had curled and fine hair. This decision, doubtless, enraged ameteurs wedded to the opinions of the English.

During the years that I have studied the races of dogs I have proved that the great majority of attractive Newfoundland dogs have curled hair.

Why, then, does the English Club wish to impose straight and coarse hair on the Newfoundlands? I defy the Club to give a good reason, just as I defy the Pointers' Club to tell why, ten years ago, a deep break in the nose was a recognized quality of the dogs about which the Club concerns itself, while now such a break is a grave defect in the same dogs. It will be said: This is a matter of taste or of fashion." No, taste or fashion with the English is a matter of guineas. The English judge has always at his back a dealer in dogs, and when the judges impose certain points on a race, the dealer has for sale dogs possessing those points, which points become defects, when the dealer has for sale dogs which do not possess these points.

They admit two varieties of retrievers, one with straight hair, the other with curled: Now, according to the most esteemed English authors, retrievers are a cross between spaniels and Newfoundlands; why, then, not admit the same varieties of hair in the Newfoundland, which is the ancestor of the retriever?

In France we are logical in admitting two varieties of color, the black and the pied; and two varieties of hair, the straight and the curled.

IN

RELIGIOUS.

CALVINISM AND CONFESSIONAL REVISION.
A. KUYPER, D.D.

Presbyterian Quarterly, Richmond, Va.

N the controversy which formed the subject of discussion between the Calvinists and the Arminians at the Synod of Dort, the right of the Churches to undertake a revision of their symbols was acceded on both sides; but when it came to a question of method they were found to differ radically in principle. The Arminians viewed the Confessions as products of human study, and, therefore, demanded that the Revising Synod, pending the process of revision, should be free from the trammels of the creed, and should be free to erase, alter, or add whatever it liked with the single proviso that the next or any subsequent revising synod should be at liberty to revise anew the already revised Confession.

No, Calvinists said, our Confession did not originate from man alone, and shall not be treated as a bare product of human study. God, himself, by the mighty deeds of His providential government created a more than ordinary movement in the current of church life; in the midst of this general stirring took a firmer hold of the spirits of His people; enabled them thereby to pass through a period of deeper spiritual experience of the truth of the Christian religion; and thus, in the light of the Holy Spirit, there was gradually evolved out of this mighty commotion a clear, distinct, positive conviction, which has been formulated in our Confession. In these symbols, therefore we possess a part and parcel of the life of our churches. They were not given to a single generation, but to the Church of all future generations until the coming of our Lord. The Church is bound, therefore, not to lord it over this truth, but to submit to it, and to keep the gold of this God-given Confession untarnished, until that illustrious day when the King of the Church Himself will appear to profess His truth in judg

ment.

This Confession, Calvinists held, possessed rights conferred by God, and confirmed by history, and could be deprived of these only after due process of law. Only the Word of God stood higher; to it alone it had to strike the flag. According to this view, then, the method of procedure had to be as fol

lows: In the Synod that took up the matter of revision, no one was entitled to speak who did not begin by subscribing to the Confession, reserving, of course, the right of appeal to the Word of God. Next it had to appear, whether from the Synod itself, or from without, that any complaint entered against the Confession was on the basis of the Divine Word. Such complaints. having been made a comparison had to follow with the Word of God as to whether the sections under complaint were actually untenable or inadequate. If the assembled churches, after having called for the assistanee of the foreign churches found this to be the case, they were bound to enter upon a revision, in order that the sovereign rights of the Word of God, as exercising authority over the Confession, also might continue intact and inviolable. On this method the Arminian charges against the Confession were weighed and found. wanting.

From this it will be seen that the churches do not possess authority, for no reason in particular, to bring the Confession, as a leaking ship, into dry dock to be calked, or to have it rebuilt after some presumably more seaworthy model. This would, indeed, be to keep pace with one's time, or, rather, to drift along with the current of the "Zeitgeist," instead of glorifying God by bearing witness to the eternal rock of his truth, in contrast with the restless shifting of human opinion. And the end would be that what called itself a church would, as a matter of fact, be resolved into a debating society of religioussophists.

There is still another aspect under which this delicate question ought to be considered. Most assuredly the Reformation has not been the last "Sturm-und Drangperiode" of the Church. The chasm that has gradually opened up between our subjective convictions and our objective confessions will have to be filled in due time. But has the time for this already come? And does not a Calvinistic Church incur great risks in concluding that it has? In our opinion, it does, and we on our part would not dare to enter upon a revision in our Dutch churches.

I. This

In our view four conditions must be complied with before a Calvinistic Church can undertake the revision of its symbols, on the ground of a richer spiritual development. development must tend in the direction of the Church itself, not being a reaction against, but a richer unfolding of the Calvinistic principle. 2. This unfolding must have made such universal progress in the churches that there is, in reference to it, a practically unanimous testimony of all the churches, and not the least danger of one-half of the consistories or classes obtruding their opinion on the other half. 3. Calvinistic theology must have made sufficient progress to furnish the churches with adequate means for formulating this development. 4. In the foreign churches of the Reformed Confession a similar conviction must have led to similar results before this new stage of symbolic development can be entered on. It is evident that of these four logically incontestable conditions, not a single one thus far has been or can be complied with.

Under these circumstances a revision of our symbols, carried through in opposition to the Calvinistic principle, and the warning voice of history, would only be the forerunner of a still more thoroughgoing revision to follow immediately in its wake.

TH

RELIGIOUS DOUBT AND MODERN POETRY.

THE REVEREND W. J. DAWSON.

Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, London, October. HE chief ministry of poetry is a ministry of suggestion. The poet is the interpreter, but not the less the leader of his age. His words may not become the street songs of the multitude nor the solace of the poor man's hearth, but often a higher fate is theirs. They become the inspiration of the thinker. The influence of a great poet upon the best minds of his generation is like the action of the sunlight; silently it gathers force and spreads itself abroad, and marks the fulness of its power by the ripened bloom upon the fruit, and the

depth of tint and color in the flower. In like manner the highest prose genius often takes its color from the highest poetry of a period.

Therefore, if it be said that the great bulk of the people do not read poetry, we can only retort that every writer for the press in this country does; that the leaders of opinion on every great social and religious question do; that the poet first moulds the fervid minds of youth in our public schools, overshadows our universities with his presence, and meets us, Protean fashion, in every avenue of our common literature. Civilization has advanced, but as yet we have not seen any sign of the fulfillment of Macauley's prophesy in the decline of poetry. At the crest of the far-rolling wave of civilization, will always be found the highest outcome of the poet's "vision and faculty divine." Civilization, so far from destroying poetry, has really done much to intensify it. It has simply changed its methods; it has robbed poetry of the old freshness and simplicity of its utterance, the ancient force and directness of its form, and has surcharged it instead with the feverishness and satiety of a complex modern life, full of many aims, throbbing with the pulse of large and eager purpose, and saddened by the vain pursuit of a perfect culture, which more and more proves itself an unattainable and mocking dream. So long as the human heart remains, poetry will not die, nor the poet's mandate be withdrawn. Man never yet has lived alone upon the bread which the wealthiest civilizations have kneaded for his use; nor will any ethics of the dust, any application of a marvelous science that merely multiplies the conveniences of social life, or claims his curious wonder at the price of the denial of his religious instincts, suffice him now any better than heretofore. Pascal long since reminded us of the majestic and undying truth that " the heart has reasons which reason does not know," and poetry may be described as the reason of the heart. And it is because we feel that our higher culture will rather indorse and widen the poet's mandate than abridge, that we think there can be no more serious problem presented to the investigation of the Christian thinker, in the interest of the Church and society of the future, than the problem which seeks to measure and define the influence of our modern poetry.

It cannot escape the most casual student that the great French Revolution marked a new birth in literature. It mixed a leaven of new inspirations and emotions with the decaying forces of our former literature, the earliest outcome of which was the daring misery of Byron, and the revolution, defiance, and denial of Shelley. Even the sedate spirit of Wordsworth became fired with the new ardors of that portentous day.

The large, original force of the earlier poets of the century has ebbed; but a second tide has set in which is practically the consummation of the first. No Tennyson or Browning were possible without a Byron, a Keats, a Wordsworth, and a Shelley; the later poets, though in very different form, and by entirely new methods, simply fulfill the inspiration of their forerunners. But not the less is it true that a distinct new note, or rather series of new notes, has been struck in our English literature.

We have grown too familiar with revolutions to expect any swift and bright millennium from the noblest of conspirators or the most magnanimous of patriots. Mr. Swinburne still leaps upon the altar which he has made, and when he can withdraw himself from singing in the Lesbian orgies, chants before the face of Baal in revolutionary odes and vituperative sonnets. But the latter movement has scarcely heart enough, for the most part, to join in any song so strenuous; it is saddened with its disillusions, it is satiated with its gains, it is emasculated in its energies, and what offensive power it has left is mainly spent in small sneers against the tyranny of creeds and the decay of ancient faiths and pieties.

It would be worse than folly, however, to deny the vast influence which modern doubt has exercised upon modern poetry.

The supreme question of the present day is the attitude of the age towards religion, and that question finds a hundred reflexes and vain solutions in our poetic art. Of course, it may be said, the century opened with the fierce strife of religious doubt and denial in the poetry of Byron and Shelley. But there are many respects in which Byron and Shelley differ wholly, in their attitude towards religion, from their lineal descendants in poetic art. It was said of Byron by Shelley that he could not help believing in a hell, and this statement admirably illustrates his habitual conduct in dealing with matters of faith in piety. His libertinism was ingrained, his infidelity was an affectation. Shelley, on the contrary, came of a race of freethinkers, and his atheism is undoubtededly sincere enough. But it is rather the frenzied scream of an excited boy than the iconoclasm of a full-grown man. It is not merely rebellion against orthodox faiths, it is wild and unmeasured revolt against every form of use and order which tradition sanctions.

And how different this is from the sad wail of our modern agnostic poetry must appear in the hastiest comparison. The key note, the very ground tone of such poetry is poignant and unavailing regret. It touches its deepest and most pathetic chords in dirges and lamentings, in farewells to the dying faiths, and requiems for the dead. The air is full of such sad notes of sorrow, the tremblings of unmistakable distress, the vague and wild vibrations of a woe too deep for words. Its very sadness is its fascination; and, although it must be distinctly acknowledged that doubt, like other things, may become a fashion, and poetic doubt may be the mere affectation of an affectation, yet it may be admitted that the bulk of our agnostic poetry is too evidently sincere:

This is by no means the place to discuss the actual condition of the Christian faith; but we may, at least, be permitted to remark that religious doubt and modern poetry appear to have united themselves in a most unhappy marriage, and are, in their most fascinating guise but an ill-assorted couple. The greatest treasures of our Engish poetry are the product of an age of faith. It was in an age when religion was the paramount subject in English politics that Shakespeare and Spenser flourished. It was at the conclusion of the greatest war for conscience sake that any nation has ever known, and by the pen of a man, who, more than any other, embodied in his own person the stern and holy ardors of the period that our greatest epic poem was produced. The fact is religious faith is inextricably interwoven with our English poetry; and so surely has our ordered freedom grown out of our religious life, that we may well believe that there is some force in hereditary ideas, which must ever make a faithless poetry foreign to the English mind. It is too late to try to turn the tide of English literature; it has set too long upon the sunny shores of faith to ebb at last towards the icy solitudes of agnostic indifference and despair. The English mind will never yield a wide attention to any modern Lucretius in the person of a Matthew Arnold singing his despairing ode concerning "The Nature of Things"; and still less will it "dance to the piping of an educated Satyr" in the person of a Mr. Swinburne. The poet can only soar in one direction, it has been said; but if the blue heavens be closed and unattainable, what else can he do other than limp along the common earth with trailing wings or wounded heart pouring out the sad, wild notes of an irremediable woe?

[It would have been hard to find a team of authors so well likely to pull together as Mr. Vincent and Mr. Lancaster, in order to produce a story of which a portion of the scenes were to be laid in the East Indies, and a portion in New York City. With the East Indies Mr. Vincent's acquaintance is not slight. Of the 275,000 miles which he is estimated to have traveled, not a few have been in the Asiatic possessions of the Empress of India. Mr. Lancaster, as a veteran journalist in this city, knows New York as well as Mr. Vincent knows India. The two have produced what they justly term "a romance, "of a kind which was in fashion ages before "realism" was born, and which will continue in fashion for ages after it is dead. Of exciting incidents, of deeply pathetic scenes of passion, repentance, despair, and fiendish revenge, there is no lack. One scene, in which the hero and his temporary wife are crawled over while in bed by countless cobra-capellos, which only awaited a movement on the part of the occupants of the bed to inflict on them deadly bites, may justly be called thrilling. The villain of the piece is a New York physician of wealth and high standing, who does not shrink from a direct lie in order to get for his only son as a wife a woman engaged to another man. He is not left unpunished, for, as the reward of his crime, he dies in a lunatic asylum. The book is full of strong transitions. The contrast is great between scenes of Oriental splendor and Mrs. Mincer's boardinghouse in New York. The interest of the story is unabated from the first page to the last. Its complicated incidents defy a summary within the space at disposal, which admits of a brief indication only of the groundwork of the scheme.]

THE

HE Reverend Marmaduke Allan, rector of the Church of St. Remigius in the City of New York, was a very wealthy young bachelor, the only child of a father whose will provided that, if his son married, he should lose all the property bequeathed to him. Young Allan's parish was a poor one, a matter of little conseqence to its rector, who found much satisfaction in ministering to his impecunious parishoners, and did his duty by them faithfully.

In order to recover from a severe cold which had rendered him incapable of conducting the services, Allan spent some weeks at Lakewood. There he made the acquaintaince of a Mrs. Orme and her only and attractive daughter Beatrice. The mother's income was quite moderate, but she was indulging the hope of getting a rich sonin-law. Mrs. Orme and her daughter went to church at St. Remigius's, although Allan was not aware of it until he met them at Lakewood. With Beatrice the rector fell deeply in love, and after a hard struggle resolved to sacrifice his fortune and marry Beatrice, if he could. The young lady returned her suitor's affection, and, a little to the chagrin of her mother, accepted him. The lovers convinced themselves that they could live on the fifteen hundred a year, which was all St. Remigius's church could afford.

Within a short period, however, there came a time when the young clergyman made up his mind that he would have to make a still greater er sacrifice. The result of his observation of the misery with which he came in contact in the course of his professional duties and of a study of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and various other philosophers, was to make him a disbeliever in Christianity and a confirmed agnostic. In this state of mind his conscience compelled him to resign his position and abandon the church. By such a step, of course, his expected wife and he would have no means of living, save such as Marmaduke might earn in another occupation or profession. Beatrice Orme was willing to marry him, notwithstanding, but fate interfered in the shape of one Dr. Billington, a wealthy and famous physician of New York, who had been Allan's guardian.

It happened that the doctor's only child and petted son, George, was also in love with Beatrice Orme, and disclosed to his father how deeply he was pained at the prospect of her marrying Marmaduke. To please the son, the father determined to prevent a marriage between Allan and Beatrice. Finding that his former ward was deaf to all remonstrance, the doctor hit on the plan of confiding to Marmaduke the reason of his father's making such a will. That reason was that insanity had run for generations in the family of Allan's mother, that she had been insane before and at the time of giving Allan birth, and there was every prospect that any children he might have would inherit the taint. This story of the doctor was a lie, but it answered its purpose. Allan, believing all the doctor had told him, recoiled with horror from the idea of the consequences that might ensue from his marriage; and, after a hard struggle, determined to break the engagement. He could not bring himself to tell Beatrice his real reason for such a step. He called upon his betrothed, and, after an interview which was heart-breaking for both, informed her that the engagement must come to an end, giving as a reason that they would be entirely without means of support.

Of course after this Allan found New York far from a pleasant place of residence. He went to India, with the intention of studying the wisdom-religion" of the Hindoos, and hoping to find in that, some

thing to replace the faith he had lost. The theory of reincarnation seemed to promise a substantial indemnity, remote perhaps, but assured, for the multiplied sufferings of human beings in this world. In the city of Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, occultism has its home, and here Allan took up his residence. He had not lived there long, however, when, by a singular turn of fortune, he became absorbed in something quite different from the ablution, maceration, fasting and prayer, on which he partly relied to bring about mental and physiological changes which appear to be the concomitant of power to which the term supernatural is ignorantly applied. By this turn of fortune the whole future course of Allan's life was changed, and his after career was astonishing to himself and to all who knew him.

A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA; Recollections of Men and Things. By Max O'Rell. With Over One Hundred and Thirty Illustrations by E. W. Kemble. New York: Cassell Publishing Co. [When Max O'Rell sat down and made a mental review of his Jonathan and His Continent, he evidently realized that he had left a good many good things unsaid. Whether the American is inexhaustibly funny per se, or whether it is that Max O'Rell carries an inexhaustible fund of humor about him which he is capable of shedding on all created men and things," certain it is that the Frenchman in America has all the freshness and sparkle of its predecessor. It betrays in equal measure, too, the sense of infallibility which contributes as much as the humor to the amusement of the American public. As a conversational autocrat, Max O'Rell is "immense"; his conclusions are laid down with the precision of the specialist, and are to be accepted without comment. He came and saw, and then sat down to enlighten the American people as to their special idiosyncrasies, and general place in creation; and the worst of it is he is generally correct in the main. Max O'Rell, like a true Frenchman, although he has too much tact to obtrude it, looks down upon all foreigners from a lofty height. They stand to him in the relation of the subject to the scientific investigator. He describes the characteristics of the American or the Englishman, not incidentally as one refers to matters of common observation, but as the results of his investigation in a new department of biology. But Max O'Rell is by no means deficient in sympathy, he never loses sight of the fact that there is a great deal in common between Frenchmen and humanity; and, having soothed his sense of superiority by depicting our foibles, he affords evidence of a good digestion, by good-naturedly attributing them to the noblest traits of character.

In fact, all his criticisms are sugar-coated; one is willing to submit to them in consideration of the pleasant things which, as his tone implies, he cannot in common honesty withhold.

In the present work the author takes the reader behind the scenes, describing his visit as what it was-a lecture tour-and giving a good general account, not merely of incidents and observations, but of the success of the adventure as a lecture tour; and, although the humorous side of men and things as he found them, invariably receives first attention, Max O'Rell is a philosopher as well as a humorist, and deals out both commodities in fairly equal measure.

It is not too much to say that every page in the book is instructive, whether it consists of the worldly-wise generalities which flow from his pen in a ceaseless current, or in his "holding the mirror up to nature," and enabling us to recognize our own foibles.

A fair idea of the easy flow of his language and of his treatment of his subject may be gathered from the following Reflections on the Typical American."]

FIRST

THE TYPICAL AMERICAN!

CIRST of all does he exist? I do not think so. As I have said elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty, but the American has not made his appearance yet. The type existed a hundred years ago in New England. He is there still. But he is not now a national type, he is only a local one.

I was talking one day with two eminent Americans on the subject of the typical American, real or imaginary. One of them was of opinion that he was a taciturn being; the other, on the contrary, maintained that he was talkative. How is a foreigner to dare decide where two eminent natives find it impossible to agree?

In speaking of the typical American, let us understand each other. All the civilized nations of the earth are alike in one respect; they are all composed of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen and those that are not. America is no exception to this rule. Fifth Avenue does not differ from Belgravia and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a gentleman. As a type, he belongs to no particular country, he is universal.

When the writer of some "" 'society" paper, English or American, reproaches a sociologist for writing about the masses instead of the classes, suggesting that "he probably never frequented the best society of the nation he describes," that writer writes himself down an ass. If we want to find a typical American, it is not in good society that we must search for him, but among the mass of the population.

Well, it is just here that our search will break down. We shall come across all sorts and conditions of Americans, but not one that is really typical.

A little while ago the Century Magazine published specimens of composite photographs showing on the last part the result of blending eight or nine faces. I can only compare the typical American to this. This appears to me the process of evolution through which the Ameri can type is now passing. What it will be when this process of evolu. tion is over, no one, I imagine, can tell. While the process of assimilation is still going on, the result is suspended and the type incomplete.

But meanwhile, are there not certain characteristic traits to be found

throughout almost all America? That is a question much easier to

answer.

Is it necessary to repeat that I put aside good society, and confine myself merely to the people?

Nations are like individuals. When they are young they have the qualities and defects of children. The characteristic trait of childhood is curiosity. It is also that of the American.

Look at American journalism. What does it live on? Scandal and gossip. Let a writer, an artist, or any one else become popular in the States, and the papers will immediately tell the public at what time he rises, and what he takes for breakfast. When any one of the least importance arrives in America, he is quickly beset by a horde of reporters, who ask him a host of preposterous questions, and examine him minutely from head to foot, in order to tell the public next day, whether he wears laced or buttoned boots, and enlighten them as to the cut of his coat and the color of his trousers, and let them know if he parts his hair in the middle or not.

A few days ago, on reading the morning papers in a town where I had lectured the night before, I found in one of them about twenty lines consecrated to my lecture, and half a column to my hat.

I must tell you that this hat was brown, and all the hats in America are black. If you wear anything that is not exactly like what Americans wear, you are gazed at as if you were a curious animal. I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too. It took any shape, and adapted itself to any circumstances. It even went into my pocket on occasions. I had bought it at Lincoln and Bennet's if you please. But I had to give it up. To my great regret I saw that it was imperative; its popularity bid fair to make me jealous. Twenty lines about me and half a column about that hat! [And so, to summarize the story, the hat was sent to the editor with a note conveying Max O'Rell's compliments; and, the editor knowing how to take a joke, the letter was published in the next issue, and the public informed that the hat fitted the editor nicely, and that he intended to have it dyed black and wear it.]

THE CONDITION OF LABOR; An Open Letter to Pope Leo, XIII. By Henry George. With Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII. on the Condition of Labor. 12mo, pp. 157. New York: United States Book Company. 1891.

[Whatever difference of opinion there may be in regard to the strength of the arguments in this answer of Mr. Henry George to the Pope's Encyclical on the Condition of Labor, no one can deny that Mr. George has put his case in a very forcible, dignified, and attractive way, and has treated His Holiness with due respect and consideration. The views of Pope Leo are considered from various sides, and the soundness of those views is challenged, not only on the ground of political economy, but on moral and religious grounds. It is the official English translation which is here given. A few of the paragraphs of the Encyclical are traversed directly, without those paragraphs being quoted in the precise words of the official translation here published. Upon the whole, however, the general drift of the Encyclical seem to be stated with all fairness, and its leading points appear not to be misrepresented in the least.]

HIS

IS HOLINESS claims that what is bought with rightful property is rightful property. Such reasoning would sanction property in slaves.

He further claims that private property in land proceeds from man's gift of reason. Such a claim does not discriminate between things provided by man's reason and forethought and things provided by the reason and forethought of God. As to the former, the doctrine of the Encyclical is true; as to the latter, it is false. Land is something provided by the reason and forethought of God and not of man.

Still further, the Encyclical is in error in maintaining that private property in land deprives no one of the use of the land. Exactly the reverse of this is true.

Equally erroneous is the claim of the Encyclical that Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land itself. This contention, if valid, could only justify the ownership of land by those who expend industry on it. It would not justify private property on land as it exists. On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic no-rent declararation, that would take land from those who now legally own it, the landlords, and turn it over to the tenants and laborers.

Private property in land, contrary to what is claimed in the Encyclical, has not the support of the common opinion of mankind, and has not conduced to peace and tranquility, and is not sanctioned by Divine Law.

Fathers should doubtless provide for their children, as His Holiness forcibly maintains, but he is altogether in error in supposing that private property in land is necessary in order to enable fathers to provide for their children.

Equally erroneous is the contention of the Encyclical, that the private ownership of land stimulates industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to the soil and to their country; that the right to possess

property in land is from Nature, and not from man; that the State has no right to abolish private property in land, and that to take the value of land ownership in taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private owner.

In classing the single-tax people, who are championed by Mr. George, with the socialists, His Holiness does injustice to both the supporters of the single-tax theory and to the socialists. With both anarchists and socialists single-tax men fundamentally differ.

The social question is, at bottom, a religious question. Private property in land is impious resistance to the benevolent intentious of the Creator. The Encyclical states strongly the mighty evils of our present civilization, and recognizes the indispensable Christian duty of finding remedies for those evils. The remedies proposed by His Holiness are, so far as they go, socialistic-extremely moderate socialism, it is true, yet socialism still. The State cannot cure poverty by regulating wages. It is as much beyond the power of the State to regulate wages as it is to regulate the rate of interest. Labor associations can do nothing to raise wages by force. So far as tradesguilds and unions succeed, they effect nothing save to impose more restrictions on natural rights; to create "trusts" in labor; to add to privileged classes other somewhat privileged classes; and to press the weaker closer to the wall.

What is that condition of labor which, as His Holiness truly says, is "the question of the hour," and "fills every mind with painful apprehension?" Reduced to its lowest expression it is the poverty of men willing to work. And what is the lowest expression of this phrase? It is that they lack bread-for in that one word we most concisely and strongly express all the manifold material satisfactions needed by humanity, the absence of which constitutes poverty.

The prayer of Christendom-the universal prayer that goes up daily and hourly wherever the name of Christ is honored, is "Give us this day our daily bread!" Why is it that where this prayer goes up, daily and hourly, men lack bread? It is the business of religion to say why. The only answer to this question is that men have impiously violated the benevolent intentions of their Creator, have made land private property, and thus given into the exclusive possession of a few the provision that the Bountiful Father made for all. Any other answer than this, no matter how it may be shrouded in the mere forms of religion, is practically an atheistical answer.

By

PHILLIPS BROOKS, BISHOP OF MASSACHUSETTS. Newell Dunbar; with Portrait, and Views of Trinity Church, 93 pp. Boston: J. G. Cupples.

[This is a biographical sketch which the author has made a labor of love. The work is divided into five chapters of equal length, headed severally: Personality, Biographical, The Preacher, The Author, What He Stands for To-Day in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. In illustration of the author's style and treatment we subjoin the following extracts; and first as to Phillips Brooks's personality.]

VERY

characteristic of the man was a little scene the writer remembers to have witnessed one evening in early summer, on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston. The great preacher was sauntering down the walk in earnest converse with a friend, or at least acquaintance, whose hand he held in his, and was affectionately swinging as he talked-just as children swing hands and talk. His companion, who was known to the writer as a man notoriously, not all unwordly and a saint, though of average size, looked a mere boy beside his own heroic proportions. Brooks was expostulating with him in regard to some point on which he evidently wished to change him, and his big, convincing, winning Nonsense, nonsense Edward-put it aside-you know it is not so," sounded very hard to resist. Again commenting on Phillips Brooks's style as a preacher, he says: As a preacher-and that beyond a doubt is the capacity in which he is the greatest-the quality that, in the writer's opinion, first strikes all Phillips Brooks's hearers, is what may perhaps be termed, for lack of a better word "copiousness." He is like a colossal reservoir that seems full almost of bursting, and well-nigh unable to restrain what it contains. He takes his place in the pulpit, and opens his mouth, and without any accompaniment of manner (whatever may be the case with the matter) specially appropriate to an exordium, just beginsright in the middle as it were. The parting of his lips seems like the bursting open of a safety valve by the seething thoughts and words behind, and out they rush, so hot in the chase, the one of the other, that at times they appear to be almost side by side, and from then till the moment that he stops with almost equal abruptness, he simply pours-pours-pours! out-out-out.

[The author has selected a worthy object for hero-worship-a man who is esteemed by all who know him as a simple, whole-hearted, manly man.]