Oct.
Tur tone in which Mr. Coates writes to-d: equally difficult to ask him to desist from writing, to refuse his letters, or to suggest that others might intervene to stop them. When a man of his sincerity and life-long religious habit believes that he has been vouchsafed a Divine vision in which all the world's welfare is bound up, it is impossible for him to keep silence; and the wisdom of Camaliel may well deter others from interfering with him. The last people to be able to do so would be his colleagues or superiors in' the China Tnland Mission, whose essentially simple, almost primitive faith would admit no incongruity in the visions wiheh Mr. Coates describes to-We trust that we do not offend the workers of that great institution, the C.T.M.. by the use of the word primitive. The world would be a better place than it is for more of their nnquestioning devotion.—But as a certain House there are many mansions, so there are all sorts of minds and suseeptibilities in the Christian fold: and it is neither expending venom nor blasphemy to say that we hold that Mr. Coates, however pure his intentions, it is impossible not to believe they are, is making a mistake in continued publication of his views. We cannot but think, and we believe that many of his most devout colleagues will also think, that he should desist from writing about the Second Advent. His interpretation of the Biblical prophecies has been proved wrong, and it) is hard not to think that his explanation makes matters worse. Tf, as we said before, it is repugnant to many people to treat the Bible as a sort of cryptogram. it is surely still more so fo -suppose that the Almighty lays snares for the feet of his creatures. "Believe m said Molinos, to John Inglesant, "God does faith. But we cannot be blind to the fact that his prediction. or rather his dogmatic—interpretation of Biblical prediction, has already had a most disturbing effect among Chinese Eh jans and we trust that, having proved wrong in' his former assertions, he will allow for the possibility of further error in trying to correct them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.