a hope, and is ready and able to declare the reason for it. It believes, and therefore it speaks. Its faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It believes the whole eleventh chapter of Hebrews. It believes in the inspiration and authority of all the Scriptures. It believes in the supernatural, in miracles, in the absolute divinity of Jesus, in his atonement, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of God. It believes in the resurrection, in the judginent, in immortality, in heaven and hell. It believes that every penitent soul may come to God in the name of Jesus Christ and find pardon, life, and salvation. It believes that the time is coming when "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea;" and in this faith it expects the Gospel to spread abroad, until the last son of Adam shall hear the joyful sound.

If ever there was a time when such a ministry, with such a faith, was needed it is now. Christ has told us that the time is coming when "there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." No mightier problems ever confronted Christianity than at this hour. What are we to do with labor and capital? What with the corruptions of society? What with the venality of statesmen and legislators? What with worship of wealth and power? What with the wronged and oppressed in this land and all lands? masses of the illiterate of Christendom? of tramps and the vile and dangerous classes? poor of the great cities? What with the waste of naval and military armament? What with the awful drink habit and the fearfully malignant and curseful drink traffic? What with the unconverted, unenlightened, unevangelized thousand millions of heathenism.

What with the vast What with the hordes What with the

Surely such a condition of affairs as is revealed by these questions may well appall the stoutest heart and try the stanchest faith. The supreme hope of the world is in a genuine, cultured, believing, rejoicing, evangelistic ministry. Such a ministry can answer questions and resolve doubts; can state, explain, defend the truths of the Gospel when formulated into creeds;

can exemplify the blessed, joyous, conscious experience of a personal salvation. This world is not to be won to Christ en masse. From this time on it is to be hand-to-hand work. The ministry is the divinely appointed leadership of the people. If the ministry is evangelistic the people will be the same. And when the Church and ministry are both evangelistic all barriers to the progress of the cause of Christ will be removed, the great and pressing questions that demand attention will be solved, the Gospel message will be carried to all lands, and the morning of the millenmium will be hastened in its coming. Why may it not become the all-absorbing desire of every minister to enter with all his soul upon evangelistic work, which includes the enlightenment and conversion of sinners and the building up of all converts in the truth of the Gospel? In order to this there must be entire consecration of all that is ever called "my" or "mine;" a devotement of all powers to the service of the Master; a seeking for the baptism of the Holy Ghost, for purity, inspiration, and service, until the gift is bestowed; a holy, blameless life; and ceaseless toil for the salvation of the souls of men. That God may give the Churches and the world an evangelistic ministry ought to be the ceaseless prayer of every loyal Christian heart.

W.Z. Mallation.

ART. II.-A STUDY IN SOCIOLOGY.

SOCIOLOGY is as yet a study, rather than a science. The term itself is of recent origin. It was coined or invented by Auguste Comte, and was used by him in his Cours de Philosophie Positive to designate that department of his philosophy which treats of social phenomena, the laws that govern them, and their relation to each other. His was the first attempt to segregate the isolated phenomena of human society from their physical environments and, by combining them into related groups, to explain and account for them in a scientific manner. He thus paved the way for the creation and construction of a new science the science of society-to which he gave the name of "sociology.'

Mr. Herbert Spencer adopted the term invented by Comte, and incorporated the newborn science, remolded somewhat in order to make it harmonize with his evolutionary doctrines, into his "synthetic philosophy," thus giving it vogue among English-speaking people. He also greatly broadened its scope, since under it, as a convenient and elastic cognomen, he ranges a vast amount of heterogeneous matter pertaining to almost every conceivable phase of human relations, thought, and activity. He assigns to sociology the consideration of all physical, emotional, intellectual, political, ethnic, moral, and religious phenomena arising from or connected with the life and history of mankind. He holds that it is its province to give an account of the origin and development of all domestic, ceremonial, industrial, economic, civil, political, commercial, ecclesiastical, and religious institutions and customs existent among men, and that it must point out and describe their mutual relationships and interdependencies and their effect on each other and on society at large.

Constituted on the Spencerian basis sociology must become generic and all-inclusive, rather than a science with welldefined lines of demarcation from other sciences, and must embrace in its wide sweep everything that pertains to social phenomena of all kinds and grades-in fact, everything that pertains to human life and nature, viewed from a social standpoint. With such a scope, sociological science becomes but a

synonym for a vague generalization, covering a field of thought and investigation so vast and various that no single mind can thoroughly traverse, much less master, it, and requiring a scientific preparation such as no one is capable of obtaining, since all of the organized sciences have grown to such magnitude that the best-equipped student can hardly hope to master thoroughly and completely any one of them in a single lifetime, much less such a congeries of sciences as must necessarily be included in a sociological system like that devised and outlined by Mr. Spencer and his followers. Besides this, the relationships existing between such various and widely divergent subjects are not infrequently so slight and inconsequential as to render it almost, if not, indeed, quite, impossible to combine them into one harmonious whole and thus bring them into scientific unity.

As a result of the attempt to extend the sway of the sociological scepter over so wide a domain, there is at present no general agreement as to what shall constitute a distinctive course of sociological study and training. The courses prescribed in the leading educational institutions, both of Europe and this country, are about as various as the institutions that prescribe them or the men that formulate and teach them, thus furnishing a new and marked fulfillment of the old Latin proverb, "tot homines, quot sententia." This statement is fully corroborated by the following brief extract from a lecture delivered before the American Academy of Political and Social Science by Professor Giddings, who occupies the chair of sociology in Columbia College:

Several universities in Europe and America have introduced courses in sociology; yet there is no definite agreement among scientific men as to what the word shall be understood to mean. In some of the university courses it stands for a philosophy of society; in others it denominates a study of the institutions of tribal communities; in yet others it is applied to highly special studies of pauperism, crime, and philanthropy. In the literature of sociology, also, an equally varied usage may be found. Special investigators employ the word in senses that are unrecognized by the systematic writers.

These facts, however, in no wise invalidate the claim put forth for sociology as a possible science of great importance and value. They only go to prove that as yet it is in a forma

tive state, that its scope is not clearly defined, that its province is not fully determined, and serve to substantiate the truthfulness of the statement made in the opening sentence of this article-that sociology is as yet a study, rather than a science.

This statement, however, in no wise militates against the possibility of differentiating and establishing in the near future a complete and well-defined science of society, since it is a wellknown fact of history that no science has ever sprung into existence suddenly and fully equipped, as Minerva is fabled to have sprung from the cloven skull of Jove. All of the sciences in their incipiency existed in a nebulous condition, with a modicum of truth as a nucleus. Gradually sloughing off all extraneous matter and divesting themselves of all excrescences, they have slowly and steadily developed into their present condition of comparative perfection. The noble science of astronomy was for long centuries enshrouded in the nebulous haze of astrology, before it attained to its present magnificent development and gave to the world its luminous revelation of the vastness of the universe and the everlasting, harmonious march of the glittering hosts of heaven. The wizard spell, the weird enchantment, and the wild vagaries of alchemy were the ignoble precursors of modern chemistry. For more than a century geology has been striving to reveal the meaning of the mysterious, hieroglyphic records stored away in the lithographic volumes of the strata of the earth, but has not yet become a perfect interpreter of their hidden meaning. Sociology is the youngest of the sciences, having come into existence only a few decades ago, and has to deal with most intricate and complex problems. When the slow development and perfecting of the other great sciences are taken into account, it should excite neither wonder nor discouragement that a complete science of society has not yet been fully differentiated, that its province is not clearly defined, that its facts are not yet thoroughly coordinated, or that its votaries are not in full accord or exact agreement as to what shall constitute its boundaries and scope.

One encouraging and important result may certainly be predicated, however, as accruing from these years of study and investigation along sociological lines, and that is that there is gradually coming to be a consensus of opinion, on the part both of teachers and students of sociology, that the construction of