times past been subject to similar experiences, and in support of this theory he cites the views of numerous astronomers that Mars, in the course of its eccentric orbit, passes through space which is equally the orbit of numerous planetoid bodies revolving around the Sun, and that two of its present satellites are not proper to it, but have fallen within the sphere of its influence in time past.

BACTERIOLOGY.

The Germ Theory. It is now suggested from a Continental source that danger of disease may be incurred by bathing in polluted water. It seems that typhoid fever associated with jaundice broke out in the garrison stationed at Altona, and the epidemic was attributed to the practice of bathing in the Elbe. At the period in question the Elbe was in a high state of pollution. Recently a similar study has been undertaken at Ulm among the soldiers. The military bathing-place, it seems, is situated below the point where the foul and polluted river Blau joins the Danube. Before the Blau reaches Ulm it is contaminated with sewage matters, a village called Söflingen sending its waste into the stream. Fowls dying of a mysterious disease at Söflingen were thrown into the river, and on examining the dead bodies of these birds a germ was constantly found which resembled in all essential particulars the microbe found in the jaundiced and typhoid-stricken soldiery of Ulm. In a special experiment, some of the water of the Blau, mixed with sterilized broth, was used to inoculate mice. The mice died in sixteen hours, and in their bodies was found the microbe which had been discovered in the cases of jaundice and in the diseased fowls which had been disposed of in the river. I suppose the microbes were swallowed by the soldiery, and gave rise to the disease in question in the usual fashion, but it is interesting to discover that the jaundice symptoms are apparently due to the action of a specific microbe. The lesson we learn from this research is the importance of bathing in pure and uncontaminated water.-Dr. Andrew Wilson, in Illustrated News of the World, March 25.

Opium-Smoking.

CHEMISTRY.

milk and sterilized the product in a stove at 118°. Below that figure there is a risk of the milk altering; above it the milk becomes discolored and acquires a more pronounced taste. Infants take to this milk very well, and about 500 observations made during the last three years have proved that it does not produce either green diarrhoea or indigestion. Examination of the contents of the stomach during the different stages of digestion show that, in the stomach of young children, this milk produces clots much smaller than the ordinary cow's milk, and closely resembling those produced by woman's milk. -Journal de Pharmacie et de Chimie, Paris, February 15.

ELECTRICITY.

The Telautograph.-Professor Elisha Gray, the inventor of the musical telephone, has on exhibition, at No. 80 Broadway, New York, a new invention, the Telautograph, which, while ranking for utility with the telegraph and telephone, is in one very important respect superior to either as a medium of communication. The written message is produced in fac-simile at the receiver's end. There is a machine provided with a roll of paper and a pencil, or self-feeding pen, at either end. At the transmitter's end the paper is unrolled mechanically, and at the receiver's end electrically. The pen or pencil, with two cords near its point, connecting at right angles with two points of the machine, is taken in hand by the transmitter, and the pen or pencil at the receiver's end glides simultaneously over the paper, producing by electrical impulse, a facsimile of the handwriting at the other. No attendant is required by the receiver, who may be absent from his office for days together returning to find all communications addressed to him in the interim, in the order in which they were received. In cities and towns, the telautograph will be operated on the exchange or central-station plan, in much the same manner as the telephone is now worked.

The Electric-Light Bug. With the introduction of arc-lights in the South have come numerous bugs of more or less dangerous species. One in particular that is worthy of notice has been termed the electric-light bug. It is about an inch and a half long, and from a sixteenth to a quarter in thickness, and seems to consist wholly of legs and wings. They have hitherto been considered harmless, but now it is believed that they bite or sting, with direful results.—Electrical Review, March 25.

Humanized Milk.—At a late meeting of the Sociétê de Thérapeutique, M. F. Vigier read a paper on milk from which the cheesy part has been extracted (lait décaséiné), which he called sterilized humanized milk, but which has been used for a long time in England under the name of humanized milk." M. Vigier points out that the inconveniences attending the use of cow's milk for feeding infants are due to the excess of cheesy matter therein, and that this cheesy matter coagulates in the stomach and forms clots too large to be digested. This inconvenience, M. Vigier showed, does not attend the use of milk from which the cheesy matter has been extracted. This last is cow's milk of a good quality, from which has been removed, by the ordinary processes employed in the fabrication of cheese, a proportion of casein in excess of that which is found in woman's milk. After a number of trials he ascertained the proportions corresponding to those of woman's

GEOGRAPHICAL.

Source of the Nile.-Recent reports from Oscar Baumann's expedition describe the country from the north end of Tanganyika to Lake Victoria. On September 5 Baumann struck the Kagera River, and was enthusiastically received by the

Moon, and regarded him as a descendant of their late ruler, who also claimed descent from that satellite. On September II Baumann crossed the Akenyaru, indicated in our maps as a hypothetical lake, but which in fact is only a river. The socalled "Mworengo Lake" proved to be a river also, flowing through Akenyaru. There is, then, no great lake between the north end of Tanganyika and the southwest of the Victoria Nyanza. On September 19 Baumann reached the source of the Kagera at the foot of a steep, forest-clad mountain, which forms the watershed towards the basin of the Rufisi. This mountain, which the natives especially venerate, is called by them the Mountain of the Moon. Here, then, in remarkable conformity with the teachings of the ancients, is the true source of the Nile, in German east-African territory. As such the Kagera must certainly be regarded, seeing that it is the most considerable tributary of the Victoria Nyanza.-Globus, Braunschweig, LXIII., 10.

METEOROLOGY.

The Climate of Central Asia.-The meteorological condition of Central Asia is very much misunderstood. As to that

part of the world, consisting of plains at a high altitude, and having an abundance of lofty mountains, it has been too hastily assumed that it is necessarily more or less sterile, and that assumption has been fostered by the narratives of travelers who happened to have visited bleak and sterile parts of the country. The careful observations, thermometrical and other, of Mr. Pépin and myself, in various parts of the country, especially in the neighborhood of the Pamir Steppe, prove the contrary. Portions of the Pamir are of great altitude. On its southern edge is the Sir-i-kol (Lake Sir), which, according to the latest authorities, is 13,900 feet above the level of the sea. Here is the source of the Oxus, which flows westward down the steep slope of the plateau through Bokhara and along the border of Khiva into the Sea of Aral. Yet, wheat grows luxuriantly along the plateau of Central Asia, and ripens in about 135 days between the 18th of February and the 25th of June. Moreover, I do not hesitate to say that the continental climate of Central Asia admits of a cotton belt of greater extent than that of the United States.-Guillaume Capus, in Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, Paris.

The Conditions which Seem to Attend the Formation of Meteorites.-Messrs. Moissan and Friedel, in some admirable researches, the results of which they have communicated to the Academy of Sciences, have each shown that the iron in meteorites is far from being homogeneous, even in parts in close proximity to each other. It is surprising to find such a heterogeneousness in a mass which has the aspect of having been formed by fusion. I have made some experiments, by which I endeavored to produce imitations of the stony meteorites of the common type. The high temperature employed in these experiments in my laboratory brought about the formation of the silicates, peridot and enstatite, in clear and large crystals, such as are never met with in meteorites. The silicious substances, which compose meteorites of the common type, notwithstanding their extreme tendency to crystallize, are always met with as very small crystals and very much confused. If I may be allowed to use an analogy to objects about us, I would say that the crystals obtained by the fusion of artificial stony meteorites resemble the long needles of ice that liquid water forms in congealing, while the fine-grained structure of natural meteorites is rather like that of hoar frost or snow, formed, as is well known, by the immediate passage of the atmospheric vapor of water to a solid state, or to the flower of sulphur solidified under like conditions. Moreover, the innumerable grains of iron scattered in the same meteorite show clearly by their forms that they have not been isolated as the result of fusion. In place of being globular they are ramified and mixed with some stony minerals. The conclusion which I draw from all this has been confirmed by the very interesting experiments of Mr. Stanislas Meunier, who has succeeded in imitating divers meteoric minerals, both metallic and stony, by means of gaseous reactions, that is, by a mutual decomposition of vapors. Both observation and experiments seem to combine in establishing that meteorites have not been formed by simple fusion, but more probably by a precipitation of vapors passing suddenly from a gaseous state to a solid form. If these vapors were of different substances, one could understand the heterogeneous nature of the solid products they have engendered.-M. Daubrée, in the Comptes Rendus des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences for February 20.

PALEONTOLOGY.

Maltese Cave-Exploration.—Mr. John H. Cooke, F.G.S., has just (Feb. 28) submitted his Report to the Royal Society of London on the exploration of the Har-Darlan Cave, Malta. Mr. Cooke has been fortunate in adding a bear (related to Ursus Ferox) and the Barbary deer (Cervus elephas, var. bay barous) to the fauna of the Maltese caves. He also found the pigmy hippopotamus (H. Pentlandi) in great abundance. This species is common in Sicily and adjacent lands. Man is represented from the cave by a single metacarpal bone, and by pottery of two distinct periods, of Phoenician and Punic origin. The antiquity of the cave and deposits is proved by the fact that the cave is now forty feet above the level of the gorge, whose flood-waters freely flowed into it in prehistoric times. At present only a tiny streamlet, dry, save in the rainy season, flows through the gorge, incapable of performing any perceptible erosion, whereas the ancient stream carried large boulders along its course and piled them, well waterworn and rounded, in abundance within the cavern, which is some four hundred feet in length. Only one molar and part of a jaw, and one humerus of Elephas mnaidriensis were found. -Geological Magazine, London, March.

PATHOLOGY.

Chemical Vaccine Against Rabies.-Professor Tizzoni and Dr. E. Centauni, of the University of Bologna, have been experimenting with an anti-rabic virus, for which they claim such satisfactory results as to justify the serious consideration of the proposal for the systematic vaccination of all dogs.

The vaccine is extracted from the cerebral nervous system of a rabbit which has died from virus fixe, and is dissolved under conditions designed to produce constant results. This solution, the method of preparing which will be published later, is colorless or slightly tinted of a straw color, without odor, with neutral reaction, aseptic in the most restricted sense of the word, and free from all virulent properties.

The solution has been experimented with, both as a preventive and curative, and in both classes of cases with satisfactory results. The animals employed were rabbits. So far as the experiments have been conducted with infected animals, the treatment was efficacious only when begun within four days of the period of infection. As a curative, too, larger quantities of the vaccine are required than would suffice to confer immunity on an animal free from infection.

In these researches the experimentalists claim to have established the principle, already held as a hypothesis, that vaccination secures immunity by purely chemical action, its properties being due to a particular substance which is developed from the infecting agent in the media of those cultures which are special to it.—Lancet, London, March 11.

The Cholera-Outlook in '93.-It is more than likely that cholera will visit us in 1893, because, as a rule, it remains for several years after it has made its appearance. It will be still more likely if we should have another warm and moist season. If cholera make its appearance in Chicago, it will not only be the death-blow to the World's Fair enterprise, but Chicago will serve as a nidus whence cholera will spread over the greater part of the United States. What shall we do? Shall we rest quietly in our present imaginary safety or shall we busy ourselves now to keep out cholera ?

I give a general idea of what I think would be the best plan to keep out cholera. In every city of the United States there should be an efficient Board of Health, with full police authority. This Board of Health should look after the cleaning of sewers, streets, alleys, wells, cisterns, dwellings, especially second-hand shops, cheap restaurants, and hotels, all sorts of drainage, all manner of traffic-in fact, everything relating to the sanitation of the city or community. They should have all the necessary means for thorough disinfection, isolation, or destruction of anything they thought dangerous. These Boards

of Health must consist of energetic, intelligent physicians, and should be appointed now, not after the cholera has made its appearance.

I do not think that it will do any good to stop immigration unless commerce also is stopped. Persons do not spread cholera when they are in a healthy condition. What must be done is to have all commercial intercourse carefully looked after by the Boards of Health.-Albert Schneider, M.D., in Literary Northwest, St. Paul, April.

Flies and the Cholera.- Flies are the agents of propagation of a large number of contagious maladies. Persons are very often inoculated with carbuncle by flies. Some experiments of Cornil have demonstrated that they can carry the bacillus of tuberculosis. Dead flies, when dissected, often contain bacilli which have been absorbed from the spittle of consumptives, and these bacilli preserve their virulence. Dissemination of the germs of yellow fever has also been attributed to flies. Some recent experiments of Mr. Simmondi, of Hamburg, prove that flies, during a cholera epidemic, may be a dangerous factor in the spread of the malady, when they alight on food which, like soup, milk, sauces, are an excellent medium of culture for the comma bacillus. Mr. Simmondi took nine flies from the recently opened intestines of a patient who had died from cholera, and put them in a large bottle in which they could fly about. In from five to forty-five minutes each of these flies was put in a tube containing liquefied gelatine, which, after being shaken, was emptied on a saucer. forty-eight hours all the saucers were covered with abundant colonies of the comma bacillus. In another experiment, six flies were placed under a glass, with a fragment of a cholera patient's intestine, and afterwards in a large vase, where they remained for an hour and a half. Then each of them was put in a tube of gelatine. When the gelatine was poured out on saucers, it gave birth to innumerable colonies of the comma bacillus.-Cosmos, Paris, March 4.

ZOOLOGY.

In

Victorious Voles.—In spite of the havoc wrought by Professor Loeffler among the field-mice in Thessaly last summer, these little pests have reappeared there in great numbers. The Prefect of Phthiolis appeals to the whole civilized world, apparently, for "protection" against his tiny enemies—a pathetic figure recalling that of Hannibal wandering about in his old age trying to stir up someone to fight the Romans.British Med. Journal, March 11.

THE STOMACH AND DYSPEPSIA; OR, THE LADY AND THE TIGER.

P. C. REMONDINO, M.D.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

National Popular Review, Chicago, March.

COME time ago we read something in one of our exchanges,

SOME

in which the writer held that it was all wrong that we should, even for a moment, entertain the idea that there existed such a thing as progressive physical racial deterioration, and this optimistic writer would make us believe that the generally accepted idea that we are fast becoming a nation of dyspeptics had no foundation in fact, but that, on the contrary, evidence would show that dyspepsia was much more prevalent fifty years ago then now.

We hate to undeceive any cheerful human being, but we cannot but feel that the optimistic writer is laboring under a fond delusion, which it is our unpleasant task to dispel.

Dyspepsia is but a very vague term; it is a twin-brother, orto be ungallant but scientific, and judging the condition from its mendacity, fugitive, flirting, will-o'-the-wisp, and unreliable stability-a twin-sister of that equally vague and undefinable condition" biliousness"; terms which, when heard, leave us in as much of a quandary as Frank R. Stockton's tale of "The Lady and the Tiger," as the dyspeptic may or may not have

dyspepsia, and his stomach may be physically as sound as a cast-iron retort.

What, then, is this disagreeable and ill-behaved condition that renders the lord of creation so miserable, robs him of all spirit, and makes him feel like the wicked and repentant Nebuchadnezzar as he crawled on all fours; an interloper that lost Waterloo to Napoleon, and from which even literary men have no sure escape, as evinced by poor Carlyle, who, when in agony, exclaimed "What a happy man was I, until I found I had a stomach." Carlyle was undoubtedly an inveterate, and hopeless dyspeptic, but it is very doubtful if at any time his stomach was either the primary or remote cause of the phantom that haunted him for the last fifty years of his life and to which we undoubtedly owe much of his brightest work.

No condition is less understood or further reaching than this pest of mankind; more likely to inhabit royalty than a tramp, or the man of genius rather than the simpleton, it has been at the bottom of any amount of this world's mischief. Like the origin of wigs and breeches, religion and general depravity, we must look back to antiquity if we wish to know whence and how we have become dyspeptics. Just when primitive man became an anthropophagic connoisseur we cannot well say, but here it is that we begin to hear the first gastric murmurings of discontent. Up to this innovation in our diet, a perfect accord had existed between man and his stomach; but here it ceased; and, thence on, we have gone from bad to worse, becoming addicted to Limburger cheese, sour beer, apple-dumplings, and American cookery, and now we wonder why we are dyspeptics.

The discovery of the art of cookery may have given a larger list of food whence man might make up his bill-of-fare, and many imagine that the art has greatly contributed towards health and the lengthening of human life. There are many serious reasons to make us doubt these conclusions, and in the face of the ordinary American boarding-house cooking and social ethics, and its unfortunate, gaunt, sunken-chested, hollow-eyed, Egyptian-mummy-complexioned dyspeptic victim. we feel that we must enter a general denial to the proposition. Primitive man living on grapes, berries, nuts, and grasshoppers, with milk and honey for relishes, and wild onions for appetizers, must have been the very soul of optimism and health. Those evil genii, the distiller, brewer, cook, and perverted Gospelexpounder had not begun their interminable duel with the apothecary and the doctor, with poor miserable man and his stomach for a battle-field, and primitive man was consequently not dyspeptic, gouty, nor uremic. Has the stomach of man changed since those happy days, and what has the stomach really to do with dyspepsia?

It has been asserted, and not without reason, that the Caucasian has more endurance than any other race, and that in comparison with contemporary animals he excels in capacity for work and endurance. There is no doubt but that his stomach has endurance and capabilities that nearly equal those of the ostrich, rhinoceros, or camel.

The Scotch highlander swallows his underdone oatmeal porridge, feeling that its rawness will retard its digestion, and not compel him to replenish his furnace for many hours; on the same principle the Irishman swallows his national mess of potatoes boiled with a stone in the centre"-that is, only the outer layer of the potato being boiled at all-also an expedient learned by experience that a half-raw potato will last as long as three well-cooked ones. The French peasant makes his meals of a bread made of a mixture of peas, rye, beans, or wheat-flour, ground up husks and all into one mass; this, with the addition of a little cheese of questionable age and some acrid wine, may serve for breakfast, dinner, or supper. Now what is of particular interest to us is the fact that none of the examples given are troubled with dyspepsia. It is well known that Ireland and Scotland present the greatest number of pastcentenarians, while for an all-round long liver there is no

nation on earth that excels the French. Undigestible food, underdoue porridge, raw potatoes, tallow candles, and sour bread washed down with sour wine, cannot evidently be classed among the causes that produce dyspepsia.

The German can take down his regular government length or allowance of pea-meal sausage, sour-kraut, sour milk, and home-browed beer, handle the flail all day, and dance in his hob-nailed shoes all night, filling in the interval with lunches of anything that comes handy. Dyspepsia is as unknown to him then as in after life, when, with his long-stemmed pipe, he hugs the stove, intent only on getting his four or five daily meals.

The African stomach seems more to assimilate to that of the ostrich or the rhinoceros. The amount required to satisfy the ordinary appetite of the son of Ham is something incredible. The more he eats the shinier his skin glows. We never knew one to require any pepsin, even after a dinner of a threepound fish, a pound of roast, half a dozen eggs, olives, pickles, potatoes, beets, turnips, and other things, with some dessert and coffee. Dyspepsia does not affect these people, who can gormandize on yellow-legged chicken and roast 'possum at a rate that would make a Heliogabalus turn green with envy.

Evidently, dyspepsia cannot be said to depend on overfilling the stomach with odds and ends as if it were a second-hand junkshop or some back-yard swill-tub.

By discarding the idea of stomach-complication in any connection when treating dyspepsia we will be more likely to reach the true origin, cause, or seat of the disease. Some cases have yielded to exercise systematically employed, whilst others recover under a few days of absolute rest. The numbers of so-called dyspepsia that are cured by the disappearance of business, domestic, or social annoyance are nearly unlimited. An overdue note in the possession of a bottle-nosed and beetle-eyed creditor is more productive of dyspepsia than a meal of second-hand carpet-tacks. In fact it may be a safe thing to assume that in dyspepsia, we had better look in the garret, closet, or cellar of the dyspeptic's house, or among his business or social relations, rather than to his stomach for the solution of the difficulty.

There is a form of dyspepsia which might be termed the perverted Gospel cachexia. It is a late production of Christianity, and has its counterpart among the fakirs and bonzes of Brahminism and the dervishes of Mohammedanism. To go about as if the stomach were full of copper filings and acrid bile, and the small intestines having a picnic on a combination of green apples, decayed sour-kraut, and cucumbers, with a countenance whose lugubriousness would sour sweet milk, is believed to be the manner of serving God by the victim of the cachexia. In such cases the stomach is sound organically, the disease is mental and only reflectively stomachic.

With Americans, dyspepsia has several factors. First of all we have the religious factor, already mentioned, then our peculiar political system. The silly habit of treating or being treated in the saloons is a fruitful source of renal disease, toxœmia, and resulting dyspepsia. There in no doubt, that in our system of education we obtain a prolific source of dyspepsia.

There is one education that is sadly neglected in Americathat of the palate or stomach. In the trying American climate, man must either eat sufficiently or suffer the consequences of not doing so. Incomplete nutrition and consequent enervation must be the inevitable result of the meagre diet on which too many of our people accustom themselves to live.

Another source of our dyspepsia is our civilized and enforced antipathy to all innocent and healthful amusements. To such as see only evil in amusements, dyspepsia, mental, moral, and physical, must be a natural and incurable condition, unless their natures are so intensely animal that they are unconscious of their loss on the same principle that a cannibal is unconscious of his nakedness.

A cheerful soul that believes in the wisdom of the Creator, and is not at every turn thinking how much better he might have made the world, who, now and then, churns up the region below the diaphragm with a hearty laugh or sends a cheerful message to the solar plexus, denoting that he is in harmony with God and nature; living in peace and good will with the rest of mankind; who is, in fact, an optimist and a practical philanthropic Christian-can never become a dyspeptic.

A

FADS OF MEDICAL MEN.

CYRUS EDSON, M. D.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

North American Review, New York, March.

BOUT the first medical fad I can remember was the water-cure. The real value of the hydropathic treatment is now thoroughly recognized; it is well-designed to give a person a chance to rest and to build himself up; then, too, it is a stimulant and tonic to the nervous system, but it is not the cure-all it was once believed to be.

Perhaps the queerest fad of modern times was that which placed the elixir of life in blue glass. Reasoning on the observed effects of blue light on some plants, the inventor of the fad prescribed baths under blue glass. And the queerest thing about the whole business was the fact that some of the devotees not only declared themselves benefited by the treatment so long as they believed in it, but were unquestionably so benefited.

The effect of belief or faith, the effect of mind over the matter of the body, is one of the mysterious things in science. It appears to be possible for the mind of a man or woman to cause physical changes to take place in the body of that man or woman, nor have we at the present time any data showing the limit of this power. The scientific study of this strange power has revealed it to be subjective and not objective. The mind can act only on its own body, never on the body of another. If I desire to produce a blister on the body of another, I can do this only by in some way causing the mind of the other to produce it. If you could persuade persons to believe that the application of a cat's tail to a rheumatic limb would cure them, it is beyond question that such an application would do them good.

On this rests many of the stranger fads of practice, such as the Faith-Cure, the Grape-Cure, the Milk-Cure, the WaterCure, the Rest-Cure, and, in fact, nearly all of the cure-alls. Some of these have distinctly hygienic conditions which enable nature to do her best for the patient, but added to these, and largely aiding them, comes the belief which brings about the curative influence of the mind on the body.

Unquestionably I am a believer in the Faith-Cure, but only when it is subjective; I have not a grain of belief in it when it becomes objective. And more than that, I believe in it only as an aid, as one of the remedial agents which help the patient; I have no belief in it alone except in a small class of nervous diseases. We condemn and laugh at the practice of FaithCurists, for they declare their power to be objective, and claim for it an extent and range which are absurd.

Such alleged discoveries as the cure of cancer by the use of a certain plant, and the Elixir of Life invented by BrownSequard, must be classed among the fungoid growths which mark the decay of the scientific mind. Exaggerated estimates are frequently given to new discoveries which are valuable, and it is not unfair to rank these exaggerations among the fads of medical men. A striking instance of this is to be found in chloral, which, when first discovered, was hailed as a sedative leaving no evil in its train. We now know the choral-habit to be as awful in its effects as the morphinehabit. The lesson this teaches is obvious; a medicine must be thoroughly tried before we can say what it is worth, nor should we allow ourselves to join the faddists who hail the coming of the cure-all.

RELIGIOUS.

COSMOPOLITAN RELIGION.

C. H. BARTOL.

Condensed for the THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in

New World, Boston, March.

O be cosmopolitan is to be human,—not an American, or

religion such we must be, else we are not truly religious. A sect cannot confine the members of its house unless its premises are defined, and none of its definitions any longer hold. Every one who puts up a fence, fences out more than he fences in. Not to exclude, but include, is our cry and call. According to the Apostle Paul, the Jew is he that is not one "outwardly," but "inwardly." He is a better Christian than the man who rests in the title alone.

God is one and man is one. The good genius bids us not to divide, but reconcile. We do not part secular from sacred, or restrict Holy Writ to the Bible, or separate male from female, or banish the evil from the good. The connoisseur said that his eyes were so poor that he mistook in a picture a Cecilia for a Magdalen, and could not tell sinner from saint. There is a love and a reverence, a humility and a humanity, which embraces all things, and leaves no creature out.

Ecclesiastical and statistical religion can claim but part of the credit of social progress in any reform. It did not suffice

to establish temperance, or freedom, or domestic purity, or woman's rights. More than half the Church went for slavery. A religion which cannot be bounded, any more than the mighty wind and tongues of fire in the old Apostles, swept and burned through the Northern land. Once at least the voice of the people and that of God were the same. "We shall beat you," said a Southern leader to Garrison, "for we have the largest number of the whole country for our support." 'But," answered the Liberator, "there is One whom you leave out."

When Humboldt said, "I am of the worship of all men of science," he meant no repudiation of worship, but a retreat from untenable assumptions and procedures to ideas that could not be maintained. There are, say the medical doctors, but few specifics, and the creed that is potent will be short. Not enumeration, but emphasis, avails. It will certify the Christian if he love his kind, for so he must love their Creator. Jesus says, the Second Comniandment is like to or born of the first.

The theory of man's fall is refuted by the fact of his ascent. Total depravity is not the true anthropology. There is a cosmopolite religion that grows in the remotest regions of the ever-rising human race. Goodness cannot be a monopoly of any nation or tribe. When peculiarities of cast, sect, or blood are eliminated, instead of a cipher for the remainder, we shall have an extract of righteousness to sweeten and hallow the globe. The tokens multiply that a purging process in all denominations is swiftly going on.

But this cosmopolitan religion is not in the future alone to be seen or sought. It exalts the past from ages long ago.

Our circumstances differ, but the Gospel of love and mercy we have to preach has not changed. It abides here below, and reaches to the communion Paul foretells, when prophecies shall fail and tongues cease and knowledge vanish away.

It is a moral trinity Paul preaches, of qualities, not persons, not of dogmas, but dispositions and deeds. With a motion of the hand and stroke of the pen he dismisses seer and scholar and sage and waves away the Rabbinical literature and love. He postponed to Charity all the rolls of parchment in the temple-crypts.

No inclosed space, but all out-of-doors, is the realm of love and shrine of prayer, the Church broad as the world, the creation a parental roof. The old tabernacle was a small structure, and the Ark was portable. In the new dispensation we are everywhere at home, as is the eagle on his perch, the sand-bird on the beach, and the cattle on a thousand hills.

"Folks are better than angels," said Father Taylor; but we shall find that angels are folks. "All minds are of one family," was Channing's word. Not in geographical nearness, but fellowship of souls, is the communion of saints. There is but one world. We read that "the wind bloweth where it listeth," and it listeth to blow everywhere. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." Jesus meant that we should be born of it, till every truth becomes a deed.

AMERICAN MOHAMMEDANISM.
HOWARD MACQUEARY.

Condensed for THE LITERARY DIGEST from a Paper in
Unitarian, Boston, March.

SINCE THIS article was written Muhammed Webb has come to this country, and has, we presume, entered upon his work of establishing a Mohammedan mission in the United States. Mr. MacQueary quotes largely from the letter in which Mr. Webb gives his reasons for accepting Mohammedanism.

MR.

R. WEBB is the second American Consul to Mohammedan countries who, to my knowledge, has been converted to Islam; but he is the first one I have heard of who has turned missionary to his own people. Really, our Government should be a little more careful in selecting foreign Ministers, and appoint only those who are rooted and grounded in orthodox Christianity: otherwise, we may all be converted to Mohammedanism, Buddhism, or some other "ism." Of course, it will sound very funny to the enlightened Christians of New York to hear that "educated, intelligent Mohammedans" are sending a missionary to their city to convert them to Islam; and already the papers ridicule the idea. The usual cheap criticism is being put forward. Doubtless, our sending missionaries to convert intelligent Hindoos, Chinese, and Japanese to Christianity seems to them quite as farcical and chimerical as this Mohammedan mission does to us. We remember that his Holiness Pope Leo X. poked fun at "Brother Martin" when Luther began his work, and fancied that his agitation was the result of a drunken monk's vagaries; but the sequel undeceived "the infallible judge." Moreover, we must remember that there are many Theosophists, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Jews, and even Mohammedans now in this country; and the appearance of mosques would be no more surprising than Jewish synagogues or Mormon temples, or theosophical lecture-rooms, etc. America is such an arena of political and religious propagandists that the entrance of one more should not surprise us.

First of all, then, Mr. Webb says:

"I honestly believe [he continues] that within five years we will have a Moslem brotherhood in America very strong numerically, and composed of just as earnest and faithful Mussulmans as the world has ever seen. For the past ten years I have carefully watched the course of religious thought in my country, and have been in a position which enabled me to view the field to advantage. I have seen the masses of intelligent people drifting away from the Christian churches, and forming themselves into freethought societies, ethical-culture societies, non-sectarian societies, and numerous other organizations, the purpose of which is to seek religious truth. Besides these there are the Spiritualists, the Theosophists, and an infinite number of other smaller bodies which follow no religious system. Then, too, there are the Unitarians, who, I am satisfied, will adopt Islam when they really know what it is (sic!). I believe that the strongest reason that Islam is not the predominant religious system in America to-day is because it has been so grossly misunderstood and misrepresented