THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.

DID CHRIST TEACH SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?

H

E not only taught social democracy, but His whole mission on earth was to establish it-this is the claim made by Dr. Josef Ritter, in the Vienna Deutsche Worte, by many considered to be the ablest scientific and literary exponent of the principles of social democracy published on the continent. Dr. Ritter's claim is not intended as a sensational deliverance, but is a wellmeant effort to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was the protagonist of the principles now advocated by modern social democrats. The run of thought and argument is not without special interest. In substance it is the following:

The author places himself squarely on the standpoint of the most modern Biblical criticism, accepting only the "genuine Lord's sayings" as reliable sources for the discovery of who Jesus actually was and what His real teachings were. In this way he gets rid of the entire fourth Gospel and of much in the other three. He is, however, frank enough to confess that even that which remains he does not utilize as do the liberal critics, taking as literal what they interpret figuratively and taking figuratively what they accept in the literal sense. He thus feels that he is a Copernicus of modern theology, having in his possession the real key to unlock the enigma of the character and teachings of the Nazarene.

With these methods he has discovered that Jesus was really not a religious teacher at all, but that He was a social philoso pher. During the years between His early youth and His entrance upon public ministry He made Himself acquainted with the political philosophers of Greece and Rome, notably Aristotle and Seneca. The proof of this lies in His teachings, and in the fact that these can not possibly have grown out of an entirely Jewish soil. Christ in His teaching, such as when He claimed that blasphemy could be forgiven (Mark iii. 28), went even further than Socrates. He also did away with all old religious customs, rejected the necessity of a visible temple, and taught that the only temple needed was that created by God Himself. When Christ speaks of "God," He does not mean this in the ordinary sense of the term, but this is synonymous with "the collective state." When He accordingly depicts the glory of the "Kingdom of God," which He had come to inaugurate, He means merely the great socialistic and communistic state He will establish. "God" is accordingly for Him not a religious conception, but, as the provider of daily bread to whom men are to pray, the term can refer only to that Lord who alone can provide all men with what they really need, and this is "the collective state." This then is the "Kingdom of God."

That this was the ideal of Jesus of Nazareth is supported by both historical and exegetical testimony. The author claims that the entire Old Testament proceeds from the standpoint that wealth is unlawful and is even theft. The Mosaic legislation already took the first steps toward freeing men from the curse of private property, by converting the country of the Jews, at least in a great measure, into a collective state. With the beginning of the period of the kings things began to change for the worse in this regard, and the poor people were the objects of tyrannous oppression. Against this the prophets, as the representatives of old-fashioned rights, began to protest loud and long, and promised in many visions that the future Messianic rule should change all this again (Ezek. xxxiv. 2, 10, 23; xlv. 8, 9; Is. xlii. and lxv. 21 sq.). The realization of this ideal of the prophets was the object of Jesus' ambition. He aimed at the establishment of a Jewish national state, out of which should in the course of time For this reason be developed this international collective state.

He aimed to be chosen as King of the Jews, feeling sure of the sanction of the Roman authorities, as He had advised that tribute His refusal of the crown on one be paid to their government. occasion is to be attributed to the fact that the time was not ripe. This ideal naturally aroused the ire of the wealthy and privileged classes, and it was their hatred that eventually made Him a martyr in the cause of the poor. Christ's taking the sins of the world upon Himself means that He concentrated on Himself all the selfish anger of the rich, hoping that His blood should prove to be the seed that would bring forth the era of freedom for the poor.

IN

IS THE TIDE TURNING?

N our last issue we presented parts of an argument, from The Methodist Review, purporting to show signs of a return of the world from doubt and agnosticism to religious faith. Under the title of "Religious Phases of the Year" [1895], The Watchman (Baptist, Boston) speaks hopefully on this subject. It says:

"The epoch of bald materialism which followed the exposition of the Darwinian theories, and the exclusive attention to physical phenomena, has been replaced by an increasing recognition of the spiritual factor in the organization of the universe and its primacy in human life. Like Hamlet to Horatio, Theology has said to Science, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' And Science has heeded the suggestion. The revival of idealism, and the vogue of monism, are simply phases of the movement of thought from the philosophy which deified frog-sperm.

"If we do not mistake, the last twelvemonth has witnessed the beginnings of a closer consolidation of evangelical Christianity throughout the world. The proposal for Christian union by bargain and concession has received a reverse. It does not look nearly so hopeful as a year ago. But the movement of thought and the pressure of events have constrained all Christian churches to ask themselves what are their own essential doctrines and to examine their foundations afresh. The human accretions about the vital principles of Christianity never counted for so little as they do to-day, and the principles themselves for so much. The clearest thinkers in all the churches see that modern problems and opportunities demand that nothing shall be held as the Gospel which is not essential to the Christian revelation; and that, like a ship about to meet a storm or an army to engage in battle, the Church of Christ must discard every superfluity and simply retain that which is essential to her life and efficiency. Men are coming to see that it is ridiculous to attempt to convert the heathen of our own towns to the enthusiasm for the partizan issues that divided Europe in the sixteenth century, or to transplant to Japan and China the sectarianism of the West. In this new emphasis that is being placed upon the essentials of the faith there is a brighter augury for real Christian union than in the formal agreements which men sign and then continue to go their own ways."

The Watchman thinks that the political rearrangement of the far East is compelling the Christian church to treat religious questions with a new breadth. In this connection it says: "The Gospel was designed for the world, but too often we have

narrowed our conception of it to the measure of the necessities of our own communities. Missionary work has sometimes sought to reproduce' in Oriental countries an Occidental type of thought and civilization. We have sometimes overlooked the fact that, just as Dakota and Egyptian and Indian wheat differ, but all are wheat, so the Christian life developed in Burma or Japan may not be the less Christian because it differs from our Anglo-Saxon ideals. The events which have taken place the last year are too momentous and far-reaching for any single brain to grasp their ultimate issues. But at least we can see that the whole world has come into new and closer relations, and that the command to preach the Gospel to every creature comes with an unwonted urgency that compels us to preach a Gospel that meets the necessities of every creature, and develops his whole life along the lines of its normal growth."

UNBELIEF IN THE MIRACLES OF JESUS.

IN

N the eyes of an ignorant person the skilful prestidigitateur or the expert chemist may pass for a thaumaturgist; but the moment one explains to this ignorant person the means employed to accomplish the wonders, he will cease to see miracles in them. If, before being thus enlightened, he believes that he sees miracles in what astonishes him, it is because he can not imagine that there may be means perfectly natural and accessible to all for producing these marvelous effects. Hence he attributes them to a superhuman power-to God or to the devil. Arguing in such fashion, Prof. Albert Réville, of the Collège de France, Paris, opens his paper, in The New World, on "The Miracles of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels." He then says:

"If anything denotes the change in the human mind which has taken place during a century and a half, it is assuredly the point of view from which miracles have come to be regarded by the immense majority of men who know and reflect. Their skepticism, not to say their incredulity, in this respect, has spread among the masses who do not always have very substantial reasons for sharing it. It is in the air of the time-the resultant of innumerable minor experiences which have ended in forming a compact mass. The anti-miraculous movement began with the Reformation, which, in fact, banished the supernatural from the church, that is, from the ordinary, practical life of the church, and which, moreover, found itself compelled to deny the miracles that continued to flourish in Roman Catholicism. It is true that the Reformation claimed to preserve faith in the reality of the biblical miracles. It was a very difficult position to hold. In truth the same reasons which were used to support the reality of these miracles could just as well have been applied to the more recent miracles of which the Catholic Church boasted. We know how the necessity for the former was explained. But were there no longer incurable diseases to heal, doubters to confound, and sinners to convert? Had the missionaries who carried Christianity to the heathen peoples of America or the extreme East no need, as the first apostles had, to be accredited in the same manner to those who they were seeking to gain? From that time on, in order to justify their negations, Protestants were forced to examine the miraculous acts that were brought up against them. Whether they found them insufficiently attested, or saw in them the exalted phantoms of imagination; whether the miracles appeared grotesque to them (as indeed they were sometimes); whether the accounts could not be subjected to any serious criticism; or whether, finally, they awakened the suspicion of culpable fraud, this examination confirmed them in their unbelief."

Professor Réville says that it may be that, by very reason of "the religious greatness of Jesus, the sovereign beauty of His teaching, the inexpressible charm which He exercised over the Galilean multitude for a time, and the indestructible and passionate love which He inspired in those who followed Him closely and remained faithful to Him, His biographers, in reproducing a tradition already full of accounts marked by the stamp of enthusiasm, may have scattered miracles with full hands upon the truly historical course of His public career, without suspecting the objections that this manner of procedure would raise later on."

Professor Réville's mode of examining the miracles is illustrated in the following extract:

"Let us take, for example, the episode of the raising of the daughter of Jairus. According to Mark the father of this very sick child comes to find Jesus, tells Him that she is at the point of death (εoxatws exɛi) and begs him to come and heal her by laying His hands upon her. Jesus grants his prayer. On the way, they come and tell Jairus that his daughter is dead. Jesus bids him not to despair. He dismisses the crowd which followed Him, and those who were already filling the house with their lamentations. He tells them that the child is not dead but sleeping. Then entering her chamber, accompanied by only three of His disciples and the parents of the young girl, He takes her by the hand and bids her rise; she rises indeed, and He orders them to give her something to eat. It is a remarkable feature, recurring very often in the case of miracles which, it seems to us, would have been blazed abroad as much as possible, that Jesus forbids them to speak of the event, as if, under the circumstances described, it could have remained unknown. But putting this point aside, it is evident that Mark's narrative leaves us absolutely uncertain whether a real death, or an apparent one, a syncope or a comatose state, deceiving the persons present, was intended. In Luke viii. 42 there is a tendency to represent the child as already dead when the father comes to find Jesus (añéOvηokεv), and it is no longer a question, as in Mark, of healing her; he is to raise her. But in Matt. ix. 18, she is unquestionably dead (éteλeútnoev), so that the first evangelist was obliged to suppress the detail according to which Jairus was informed of the death of his child only on his return to his house, and we no longer comprehend at all the assertion of Jesus to those present that she is not dead but sleeping. We can not doubt, according to text of Matthew, that we have here a resurrection in the full force of the term. I am much inclined to believe that the three narrators had fundamentally the same idea, but that the common source which they have embodied was much less explicit, and spoke of an extraordinary cure rather than of a resurrection. If it had plainly affirmed the miracle, the evangelist Mark would not have been one to dream of attenuating it or rendering it doubtful. We are thus led to affirm a marked gradation in the manner in which the event is related in the three gospels, and the primitive narrative, or that which is nearest to the primitive sourse, that of Mark, leaves the fullest room for the supposition that something other than a resurrection is in question here.'

IMMORALITY OF CHURCH ENTERTAIN

THE

MENTS.

'HE question of the morality of church entertainments continues to interest certain critics and essayists. Rev. William Bayard Hale contributes to the January Forum "A Study of Church Entertainments," in which he severely denounces such means of raising money. Mr. Hale was lately in receipt of a printed advertisement of a "fair," for the benefit of a certain church, in the shape of a card which, besides containing the program, bore the inscription, from "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Tis an honorable kind of thievery." He thinks that this inscription is only equaled by the robust candor of a clergyman who, in his speech opening a similar church bazaar, said:

"They come to be cheated [laughter and applause], and if they don't come to be cheated a little, they deserve to be cheated a good deal [renewed applause].”

Upon this Mr. Hale says:

have methods of raising money which are fraudulent, and nobody is horrified by the knowledge, because nobody to-day takes the churches any more seriously than they take themselves.

"It is indeed difficult for the imagination to connect these modern societies, occupied in giving fairs, suppers, and popular entertainments, with the undivided church which once worshiped God in simplicity and seriousness, filled with heavenly aspirations. Modern religious methods do not find their patterns in the earlier church. We are not informed, I ventured to submit to the last church congress in the United States, that the church at Ephesus or Philippi ever advertised a bazaar, a clam-bake, or a strawberry sociable. We have no information that St. Paul was accustomed to give stereopticon lectures, Barnabas operating the lantern. It is not clearly established that St. Athanasius ever arranged a kirmess, a broom drill, or a pink tea. There seems, then, to be no inherent necessity for the church to undertake the amusement of the public. Our Lord knew, I conceive, what the nineteenth century would need at the hands of His church; but He left it no direction, explicit or implicit, to open eating-houses and theaters. He seems to have been entirely ignorant of any time to come when it would be best for His blood-bought church to transform itself into a system of concert-halls, kitchens, and entertainment-bureaus."

Mr. Hale is convinced that the necessity for such a transformation of the church is not one inherent in its character, but has been forced upon it "by conditions which are the result of divisions in the church." It is "sectarianism," he asserts, which has made "the religious show" a necessity. On this point he remarks:

"Does any one claim that churches have awakened to a better understanding of their function than the Founder and the Apostles had? No one claims it. Is it pretended that sacred negro minstrels, dances, light opera, and vaudeville are to-day more essential to the salvation of men than prayer, worship, the reading of the Scriptures, and the administration of the Sacraments? It is not pretended. The plain fact is that the luxury of having one hundred and forty sects is expensive, and the money to pay for it has to be raised in some fashion. In communities where one Catholic church would be gladly and fully supported by the voluntary offerings of the community, half a dozen denominations can not gain a support without going into business and baiting the public with fairs and theatricals.'

Mr. Hale then gives extracts from a record of church entertainments, which he has been keeping for some time, and comments on their ludicrous and hurtful character. He says in closing:

"I charge, then, that, besides its hundred other sins, the division of the church-most absurd and inexcusable of economic errors-has desecrated holy places and holy days; has assaulted all reverence; has given thousands who might have been won to the higher life an utterly ignoble conception of religion; has reduced Christian congregations to the level of fakirs and poor actors; has turned clergy into scrambling mountebanks; and has dishonored Christian womanhood.

"The world does not need the church as a purveyor of vaudeville; the church does not deserve perpetuation even for the glory with which it may crown itself as the producer of light operatic diversion. The world does need and is piteously crying out for the church to do that for which-divided-it is hopelessly inefficient. Let the vision of the Catholic Church take possession of the souls of men, and in place of the pauperized sects which, rivaling each other in vulgarity, contend for the miserable dollar of the public, the world will see an institution consecrated again to the service of humanity, to the proclamation of the Gospel, to the spreading of the story of the tragedy and sacrifice of Calvary, generously maintained by a charity eager to witness to the constraining power of the love of our Savior."

ACCORDING to the Indianapolis Journal a clergyman of that city has undertaken to demonstrate that the saying of Scripture that "tho your sins be as scarlet," etc., is really a statement of scientific fact so far as the color of sin is concerned. He asserts that scientific experiments have developed that sin is scarlet. These experiments were made at the Smithsonian Institution. By means of a chemical process the perspiration of a person aroused by sinful passion was subjected to a test that disclosed a pinkish color. Forty experiments were made, and in each test the result

was the same.

'Washington was a Christian. Study his private life, amid the shades of Mount Vernon; contemplate his career as a soldier at the head of the army; scrutinize the acts of his administration as Chief Magistrate of the Republic, and you will constantly find proofs that he was governed by Christian principle. If we exclude the molding power of Christianity in the formation of Washington's character we can neither account for nor interpret it. Depraved human nature could not bring forth, under the most favorable circumstances, such a man, such a hero, such a ruler, such a patriot, and such a statesman! Heathenism, in the highest stages of civilization attained in all ages and lands, has produced no character approximating to that of Washington."

Mr. Conrad then proceeds to a study of the life of Washington -the relation of his whole character to Christianity-tracing throughout his entire career the dominating influence of deep piety. We quote briefly :

"He believed in the special providence of God and attributed every favorable event, his own success and the ultimate triumph of the cause of liberty, to its direction and superintendence. In speaking of the progress of the war, and the manner in which the Americans had sustained it, he said: "The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel who lacks faith, and more than wicked who has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations. I am sure there never was a people who have more reason to acknowledge the divine interposition in their affairs, than the people of the United States; and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they have failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.' He regarded Jehovah as the God of battles and constantly prayed to Him for victory and success in founding our nation."

Speaking of the last official act which Washington performed, that of resigning his commission as General-in-Chief into the hands of Congress, when he closed his military career with the words, "I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy keeping," Mr. Conrad

says:

"These were the sentiments and such was the practise of Washington. In him we find the exercise of the highest military au thority, regulated by the soundest Christian principles. The Christian man was not sunk in the unchristian soldier, but the Christian man appeared in the Christian soldier. The Christian virtues of his private life he maintained without blemish during his military career. What he recommended and enjoined upon others, he practised himself; what he condemned and reproved in others, he avoided himself. Thus by his unwavering devotion to religious principle, amid all the vicissitudes of war, he won the esteem of his officers, the attachment of his soldiers, the confidence of his countrymen, and the admiration of the world."

We quote again briefly from the closing paragraph of Mr. Conrad's paper:

"It is evident, therefore, from the character, principles, and

THE DRINK-EVIL IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.

PROF.

ROF. W. GARDEN BLAIKIE, D.D., of Edinburgh, Scotland, contributes to The Christian Intelligencer a thoughtful article on the drink-sin in the Old Testament. It is a noteworthy fact, Dr. Blaikie says, that the sin of drunkenness is more frequently referred to in the Old Testament than in the New. He reviews the numerous instances of ruin and disgrace which befell various personages in Old-Testament history on account of indulgence in strong drink, and maintains that intemperance was the principal cause of the overthrow of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. He cites the testimony of the prophets on this point. Thus Isaiah speaks of the drunkards in the state, whose "God was their belly," and whose motto was "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." In his fifth chapter Isaiah recounts a series of six terrible woes against the sinners of Judah and Jerusalem, and two of these woes are hurled against the drunkard: "Wo unto them that rise up early in the morning that they may follow strong drink, and continue unto night until wine inflame them! Aud a harp and the viol, and the tabret and the pipe and wine are in their feasts." Dr. Blaikie shows also that it was when wealth and prosperity came to the Hebrew state that the drink-evil began to assume its most threatening proportions. We quote:

Our newspapers

"In the kingdom of Israel there was evidently a great influx of wealth under Jereboam II. We have an indirect proof of this in what is recorded as having taken place a few years later in the reign of Menahem, when the Assyrian invasion took place under Pul, and Menahem had to buy him off with a bribe of a thousand talents of silver. To raise this amount, somewhere about two million dollars, Menahem exacted a contribution of fifty shekels (about twenty-five dollars) from 'all the mighty men of wealth' -which would imply that in his little kingdom there were some 80,000 persons who might be called 'mighty men of wealth.' "And how did they spend their money? sometimes tell us of the fabulous sums spent by rich men on their entertainments, and in those days the cost of feasting must have been on a corresponding scale. The prophet Amos gives us a vivid picture of it: Wo to them. . . that lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music, like David; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.' How changed from the days of Abraham, when animal food was hardly known, and it was only on rare emergencies that a 'calf, tender and good,' was killed, 'the fatted calf' of the parable of the prodigal son, in order to provide an unusual entertainment for strangers! In the days of Amos, feasting had become a kind of fine art, and all that could gratify ‘the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye and the pride of life' was heaped together in profusion day by day. Men poured out streams of wealth for the decoration of their houses and on musicians and musical instruments; the choicest of the flocks and herds were sacrificed for their tables; costly vessels were purchased for their wines, and costly wines for their vessels; and as is still so common, the demon of selfishness reigned over all; public calamities excited no feeling of distress; they were not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.' Their god was their belly and their motto: 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' Unsanctified wealth was followed by the ruin of their country; wine destroyed the heart; the old patriotic cry, 'Pro aris et focis,' for our altars and our firesides, roused no emotion; and

the consequences was that many who had been accustomed to feast in houses of ivory, regaled with fragrant scents and joyous music, ended their days in captivity, and devoured their scanty morsel to the music of clanking chains, amid the gloom and stench of the dungeon.”

Pope Leo XIII. Not on the "Index."-In reference to the report that a book written some years ago by the present Pope is to be found on the Index Expurgatorius (see LITERARY DIGEST, January 4), The Ave Maria characterizes the rumor as "a curious blunder of the secular press," and says: "It was said that the Holy Father, while Archbishop of Perugia, had published an ascetic work which was afterward placed under ban; and sensational scribes hailed this news as evidence against papal infallibility. Every Catholic knows that even were the statement true dogma would in nowise be affected; but the fact is that the condemned work was written by a canon of Perugia while the future Pope was Archbishop of that See. Mgr. Pecci did not even give the work his imprimatur." The Church Progress (Roman Catholic) also denies that Pope Leo XIII. wrote the book in question, and remarks: "The author was a Rev. Carlo Paoletti, a parish priest of the diocese of Perugia, who was at one time confined for insanity, and who manifested afterward an abnormal devotion for the Blessed Virgin. He wrote the book in question without ecclesiastical approval, and Archbishop Pecci, out of regard for its author, who was a worthy man, tho mentally unbalanced, did his best to stop the sale, and bought all the remaining copies from the printer."

No Chance to Brag in Heaven.-"Mr. Moody has a popular and very telling way of 'hitting' the errors which are so rife in the theological thinking of many persons to-day. Speaking of salvation by grace he has said: 'It is well that a man can't save himself; for if a man could only work his own way into heaven, you never would hear the last of it. Why, down here in this world, if a man happens to get a little ahead of his fellows, and scrapes a few thousand dollars together, you'll hear him bragging about his being a self-made man' and telling how he began as a poor boy and worked his way up in the world. I've heard so much of this sort of thing that I'm sick and tired of the whole business; and I'm glad we shan't have men bragging through all eternity how they worked their way into heaven."". The Mid-Continent.

RELIGIOUS NOTES.

MANY will be surprised to learn of the numerical strength of the Methodist Protestant denomination, a branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church. According to its latest statistical report it has 1,422 ministers in active service. It has 174,572 members, 4,109 probationers, 2,356 churches, 462 parson- . ages, and 112,131 Sunday-school scholars. This denomination is specially strong in Maryland and Pennsylvania. It has two ably conducted religious papers: The Methodist Protestant, of Baltimore, and The Methodist Recorder, of Pittsburg.

THE trustees of the United Society of Christian Endeavor have determined to hold their future national conventions on a somewhat different plan than formerly. The general meetings will be held in churches, perhaps fifteen or twenty at the same time. These meetings are to be devoted solely to Christian Endeavor topics, while great tents will be devoted to mass-meetings and fellowship exercises.

The Freeman, of London (Baptist), has a leading editorial on the war scare, under the title "A Little Cloud from Hell." Speaking of the action of our Congress, it says: "The vote of $100,000 for inquiry was reasonable enough. But the proposed vote of $100,000,000 for war preparation is so Satanic that it could only have been inspired from hell. And that is the only place in the universe where it can bring joy."

ROBERTSON NICOLL, editor of The British Weekly, thinks that one of the greatest desiderata of English literature is a really great commentary upon the Sermon on the Mount. He states, also, that the late Dr. R. W. Dale intended to prepare such a work, but it was one of several projects which his lamented death left uncompleted.

The Congregationalist remarks that the Jews at last have their revenge on Babylon. Nearly 2,500 years ago Babylon took the whole nation into captivity, but two Jews of Bagdad have now bought all that is left of Babylon.

A CANVASS of eight blocks in New York city by federated churches shows that only 1,520 out of 8,800 people attended any church, tho 4,000 professed to be church-members; 650 out of 3,000 wage-earners had to work on Sunday.

BISHOP FERRAUD, the author of "L'Irlande Contemporaire," at whose consecration a delegation from Ireland assisted, is one of the nine cardinals to be created at the next Papal consistory. He is Bishop of Autun.

FROM FOREIGN LANDS.

A

THE SOUTH AFRICAN IMBROGLIO. LTHO the South African question has assumed a dangerous aspect rather suddenly, its causes are as historical as the Monroe doctrine. Premier Rhodes, Sir Hercules Robinson, and Dr. Jameson are ardent adherents of the idea that the whole world must ultimately belong to the English race, and the adventurous doctor has simply gone forth to translate this theory into facts in South Africa. The history of the quarrel between Boers

and British is, briefly told, as follows:

When Holland was forced to relinquish the Cape Colony to England, the settlers there had, during the preceding centuries, already assumed the character of a distinct nation, calling themselves Afrikanders-a name which is now erroneously applied to the English-speaking section of the population. The Cape settlers, called Boers (boeren, i.e., farmers, from their calling), refused to become British subjects. As the land they inhabited had been ceded to England, they moved over the border, and, conquering the negro tribes, formed new states after the manner of the pioneers of our own West. The British Government always waited until such a new territory was in a settled condition, and then annexed it, having formulated the docrine, "Once a British subject, always a British subject." Farther north than the Transvaal the Boers could not go, as the climate is too unhealthy for whites. They had given up every other settlement, but they turned upon their pursuers in these two states, and won their independence.

In the Transvaal a foreigner of good character becomes a citizen after five years' residence. Immigrants of the agricultural classes generally become loyal Transvaalers within that time. They learn the language of the country and modify the spelling of their names to suit its new pronunciation, after the manner of our own immigrants. The British section of the digger population, however, openly avow that they will annex the Transvaal to the British Empire by their votes, and demand that suffrage be given them upon their entering within the Republic.

The Boers, on the other hand, declare that a floating mining population is of no value to the country. They assert that these foreigners do not add to its wealth, do not develop its resources, and are of too adventurous a character to become valuable and patriotic citizens of the Republic. The Boers are of opinion that these foreigners, who openly assert that they deplore the independence of the Republic, should at least be made to pay part of their treasures to the government of a state which they have entered only to gather gold, whose laws they hate and whose people they treat with open contempt, disdaining to learn even their language, altho every facility is offered for doing so.

European mail bearing upon the bloody ending of Dr. Jameson's attempt to conquer the Boers is not yet at hand, but the following extracts, published a few days before the struggle had reached its climax, will show that many Englishmen doubted the justice of the miners' cause.

A writer in The Times, London, said:

says:

ties, notably Germans and Americans, with a fair sprinkling of French and Russians, and a few Italians. These people have as much right to be considered, in one way, as the majority, and it would be taking a leaf out of a Dutch book of proverbs if British subjects attempted or even desired to do otherwise. In this lies the weak point of the appeal to Great Britain."

The Westminster Gazette, too, thinks that "it is only just to regard the Transvaal question from a Boer point of view," and does not believe that the Transvaal can be easily annexed to the British Empire. It says:

'A lot of the talk about the readiness of the Uitlanders to 'rise' is merely bunkum. As we have seen, they are not united. Secondly, the interests of the whole body of newcomers are by no means the same. There are Moderates and Radicals and masters and men on the Rand as in other parts of the world. In the third place, there is no reason for disguising the fact that powder-burning is by no means to the taste of a considerable section of the Johannesburgers. In a word, they are hardly of the stuff of which revolutionists are made. People in this country who speak glibly of the possibility of hostilities in the South African Republic, do not know what they are talking about. To look forward with anything like equanimity to a conflict between the whites across the Vaal simply argues an ignorance of the complications of the situation in South Africa. The Boers are in many ways much more strongly entrenched in ons land than casual critics understand."

If Mr. Chamberlain was not aware of the danger of an invasion of the South African Republic by the Matabeleland Britishers, this can not be said of the Conservative press in England. Before the expedition of Dr. Jameson had become known to Europe in general, The St. James's Gazette, London, said:

"An armed collision is possible, in which the Johannesburg people may be trusted to take pretty good care of themselves, and there are plenty of young fellows in the surrounding British territory, men of the type of those who enabled Mr. Rhodes to smash Lo Ben, who will be likely to look in if there is prospect of trouble. In face of all this the responsibility of the Imperial Government will be a sufficiently grave one. A protracted guerrilla conflict in the Transvaal can not be permitted, and England would probably have to intervene in force to restore order and suggest terms of a settlement. It might be wiser to intervene before the parties actually come to blows."

IRELAND'S RELATION TO GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA.

IF the opinions expressed in the newspapers of a people are worth anything, the Irish Nationalists are ready to rise in open revolt if war is declared by this country against Great Britain. "Ireland," says the Dublin Independent, John Redmond's paper, "will go solid for the Republic." But this is not all. The Nationalists in Ireland are firmly convinced that their compatriots in the United States will take care to bring about a struggle. United Ireland says:

"Let not Englishmen lay the flattering unction to their souls that because Irishmen have been divided during the last few years in a constitutional struggle, they must necessarily be divided in a great national emergency such as that created by the message of President Cleveland. Just such an emergency visited the disunited Irish nation in 1780. God knows it was no easy thing for the oppressed Catholics of Ireland to throw in their lot with the domineering Protestants of the Parliament which had carried out the penal laws; but when the touchstone of nationality was put to them, when it became a question of Ireland's freedom against a question of sectional rights, the Catholics of Ireland rushed to the standards of the volunteers, and we won the Parliament of '82.... We thank heaven that if Englishmen can be united in a great crisis for their country, so, too, can Irishmen. The small petty differences will, no doubt, be persevered in by the thoughtless; but to-day, we can tell England and England's rulers, the sentiment of Ireland in reference to the