OUR DEADLY "SELF-SATISFACTION" T HE NEW AMERICAN HUMOR has broken over Europe. Or, at least, over England; and however little it makes us laugh, it furnishes precisely the justification some of our cousins have wanted for their long-standing grievances. Mr. E. B. Osborn, of the London Morning Post, is one who has found no ease in our literary Zion so long as New England led in the hymns. He used to take particular delight in Mark Twain, because "that Cervantes (or possibly Rabelais) who called himself Mark Twain" was not always respectful to the Concord Philosophers and Boston highbrows. Yet he tells us that all American humorists whose books have hitherto gone across the Atlantic have had the stamp of Mark Twain; but the new revelations of Sinclair Lewis, James Branch Cabell and H. L. Mencken out-Rabelais their elder. Mr. Osborn lets go Mark Twain all the more readily because it is "that brilliant young American critic, Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, who serves to remind us that Mark Twain is no longer a model for those who are now using ridicule as rusty at climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail representative of Omnipotence in a place that is not home."" Mr. Mencken's "A Book of Burlesques," now published in England, is accepted by Mr. Osborn as "the simplest and most straightforward example of the new American humor." For "He is ready to turn anything and everything into fuel for laughter; from the meandering commonplaces of the pall-bearers at a middle-class funeral to a concert program or vers-libre. He shows us American tourists looking over an Alpine gasthaus railing atone of the most beautiful views in Europe (from the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck) and, blind to the sunset glow of entrancing colors, discussing the cookery of a score of hotels and the algebra of tipping. His musical jest, the program analysis of Ruhm und Ewigkeit, a symphonic poem in B flat minor by Johann Sigismund Timotheus Albert Wolfgang Kraus, is a joyous piece of hyperbolical humbug. Kraus, who has written a choral for sixty trombones, dedicated to Hindenburg, is now at work on a military Mass for four orchestras, seven brass bands, and ten choirs, with the usual soloists and clergy. He has been married eight times, and is at present the fifth husband of Tilly Heintz, the opera singer. "The Artist' is a delightful satire on the sham ardors of an audience assembled to hear one of those rotten piano-thumping immigrants,' to quote a critic who is there, very much so. A DECORATED SHOP FRONT IN POMPEII In the "Street of Abundance" reappear, after eighteen centuries, these frescoed heads of Jupiter, Apollo, and other gods. Also Roman inscriptions. a weapon against the deadly self-satisfaction of the American people." What the new laughers hope is "By means of high-explosive laughter, to throw down the gigantic walls of the transatlantic Jericho, a city built up to the skies and roaring like the sea-or the Chicago wheat-pit. . . . "There is a fine indignation behind all the newcomers' jestsa burning hatred of the narrow self-righteousness of a country which would, if it could, be ruthless in imposing its standards on the rest of the world. A minority of Puritanical persons have deprived their fellow-citizens of the wine that makes glad the heart of man; they are now trying to make the whole planet-a Sahara of everlasting drought. His campaign is waged on a wide front; he finds weapons in every form of literature. As novelist, he expresses himself in the works of Mr. Sinclair Lewis, who shows that the cocksure mediocrity of Gopher Prairie, and the enlargement thereof called Zenith, is no longer merely provincial, 'no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance.' It is a force which aims at destroying all the amenities of the civilizations it can not understand. 'Sure of itself,' writes Mr. Sinclair Lewis, 'it bullies other civilizations just as a traveler in a brown Derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarets over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius. Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in cheap automobiles, to make advertising pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking, not of love and courage, but of the convenience of safety razors.' As playwright, the new American humorist is Mr. Eugene O'Neill or another-any dramatist, in fact, who is out to destroy the conventions of sentimental drama in America: for example, the idea that a thirty-year-old actor in a white nightshirt kneeling beside a bed saying, 'Now I lay me down to sleep' in a deep bass voice, is the estranged couple's six-year-old son Adolph. As ironist, with a method half-way between that of Rabelais and Anatole France's, he is the author of 'Jurgen' and Figures of Earth,' books designed to ridicule man's conceit, the infinite self-sufficiency of an ape reft of his tail and grown "He also rags all the purveyors of 'ics and 'isms, who wish to make their whim-whams a part of conventional morality, and his Eugenic Marriage Service is perhaps the most hilarious of all these literary escapades. The clergyman, whose booming tones are somewhat muffled by his respirator, thus adjures the couple who are about to enter into the bonds of aseptic matrimony: 'I require and charge both of you, as you will answer in the dreadful hour of autopsy, when the secrets of all lives shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any lesion, infection, malaise, congenital defect, hereditary taint, or other impediment. why ye may not be lawfully joined together in eugenic matrimony, ye do now confess it.' Anybody present who knows of any such obstacle is required to 'come forward now with his charts, slides, and cultures' or else forever hold his peace. The bridegroom produces his Government certificate of good health containing the following details: "Temperature per ora, 98.6. Pulse, 76, strong. Respiration 28.5. Wassermann, -2. Hb., 114 per cent. Phthalein, 1st hr., 46 per cent.; 2nd hr., 21 per cent. W. B. C., 8,925. Free gastric HCl, 11.5 per cent. No stasis. No lactic acid. Blood pressure, 122/77. No albuminuria. No glycosuria. Lumbar puncture: clear fluid, normal pressure.' The "Finally an aseptic ring is placed on the bride's hand, the couple are sprinkled with bichlorid, and they kiss and then gargle. wedding over, an operating table is brought in, a patient appears and a surgeon proceeds to cut his leg off. I am indebted to this author for a good deal of eupeptic and probably, aseptic laughter." Whether we have done with Mark Twain as a laugh-maker is still, perhaps, a matter to be considered. Even Mr. Osborn admits that his is "a profitable line of canned literature" with us; but "the new American humorist, tho still indulging in the picturesque hyperbole which is a universal quality in all joyous jesting, will have nothing to do with the old recipes for provoking cheap laughter." DUSE REMINDS US THERE WERE ACTORS T O SHOW THE YOUNGER GENERATION how she used to play a part is the apt interpretation put by a critic on Duse's return to the English stage. And since we have so nearly lost the art of acting in the flummery of producing, the younger generation, if they are wise, will be immensely grateful. Duse has reached London in her Western progress; rumor has a long time been persistent that she will revisit us. After the twenty-five or more years since her appearance here a new generation will welcome her. Her vehicle will not be D'Annunzio but mainly Ibsen. Her opening piece in London was Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea, "known here, but not familiarly. It is not one of the Norwegian's easiest plays, but it deals with his constant examination of the play of freewill. Ellida Wangel, the second wife of a doctor in a small Norwegian town, has contracted a mysterious marriage of souls with a seafaring man, of whom we know nothing except that he is a murderer. He returns after an absence to claim her and Wangel, her husband, offers her her freedom, but Ellida chooses Wangel. It is not a very comprehensible play, but Duse seems to find enough in it for her maturest exercise of her great art. The critic of the Manchester Guardian, at least, convinces us: discard is the old habit of playing one's self instead of one's author. And here we see Duse belongs in the old school. But the London Telegraph, speaking of her performance in "Ghosts" amply forgives her: "It remains, therefore, to talk of Duse herself: and yet, what is there left to be said of her, except in poetry? The critic knows only too well that if he racked his brains till they burst under the strain he could find nothing new to say of her that would be true, nor anything true that would be new. He might say, for ITALY'S GREATEST ACTRESS Reappears before English audiences after years of retirement and finds a bewildered new generation. "The play was acted in Manchester many years ago by Janet Achurch and Laurence Irving. It was not too comprehensible, and perhaps never can be. It is the old story of these plays in two stories-as clear as day in the upper or symbolical one and so dark on the practical or ground-floor plane that you grope about and bark your shins. What was this power of the Stranger? Mystical, or merely occult? Sufficient that it exists in the printed page and in the soul of Duse. As soon as Ellida came on you saw that Duse had not changed. There was the same placid features over which so many storms have broken that it seems as tho they could never rage again-you would say a sea of calm distress. There were the old accents caressing and, as it were, lapping the meaning of the words like a tide. There was the old exquisite play of the hands, that constant fumbling and gathering of her dress which, as in a statue, is become part of the body's interpretation as with Duse the body becomes the soul. The actress put the little mechanical starts and surprizes with which the first act is so full into their proper place; she had no need to stress the insignificant. And when from the arbor she waved her flowers to her stepchildren, you caught a glimpse of happiness and grace breaking exquisitely through the clouds of self-torment. The whole of the second act was a symphony for the voice. In this Ellida must explain to Wangel the fascination of the Stranger, her horror of that fascination and her pure love for her husband. Duse sat on a low stone wall at the back of the stage so that her face could hardly be seen, and moved the house with her recital of spiritual agony kept scrupulously in the lowest of keys. The third act sees the return of the Stranger. Here Duse sat with her back to the audience so that we must divine her ecstasy, which, as she yields, was that of Juliet. I do not remember anything more exquisite than her playing of that which follows-the sheltering behind her husband, her mingled helplessness and terror. It was all so extraordinarily of the theater and so little theatrical. As it used to be, so it was still the silences which counted. If there be in acting such a thing as pure passion divorced from the body yet exprest in terms of the body, it was here." The writer of this critique observes that the only English player present whom he observed was Ellen Terry, and adds, "Perhaps our English actors have nothing to learn!" Certain it is that one tenet of acting that the modern stage is trying to instance, that Duse's Mrs. Alving is not the woman that Ibsen drew-that her interpretation gives him little impression of the woman who was strong enough to hide her husband's excesses, to shoulder his duties, to make herself his boon companion on his secret orgies, to conceal his real nature from his son by such heroic means. The critic may say this with truth; but he must say it with the knowledge that it or something exactly like it has been said before-that Duse's way of altering characters and even plays to fit her own personality has been commented upon so often as to be by now a critical commonplace. And even if, when that is said, he goes on to rhapsodise over the woman herself-the depth of yearning and tenderness that she puts into the scenes between Mrs. Alving and her son, the power and vitality which radiate from her almost visibly he is still unhappily conscious that he is repeating in a few halting sentences things that have been beautifully said before; things that, unless they can be said beautifully, are better not said at all; things, in fact, that only the poet knows how to say once again so that they shall seem only now for the first time to have been thought of. The workaday critic, too conscious of his limitations to attempt to turn poet for the nonce, or at any rate too conscious of Duse's magnitude to dare to pay tribute to her in coin of such base minting, must content himself with stating once again in simple language the simple fact that she is a great actress and worthy of all praise." True to prophecy the younger generation already has shown its reaction to such an artist as Duse. We find this paragraph in the New Statesman (London): "Standards change. I could not bring myself to say a critical word on Duse, but I found a young actress friend of mine less reticent and openly scornful of the journalist's attitude to her Ibsen's performances. They had been spoiled, and Ibsen's genius sacrificed to the artist. 'The Lady from the Sea' was cut down from five acts to four, and acted as if it were a domestic Italian comedy. And Duse's playing was not acting, but an inanimate recitation. The "hand language" was beautiful, the motions of the body now and then appropriate, more rarely still a sentence or two had a lovely dying fall. That was literally all. The intellectual values of the play were disregarded, the poetic ones not understood, and the rhythm of Duse's playing was too weak to sustain the faintly picturesque, almost colorless, conception of the part.' All this seemed shocking to me but not, I am afraid, altogether astray of the truth." Before her recent appearances in London, Mr. E. A. Baughan wrote in the Daily News: "It is difficult to convey to the younger generation of playgoers what Duse meant to us. Sarah Bernhardt had been the star, and in those days, after becoming acquainted with the art of Duse, we were apt to belittle the great French actress. She was so eminently of the theater and knew its every trick. We overlooked, perhaps, the wonderful expression of emotion of which she was capable, and did not sufficiently appreciate her powers of hypnotizing an audience. "Duse gave us something very different. She started quite a new school of acting with her sensitively poised naturalness. Young actresses who tried to imitate her came to grief. They imagined her naturalness arose from underacting. But, as a matter of fact, Duse was even more an actress of the theater than Bernhardt." THEISM A MEN OF SCIENCE ALSO MEN OF FAITH AMONG SCIENTISTS-the very phrase brings many affirmative nods-is hardly known, and it is a distinguished scientist and a churchman who, speaking not only for himself but for most of his equally known fellows in the broad fields of research and inquiry, makes this important statement. He insists, as has been insisted before, that there is nothing incompatible between science and religion, and that some of the most illustrious names in the annals of science are devout, God-fearing men and faithful adherents of the Church. Yet a recrudescence of the so-called warfare between science and religion agitates the world, and there has been an exchange of anathemas between pulpit and laboratory and a mutual consignment to fire and brimstone reminiscent of the sixteenth century. The responsibility is a divided one, writes Dr. Robert A. Millikan in The Christian Century (Undenominational), "for science is just as often misrepresented as is religion by men of little vision, of no appreciation of its limitations, and of imperfect comprehension of the real rôle which it plays in human life by men who lose sight of all spiritual values and therefore exert an influence upon youth which is unsettling, irreligious, and essentially immoral." It was Dr. Millikan who prepared the recently published statement declaring that there is no antagonism between science and religion, which was signed by forty noted men, two of them Cabinet officers. He is a distinguished physicist, until recently professor of physics in the University of Chicago, and now director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He bears, we are told, the distinction of being the first to succeed in isolating an electron. the fields of science and religion, but to their own fundamental religious convictions." He begins with the name of Dr. Charles D. Walcott, president of the National Academy of Sciences, head of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who is "personally known" to Dr. Millikan as "a man of deep religious conviction," and who wrote to Dr. Millikan "asking that he be described for the purposes of this address, which he has seen, as 'an active church worker.'" Dr. Millikan goes on: The simplest and most convincing proof of his assertion, writes Dr. Millikan, is found in the testimony of the greatest minds who have been leaders in the field of science, upon the one hand, and in the field of religion, upon the other. Among British scientists he selects for example, the names of Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, and Raleigh, of whom he says: "No more earnest seekers after truth, no intellects of more penetrating vision, can be found anywhere, at any time, than these, and yet every one of them has been a devout and profest follower of religion." He quotes Lord Kelvin as saying, "If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find it not antagonistic, but helpful, to religion." Going to France, Dr. Millikan selects, for example, the name of Pasteur, "easily the peer of any biologist who has ever lived anywhere," of whom his biographer says, "Finally, let it be remembered that Pasteur was a deeply religious man." Coming to America, Dr. Millikan asserts, "I can bring the evidence strictly up to date by asking you to name the dozen most outstanding scientists in America to-day and then showing you that the great majority of them will bear emphatic testimony, not only to the complete lack of antagonism between "The same is true of Henry Fairfield Osborn, the director of the American Museum of Natural History of New York, and one of the foremost exponents of evolution in the country. Another rival for eminence in this field is Edwin G. Conklin of Princeton, who in recently published articles has definitely shown himself a proponent of the religious interpretation of life. In the same category I know, also from direct correspondence, that I may place John C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and America's foremost paleontologist; Michael Pupin, the very first of our electrical experts, who has approved every word of this address and recently delivered a better one at Columbia University on this same subject; John M. Coulter, dean of American botanists; A. A. and W. A. Noyes, foremost among our chemists; James R. Angell, president of Yale University, and eminent psychologist, with whom I have had an exchange of letters on this subject; James H. Breasted, our most eminent archeologist, who served with me for years on the board of trustees of a Chicago church, upon which also T. C. Chamberlin, dean of American geologists, was a constant attendant; Dr. C. G. Abbot, home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, eminent astronomer and active churchman; and so on through the list of most of the scientists of special eminence in this country." Another obvious fact to Dr. Millikan is that science and religion have separate tasks. "The purpose of science is to develop without prejudice or preconception of any kind a knowledge of the facts, the laws and the processes of nature. The even more important task of religion, on the other hand, is to develop the consciences, the ideals, and the aspirations of mankind." Obviously, science without religion "may become a curse, rather than a blessing to mankind, but science dominated by the spirit of religion is the key to progress and the hope of the future. On the other hand, history has shown that religion without science breeds dogmatism, bigotry, persecution, religious wars and all the other disasters which in the past have been heaped upon mankind in the name of religion, disasters which have been so fatal to organized religion itself that at certain times and in certain countries the finest characters and the most essentially religious men have been found outside the Church." Again both science and religion have reached their present status through a process of development from the crudest beginnings, and the great leaders of the past must be judged by their standards rather than by ours. "Once get this point of view and you will never think of asking whether Genesis is to be taken as a modern SOME OF THE "GREATEST MINDS" IN MODERN SCIENCE WHO ARE ALSO MEN OF DEEP "RELIGIOUS CONVICTION " text-book of science. It was written long before there was any such thing as science." A fourth obvious fact is that every one who reflects believes in one way or another in God. To Dr. Millikan it seems "as obvious as breathing that every man who is sufficiently in his senses to recognize his own inability to comprehend the problem of existence, to understand whence he himself came and whither he is going, must in the very admission of that ignorance and finiteness recognize the existence of a Something, a Power, a Being in whom and because of whom he himself 'lives and moves and has his being."" M SANCTIONING ARMED PEACE ILITARISM AND "FALSE" PACIFISM are alike abhorrent to a group of religious and welfare workers recently called in conference by Secretary of War Weeks to lay plans for the maintenance of a high religious standard in the "defense" forces of the country. "To pursue peace unarmed and undefended," asserts the conference, "would be the quickest way to invite war." Whether this position is in accord with the teachings of Christ is a question on which our editorial writers are not agreed. Christ, declare the critics, was distinctly a pacifist. More than sixty representatives of Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish creeds attended the conference and agreed upon its pronouncements. Impartiality as to religion characterized the sessions, which were presided over, in turn, by Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the Jewish Welfare Board; Bishop William F. McDowell, Methodist; and Father Francis P. Duffy, Catholic. In declaring its attitude the conference stated: "Peace at home within our own country, peace among all the nations of the earth, is a sacred mission to which America has devoted herself and her resources. . . . Against the curse of militarism America has traditionally set herself. Militarism is absolutely strange to the genius of her institutions. . . "We deprecate any attempt made under the cloak of religion and in the name of false pacifism to deny the support of the churches to the well-being of our Army and Navy. To the churches and to the Government the religious welfare of the men must be a primary concern. For that reason chaplains of the different denominations are commissioned. As General Pershing has stated: 'Religion contains the secret of and impetus toward clean living. Therefore a steady effort is made to put the hearts of men into right relation to God."" Stress is laid on the "high and holy" office of the chaplain, whose essential duty is held to be not to promote military morale, but "true morale in the best possible way-by religious sanction." He is commissioned to work for all the men, without distinction of creed, which, however, is not to be interpreted as meaning that all creeds are alike, or that creed is of no value, since this would be "to impose one's own religious belief upon others," and "to offend religious liberty." It is a most sensible and timely statement, and "few rational persons will take exception to it," says the Cleveland News of the pronouncement. Pacifist fanatics are still with us, as in 1916, it is asserted and "they are always declaring that 'we women' or 'we church members' or 'we Socialists' ought to make war forever impossible by insisting that the United States disarm completely." Yet history "testifies that helplessness is not an adequate defense, that drilling schoolboys in military rudiments is not 'training them to become murderers,' that a wellmeaning nation can be ready to protect itself without being militaristic, and that reducing or abolishing the Army and Navy would not be the best possible way to avoid war." Public opinion is, fortunately, "too enlightened to entertain the mock-pious notions of the doctrinaire pacifists," believes the Chicago News, asserting that "religion no more requires opposition to adequate national defense than it requires the disbandment of the police forces and the destruction of the reformatories and jails." But it is for the soldier or sailor "to choose a creed or no creed, to be irreligious or religious, without any impertinent official interference," declares the Brooklyn Eagle, which argues that it is necessary only to "give each soldier in barracks what evangelists call 'access to the means of grace.'... Until 'religion' is a term susceptible of logical definition, Army regulations should confine themselves to military duties and universally recognized ethics, leaving the souls of soldiers to individual responsibility." In its pursuit of peace the conference is hardly going in the right direction, according to the St. Louis Star, which says that "there is more war wrapt up in the vision of an armed peace, when armament is carried to excess, than there is in the vision of an unarmed, undefended peace." To The Star "The really significant fact about the resolutions adopted by these sixty ministers of the gospel was that they contained no trace of the genuine spirit of peace. They tended to promote individual national armaments, on a competitive basis, when the cry of the real peace advocates is for simultaneous reduction of armaments by all the nations, and for the organization of the nations in a cooperative peace movement.. "The Founder of the Christian religion would challenge the entire doctrine of Secretary Weeks's ministerial committee. He proclaimed, preached and practised an unarmed, undefended peace. The practical denial of that doctrine comes more graciously from laymen than from ministers of Christ. "However, The Star feels sure that Christian ministers in general would adopt far different resolutions from those put forth in Washington. They would not go to the extreme limit of Christian pacifism in an un-Christian world, but they would put emphasis on work for peace rather than the works of war." CANADA BLAZING THE WAY TO UNITY "S | PLIT P'S" SPECKLE THE PAGES of history, remarks a Presbyterian journal on the vote of more than a third of the Presbyterians not to join the union of Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists recently effected in Canada, which was reported in these pages on July 7. After twenty years of negotiation and discussion, said to have been delayed by Presbyterian hesitancy, and after the other two bodies had almost unanimously approved the union, the Presbyterian body took final action at the recent General Assembly meeting in Port Arthur, Ontario, by voting 426 to 129 for adherence. Tho the minority against union is so strong as to mean, we are told, the continuance of the Presbyterian denomination, the establishment of the United Church of Canada, as the new body is designated, seems to be assured, and awaits only ratification by Parliament. On this important event to the north of us, THE LITERARY DIGEST Wired some of the leading denominational journals for their editorial comment. Looking at the Canadian papers first, we find that The Sentinel, an interdenominational publication of Toronto, "is among those who believe that the creation of a strong United Protestant Church will give a great impetus to the religious life of Canada.” It is regretted that the union can not be consummated with complete unanimity. "At the same time, the earnestness and conscientiousness of the dissidents must inspire the respect of their opponents, and this should carry broad and generous recognition of their right to continue the Presbyterian Church in its present form." "If ever there was a time when the need was urgent for the union of Christian forces in a great spiritual movement for the regeneration of our social order and the redemption of the world," says The Presbyterian Witness (Toronto), "surely it is now; and our responsibility is measured only by the magnitude of the opportunity set before us." From a front seat in the General Assembly, Rev. George S. Clendennen writes in The Christian Guardian (Methodist, Toronto) that the gathering demonstrated that the differences which exist in Canadian Protestantism are differences within each denomination, rather than among the denominations as such. On the floor of the Assembly he found that "precisely the same independent judgment, variety of view-point and frankness of utterance were evident as in our Methodist Conferences. There was the same concern for Sabbath observance, prohibition of intoxicants, idealism in business, and effective evangelism as we are accustomed to." Thus satisfied that on the essentials there are no dissimilarities between the two great denominations, Mr. Clendennen notes that there still remain certain habits and qualities which are characteristic of Presbyterians, just as there are also distinctive elements in the Congregational and Methodist types; but "the beauty of this union into which we enter is that the traditions and virtues of each are likely to become the heritage of all." The Canadian Churchman, an Episcopal journal of Toronto, prefers not to say whether the status of the issue at the moment is happy or otherwise; but when it notes the "complete frankness and honesty" with which men of contrary views exprest themselves, it finds it necessary to say, “we must feel that the final issue can not be other than happy when men meet each other as the leaders of the Presbyterian Church have met in this momentous debate." The Canadian Baptist, also of Toronto, remarks that the Baptists are not in it, so "have little right to criticize the plan of union. But they can and should watch the experiment in amalgamated religions and see if the results are beneficial or evil.” The verdict of history on Presbyterian unanimity seems to be that "there ain't no sich animal," remarks The Presbyterian Advance (Nashville), to turn southward for comment among American denominational journals. In the Presbyterian makeup, says this weekly, "conscience' looms large, and either its enlightenment comes with amazing slowness or else the Presbyterian conscience has some other peculiar qualities, for Presbyterians seem to find it much more difficult than most folk to carry out their principles of representative government and accept the decisions of majorities." "An old Scotchman is reported to have had a revised version of a certain well-known Bible text to the effect that 'where two or three are gathered together in His name, there will be a secession,' and if we are to judge of a truth by the way it works, that must be a truth. It is to be hoped, however, that in this case bitterness over property rights will be avoided, for it appears that great care has been exercised to safeguard the property rights of the minority. The enabling act of the Dominion of Canada provides that all property of all three churches shall pass to The United Church of Canada, but makes provision that any congregation may withdraw within six months and keep its property. This wise provision, growing out of true Christian fraternity, should serve to keep down such strife in civil courts as has too often followed the union of churches." Hailing the union "with enthusiasm," the New York Christian Advocate (Methodist) regards it as "the logical culmination of the intradenominational unions which have been going on in Canada for fifty years, and which have solidly unified the Methodist and Presbyterian bodies, whose divisions once weakened Canadian Christianity. The time is now ripe for them to become one for the sake of Christ and the Kingdom." Unfortunately, "It is a long way to such unions in the United States. We have yet to heal the divisions in our own denominational families as Methodists and Presbyterians before we can even think of forming the larger organic unions. Yet this Canadian union should help us toward eventual unity. Christians who put the welfare of Christ's work above the prosperity of any special branch of it will lift a thankful prayer to Him in whose name these men of many minds have now agreed to come together and work as one. May the United Church of Canada so exalt Christ that His righteousness shall prevail from sea to sea!" The union can hardly be said fully to solve the problem of unity in Canada, states The Congregationalist, "tho the uniting bodies represent a total of 2,498,120 persons, or 29.56 per cent. of the people of Canada." The leading denominations outside the union, we are told, are the Anglicans, 1,407,959; the Baptists, 421,730; the Lutherans, 287,484; the Greek Church, 169,822; and the Roman Catholics, 3,383,663; the figures being from the census of 1921. However, continues The Congregationalist: "From the standpoint of a profound belief in the validity, necessity and possibility of Christian catholicity we should be disposed to regard the coming Canadian United Church as the making of one larger and freer denomination out of three. It perpetuates too many of the traditional denominational elements to have the full simplicity and freedom of a truly catholic church. But the whole movement toward its creation has symbolized something larger than it itself expresses. It is no small achievement that such diverse elements as connexionalism and congregationalism, Arminianism and Calvinism should be brought together. The ideal of a great, free, national church, conterminous in spirit and purpose with the Kingdom of God, is not lightly to be regarded, especially when it inspires men to sacrifice for its attainment every lesser organization and end. Our Canadian brethren have blazed the way through tangled and overgrown regions. They have given to the Christian world an example, which only to surpass can justify the failure to emulate." BANKING AND CHURCH-GOING Bankers think it good business-good personal business, that is-to go to church, and a bankers' magazine hastens to report the evidence. According to the replies to a questionnaire sent out in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by Dr. William Horace Day, pastor of the United Church, and summarized in The American Banker (New York), "74 per cent. of the financial leaders of Bridgeport are habitual churchgoers; 9 per cent. stay away; 75 per cent. of successful men habitually go to church; 95 per cent. believe that people should go every Sunday." |