but it comes out in singular contrast to the action of the New York State Conference on Religion, which admits to its platform Jew as well as Gentile, and which is representative of real federation. It seems hardly worth while to federate and have the attempt take on the aspect of a fake."

IGNORING THE TEACHINGS OF

IN

THE APOSTLES.

Na work which The Homiletic Review calls "one of the great religious books of the year, even perhaps of the decade" ("The Universal Elements of the Christian Religion"), Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall combats the tendency in popular religious thought to magnify the life and words of Christ to such importance that the teachings of the apostles are practically ignored. As he puts it," the trend of contemporary opinion is very largely in one direction: namely, to define the essence of Christianity as consisting merely of the teachings and example of Jesus, as recorded in the first three gospels, in distinction from that view of the person of Christ as the eter:nal Word, manifesting the Father, and the work of Christ as the suffering and triumphing Savior of the world, as set forth in the fourth gospel and in the apostolic epistles." This neglect and, indeed, opposition to the theological teachings of the apostles are due, Dr. Hall believes, to the "modern advances and reconstructions in philosophy," to the erroneous identification of the apostolic theology "with the ponderous scholastic systems built upon it," and to "the growth of the historical method of Biblical study; whereby the accent becomes more and more concentrated on the narrative of the first three gospels, including the teachings and the idealistic example of Jesus as constituting the essence of the Christian religion."

mysteries of His person, the majesty of His work, the metaphysic of Christian experience, and leaves us only Jesus of Nazareth, His life, purpose, example, and words. This, we are told, is the essence of Christianity; this, and this only, must be the organizing principle of that new reinterpretation of the idea of the Church for which many, dissatisfied with the Protestant status quo, are anxiously looking. But, so far from the general consciousness of the devout Church accepting this reactionary dictum, the unsatisfactoriness of the present teaching, which leaves us only Jesus of Nazareth, is becoming more apparent from day to day. It is not a large enough teaching to take the place of the majestic conceptions of the scholastic theology, much less to be substituted for the theological outlook of St. Paul. We may dissent from many things urged by the divines of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nevertheless they saw things on a grand scale. The Christianity they taught was one that could fill the horizon of an intellectual age and could inspire the awestricken devotion of souls like Milton and Zinzendorf and Doddridge and Toplady and the Wesleys. The historical reaction from metaphysical conceptions of Christ leaves us indeed an admirable practical discipline, but it cuts the wings of the soul and reduces the scale and measure of its thinking. It can not meet the craving of the human spirit, which knows but too well those hours when the metaphysical is the only outlet to the pentup sense of infinity. It can not produce the type of character which has been the glory of every Christian age, character steeped in metaphysical conceptions of God in Christ, of Christ in the soul of man, of man absolved by the sacrificial love, transfigured by the regenerating grace of the incarnate God. It can not grapple with the problems of the Christianization of the world, in lands where the historical counts for little, and where he only has power who bears the message of life in terms of its philosophical equivalents."

The modern search for the essence of Christianity, says the writer, has developed the resistance of the apostolic theology, especially the theology of St. Paul. In comment he adds:

"The effects of this are already appearing in the impoverished religious values of the sermons produced by the younger generation of preachers, and the deplorable decline of spiritual life and knowledge in many churches. Results open to observation show that the movement to simplify the Christian essence by discarding the theology of St. Paul easily carries the teaching of the Christian pulpit to a position where, for those who submit to that teaching, the characteristic experiences of the Christian life become practically impossible. The Christian sense of sin; Christian penitence at the foot of the cross; Christian faith in an atoning Savior; Christian peace with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ-these and other experiences, which were the very life of apostles and of apostolic souls, fade from the view of the ministry, have no meaning for the younger generation."

Concerning the present tendency to set the whole accent of Biblical study upon the historical as contrasted with the metaphysical view of Christ, the writer sounds a warning against the danger of the historical method becoming itself unhistorical, and in seeking to represent the Jesus of history to "misrepresent and conceal the Redeemer of the world." He continues:

"At his moment we are experiencing the incidental disadvantage of beneficent reaction. As formerly the metaphysical forced aside the historical and developed the excesses of speculative orthodoxy, so now the historical, focusing its light upon the narrative, throws into shadow the Christ of the apostolic consciousness, the

WH

RELIGION IN FICTION.

HEN the roll of the prophets of the nineteenth century is made up, says The Congregationalist (Boston), there will be a place upon it for the name of the late George Macdonald. Mr. W. J. Dawson, in his new volume, "The Makers of English Fiction," allots to Macdonald the foremost place among the three or four names which stand for high achievement in the field of the religious novel.

With him he mentions J. H. Shorthouse, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Olive Schreiner, and Mark Rutherford. It will be noticed that he does not include Kingsley. Mr. Dawson explains the prominence of the religious novel in English fiction by a reminder that "all the great causes which have most powerfully moved the English mind have been in essence religious causes." Through this medium of expression, he asserts, George Macdonald's influence in contemporary religious thought has been much greater than the present generation is aware. The pivot of Macdonald's entire theological system, we are told, is the Fatherhood of God, with its logical corollaries of human perfectibility and universal restoration. We read further:

"In his own way he has uttered in fiction the message which Maurice uttered in theology, and Tennyson and Browning in poetry.

He nowhere minimizes sin, but he everywhere teaches that evil can not last forever. Eternal sin enduring in the presence of eternal holiness is to him unthinkable. Somewhere, sometime

purgatory and left out hell. With the religious value of these conclusions the critic of fiction has nothing to do; all that he has to do is to ob

serve the method of their expression, and how far they have or have

As indicative of the general spirit of Macdonald's teaching, Mr. Dawson quotes the following passages from "Robert Falconer": "One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness." "They are in God's hands," he says of fallen women; He hasn't done with them yet. Shall it take less time to make a woman than to make a world? Is not the woman the greater? She may have her ages of chaos, her centuries of crawling slime, yet rise a woman at last."

"

A child, fresh from God, finds its heaven where no one else would. The devil could drive woman out of Paradise; but the devil himself can not drive Paradise out of a woman."

Mr. Dawson defines a religious novel as one " in which the faculty of creative imagination is definitely devoted and in some instances subordinated to the exposition of religious ideas." We read further:

“Thackeray, as we have seen, has many passages touched with the purest spirit of piety; Dickens, with a much slenderer sense of religion, nevertheless attempts its exposition; Kingsley writes always with distinct religious aim. There are passages in both Charlotte Bronté and George Eliot which might have been written by some passionate poet of religious ideas, some St. Catherine or St. Theresa-notably the noble close of Villette,' the preface to 'Middlemarch,' the sermon of Dinah Morris on the village green,

is what the negro seeks at present in religion, says Prof. Fred. M. Davenport, of Hamilton College, in an interesting article in The Contemporary Review (London). "To be mad with supernatural joy," he remarks, "is with the negro the great test of supernatural presence." He asks us to consider, however, the fact. that" the old slave system of the Southland snatched the ancestors of this race from savagery only one or two hundred years ago," and that "a century or two is not long in the social evolution of any people, especially one whose early abode was in the African jungle beneath a tropical sun." And the subsequent presentation of a formerly fighting, nomadic people, with turbulent imagination, twisted with superstition, does not suggest a fertile soil for the swift development of ethics. On the other hand, the intrinsic nobility of the race as manifested in its original and beautiful music, is insisted upon.

Even the wildest religious emotion is apt to be a vivid rather than a profound experience. An excellent illustration of this is furnished by an experience of the writer's in Northern Georgia. He says:

"I once spent an evening listening, with a couple of friends, to an old darky's account of his conversion. . . . He had reached the climax of the recital, was in a considerable state of ecstasy, and was very anxiously seeking to impress us all with his spiritual experience, when suddenly his dog began barking furiously just behind him and utterly broke the continuity of his thought and of his speech. I think no one of us will ever forget the dash of savagery that came into his face as he turned with flashing eye and foaming lip upon that canine intruder. It was a startling transition, revealing the crater of primitive passion just underneath the crust of religious culture and nurture."

Religion was in fact to this man pure emotional expression, easily side-tracked from joy to rage. Professor Davenport finds "a few of the primitive phenomena which particularly distinguish the religion of the negro so interesting as to warrant our observing them more closely." And it is worth noting that they are all along the line of a religion without mental foundation, without coherent relationship between thought and deed. Of this physical exhilaration, the manifestation of which others besides the negroes. have often characterized.as religion, there are three usual forms of expression, the rhythm, the shout, the "falling-out." Says Professor Davenport:

"High feeling, discharging itself in muscular action and discharging itself rhythmically, is everywhere a spontaneous manifestation of children and child races. If this feeling discharges itself through the muscles of the throat, we have the shout. If through the feet we have the dance. The sacred dance is, of course, not so common among the negroes as among the Indians. But it is. quite common.

Altho Professor Davenport characterizes religion as the most prominent activity of the negro race, he goes on to explain that he means religion of a certain type," which can only be understood. when viewed historically and in the light of the mental development which these people have obtained.".

An interesting evidence of the extent to which the negro's mind is open to superficial impressions without the capacity of assimilation is shown in the following quotation from a recent issue of a Southern paper, published over a negro bishop's signature:

As

FOREIGN COMMENT.

THE VON BUELOW MYSTERY.

S witty as Heine, says a London paper, and as sententious as La Fontaine, are the utterances with which Prince von Buelow, Chancellor of the German Empire, has recently been regaling the Parisian papers, but with regard to his sincerity some differ. What none denies is that, like the oration of Nestor, sweeter than honey flows the tide of speech, and as with that Homeric orator, too, more meaning is sought in his words than appears on the surface. In the conversations or interviews reported by representatives of the Paris press in the columns of their journals, the Chancellor is reported to have disclaimed all selfish or ambitious schemes on the part of Germany in the Morocco dispute.

the Petit Parisien certain proposals which sound like an urgent and eloquent appeal for international concord.

By what miracle have the serpents of yesterday become changed into lambs? And why does the shepherd of the German flock play upon his pipe such airs of idyllic sweetness?"

The Action (Paris) answers this question by saying that Mr. Delcassé was the cause of all Germany's apparent "brutality" and accepts the Prince's words as sincere. To quote :

"An important detail in the history of our foreign relations seems to be fixed by the testimony of Prince Buelow himself, and that is the criminal megalomania of Mr. Delcassé. which aimed at turning against Germany the force of conventions concerning which she had never been consulted."

The Matin (Paris) takes up indirectly the defense of Delcassé against the insinuations of the Chancellor. The journal des Débats (Paris), while it admits that Delcassé managed the Morocco affair in a manner gratuitously offensive to Germany, adds that the Chancellor has not done right in confounding France's general foreign policy with the one mistake made by the ex-Foreign Minister of France. The Presse (Paris) comes out very bluntly with a charge of what a correspondent of the London Times calls "the mixture of naïveté and cunning that characterizes latter-day German diplomacy." It says:

"If there are prejudices which separate Germany and England, these, I repeat, will eventually disappear, and France can help to dissipate them. Allow me to add that we Germans have the example of France to prove that it is always possible to effect a reconciliation with Britain. .. German public opinion will enter into these feelings as soon as it is assured that there is no longer any idea of creating a void around us [i.e., isolating Germany]. which is considered among nations, as among individuals, an unfair proceeding."

The London Times is not inclined to take very seriously the words which the Chancellor of the German Empire poured into the ears of representatives of the Paris Temps and Petit Parisien, and comments on them in a vein worthy of Prince von Buelow himself, as follows:

"No critic with the slightest literary sense would dream, we need hardly say, of applying to airy trifles of this order the rigid canons of interpretation by which we are accustomed to construe solemn state papers or grave official statements. Misconception of that kind would be fatal not merely to the enjoyment of the Chancellor's wit and humor, but to the apprehension of his true meaning. The causeries abound in more or less audacious rearrangements of history, and of very recent history, too; but the boldness with which they are made is itself one of the charms of these little masterpieces. It would be worse than brutal, it would be positively stupid, to try these brilliant flights of fancy by the cold, hard standard of fact. That we reserve for the artist's next performance on the diplomatic kettledrums. To-day he has thrust that coarse and noisy instrument-with which he is never quite successful-aside, and he pipes in quite idyllic tones on the flute -we had almost said upon the piccolo-to 'la belle France.'"

His remarks have indeed been received with coldness, or ridicule, by a large section of the French press. Even the greater German newspapers are silent or speak as if Prince von Buelow was not expressing the sentiments of his countrymen. The Echo de Paris is absolutely virulent in its comments, and says:

"It seems as if Prince Buelow has made to a representative of

"If we were permitted to judge people by their demeanor, and to trust solely to appearances, we should certainly think that Mr. Buelow, the 'Prince von Buelow,' as he is entitled since his Morocco triumph, is an exceedingly honest negotiator, who wishes us all the good in the world, on condition that we throw ourselves into his arms; and he is willing some day, if only we walk in step with him, to return to us the keys of Alsace Lorraine.

"Unfortunately, nothing is farther from the truth than this. Prince von Buelow in a few phrases that mean nothing, makes promises that promise nothing, speaks of hopes in the future without offering anything in the present. In short, he asks the friendship of France without proposing anything in return for it.

'And still the great and only important question stands unanswered, namely, 'Is France going to be the ally of England or of Germany?'"

The Figaro (Paris), however, suspects that "Prince von Buelow wishes France to be the dove that bears the olive-branch of peace between England and Germany." And it adds:

"This is a very flattering proposal. France is to help England and Germany to sit down in harmony at a feast where each will take her fill of power and wealth. A very fine sight indeed; as a man said the other day, 'Come with me to Tortoni's to-morrow and I will show you how they enjoy the ices there!'"

Another French paper credits the Chancellor with sincerity. William II. has had good cards in his hand, but has played them badly, says the Eclair (Paris); "Prince von Buelow has understood that everything was to be begun over again, and he is striving to repair the blunder of his master."

That the time is not ripe for a sincere rapprochement between France and Germany is maintained by the Vossische Zeitung (Berlin), which adds:

'The highest official in the Kongo, the man who corresponds in Africa to Lord Curzon in India, was no sooner placed in possession of the conclusions of the Commission than the appalling' significance of their indictment convinced him that the game was up, and he went into his room and cut his throat. I was amazed on returning to Europe to find how little the significance of this suicide was appreciated. A paragraph in the newspaper announced the suicide of a Kongo official. None of those who read that paragraph could realize the fact that that suicide had the same significance to the Kongo that the suicide, let us say, of Lord Milner would have had if it had taken place immediately on receiving the conclusions of a royal commission sent out to report upon his administration in South Africa."

The Pall Mall Gazette (London) speaks of the "detailed list of blood-curdling murders and outrages" given in the report. "The dark doings of Belgian traders and the laxity of Belgian officialdom" are clearly brought to light, declares The Westminster Gazette, and it adds, "There seems to be no end to the cruelties and injustice associated with this portion of the dark continent." Mr. J. H. Harris, for many years a resident in the Kongo Free State, says in an address reported in the London Daily News:

not Belgium-and it is impossible that he can be ignorant of what is going on. If King Leopold ignores his duty and the tide rising against him in this country, the United States, and Europe, then the consequence to him will be disastrous."

The same gentleman said to Mr. Stead, as reported in the London Review of Reviews:

"If King Leopold were to take no action, but to allow the whole infernal business to proceed unchecked, then I think any international tribunal which had powers of a criminal court, would, upon the evidence of the Commission alone, send those responsible to the gallows."

The Kongos, both French and Belgian, seem to be unfortunate in their administration. The French Minister of the Colonies, Mr. Clémentel, has just received the report of Count de Brazza, upon the alleged atrocities which have taken place under the government of Emile Gentil, Colonial Administrator of the French Kongo, which lies to the west, as the Belgian Kongo lies to the east of the great river so named. The Vossische Zeitung (Berlin) declares that the Kongo colonial scandals are the topic of the day in Paris, and gives the following details of Gentil's barbarity:

"It is said that when the men of a village fled to the woods in order to escape compulsory service, the authorities took captive the women and children, and locked them up in a room, where they were left to perish of hunger and thirst, being subjected in the mean while to the outrages of the black soldiers. Gentil caused a negro who was suspected of having stolen a rifle cartridge to be flogged to death with a rhinoceros-hide whip. This man's innocence subsequently came to light. A woman, whom Gentil did not find sufficiently submissive, was first scourged and then hung up by the feet till she died."

Mr. Roanet, Deputy for Paris, in his journal Humanité (Paris) accuses Gentil of murder and oppressive taxation. He says that Gentil's instructions to his subordinates concerning the necessity of increasing the imports "set a premium on brigandage." Innumerable instances of Gentil's alleged cruelty, injustice, and extortion are cited in the French press from the evidence of those who furnished Count de Brazza with materials for his hitherto unpublished report-all being of much the same character as those related above. But the opinion of the French editors is somewhat divided. The Liberté (Paris) represents Gentil to be the object of calumny, and boldly declares:

"The kindness of Mr. Gentil toward the natives rendered him the object of dislike among Kongolays of influence. His anxiety to purge the colony of all foreign elements and especially of Belgian immigrants, and his projected French railroad which would hurt the interests of people in the neighborhood, are amply sufficient to account for the campaign against the Commissary-General of the Kongo."

The Figaro (Paris) is cautious and conservative. It says:

"It would be much better if people were to be more cautious and circumspect in denouncing this or that as a scandal. They would be far wiser if they sought to find a remedy against the repetition of those mistakes which we are obliged to admit, but which, unless the contrary be proved, we must consider exceptional."

This end will be served, says the Revue Diplomatique (Paris) by just such commissions as that of which the late Count de Brazza has submitted his report to Mr. Clémentel. To quote:

G

THE MEAT-FAMINE IN GERMANY. ERMANY is suffering from a meat-famine, and pork is selling at a mark, 24 cents, a pound-a rise of 72 cents above last winter's price. The Minister of Agriculture, Podbielski, is being caricatured and abused; Prince von Buelow is petitioned by peers and people; and Germany finds sausages, according to the newspaper cartoons, a delicacy too precious to buy. The policy of Podbielski in putting a prohibitory tariff on foreign cattle is blamed by some people. Several noblemen and newspapers are asserting that the butchers and drovers have put the prices up by a mutual agreement, or trust, and are taking advantage of the extra demand for home cattle occasioned by the exclusion of foreign producers to make hay while the sun shines.

According to the Hamburger Nachrichten, the National-Liberal Reichstag Delegate Held, who represents a rich cattle-bearing district, has issued a statement in which he denies that there is any meat-famine" in the real sense of the term. Swine are abundant, tho their price is high by retail. He states:

66

Consumers will some day find out who are the persons rightly to blame for the high prices, and will begin an agitation against the dealers, who artfully control the market, and against the butchers, who receive prices for their meat which are not warranted by the actual condition of things. The price of pork by wholesale has risen to the amount of from 5 to 10 pfennigs [11⁄2 cents to 21⁄2 cents] a pound, and beef 2 pfennigs [half a cent] a pound. What right has the butcher to advance his prices of the former 30 pfennigs [72 cents] and of the latter 20 pfennigs [5 cents] a pound?"

Count Schwerin-Löwitz has addressed the Chancellor attributing the famine to the existence of a ring or trust composed of butchers and drovers. The Allgemeine Fleischer Zeitung (Berlin), the organ of the meat trade, is very indignant at this and says:

cooperation between the butchers and drovers who wish to gain all the profit which came from the former trade in foreign cattle."

On the other hand, the Association of Cattle-dealers of Wittenberg-on-the-Elbe has issued a protest against the idea that the protective tariff on imported cattle has caused the famine. They continue:

According to the Norddeutsche Zeitung, Count Udo Stolberg, member of the Reichstag, has addressed a letter to the Chancellor of the empire, advocating a diminished railway tariff for the transport of live stock. This would benefit the consumer without detracting from the profit of the producer. The Frankfurter Zeitung lays all the blame upon the high tariff measures of Minister of Agriculture Podbielski, who had, moreover, assured the Kaiser that the existence of a ring was the cause of the rise in prices. It intimates that the Minister of Agriculture ought to find some way out of the difficulty. To quote :

"Would it not be his duty in this case to provide for the formation of some organization, which should direct its activities to the work of providing meat at the price the consumer could afford to pay? Ought he not to have prosecuted this ring with relentless severity?"

The Social Democrats have addressed the Government by a petition or interpellation begging that foreign cattle be at once admitted into Germany. The Kreuzer Zeitung (Berlin), the organ of the Kaiser, says that this petition was a mere party movement intended to harass the Government. The writer says:

"That the Social Democrats brought in their interpellation merely for the sake of agitation is proved by the fact that their spokesman, Mr. Gesetz, had no expedient to propose by which the rise of meat prices, vulgarly called the meat famine, might be abated. The proposed revision of the Trade Treaties and the abolition of any tariff on cattle could not possibly affect the present condition of things. We are glad to see that the Government paid no attention to the words of the meat-famine agitators. . It shows wilful blindness in these men when they refuse to see that the high prices are likely to fall; and that they result from a

ONE MAN'S FAMINE IS ANOTHER MAN'S FEAST. Podbielski, the swine-breeding Minister of Agriculture, grows fat while the public starves. -Wahre Jacob (Stuttgart).

while on our business journeys and find that cattle and swine are plentiful."

After stating that the tariff has excluded the cattle plague, they say: "We do not advocate the abolition of the present restrictions, but on the contrary are addressing a petition to the Minister of Agriculture that no foreign cattle be admitted into the country."Translations made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA.

RUSSIA is ripe neither for revolution nor for a constitutional

government, says Alexandre Ular in La Revue (Paris). Mr. Ular is an authority on Russia, a country he knows well, and in the article we refer to he gives a lucid account of the political opinion of the people. For, as he says, the Russians never use the word "nation" in reference to themselves, but talk of the people-a confederation of isolated and independent mirs or communities. He reports an interview he had with Plehve a few weeks before his assassination, which resembles the interview with Trepoff quoted in these columns September 30. By this notorious official, who had sworn to the Czar to put down all revolutionary movements in two years, he was informed that all such movements originated with strangers-Poles, Armenians, Finns, and especially Jews. Only a very few genuine Russians, socialists and constitutionalists, were opposed to the autocracy. But such people, added the Russian minister, have no influence with the peasants, who laugh at them, knowing that they are advising the people contrary to the general interest. When reminded that the propaganda was extending, Plehve admitted that it was; but this was through foreign or Jewish influence. Outside of the Jewish race, he said, there were not more than forty thousand people in Russia who desired a constitutional government. The peasant believes in God,