-woe to them! I would rather take for my friend a public sinner who had sinned through human frailty and passion than I would touch the hand of these purveyors of vice." These are pretty severe words of censure. Yet, in view of the obvious facts, who, shall dare to extenuate the offense, which every book buyer knows, and every guardian of youth ought to know, is " rank and smells to heaven?" If the truth were spread out before us clearly it is to be greatly feared that the fortunes of some book publishers are the price of blood as really as that of any liquor dealer.

Where does the responsibility begin and end? At this rate, may not the time come when it will be safer not to know how to read? Accepting the relation of the book publisher to the book writer to be as that