opinion sufficiently enlightened to recognize the necessity of maintaining order and the justice of securing to every accused person a fair trial by an impartial jury. It is well, moreover, for public officers, from governors to constables, to think more of their duties and less of a reëlection. If such sentiments do not pervade a community, all the worse for such a place; but they may easily be cultivated. The press, the bench, the bar, the pulpit, and the various other creators and guides of public opinion could mould and guide the popular mind in the right direction. Associations in each State, moreover, where mob law is prevalent, might devote themselves to the investigation of crimes of every description and give the widest publication possible to their annual reports. Indeed, there are already many healthy indications of an improved order of things, and it is this growing opposition to "lynch law" in place of the former apologetic and sensitive attitude on the subject which is so full of promise. At the same time there must everywhere be cultivated those sentiments of charity, justice, order, and humanity on which depend the well-being of the human race. Evils are surely to be condemned, and in the task of reform criticism is ever a most effective weapon; but an abiding sense of justice joined to a robust faith in the ultimate triumph of the forces which make for righteousness will, in spite of transient disappointments, accomplish far more than the stake, the halter, and volumes based upon prejudice and unfairness.

In conclusion, we think we have made it clear that the original cause of lynchings was the assaults of which so much has been already written; that now there is no crime which does not in some communities fall within the jurisdiction of Judge Lynch's court; that so far from protecting women, the work of the mob actually results in increasing the number of female victims; and that vengeance enters no longer into any recognized theory of punishment. Society must be protected and the transgressor be made to suffer, but that these results can be accomplished only through the mechanism of governmental organs all history proves to be a fact.

Neither is it necessary to advance any arguments against mob law, for the simple reason that the subject is one beyond the bounds of controversy. That howling gangs of ruffians bent upon shedding human blood can arrogate to themselves the functions exercised by courts and magistrates, or that they can disguise their malevolence by claiming to protect the virtue of helpless women, is monstrous. Statistics prove that more persons are lynched for crimes other than those against women than for such assaults. These murderers will, unless they are promptly dealt with, continue their misdeeds until portions of the South will become human shambles. It is time they were being stopped. The world is astounded by such acts, and asks if this is a civilized country. The direful effects such violent scenes exert upon the rising generation of both races cannot be calculated. Whether we like it or not, it is written in the book of fate that the South must be populated by two races who are to be dependent upon each other. That they must learn to get along with each other is not necessary, for they have been doing so for several centuries. In Jamaica, where the blacks outnumber the whites far more than they do in any part of the South, the lives and honor of men and women are perfectly safe. The same is in like manner true of certain portions of our Southern States situated under similar circumstances. Meanwhile upon the leaders and teachers of the blacks will rest the tremendous responsibility of imparting to that race those lessons of morals and industry without which no race can ascend in the scale of enlightenment. In this work duty and self-interest, to say nothing of other considerations, will admonish the whites to take part. That the negro is improving, moreover, no fair-minded person can gainsay. His advancement in some quarters is simply phenomenal. There is no earthly reason why both races may not go forward. If one of them lags behind, it is bound to pull back the other. Hence, if we of this generation are wise, we will not transmit to succeeding generations a question to vex them perpetually. The only solution of the so-called race problem is one founded on justice.

Let us recapitulate, then, the antidotes for lynch law: 1. There should be created a more efficient system of education.

2. Preventive agencies should be substituted for repressive ones. A rural police is especially desirable.

3. Judges to be appointed for life and given a proper compensation.

4. The abolition of capital punishment in all cases save those where the prisoner is accused of an assault upon a

woman.

5. The recasting of criminal procedure so as to make it less technical. At the same time jurisdiction ought to be conferred upon county courts to try privately persons accused of assaults upon females. Judges of such courts should be authorized to empanel a jury immediately; and if found guilty, the accused should be executed at once and privately. There should be no appeals in such cases.

6. Sheriffs who permit a prisoner to be rescued by a mob for the purpose of lynching him should be removed from office at once, and any person who publicly advocates lynching should be ineligible to any position under the State or Federal government.

7. There should be organized in every State where assaults, lynchings, murders, and other felonies are common an association composed of representative and intelligent citizens, whose duty should be the collection and publication of the circumstances of such crimes. By giving the widest circulation possible to such occurrences a healthier public opinion could be quickly created.

Some such steps as the foregoing are necessary. It is confidently believed, moreover, that their results would prove both efficacious and permanent. A SOUTHERN LAWYER.

FISKE'S THROUGH NATURE TO GOD." 1

SOMEHOW there has got abroad a rumor to the effect that the old reliable, religious highway is rutted badly by heavy ecclesiastical traffic. Backwater, presumably from Noah's flood, wherein the whale of the prophet Jonah is wont to behave himself unseemly, has floated, it is whispered, sundry bridges away. A cyclone every now and then for the last few decades has swooped down and whirled up as dust to heaven the ancient, honest macadam of proof texts, whichgossip reports—has fallen again to earth like the hail of Egypt, demolishing all wayside inns of grace. And, worst of all, the dogmatic milestones erected by the fathers at sundry times have been ruthlessly broken up to repair the roadbed; yet in vain, for nothing—it is affirmed on the excellent authority of "they say "—remains in pristine integrity at this hour but the deceptive signpost: "To God."

Now Mr. Fiske has taken this rumor of a dire state of the way of salvation so seriously that the philanthropic spirit has moved him to engineer forthwith a new road to God, not through the supernatural, but via nature itself.

He describes this road in his new book, and we have just attempted to go over it after him.

Conscience compels us to say that we found the survey truly fine, but the metal more than doubtful, and the construction nowise for posterity.

Dropping metaphors, we must premise that Mr. Fiske's little book is constructed-perhaps quite unconsciously-on a trinitarian plan. First of the three essays, and furnishing the statement of the main theme, comes: the "Mystery of Evil" (a vindication of God the Father?). Second: the "Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-sacrifice" (the eternal preëxistence and incarnation of God the Son?). Third and last: the "Everlasting Reality of Religion (the doctrine

1 THROUGH NATURE TO GOD." By John Fiske. Mifflin & Co. 1899.

Boston: Houghton

of God the Holy Ghost?). In each of these three essays Mr. Fiske leads us to believe that he is undertaking the demonstration of a definite theorem. The general method is to open with a picturesque presentation of difficulties, so candid that we at once conclude the eminent writer would not write at all had he nothing original to contribute toward the problem's solution. Then follows a more or less respectful setting aside of what other men have done, and a brief statement of what needs doing. The reader is by this quite sure that much is to come. He peruses eagerly the eloquent exposition of the law of evolution as involved in certain particular processes, and when still under the spell thereof is forthwith offered sundry exquisitely worded generalizations, which no one cares to question lest his good breeding and fine literary taste be impugned, and which somehow induce a belief that something has been done toward the establishment of the thesis. Alas! the Q. E. D. is less in the logic than in the style. Let this general criticism be substantiated by a succinct account of each essay.

In the first, after a restatement of the Biblical story of Adam's fall, Mr. Fiske brings us to consider the impossibility of understanding how there can be evil in a world made and preserved by an all-good and all-powerful deity. To maintain the all-goodness, the all-power has been usually sacrificed to some extent. An evil material or principle is held variously responsible for defective methods or imperfect results. Mill's suggestion that the limitation of God's power allows men to view their poor strivings after the good as needed assistance rendered the Creator by the creature for the completion of his taskwork, is thrown aside because a non-omnipotent deity is rightly seen to be no God at all. Calvinism, on the other hand, is extolled by Mr. Fiske because it insisted on both the omnipotence and the absolute goodness, taking logical refuge in man's incapacity to ascertain what is really "good for God." The "Gesta Romanorum" is quoted in support of this position (why not Parnell's immortal version of the tale?) to commend respectfully to our consideration the disquieting suggestion that what