V Mo ,5 .2l35 M£fcfcft» V * * a ° ' *%» V * * * ° /• ^ V * ' * o a *% V * * * ° IP s ^ ^ * ' * * * s A ^ ' / ^ ^ 1 r>^ 0* J. <^ <^ £ ^ V** Q, %^ £ °^ \ £ °^ <$ * .«* 9e "^0* «* <3ft ^ w \# ^■^ V + * * ° / -^. »■ « 51 i /•. f <3 C « '"t-A . v ^5 r, » I -"\^ * * , \^> ^vo* * joy <* ^ ■ /^i ^ , r |^/.*"^ 4 ^^A,*"^ v ^^A> ^ ^0« ^0« &<& ' ** s J> cP V « ^><< ^0* <* ^ ft ft S S A° •* ■< ft ft 1 ^ f 0^ ^ " * ° ' % ^ s ^* : ,^iiQ ° «^ ^ : ,ljf ° <$"% \^ K ^0^<^ f° 'Uti ^3 ^ °* '+ ftft s' V * " * ° *■ "^ V ^ v * ° > ^ r ^ ^^ ^ ^o^ * ^ ^ftft^ A G ^ '' i ftfts \> . \ * , ^A\ O THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1904. A Survey of the Larger World Movements. THE Year 1904 has been marked, throughout the world, by a disappearance of worm-eaten and traditional esti- mate, dealing and diplomacy, and by a fresh and earn- est return face to face with first principles. The Occident, represented, it is true, in its most highly orientalized member, has come into clash with the Orient, represented, it is also true, in its most highly westernized member. Pure secular democ- racy has dared pure sacred despotism to come forth from its lair. Great political and great money powers have been brought to the test at the bar of character. Subtle and mighty movements have felt it necessary to justify them- selves, for the first time in many years, on their moral grounds. A great revolution of internal political policy has taken place in Russia. The military hero of the rough riders and the war-master of America has put himself forward as the champion of the world's peace. A large portion of the American people has broken from party restraint, and placed in power a president in whom their hearts evidently trusted. Clear, large, simple outlines — developments unsmother- ed and rushing to the. clash— a dealing with great issues not by feint, but in the open, this is the ear mark of the year through which we have passed. Take one simple but comprehensive illustration : THE President's message is a refreshing thing. In it he evidently speaks out his whole heart and mind, un- trammeled by any fears of political policy. His recent . election revealed to him that a large, majority of the people | of this country believed in him as a man, and were satisfied I }}y transfer with the integrity of his purposes. Mr. Roosevelt is at heart a social reformer, and in the days of his youth belonged to a coterie of social dreamers that might almost be regarded as Utopian in their schemes. He has succeeded in making the most remarkable personal, ethical, and social impression upon the people that ever was achieved by any President. And it was time. The love of wealth, the corrupt forms and prin- ciples of a decaying English aristocracy, the increasing love of pleasure as a chief end of life among our American youth, and certain conspicuous American immoralities, were rushing our country on toward social ruin. The President had prepared the people for this remark- able expression of his views by already declaring that he was for peace, and not for war ; but in his message, war has com- paratively the most inconspicuous place of all. The navy and army are relegated to the end of the document and together constitute but one-eighteenth of the message, and the. Philip- pines with their issues are as comparatively small. The meeting of the International Peace Conference in Boston early in October, the President's promise to try to call an- other Peace Conference at The Hague, his announcement that the administration is negotiating arbitration treaties with all the Powers that will enter into such negotiations, and Sec- retary Play's address at the opening of the Boston Confer- ence, claiming that when The Hague Conference lay ap- parently wrecked, at the beginning of its career, it was the American government which gave it the breath of life; and that we have set an example to the world during the past two years in the matter of disarmament, bringing away from the Far East 55,000 soldiers and reducing our Army to its mini- mum of 60,000 men, seem to give, countenance to the earnest- ness of the President's intentions. When we recall the fact that Frederic W. Holls, the secretary of The Hague Confer- ence and a most indefatigable laborer for the world's peace, was a warm personal friend and co-worker of Roosevelt's, the actions of the President seem natural. On the other hand, as a contrast to this beautiful picture of American peace, Sec- retary Hay was promptly told that the Mexican war was a national crime, as it was ; that the Spanish war was unneces- sary, that the war in the Philippines was a war to establish by subjugation a dominion to which we had taken title as a prize of victory in another war, entered upon with a profession of purely philanthropic intentions, and that Spain had not pro- posed to relinquish the Philippines, but we insisted that they should be ceded to us as a possession. Critics of the Presi- dent's peace, policy sarcastically pictured Secretary Hay as "the meek aureoled apostle of conciliation and arbitration in- voked to beam serenely" on the foreign representatives of peace who appeared in Boston. The Dutch government has taken no action as yet in erecting the Palace of Peace. A year and a half ago, in May, 1903, Mr. Carnegie paid over his gift of a million and a half of dollars for this purpose, but Holland has been holding it, and the money lies idle in the state treasury. The government has not secured a site, nor shown any interest in the edifice. The city authorities at The Hague have vetoed a proposition for sanctioning the erection of the building in the capital's beautiful pleasure grounds, which is chiefly a forest. The master of the Queen Mother's household has suggested that it would be better to give the money back to the American millionaire, than to sacrifice the trees in the park, and a mem- ber in the city council has characterized the Carnegie money grant as a "white elephant." The Queen is reported to have declared recently that the indifference of the Dutch public was a scandal and that something must be done. Meantime the international court of arbitration has settled three im- portant cases. BUT let us pass from the topic of the world's peace to an- other matter in the President's message : What the President really emphasizes is our social life. Several j years ago we pointed out the fact that Roosevelt was essen- | dally a preacher, and his present message is an illustration ol | this fact. Duty is the keynote in every topic treated; He I first of all gives attention to the relation of man to man in his daily activities as they come under the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth Commandments ; and he then proceeds to an appli- cation of the fourth and sixth Commandments to our Ameri- can people under an ingenious discussion of a proper national ideal for the city of Washington, which is under federal con- trol, and which he believes should be set up as a model for the best American metropolitan life. He tells labor that it has the right, and even the duty, to organize. It has the right also to endeavor to persuade its own to join organizations. It has a legal right, "which, ac- cording to circumstances, may or may not be a moral right, to refuse, to work in company with those who refuse to join their organizations. It has no right to seek proper ends by improper means,* and such instances should not for one mo- ment be tolerated. Mob law is intolerable in any form." He lays down law for the railroads. Not only should the commerce of our country be forwarded, but the. lives of the traveling public should be guarded. Hours for railroad em- ployees should be limited and only trained and experienced persons be employed. Drastic punishment should be visited on any railroad employee, officer or man, who by issuance of wrong orders or by disobedience of orders causes disaster. ** Great corporations are necessary and serviceable, and should not be dealt with intemperately. The American people should show good sense, moderation, the earnest desire to avoid doing any damage, and yet the quiet determination to *An extreme illustration of the President's doctrine here was found at the opening of the year in the hearse and carriage drivers strike in Chicago. 1600 drivers striking for better pay and shorter hours interfered with fun- erals to such an extent as was said to create a situation dangerous to the city'e health. One man drove the hack containing the body of his wife and ke.pt the strikers back with a revolver. A private ambulance bearing a dy- ing man was attacked by union pickets. One undertaker held a "Union- label funeral." A cartoon represented a dead man as leaping from his coffin and refusing to be buried in a non-union cemetery. The, profanation of human sorrow, and failure to observe the respect due the presence of death, seem to have called forth stronger protests in the name of common humanity, than the violence of mobs in other times and ways. **In the management of American railroads much is to be admired. Though the highest wages in the world are paid to railroad men in America, the charge for carrying freights is lowest, and yet the stocks and bonds or American railroads are regarded as a good investment by foreigners. Amer- ican through trains, while not as safe as those on the continent of Europe, have the advantages of comfort and, as a rule, much greater speed. The coupe or email coach system of traveling so common on the continent, is far outstripped by American methods, which are now being adopted in Europe. 5 proceed step by step, without halting and without hurry, in eliminating or at least in minimizing whatever of mischief or of evil there is to interstate commerce in the conduct of great corporations. Publicity, and not secrecy, will win hereafter. A complete stop must be put to rebates. And while the Pres- ident does not mention particular corporations in this connec- tion, his description of his intentions may lead us to expect a great battle in the future between the government and standard violators of sound business justice. Within the last two years much has been done by the country in this line. Congress passed an act to expedite anti- trust hearings (Feb., 1903), created the new department of commerce and labor with a bureau of corporations (Feb. 14, 1903), gave the interstate commission power to deal with secret rebates in transportation charges (Feb. 19, 1903). The attorney general has restrained by injunction fourteen of the great railroad systems from giving illegal rebates to favored shippers, officers of railroads in the cotton carrying pool were indicted, the beef trust was put under injunction, the North- ern Securities Company has been destroyed, the Supreme Court has decided, in the coal carrying suit, that books and papers must be produced. BUT the President's strongest words are for fashionable American society, and particularly for the semi-Euro- pean circles that attempt to set false American stand- ards in the nation's capital: "In the first place, the people of this country should clearly understand that no amount of in- dustrial prosperity and, above all, no leadership^ in interna- tional industrial competition can in any way atone for the sap- ping of the vitality of those who are usually spoken of as the working classes. The farmers, the mechanics, the skilled ana unskilled laborers, the small shop keepers, make up the bulk of the population of any country, and upon their well being, generation after generation, the well being of the country and the race depends. No Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the youth of to-day. For if so the youth will have to pay a heavy penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the to- morrow." The President points, above all, above politics, competi- tive business, capital and sport, to the value of the race itself, and the home : "It is very desirable that married women should not work in factories. The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner. The prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances. If a race does not have plenty of children, or if the children do not grow up, or if when they grow up they are unhealthy in body and stunted or vicious in mind, then that race is decadent, and no heaping up of wealth, no splendor of momentary material prosperity, can avail in any degree as offsets." This plain and serious view of marriage is the. one for which the Lutheran Church has always stood, and the Presi- dent is a preacher of Lutheran doctrine at least on this point. The Lutheran marriage service, in recognition of this teach- ing, contains several paragraphs from which refined people, at first sight at least, often shrink. Thus it quotes the Scrip- ture: "God created man in His own image; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." Thus also the marriage collect says: "Almighty God, who didst create man and woman, and didst join them together in marriage, making them fruitful by Thy blessing, thereby signi- fying the mystery of the union betwixt Thy Son Jesus Christ and His Bride the Church: We beseech Thine infinite goodness, let not this Thy blessed work an 1 ordinance be set aside, or brought to naught," etc. That the primal duty of man is to plant a home, in the fullest sense of the word ; and the first consideration in a home is not congenial recreation and rest, but that children are as es- sential to sound home life as arrows are to the quiver, or fruit to the vine and olive tree, is brought out even more remark- ably by the President in an earlier letter on "race suicide." "If a man or woman," writes Mr. Roosevelt, "through no fault of hla or hers, goes throughout life deprived of those highest of all joys which spring only from home, life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy. . . . But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage, and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dis- like children, is, in effect, a criminal against the race and should be an ob- ject of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people." Such is not at all the view of polite society, and of our cultured young people of to-day. So far astray does the deli- cate and luxurious intellectual life of the age, in which the in- dividual himself becomes the chief concern, and sacrifice of one's own selfish ends and comfort is not a dominating consid- eration, that carnal motives are often imputed, with a sneer, to men who have the courage to take the old view and stand up for God and the race. We will not say that the advice of the Apostle Paul, on his grounds, is not to be held in consideration as sound throughout on this point, nor that conditions of physi- cal decline should be overlooked, nor that the coarse and sen- sual motive does not prevail in the average man of society and of the world ; but we do affirm that the integrity of purpose, purity of motive, and joy and culture of heart in the bosom of a large and self-sacrificing family-life, are immeasurably loftier than, for instance, the evidently self-centred, comfort- accepting, pleasure-loving, and consequence-avoiding life of the cultured young woman professor in one of our universities who has created a sensation by making the following state- ment, in which, mark you, there is no revolt against evil desire, and sinful indulgence, but only against physical consequence. Yea! here the rebellion, and it is typical, is not against the wrongs of human social life , but against that which is highest, holiest and most glorious in it, namely, motherhood! The young woman professor writes : "I am not prepared to say that I absolutely refuse to accept the charge of motherhood, but I do refuse — and I have no words to express the loathing with which I regard the idea — to be looked upon as a mere means of swell- ing the census report. Stripped of its fine language, this is what all this prating of the beauty of large families amounts to. I do not believe that there is, or ever has been, a large family which resulted from anything so high-minded as the deliberate, desire of both parents to rear good citizens for the State." The words of the President have moved The Lutheran Standard, one of the most serious and earnest of our church papers, to speak as follows : "Large families have come to be regarded as a great burden, an intoler- able responsibility. The, woman who gives birth to many children is looked down upon with pity and contempt, rather than looked up to with honor and 8 respect. The pain and the suffering connected with maternity, notwith- standing what the Scriptures say on the matter, are declared to be the, im- position on womankind of a burden which no man should ask his wife to carry. Many married people, who consider themselves respectable, and are considered respectable by their neighbors, are before God known to be re- sorting to wicked, ofttimes criminal, practices, in order to avoid having children. This is a grievous thing, and calls for earnest protest on the part of right-thinking people. "The woman whose purpose in being married is to lead a fashionable life, preside over a fashionable home, and spend her husband's money, miss- ed her calling when she entered the marriage estate. Human butterflies make poor mothers. According to Scripture it is not a disgrace, but an honor, to be a parent. Are, our Lutheran married people imitating the wick- ed example which the fashionable worldling is setting? Are our Lutheran women, through wicked habits, becoming like their pale, nervous, broken- down, foolish sisters? God forbid! 'Be not deceived: God is not mocked.' Such violations of divine and natural law will have their reward, here and hereafter. May the love of God and of Christ so fill the hearts of our peo- ple, that they will obey cheerfully the laws of God, and follow in His ways." From the home, the President turns to speak for a mo- ment on child training, as it should be practiced by the state : "Tn the vital matter of taking care of children much advantage could be gained by a careful study of what has been accomplished in such states as Illinois and Colorado by the juvenile courts. The work of the juvenile court is really a work of character building. It is now generally recognized that young boys and young girls who go wrong should not be treated as criminals, not even necessarily as needing reformation, but rather as needing to have their characters formed, and for this end to have them tested and developed by a system of probation." THE President recognizes and very clearly delineates the limits between the rights of the nation and the rights of the various states. He devotes attention to the work that his government is accomplishing in forwarding the art of agriculture, in preserving the forests, and he points out the difficulties in securing first-class Indian agents. His dis- cussion of the postal service has no reference to the frauds which he has unearthed.* The President lays down a point of interest for the na- tional agitators that are so prolific in America: "Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern ourselves wiih striving for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with trying to better the condition of things *It is an interesting fact that the revenues of the United States post office have increased from $76,000,000 in 1895 to $144,000,000 in 1904. in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to put a stop to civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness and violent race prejudices here at home than by pass- ing resolutions about wrongdoing elsewhere. Nevertheless there, are occa- sional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the. deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which such a course is justi- fiable. There must be no effort made to remove the mote from our broth- er's eye if we refuse to remove the beam from our own." He, however, defends the right of the American people, which in spite of its own short comings, yet as a whole shows by its consistent practice of its belief in the principle of civil and religious liberty and of orderly freedom, "among whom even the worst crime, like the crime of lynching, is never more than sporadic," to give expression to its horror against the massacre of the Jews in Kishieneff or against the cruelties practiced upon the Armenians. The President deals with the principle of immigration on very broad lines. "First and foremost let us remember that the question of being a good American has nothing whatever to do with a man's birthplace any more than it has to do with his creed. In every generation from the time this government was founded, men of foreign birth have stood in the very fore- most ranks of good citizenship. To try to draw a distinction between the man whose parents came to this country and the man whose ancestors came over a few centuries back is a mat- ter of absurdity. Good Americanism is a matter of heart, good conscience, lofty aspiration and sound common sense, but not of birthplace or of creed. Among the men of whom we are most proud as Americans no distinction whatever can be drawn between those whose parents came over in a sailing ship or steamer, and those whose ancestors stepped ashore into the wooded wilderness at Plymouth nearly three centuries ago." Thus is nativism dealt a sturdy and stunning blow. The President proceeds, "There is no danger of having too many immigrants of the right kind, if they are sound in body and in mind and above all if they are of good character. But we should not admit masses of men whose standards and IO personal habits are such that they tend to lower the level of the American wage earner." During the last six months, since July i, 1904, the arrivals of immigrants have been more than 375,000, and they are still coming in at the rate of 2500 a day. In the last two years more than two millions have been added to our population by the increase of emigration. Italy contributes more to the growth of our population than any other country, Austria coming sec- ond, Russia third, and Sweden fourth. Sweden has sent us about 30,000 of her sons and daughters during this past year. There is a large falling off in the emigration of all these coun- tries, and an increase of immigrants from England. We should very much like to go into the details of this subject of immigra- tion, and trust that we may be able to do so at some time in a special article. The President makes a strong protest against clogging the wheels of justice, especially when the criminals are such as are against the general government itself, instancing the cases of Reavers. Green, Gaynor and Renson. Here is the highest executive of the American people turned preacher, and preaching nothing less than a social and political revolution. There are no platitudes and no platform planks in these words. We are face to face with first prin- ciples. DURING the year 1904 Congress settled many important matters, for good or for ill. It passed the Cuban Reci- procity bill. It ratified a treaty with Cuba, which car- ries out the terms of the Piatt amendment. It ratified the Pan- ama Canal Treaty and provided a bill for the government of the Canal zone. It ratified a treaty with China providing for two open ports in Manchuria, and reinforced the Chinese ex- clusion laws. It provided a joint Commission to study meth- ods of upbuilding the American Merchant Marine. It loaned $4,600,000 to the St. Louis Exposition. It ordered the Department of Commerce to make an inquiry into the beef trust. It lined the Philippines under the coast wide wise trade laws. Altogether it lias passed T400 bills, mostly of a special II character, and its appropriations reached nearly $800,000,000. This Fall it has instituted a searching' investigation into the qualifications of Senator Smoot, and has brought out some startling evidence respecting Mormonism which the American people has never yet had before it.* Congress has also agreed to the impeachment of Judge Swayne, of Florida, of whose doings we happen to know a great deal in a private way. On the other hand Congress has post- poned action on measures for the benefit of the Philippines,! Hawaii and Porto Rico. It has not taken decided action against the trusts, nor increased the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission.f A popular revolution in the state of Missouri has over- thrown the corruption that centered in the political powers at St. Louis, and has elected the District Attorney who convicted the corrupt politicians to the governorship of the state. ANOTHER signal illustration of the tendency to brush aside technical discussion on great issues and to return to primal moral principles is to be found in the sudden development of the moral obligations of Telegraph Companies *The counsel against Smoot expect to show that the Mormon Church in morals, politics, and business, is a menace to American institutions, and that a man identified with the Mormon hierarchy is unfit to be a United States Senator, and incapable of performing the duty of that office. It is claimed that the Mormon Church has violated the compact under which Utah was admitted as a State, and that the violations have been connived at by the officers of the Church. The counsel has brought to light terrible Mormon oaths which members of the church are required to take. The chairman of the Democratic State Committee of Idaho testified, only a week or two ago, that the growing power of the Mormon church was made the leading issue by the Democrats and Independents in the last cam- paign. He said that the Mormon population of Idaho is instructed by apos- tles from Utah as to how to vote. He declared that it is impossible for any man or any party to stand against the Mormon church in Idaho. Six of the twenty-one counties are known as solidly Mormon, and in all the south- ern counties the Mormon church is practically in charge of the legislature, and of political and delegate conventions. The delegates elected are not al- ways Mormon in religion, but they are. always Mormon in political action. He said further that if one who has been a Mormon were to vote a Demo- cratic ticket and it were known, he would be ruined in business. jOn December 16th the. Senate after all passed a Philippine bill relating to customs, exemption of municipal bonds from taxation, the issuance of bonds for public improvements, sewers, and drainage systems, primary schools, and railroads, whose stock issues are to be restricted to the amount, of actual cash investment. tSecretary Garfield has just brought his plan of a federal license of cor- porations before Congress. 12 I ' which arose last May like a storm-cloud out of a clear sky, and which obliged one of the most powerful corporations in the land, the Western Union Telegraph Company, to change its business course and make a complete tack in its sailing. It is quite true that there is some ground for the cynicism which sneers at the motives often found beneath a popular out- break of feeling against large organizations that are indirect abettors of law-breaking. But Christians may be glad for such reaction. The weakening of the sense of responsibility, in men, for the moral influence of their property and their acts, under corporate relationships, is one of the evils of modern business life. The common promptings of sound humanity are disregarded. Men who would not dream of renting their own buildings for doubtful or immoral purposes do not consider their share of responsibility when the same thing is done through a company in which they are interested. We are told that men who would not bribe a legislator to accomplish the dearest wish of their lives, are content not to inquire too closely into the contingent expenses of a great corporation to which they lend their names or from which they draw their money. And the reason for this neglect of duty is clear. It has not been made sufficiently plain to the conscience of the American public that the act of a corporation is in theory the act of those who compose it, and that the introduction of intermediaries does not break the chain of responsibility. Truly edifying is it to hear a secular paper announce that "the old notion that a corporation has no soul to save, leads men to forget that, after all, a corporation is only a shell containing many men with souls to save." In the case of the Western Union Telegraph Company it appears that Captain Norton Goddard approached the com- pany last April in the guise of a poolroom magnate and found that the company was ready to run a wire down the chimney of his house to supply his supposed poolroom with news of the races, and to send him an operator who was an expert at jumping out of the window. The captain made all this public through the papers. Now the Western Union Telegraph Company is com- 13 posed of such respectable and eminent directors as Chauncey Depew, Morris K. Jesup, George J. Gould, Jacob H, Schiff, and J. P. Morgan. Several of these men felt themselves scan- dalized in these deeds, and Senator Depew threatened to re- sign from the Board. President Clowry, who originally came to New York with an excellent reputation, defended his com- pany by a plea in the papers that the Western Union is bound to transmit any message offered, and he said that he would withdraw the telegraph wire from any poolroom when notified of its existence by the police. He said that the Western Union is not authorized to scrutinize messages with reference to their moral burden and it is bound under the law to transmit ail messages if couched in decent language. "This company has nothing to do with the racing Associations nor with the race track. It does not own a share of stock in any race associa- tion. We have one of the largest directories in the world and each one is a good, moral man. I have never been in a gamb- ling house or poolroom in all my life. I want to do the right thing and so do all our directors." This excuse of the Western Union was sustained as ade- quate by eminent private authorities, including the Philadel- phia Ledger, which raised the question as to how far a pri- vate corporation operating telegraph lines would be justified in setting up as a censor of morals and in ascribing motives to those offering messages. It claimed that the company is a private person whose duties are exhausted in the transmission of messages, and it must not be assumed that a corporation en- gaged in sending telegraph messages is bound or is free to inquire into their morality. Unfortunately, for the Western Union and for the wise dictum of the Public Ledger, no less a personage than the po- lice commissioner of New York reported that the Western Union had a far better knowledge of the inner side of the pool- rooms than his own police, that Western Union operators were in them, that Western Union inspectors were on guard, and that a Western Union treasurer was in receipt of daily exor- bitant tribute. It was also shown that the Western Union Company instead of merely transmitting messages of the races 14 was itself collecting - this class of news and selling- it to the pool- rooms at exorbitant prices. In fact the police Commissioner charged that the Western Union has a distinct department of its business specially organized to facilitate law-breaking, and that it receives special prices for this disgraceful work. Evidently it is no part of the legitimate business of a tele- graph company, whether it be a private person or a common carrier, to maintain a crew of men skilled to string wires in secret places where the officers of the law will not detect them. to maintain hidden exchanges whence with the aid of pass words, known law-breakers can receive information necessary to their criminal business. When a telegraph operator is in- structed by his company to jump out of a window in case of a police raid, and to cooperate with his patrons in covering up their offences, he is certainly doing something more than his duty as an agent for the delivery of messages. The assistance given by the company to gamblers is not incidental, and this assistance was not beyond the control of the President of the company. We enlarge upon this discussion because it is an unusually good illustration of the sophistry that is employed to justify doubtful business dealings. No company is under obligations to furnish news to people engaged in a criminal business. The use of the United States mail is forbidden to these people. Their existence depends on the favor of the Telegraph Com- pany. The directors may say that there is no law to forbid them to furnish this service or to compel them to inquire into the use which is to be made of it. But neither is there any law which obliges them to permit themselves to he used as instru- ments of crime. Many wrongs not under statutory interdict, are such that no business man of sound morality can or should tolerate. So clearly was this position brought out that the direc- tors of the company decided to quit gathering and selling race news. Mr. Clowry, the Superintendent, no doubt under or- ders from the Executive Committee, announced to the com- pany's General Superintendents at New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta that it had been decided to discontinue i5 forthwith "the collection and distribution" of horse race re- ports and directed them to act accordingly. It is said that George Gould cooperated in this reform. All right minded persons should hope that this is a perma- nent and not temporary decision, and that the general principle of a deeper sense of moral responsibility as applied to modern cooperative action will be extended to other cases, and the minds of the American people be opened more clearly to moral issues. LAST year there was no question more widely discussed than the morality of the action of the President in the es- tablishment of the independence of Panama, in order to further the completion of the Isthmian canal. More recently the Panama republic itself has gotten into difficulties with the Pres- ident and our government, because it feared that we would either prevent or absorb the whole of its commercial income. The new Secretary of War, Taft, was despatched to Panama, and, on December 12th, arrived at a complete understanding with that republic. No trade for the canal zone or Panama can enter the United States ports at either end of the canal. The United States agrees that Panama is to have full authority over her own citizens, and Panama agrees to a reduction in tariff and postage rates. Judge Taft reports that a great deal of work has already been done under American supervision. The former owners of the site left machinery, dredges and rolling stock to the value of twenty million dollars, but only two million dollars' worth of this property could be utilized. The canal commis- sion has invited bids for a supply of steam dredges, and the makers of these dredges must demonstrate their capacity by ac- tual use in the canal for two weeks prior to receiving payment. It has been discovered that the French engineers made some important errors in their data. One of these is that the height of the Culebra has been over-estimated, and another that clay and sand are found at some spots in bottoms where the French engineers reported solid rock. The coming year will be one of great progress on this waterway which is destined to bear i6 the commerce of the world from the sea of the East to that of the West at an enormous saving of time and expense. IF we lift our eye from America to the circle of the nations, the most prominent event to stand before our vision is the war that broke out between Russia and Japan on the 6th of last February, by severance of diplomatic relations. Dis- cussion as to the technical responsibility of each party for be- ginning hostilities, the wrong of Russia in delaying diplomacy, and the wrong of Japan in brushing it aside, — soon gave way to a more substantial consideration of the real and larger causes of war in the background ; and to a premonition of grave consequences. The whole question between Europe and Asia loomed like a specter of the ages to the thoughtful mind. The check given to the Arab at Tours, and to the Tartar six centuries later by the Poles, the repulse of the Turks from the siege of Vienna, and the organization of the British East India Company, were recalled. That to-day all the North in Asia is held by Russia and all the South by England, with Persia under Russian con- trol, and the Turkish Empire surviving only through European jealousy, is regarded as the subconscious cause of driving Japan into the lists. If Japan wins, a half of Asia and a third of the human race will retain its own self-development and self-rule. If Russia wins, the Asian sun sets not to rise. Japan is fighting the battle of the Orient against the Occident. Civilized as Japan is, and full of European science, she is at bottom still Asiatic, pagan, a hater of the selfish intruders of the West, and a believer in the fate and the future power of the Asiatic races. On the other hand little Japan well knew that the day might shortly come when the great Russian Bear* would strike down her own life with his mighty paw; and she *"It was largely the cumulative effect of repeated acts of Russian ag- gression that led to the present war. Not for any one of half a dozen of Russia's acts would Japan have gone to war. But she remembered them all, and treasured them up, adding each new one to the sum of its predecessors, until the grand total strained her forbearance to the breaking point." — From a New York Editorial. 17 determined to strike him first. In this plucky act she had the sympathy of the American people. It is curious to note how the rights and wrongs of this whole war have been argued, and how a stand is taken for or against one or the other party not on the basis of a calm con- sideration of the facts, but with the facts obscured either by sentiment, or by self-interest. This enlightened, philosophic, far advanced twentieth century world betrays an illogical and sentimental outlook, where self-interest is far enough away not to push in as a controlling factor. Neither France, Germany, England, nor America, has regarded this affair in a judicial man- ner. With all his civilization and education, the old Adam is still deeper and more potent than abstract reason, and moves the world to-day. The war began with great reverses for Russia, including the death of vice-admiral Makaroff, and of the celebrated Rus- sian painter Verestchagin. On May ist, the Japanese crossed the Yalu. On May 5th they cut off Port Arthur from the mainland and blocked the harbor. In June, General Oku defeated General Stakelberg, and Kuropatkin began to retreat northward, drawing the Japan- ese after him. The third week in July Russian cruisers held up English and German merchantmen in the Red Sea, and Great Britain despatched war vessels to Alexandria. Interest- ing questions of the right of search and seizure, in which the United States has taken a stand against England for a cen- tury at once arose. On the second week of August the Czar's squadron in the far East, including six battleships, four cruisers and a small flotilla of destroyers emerged from Port Arthur and were scat- tered and destroyed. Early in September the Russians were defeated in the terrible battle of Liao-Yang. This appears to have been one of the great battles of the world, nearly four hundred thousand men being engaged. Kuropatkin retreated from his main position.* *Manchuria, the seat of the war, is said to be a very fertile country, but only one-fifth of it is under cultivation. The most valuable trade product is beans, though, owing to a lack of railway facilities, it ie impossible, to sow, reap and export them the same year. The Russian railways are well run, In September, some revulsion of feeling against the Japanese began to manifest itself in America. The fact pointed out by us long ago, but disputed, viz : that the Japa- nese is fighting, not as a Christian, but as an ancestor-wor- shipper, who regards himself as a link in a long chain of hu- manity, who is brave because he has no Christian valuation of life, is turning out to be an actual matter of experience.* All the. war correspondents of Europe and America have become disillusionized as to Japanese character. The total disregard of truth and of agreements made, by the Japanese, their offensive vanity and insolence in consequence of their victories, have drawn attention to the latent barbarism in their make-up. In September America was given a shock by the appear- ance of Russian war vessels on the Pacific Coast. Later the Baltic fleet started for the East, and the Czar announced that he would send a new army of three hundred thousand men to Manchuria. (The possibility of his doing this has been dis- puted.) The officials at St. Petersburg expressed themselves but the rails are light. The Chinese have stipulated that in laying down the track, cemeteries, villages and towns must be avoided! Standards of educa- tion are not as high as in China. Brigandage is frequent. Opium is smug- gled into China. Millet is raised in large quantities and from it the national drink is distilled. Dogs are raised on farms for their skins and for their flesh. Tigers are hunted for their skins and for their bones. The Russian soldier is everywhere in evidence, and in dealing with the Chinese is said to be generous and social. See "Manchuria: Its People, Resources and Recent History." By Alexander Hosie. With map and thirty illustrations from photographs. 8 vo. pp. XII, 293. New York. Scribner. *A Russian writer last spring drew attention to the strange fact that there are no less than 30,000 Japanese who have, been converted to Chris- tianity in Japan by Greek Catholic missionaries and that the number of con- versions has been increasing est the rate of a 1,000 a year. These Greek Cath- olics asked the Bishop Nicholas as to whether they ought fight their spirit- ual benefactors. They were told that 'Christianity taught obedience to the Emperor and lawful authorities and that they should pray for peace while responding to the call of duty.' This writer, like many others who know the situation, says that the educated Japanese, are unfortunately tending more towards agnosticism, and even atheism, than toward Chfistianity. He quotes Marquis Ito, "the real ruler of Japan," as saying: "I look upon religion as a thing wholly unnecessary to the life of a people. Science is better than superstition, and what is religion — Christian or Buddhist — but merely credulity and blind faith. And is not superstition necessarily a source of weakness? I do not deplore, the fact that rationalism is becoming widespread in Japan, for I do not regard it as a danger to society." But, continues the writer, the mass of the Japanese are still in the lowest stage of heathen superstition. They have tens of thousands of Buddhist and Shintoist temples and believe in all kinds of gods, the principal ones being the god of fire, the god of war, and the god of earthquakes, who does not even spare the churches. 19 on President Roosevelt's proposition of a "Peace Confer- ence," regarding it "as not exactly opportune." Russia would be unwilling to be a party to a Conference in which the neu- trals would have a preponderance, and could restrict the belligerents. One of her papers, the Novosti, of St. Peters- burg, declares that international law is a polite myth which is continually violated when it suits the convenience of some strong nation to do it. This is not the. exact truth. Interna- tional law is, indeed, a very vague science, yet many of its important principles are obeyed by civilized powers to their own inconvenience, as our own country proved, in her war with Spain. Startling as it may seem, time of war is an ex- ceedingly good time for the meeting of a peace Congress. The realities of the situation are all the more potent, and if there were a clear understanding that nations of war would not be called on to compromise their independent position, or have their conduct in a contemporary war placed under criti- cism, they might be able to attend it with advantage to them - selves and to the world. Although the call at the present moment may seem a trifle too suggestive, yet it is even more ridiculous to wait until universal peace has come before trying to hold a peace conference. On Oct. 6th Kuropatkin's army left Mukden and at- tacked the Japanese, fighting for three days, but was hurled back in disorder on Wednesday by the Japanese driving a wedge into the. middle of his line. Nevertheless Kuropatkin made such a stubborn stand that the Japanese did not benefit by their victory. On midnight, October 21st, the Baltic fleet committed a terrible mistake, by firing at British fishing vessels in the North Sea, killing several fishermen and wounding many others. The bombardment continued for nearly a half hour, and then the fleet steamed away without any offer of help. England was aroused, and there was a strong sentiment to prevent the Baltic fleet going through the strait of Gibraltar, but the matter was settled by a promise of arbitration. At the present writing the likelihood is that the Russian and the Japanese armies will be obliged to go into winter 20 quarters with the decisive battle untaught. Meantime Port Arthur, contrary to every prediction, at this writing, Decem- ber 17, continues to hold out, and Gen. Stoessel is the hero of the war. EVEN though Russia had not been involved in a war with Japan, the year 1904 would have been a momentous one to her. Her internal situation has some very serious elements in it. Great changes have taken place in the empire within the last twelve months, and more may still be expected. It is supposed that the Russian financial situation is worse than appears on the face. Although her recent minister of finance, M. Witte, has made vast expenditures for internal improve- ment, his wisdom is open to question. Defeat for Russia in this war might involve her in financial perils without limit. It is true, that Russia is enormously rich, far more so than Japan, and that the Russian budget each year shows a hand- some surplus. No other European country has so great a budget or so great a surplus. It is also held that the agri- cultural resources of Russia are marvelous. But, if we ex- cept the rich fields of Finland and Poland, such is not the case in European Russia. The soil is usually not rich, and is not well tilled. Our readers will be surprised to learn that Russia proper produces only about one-fourth as much wheat as Great Britain, one-third as much as Germany and Sweden, and one-half as much as Hungary. Twenty-two per cent, of seed must be used for her crop, while in America less than six per cent, is used. Her grain yield has been decreasing for 40 years and is thirty-five per cent, less than it was then. Her exports of grain are large because her people at home, where there is chronic danger of famine, do not receive enough to eat. Sixty years ago Russia had no debt, but no other nation in the world has increased its national indebtedness so greatly as Russia did between 1885 and 1902. The increase was 133 per cent. In the ten years following 1889, in a time of peace, the increase in the admitted bonded indebtedness of the national government was eight hundred millions of dollars. In 1900, 21 the admitted bonded indebtedness was over three billions of dollars, and on top of this, the government had guaranteed interest, etc., on railroad securities to the extent of nearly seven hundred millions of dollars; and had guaranteed the mortgage bonds of land credit institutions to the extent of three hundred and thirty-five millions of dollars, so that in all, the government was responsible for four billion and a quar- ter of dollars. During the last two years there have been im- mense defaults to the land bank companies, and these have been unable to meet their obligations. It is true that vast amounts of land, belonging to the nobility, have been fore- closed during the last few years, but these lands could not be sold for more than a mere fraction of the face of the mort- gages. It may not be generally known that the external debt of Russia is still held abroad, while the internal debt was placed in Russia. About three hundred millions went originally to the nobility as indemnity for amounts taken at the liberation of the serfs. During the last ten years, hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign capital has been invested in Russian in- dustries, and besides this, much foreign banking capital has been attracted into the country. The fact is that Russia cannot have a fixed interest charge of much less than one hundred and thirty-five millions of dollars per year. The government has continued to offer large amounts of new loans abroad, and while M. Witte would not admit that he was selling bonds to pay his interest, he did acknowledge that he was obliged to do so to prevent gold exports, which is much the same, thing. Other internal conditions in Russia are equally gloomy. Imperial lands may be counted as an offset to the existing debt, governor ownership has been making the people poorer, and the taxation has been vastly increasing as a result of M. Witte's policy of expansion. M. de Witte has himself said, "The population is weighed down by direct and indirect tax- ation to the uttermost that can be borne." The money lender absorbs nearly all the profits of agriculture. The already de- scribed agricultural conditions are growing worse. Russian railway stock is heavily overcapitalized, the allowances for 22 depreciation are not sufficient ; and, worst of all, some au- thorities maintain that about three-fourths of the cost of rail- wa)rs has been caused by plundering the. government. It is said, loosely speaking, that nine-tenths of the people are ex- isting for the profit of the other tenth. No contract is let in Russia, which does not allow a liberal margin for a "rake-off," and, in the case of railroads, this means that they have been paid for two and a half times over, and that the standard value is fifty per cent, higher than the necessary cost. And these railroads are more and more unprofitable. In 1896 the profits of the state railroads were over five millions of dollars. In 1899 they had declined to a little more than half a million. In 1900 they were transformed into a loss of one million three hundred thousand dollars. In 1902 this loss increased to twenty-two and a half million dollars. It is stated, on what authority we do not know, that fully seventy-five per cent, of the. Red Cross fund, which was sub- scribed at home and abroad, has been stolen, and that the magnificent hospital train which the Czarina sent to the East, was "looted" between St. Petersburg and Moscow. It is said that admirals, buying coal in foreign ports, procure re- ceipts for much larger sums than they have paid, pocketing the difference and dividing it with their under officers. De- partment officers have been multiplied until the statement is made seriously that there are as many clerks on the pay roll of the office issuing licenses for dogs, as there are dogs in St. Petersburg. Of all plunderers, the grand dukes, consisting of three uncles and a brother-in-law of the Czar, are said to be the worst. The three of them are trustees of a fund to erect a memorial church to Alexander the Second. The money has been subscribed several times over by the nation, and work was begun twenty-two years ago. Nobody expects that it will be completed in this generation, and yet the embezzling trustees are sons of the murdered Czar. When the progressive M. Witte was appointed minister of finance in opposition to the bureaucracy, he undertook to put the public works on a sound commercial basis. In trying 23 to make, the tran-Siberian railway a commercial road, he an- tagonized Alexieff, who regarded it partly as a means for making war on China and Japan and partly as an opportunity for private speculation. The result was that M. Witte was obliged to retire. It was no other than the hatred Plehve who brought on Witte's downfall. Although the reforms and industrial policy had made Witte many enemies, he was successful, until the new minister of the interior, Plehve, re- ceived his appointment. From that time on there was open warfare between the two men. Plehve put an end to Witte's local agricultural commission, and took from him the admin- istration of the commercial marine. Before long factory inspectors were made subordinate to Plehve's police, department. A little later Witte was driven from his office, and the empire was dragged into a foreign war. The party headed by Plehve, Pobiedonostzeff, Alexiefif and Kuropatkin felt that war would win glory abroad and allay disaffection at home. It has done neither, and has left the reactionary party in disgrace. Russia has been compared to the . . . weary Titan, with deaf Ears, and labor- dimmed eyes, StaggeriDg on to her goal, Bearing on shoulders immense, Atlantean, the load Well nigh not to he borne, Of the too vast orb of her fate. The leaders of the reactionary faction have been Alexieff, Plehve. and Pobiedonostzeff, chief procurator of the Holy Synod, and chief administrator of the secret and inquisitorial methods by which anything like a free expression of public opinion, has been made impossible in Russia. It has been said that the bureaucracy, with its despotism, has itself felt the coming of a crisis, and that "after us the deluge," is the feel- ing of the Russian nobility. The finances, famines and re- pressive measures taken to stamp out revolution, have long been felt to be inviting it. Retribution came to Russia swift and awful. Bobrikoff, 24 Governor of Finland, was shot on June 15; Andreieff, deputy governor of Transcaucasia, was assassinated on July 17th; and eleven days later, the bomb struck the Czar's most power- ful minister, at the head of the bureau of the interior, the hated minister of police, Konstantinovitch Von Plehve. Von Plehve has been termed the evil genius of his country. It was he who ordered the horrible massacre and plunder at Kishieneflf, and he carried out the Russian policy in Finland. With Pobiedonostzeff and Alexieff. he was at the head of all Russian recent acts of despotism and of the reign of terror in the land. With his death, the policy of reaction lost its chief bulwark. It is worth while to spend some time to take a view of this ''blood-hound of the Czar," this most hated man in all the Russias. Of Polish extraction, he combined with German thoroughness, and Muscovite ferocity, a truly Oriental as- tuteness and cunning. He was born in 1848 and sought to re- trieve his family's name as soon as he was able to serve the state. A Polish noble gave him the means of obtaining an education, and then he went to Moscow and began the study of law. He soon attracted the attention of state officials be- cause of the. fierceness with which he fought for his clients. He was chosen as the procurator of Vladimir, and the vigor with which he ran down criminals caused him to be spoken of at the Russian capital. Later he was transferred to Warsaw, and here he prosecuted the very family that had given him the means for his education. It was his special duty to ferret out cases of treason, and this, bringing him to the attention of the Czar, Alexander II, lifted him to St. Petersburg and caused him to be made procurator of the courts at the Rus- sian capital. The Czar made it the special duty of Plehve to stamp out Nihilism, and the procurator searched incessantly for those whom he believed to be guilty of treason. When the attempt was made to blow up the. Winter Palace, he had many persons arrested, and some even tortured. When, on March 13, 1881, the Czar was assassinated, Plehve took charge of the prosecution in person and asked that he him- self be made director of the police department. From that 25 lime on his power increased until he became the greatest sub- ject of the Czar. When he learned that his own life was threatened, he redoubled his efforts to stamp out Liberalism and inaugurated a reign of terror. Many educated and pros- perous citizens were sent to Siberia or to the prisons. From 1881 to 1884, as the chief of state, police, he dictated the policy of the empire. He banished German colonists in Russia, and the Jews. In 1884 he was made Minister of the Interior. One of his first posts under Nicholas II was secretary of State for Finland, and he went about the task of russianizing it so cruelly that in the early part of 1903 the Czar recalled him and put him in charge of affairs at home. It was the massacre of Kishieneff that brought him to the attention of the whole world. He is believed to have had a full knowledge of the affair, and, in September, 1903, issued a secret circular to the provincial authorities practically putting a ban on all Jewish activities. His last great public work was the drafting of the scheme for peasant reform which was ordered by the Em- peror. For Plehve was obedient to the Czar. Whereas M. Witte was often blunt and uncompromising and hurt the Czar's feelings, Plehve studied his master's peculiarities, and, by subserviency and flattery, became the first Minister in the Empire. He seems to have had no policy of his own, but sounded the Czar as to the latter's feelings, and then shaped the national policy in accordance with them. He is said to have instilled distrust into the nature of Nicholas and to have stimulated his master's growing love of absolutism (with him- self as the only prop.) Love of power seems to have been the determining factor in his whole career. In the later part of his life he saw in all persons conspirators against himself, and the habit of hunting down these conspirators became his second nature. He knew that he was carrying his life in his hands, but felt sure that it was well protected. He made his great mistake in putting his trust in spies and police and ar- moured carriages, and in dismissing Nihilists with contempt. "They do not count," he said. "We know every one of them, and everything that they are doing." No wonder that, when Plehve fell at the hand of a nihilist, 26 it was a grave question with the Czar as to who should be- come his successor, and be elevated to the Ministry of the In- terior. There was General von Wahl, who puts an end to strikes by flogging the bare-backed strikers in droves. There was General Kleigels, who checks Western ideas in the minds of University students with cossack whips. And there was Obolensky, governor general of Finland, who is said to re- gard the practice of flogging women as the best antidote to revolutionary poison. It is stated that eight Russian states- men were offered the Ministry of the Interior, one after the. other, and all declined. The surprise of the whole world was exceedingly great, therefore, when prince Svialopolk-Mirsky was appointed to the position. A broad liberal, he is the very opposite of his prede- cessor. While he opposes parliamentary systems, he believes in giving the local centres of government fuller power to deal with their affairs. He does not believe in using force with students. "The young people, must be shown the truth, and also the absurdity of their longings." He favors rural schools, he favors religious liberty "as much as possible." To him is ascribed a highly developed sense of justice and it is thought that he may be relied on to strive to administer his department with moderation and prudence. He started out early in October in his great work, attempting to pacify the discontented portion of the Russian Empire. He is de- pendent directly upon the Czar for his power. We must here intercept our tale of the administration of Mirsky for a few moments, and look back to Finland, that fair and lovely daughter of the Lutheran Baltic, for whom, in her persecution and humiliation, the prayers of our church have been rising - even here in the distant west. THE policy of Plehve and Pobiedonostzeff in Poland, among the Semites, the Armenians, the Nihilist, of the em- pire, and the Germans of the Baltic provinces was pressed even into peaceful and loyal Finland. Her "russifica- tion" was determined on. In the autumn of 1902 a series of ordinances were pro- 27 mulgated which ruthlessly swept away the liberties and privi- leges of the Finlanders and visited the most perfect and en- lightened province in Russia with darkness and ruin. The Finnish Diet was deprived of effective power of legislation : the Finnish official positions were filled by Russians : Finnish judges were dismissed. Any public servant could be retired without the right of appeal. The most painful ordinance was the denial of any appeal whatever to the courts for private citizens. The Czar is said to have decorated constables for actions which the Finnish Courts pronounced crimes. The formal abrogation of Finland's constitution was im- mediately followed by a number of deportations. Relentlessly was the tyrannical system extended against all the best and most loyal men of the country, ex-senators, merchants, land- owners, peasant farmers, school masters, pastors and bergo- masters. Thus it has gone on for many months. But matters came to a head in the middle of last June, General Bobrikoff, the relentless russifier and governor gen- eral of Finland, was shot and killed at Helsingfors by a young Finn, and not only in Finland but throughout Russia new en- couragement was given to the revolutionists. Thus did the holy policy of the narrow-minded Pobiedonostzeff bring on a crisis, among the people who were most loyal* to the Rus- sians. As an answer to this assassination in Finland the Russian bureaucracy appointed prince Obolensky the new governor general of Finland in July. Obolensky is reported to be one of the most cruel and ruthless administrators in Russia. He has suppressed students' riots and agrarian movements. He has turned peasants into beggars, and had them beaten by cossacks. In 1902 an attempt was made to assassinate him. His first act in Finland was to suppress several newspapers, and he has standing orders from St. Petersburg, "to strengthen in the minds of the Finnish people the conviction that their destinies are indissolubly bound up with Russia." ♦When Russia had to confront the united forces of England, France and Piedmont, Nicholas I chose hie loyal Finnish regiments as the ones to be trusted in the protection of his capital St. Petersburg. 28 Later this fall, in October, or in the beginning of No- vember, Russia took the extreme step of asking Sweden to refuse right of asylum to Finns, and requested Sweden to grant officials from St. Petersburg the right to make a house to house search in Sweden for Finnish refugees. It appears that Russia desires prominent Finns now residing in Stockholm to be surrendered to agents of the St. Petersburg police. The Russians base their claim upon the international agreement that anarchists are to be surrendered upon demand, and they take the view that the assassination of Bobrikoff was inspired by a Finnish group operating from Sweden. Finns and Swedes are united by common bonds of language, traditions and institutions, as well as by religion, and this last step of Russia has greatly incensed Scandinavia. And in this Scandi- navian feeling America joins. Andrew D. White, the ex- American minister to St. Petersburg, declares that to his mind the destruction of the liberties of Finland has been the most wicked thing in the history of the last two centuries. He says, "It has turned the best, the most civilized, the most: educated, and the most loyal province in the empire into a land in which the opposite of all these characteristics is more highly developed than in any other part of the empire." BUT let us return to Russia herself. What prince Mirsky has accomplished for the relief of Russia within six or eight weeks seems almost fabulous. The press of Russia seems to have received notice that to form and ex- press an opinion on public affairs was no longer a crime. Mirsky has appealed for a policy of mutual confidence be- tween government and people. He has restored to the pro- vincial assembly its ancient liberty of deliberation and ex- pression, and has called a council of the presidents of the pro- vincial assemblies to deliberate concerning the condition of Russia. It is the first authorized assembling of these officials from all over Russia. The Council is of a private character and discusses three things : I. The widening of the provincial activity of the assembly. 2. The organization of a central 2 9 administration of agriculture. 3. The co-operation of local provincial hospitals in the case of wounded people. In Finland, with which it was supposed that Mirsky could have nothing to do, the Russian policy has been greatly ameliorated, and astonishing to say, the Finnish National Diet has been called to meet this month and assurances have been given, for the first time, in the history of Russia, that it will meet again in five years. About the middle of November prominent Finlanders who were exiled by Plehve received permission to return home. The oppressive activity of the police has been relaxed. Banishment by administration order has been abolished. Hundreds of prisoners exiled to Siberia have been recalled. The Jews have received assur- ances of the dawning of a brighter day. Students' demonstra- tions are not suppressed by military power, and a part of the censorship has been removed from the Russian papers. It was the 31st of last August, when Finland was stirred with joy by the definite announcement that the Finnish As- sembly would be convened on the 6th of December. There had been great fear that this convention would be suppressed, and though the program to be taken up is not adequate, the simple fact that the four orders, in which the whole tradition of the Finns is bound up, are again to be called together, to- gether with the new and gracious manifesto of the Czar, pro- duced a profound impression. The decree of the Czar not only includes a meeting for this year, but also preparations for an assembly in three years to come, by which the consti- tutional provision of Finland, that the Assembly shall meet in periods of not less than five years, will have been fulfilled for the first time since the country has been under Russian sovereignty. It is felt that the step perhaps pointed to some cessation of continuous Russianization, which was carried on so steadily by Plehve. It certainly looks as though the prayers which were offered a year ago in many parts of the American Church for the relief of Finland were now in pro- cess of being fulfilled. Naturally a tremendous liberal rebound has occurred and hopes have been raised which cannot expect fulfillment, and 30 which may again bring on reaction. The bureaucracy has raised a storm of opposition against the new minister, and are using every possible weapon to undermine him. They have done their best to postpone the meeting of the. presidents of the provincial assembly and M. Pobiedonostzeff has warned the emperor that autocracy and orthodoxy will both probably be in danger if the present movement is not stopped promptly. AN illustration of the manner in which Russia has been dealing with her provinces, may be found in the rob- bery of the Armenian church, which took place in 1898. The Russian governor of the Caucasus made, propositions to his nation concerning the confiscation of the property of the Armenian church, naturally without the knowledge of the Catholikos of the said church. A commission, and subse- quently the Russian government itself, under Prince Nikola really advised against this project. But the governor general hated Armenia violently, and now turned to Plehve, who also declined to act in the. matter. From Plehve he turn- ed to the Czar, picturing the Armenians as revolutionaries and declaring that they were using the property of the church for revolutionary purposes. Minister Witte opposed any confiscation, but nevertheless, on June 12, 1903, the Czar ap- proved it. When this Russian intention became known in Armenia, broadsides were immediately published, threatening every clergyman with death who turned over the property or goods of the Armenian church into the Russian hands. Finally the procurator of the Synod of Edschmiatsim appeared before the. Catholikos with the imperial decree of Russia and gave him seven days to sign it. The latter replied that he was astonish- ed at this attack of Russia upon the rights of the church, and needed time to think. Four days later the procurator came again and reminded him of the imperial decree. The Catholikos showed him the door. Meantime he had called the bishops and arch-bishops and officials of the Armenian church together. They ranged themselves on the side of the Armenian people, and advised 3i the Catholikos not to sign the decree, and he did not. If the Russian government should persist, it was resolved that all the ecclesiastical officials from the Catholikos down should lay down their office. This conclusion was telegraphed to the governor of Cau- casia, and, at the same time, a telegram was sent to Von Plehve, asking for time for consideration. However, the delivery of the property had already begun. One of the Armenian cus- todians had turned over part of it, and a million marks, which had been deposited in the Russian bank, were absorbed by the government. The Catholikos protested that no one dare de- liver the property of the church without his consent, and he de- posed the offending official and sent him into a monastery for punishment. A telegram was sent to the Czar, asking him for mercy, but through Von Plehve, reply came that the de- crees were to be fulfilled, and if they were not, responsibility would fall upon the patriarchs. Meantime, the excitement was growing among the people. The custodians of church property were threatened with death if they gave it over. The patriarch of Constantinople telegraphed to the Catholikos that he had no right to hand over the Armenian church funds to the Russian government, that the same was the property of the whole Armenian nation and that many foundations belonging to non- Russian Armenians were included therein. On these, funds, which run up to about five hundred mil- lion of marks, the Armenian schools are supported, together with four seminaries and a number of high schools, and many institutions of mercy. The former minister of the interior had delivered the ulti- matum to the head of the Armenian church that if the funds were not handed over voluntarily the ministry would have to answer the question whether the Armenian church could con- tinue to exist on Russian territory. In sharp contrast with this act of Russia, Damianos of Jerusalem has loaned Alexieff a golden cross, which contains "a genuine piece of the Cross on which Christ was crucified." In the letter accompanying the gift the Patriarch says, "Nam- ing you as a knight of the Holy Grave of the Lord, from which 32 Christianity has originated, we give you in this golden cross a genuine piece of the Holy life-bringing wood, upon which the God-man and Redeemer has recognized us as the recipients of his endless blessings. And so may this Holy gift be a power of strength to you in the Holy duties that you are pursuing. Given in the Holy city of Jerusalem, March 15, 1904." THE centre of all Russian ferment is the Czar. Many are the opinions with regard to him. Under misrepre- sentation of his advisers, he has more than once been a severe oppressor, yet the world seems to be conscious of his kindly, humane and liberal intentions. His deeds have spoken for him. On the 10th of March, 1893, he issued the Ukase decreeing religious power and freedom of creed and worship throughout the dominions. This decree put an end to flog- ging and to Siberian exile, and subsequent decrees removed many of the most objectionable restrictions imposed upon his subjects. It was he also who organized the Hague Peace Con- ference in the face of the opposition of his counsellors. Nicholas is in many respects a noble ruler. He contents himself with the military rank of colonel, which he bore before he became the Czar. He is conscientious, deeply religious, and entirely free from the vices that contaminate royalty. He is wrapped up in his wife and children, and contrary to the popular belief takes an active part in the guidance of domestic and foreign affairs. He is opposed to the intervention of outside powers in his conflict with Japan. In order not to give any pretext for interference, he has kept over eighty ships shut up in the Black Sea and is debarred from their use. Although three ministers and other dignitaries have been murdered and many unsuccessful attempts at assassinations have been made, no attack has, as yet, been made upon the life of Nicholas since his accession to the crown. This could not be said of either of his predecessors. He has exonerated the Finns of blame for the assassina- tion of their tyrannical governor. On the recent occasion of the birth of his heir to the throne, he issued a manifesto which, the other day (December 14th), when the assassins of Plehve 33 were on trial, cut down their term of imprisonment materially. Sasoneff's sentence was penal servitude for life, and the Czar's manifesto reduced it to fourteen years. But there is another side to the picture. It seems to be almost beyond doubt that the Czar is arbitrary, perhaps filled with the spirit of vanity, or, perhaps it might be better to say, self-exaltation. As the peacemaker of mankind and the torch bearer of civilization among the Asiatic races, he has taken a high view of his mission here upon earth, but, at the same time, under the influence of officials who have known how to flatter him, the impoverishment of his subjects, the continuation of a course of tyranny, the undermining of legal forms, and the plunging of his nation into a great war, are parts of his respon- sibility. His point of view may be seen from the fact that in the rescript appointing the successor to Obolensky, the tyran- nical governor of Finland, the Czar eulogizes and commends him for his work of the russification of Finland, hopes that it will be continued, and believes that the only chance for the welfare of the Finns is in its ultimate success! The most recent information (December 22) pictures the Czar as greatly out of humor at the Zemstov members for asking for constitutional government. He has practically told them to go home and mind their own business. Nevertheless the Moscow town council on December 15 advocated popular control of the government, only to be officially rebuked by the governor of Moscow, and to be asked by Mirsky why it dis- cusses questions outside of its province. Meantime many of the members of the Zemstov are joining the "league of con- stitutional democracy" which in turn is in touch with the revo- lutionaries. Yet captain Clado, the Russian advocate at Paris, represents the Czar as desiring to give Russia a constitution. The situation is tense. NICHOLAS exercises rule over one hundred and thirty millions of persons. But it must also be remembered that he claims spiritual jurisdiction as the head of the millions more in the orthodox Greek Catholic church. In this respect, he resembles Pope Pius the Tenth, who on the 9th 34 • >f last August celebrated the first anniversary of the beginning of his reign, and whose ecclesiastical sway extends over two hundred millions of persons. Both the Czar and Pope are now in the midst of a grave crisis. We turn from the affairs that surround the head of the Greek church to those en- compassing the Roman Pontiff. THE year 1004 in Roman Catholic circles will ever be fa- mous For the determined effort of the Pope to reform the often very flippant music of the Roman Church, and, in most elaborate manner, to introduce the old Gregorian Church music, to the entire exclusion of every other mode. As the subject is a large one, and very instructive, we shall not attempt to deal with it in this survey, but hope at some future time to present an article on the subject. A few weeks ago, on the 8th of December, we believe, it was fifty years since the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, declaring the Virgin birth of Alary the Mother of Jesus, was promulgated by the Pope. One would not suppose, with the advance of modern ideas, that a dogma of this kind would be recognized with enthusiasm throughout the world, but the fact is that, beginning with the Sunday preceding the date, immense throngs, in some instances, the whole Roman population of a city, attended the churches. In Philadelphia, for instance, it is estimated that more than 60,000 crowded into the Cathedral on the last Sunday afternoon, for performing the devotions of the Jubilee, which included three visits to the Cathedral, where piayers had to be offered for Pope Pius X. Another instance of loyalty to the Pope, striking because of its mediaeval character, was the penance imposed by him upon Prince Frederick of Schonberg-Waldenburg and his di- vorced wife, the Princess Alice of Bourbon. These two fash- ionable devotees of Paris and French watering places humbly started oi'i, last September, to Rome on a pilgrimage, which was a condition to the reconciliation between the two brought about by the efforts of his Holiness. They traveled in simple 35 garb, the prince shod with sandals, and stopped at very insig- nificant hotels on the road. Even during wet weather they went on their journey, as it must be made without a break. The princess took with her only three books, the Holy Bible, the "Narrative of Jane Shore," who atoned for her sins by walking through the streets of London, garbed in a winding sheet and holding a lighted taper in her hand; and a guide book with a map of the country. It is intimated thai these ijuiet hours on the road to Rome were regarded by the princess as the calmest and most peaceful in her otherwise stormy mar- ried life. If the Pope were aide to impose similar penances upon the divorced persons in America, hotel and inn keepers throughout the land might rise up to call him blessed ; and the country itself might be saved from great impending harm. On the nth of last March Pius the X issued an encyclical on the occasion of the anniversary of Gregory the Great. Af- ter eulogizing Gregory he compares the present conditions of the church with the church of those days. "Making a survey from the height of the Vatican, we find that we have as much or more to fear than Gregory the Great. Tempests threaten on every hand, the well arranged houses of our enemies threaten us on every side. We are deserted, and without the human instrumentalities to fight the enemy or to repel the storm." It is modern science particularly that threaten : "Every supernatural dispensation is denied, and on that ac- count the possibility of the miracle. Even the proofs that set forth the existence of a God are contested. From this rlenial of the supernatural the postulate of a false historic criticism arises. The dogmas of faith are simply erased from the pages of history without any further historical examination." Sine science has adopted this false method, there is no law anymore to prevent critics from destroying everything that does not suit them in Holy Scriptures, or that contradicts the theses they de- sire to prove. If a supernatural dispensation is defender], the sources of ecclesiastical history are built up on an entirely different foundation, and the writers of these sources are made to say what the critics desire, and not what the writers intend." Hence the Pope asks his bishops to emphasize the supernatural 36 alike before peasant and learned man. Following the example of Gregory, the education and choice of the clergy and of bishops is to become a matter of particular care. THE poor Pope has gotten into difficulties with the French Republic which are more serious in character, and per- haps in result, than any that have occurred to the Papal See since the day of the liberation of Italy, and of the success- ful establishment of relationship with the German empire. Although the French Republic has recently become more and more antagonistic to the Roman clergy and the established Church, yet the actual rupture which occurred between the Third Republic and the Vatican is the result of a specific act that took place four years ago. On January 26, 1900, Pope Leo XIII saw fit to "invite" Bishop Geay of Levalle to resign bis office immediately. This Papal "invitation" was not is- sued in any spirit of sweet gentleness and peace characteristic of a Vicar of Christ upon earth, but was given, it was plainly said, "in order that more extreme steps might not be neces- sary." The resignation had been demanded because of certain facts "reported and unhappily proved beyond dispute, demon- strating it to be impossible for the Bishop to continue to exer- cise his functions with proper authority and efficacy." On February the 2d, the Bishop, after one week's reflec- tion, replied, unequivocally resigning his office. But a little later he withdrew the resignation, and made it conditional upon his being translated to another diocese. The Vatican would not agree to this condition because the circumstances which rendered Monsignor Geay to be Bishop of Levalle rendered him equally unfit for another diocese. For four years the whole matter continued at a deadlock. For, Pope Leo XIII, under the leadership of Cardinal Ram- polla, had set it down as a fundamental part of his policy to conciliate rather than oppose the French Republic ; and, how- ever firm the external position taken by the Vatican, it would not, under Rampolla, precipitate a crisis. 37 But now came a new and unexpected chapter in the history of the Papacy. Leo the XIII died. Cardinal Rampolla did not succeed Leo XIII as heir to the Papal throne. For Aus- tria, in the interests of the Triple Alliance, and in order to pre- vent the Rampolla policy of conciliation with France, had de- termined to defeat the Cardinal's candidacy. Rampolla zvas defeated and Austria won its great triumph in the election of Pius X. The significance of this triumph can hardly, even now, be estimated. The Vatican no longer beholds its chief menace in the Triple Alliance. The fundamental aim of its policy is no longer to punish Germany and especially Austria, for having entered into an alliance with Italy. Neither does it consider it to its interest to sacrifice the inner claims of the Roman Church for the sake of conciliating the anti-clerical Third Re- public of France. Instead of a good, broadminded-politician, like Rampolla, France now has to deal with a good narrow-minded Roman churchman. As the Paris Temps early predicted : "The intellectual horizon of Pius X, will be,, we fear, that of a good priest in the country or in a village, who reads his> Bible in the Vulgate — preferably in the extracts supplied for him in his breviary. He has given ub a melancholy proof of this in the condemnation of the, learned writings of the Abbe Loisy." The dictum of the Temps in this connection, by the way, is an amazing thing. It declares : "Nothing is more dangerous in a Pope than piety when it is not sufficiently assisted by a large and independent learning." And most astonishing of all is the following sentimental prophecy with which the Temps concludes its estimate of Pius : "Everything proclaims the fact that great Rome will serve as the mausoleum of mediaeval Ca- tholicism, as it served as the mausoleum of the Roman Empire. Every day, I fancy I hear amid the city's sad and solemn ruins the voice which cried aloud over the waters of the Grecian arch- ipelago, at the fall of paganism, 'Great Pan is dead!' " Think of the exquisite classic symbolism that must thus grate on Pius' narrow ears ! The Parisian idea of a good Pope is that of "Great Pan"! And it mourns the ideal papacy as dead. 38 And no wonder! For, when the tidings arrived that Pius X was elected, France knew it might expect no more indul- gent humoring on the part of the Vatican. The Vatican makes the point that there was no political motive in the summons to the Bishop, and that the resignation was requested entirely on personal, ecclesiastical and moral grounds. If we may legitimately infer that the authority which the Concordat gives to the French government over every ecclesiastical appointment is for the sake of the politi- cal integrity of France, and not for the purpose of enabling a civil government to meddle with questions of faith and morals. The point made by the Vatican is strong. The case of the Bishop of Levalle is not an isolated one. Perhaps as many as eight bishops have been told by the Vatican to repair to Rome, or resign, while the French government restrained them from doing either. There are in truth some dozen bishops, it is said, whose lives are not consistent with their faith. One of these has been suspected of membership in a lodge of free- masons,* while another is not sound on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and it is intimated that other bishops need investigation on grounds of concubinage and simony. Shall then the Pope, if he has no other concern than the best in- *To illustrate the nature of some of these troubles more clearly, let us give the following instance: On the 21st of February sixty-one Seminary students left the Dijon Seminary under the pretext that they did not feel prepared 10 receive the ordination which was to be given them by Bishop Le Nordez. The director of the Seminary had requested the bishop to postpone the ordination which was to take place at the end of February. The bishop came in person and was listened to respectfully by the students, but after he had gone was informed by the director that they were not yet convinced and the ordination would have to be postponed. At this the bishop summoned the young men to appear before him and said he was obliged to punish the leaders. The students withdrew in silence but all of them left the Seminary. Then the French Minister of War stepped in and ordered the Corps Com- mander to send all the students who had broken their vow into the army. This brought all the students back to the, Seminary on a double quick, and the bishop now had to ask the Minister of War to recall the order which would send them into the army. W T hen the Minister of War had assured himself that all the students had returned, he recalled the order!. The cause of the disturbance was said to have been that the bishop was a Free Mason. The proof of this consisted in the fact that the bishop occasionally visited the Rue. Cadet in Paris. Now there was a Masonic Temple in the Rue Cadet. Moreover on the bishop's coat-of-arms there are the three wheels of the arms of Bossuet. This looks very much like a Masonic em- blem. Still further the bishop's name is Albert and the letter A looks like a Masonic emblem. Worst of all the legend on the bishop'si coat-of-arms is: Pro templo et patria stantes. This is taken to be an admission that the bishop is for the Masonic Temple!" 39 terests of the church, allow himself to be turned aside from his duty by considerations relatingto French secular interests? "My duty," Pius has said, "is to give good bishops to France. Bet- ter no bishops at all than inadequate bishops." At the same time, it must be admitted, that by his persist- ent threat of deposition of bishops who have been (prudently) loyal to Gallic traditions and the republic, the Pope has been able to make effective practical reply to the scandalous (i.e. in Papal eyes) trip of President Loubet to Rome, to the expul- sion of the unauthorized religious orders, to the suppression of teaching by the religous orders, to the firm determination of M. Combes himself to choose without interference, from among the clergy of France, the bishops intended for Papal in- vestiture. No matter whether Premier or Pope be in the wrong, if through this test case, the Concordat should be dissolved, it will entirely alter the relation of the Church to the French Re- public, and the Roman Church may be obliged to become wholly dependent upon the voluntary contributions of the faith- ful members of the Church for its support. But there is a further development to record in this strik- ing political drama. Since the extreme step was at last taken, and diplomatic relations between Paris and the Vati- can have been severed, the Bishop of Levalle, curiously enough, obeyed the summons to Rome. He explains that now since the position of the Republic has been established, he is free to go to fhe Vatican! And the Pope is far from free to deal with the Bishop on his merits! It will be very interesting now to observe what effect the case will have upon the French government. Should he be convicted of offences against morals, the question will arise whether the French government will insist on maintaining that the Church is incompetent to enforce the moral law among its own priests without civil as- sent. No wonder the Pope, who must now act with a view to political policy, and not to the personal character of the Bishop, has declared that since this Bishop (so patriotic to France, and so loyal to Rome!) has gone to Rome, the Pope 40 will grant the original condition laid down by the bishop in his resignation, and will make him a bishop in good standing over some other diocese. Either the "facts proved beyond dispute" were, untrue, or else there is an ulterior reason suf- ficiently strong to move the Pope to alter his original position. All the bishops in France are interested in the vital ec- clesiastical question here raised. The Bishop of Quimper and Leon believes that while the complete separation of Church and state will mean a loss to the Church in numbers, it will become, a gain in faith, in spiritual strength and authority. Though there will be no state subsidy to fall back on, the con- tributions of the faithful will make up all deficiencies, and this Bishop feels .confident that if the Concordat should be abro- gated and what he terms "persecution" should become severe, he would be much better able to provide for his clergy than he can now. On the other hand the Bishop of Troves claim? that the separation would be "ruinous" both for the Church of France and for the country itsetf. For, he argues, even after the separation, the state would not leave the Church alone, but would continue to oppress and persecute it more than ever. But the Bishop of Troves should console, himself with the memories of what took place in Germany under Bismarck, and how finally the Catholic Church grew more rapidly than ever, and Bismarck was obliged to go to Canossa. Since midsummer the. tone of the anticlerical press and populace has become bitterly abusive. The Gaidois, the stoutest champion of the Vatican in Paris, has declared : "This time it will be a momentous struggle, a foundation shock." Religious processions have been stoned, churches and cathedrals have been entered and defaced and emblems of faith have been publicly mocked. Yet the Pope, moves on, and Premier Combes likewise. Two bishops whom the Premier sought to shield behind the concordat, have practically been ousted from their sees, one of them going to Rome. Meanwhile the political relation- ships came to a clash. The minister of Public worship forbade the Pope to send communications and to give advice to pre- lates over whom he has disciplinary powers. Then the 41 Vatican took one. step more and prepared to deprive France of the honorable right to protect Roman Catholic interests in the Orient. If the papal journals are correct, the Pope will not flinch. He regards the Vatican's war with France, not as a legal contest as to the interpretation of the Concordat, but as the beginning of a moral uplift of the whole Roman Cath- olic clergy. He is said to have the ideal of the great Hilde- brand before him in his present vigorous attempt to reform the worship and the morals of the Church. Italy might be as promising a field for this work as France, since at present a French bishop can not even go to Rome without the per- mission of the Government which has named him, and which requires of him an oath to serve the French government be- fore all others. Thus do we find once again the old, old story of the struggle for balance of power between Church and state, to be prominent in modern France, even as it still exists in some form throughout the world, here in America for instance, and likewise in Germany and Austria ; in the conflicting claims of Church and state for the right of the control of the study time and formative period in the life of the growing child. The French Parliament reassembled about the middle of last October and the policy announced by President Combes included the abandonment of the French protectorate in the Orient, the abrogation of the Concordat, the separation of church and state. President Combes himself has asserted a radical incompatibility, not merely of temper, but of princi- ples, between church and state, that must lead to divorce. Yet it is his desire to bring it about in a conciliatory manner : "Whether we have to do with buildings devoted to worship, or with pen- sions to be allotted to the present holders of posts under the Concordat, there is no reasonable concession, no sacrifice in conformity with justice that I, for my part, am not disposed to advise, in order that the separation of church and state may inaugurate a new and lasting era of social peace, by guaranteeing to religious communions real liberty under the undisputed sov- ereignty of the state." The latest news from France at this writing is a sensa- tion, which has resulted in dealing a heavy blow to the Combes ministry. It appears that the French government had in- augurated a spy system intended to work for the exclusion of 42 "clerical" officers from the higher grades in the French Army. This secret anti-Roman activity in army circles was exposed in the Paris Figaro, and brought on a crisis. The ministry escaped entire defeat only by two votes, and by the inter- vention of a socialist leader in its behalf. The movement for separation has been checked, but not suppressed. Indeed a government commission has prepared a draft-bill in the interests of the policy of separation and President Combes, addressing- the commission and approving the bill, has expressed himself most emphatically on funda- mental principles, declaring that while there is no contradic- tion in principle between monarchy and the church, since both are inspired by authority and tradition, the contradiction be- tween church and democracy is inevitable. He goes so far as to declare that, "the fundamental principles of a democracy are the negation of authority, of tradition, and of divine right." He charges the Church with showing sympathy for monarchies "in view of the retrograde character of this form of government ; and she. has always manifested an invincible aversion for the Republic, a government of free investigation, which opposes reason to dogma, the sovereignty of the people to the authority of tradition." President Combes directly charges the church with not having begun to stand on her own independent rights until the state became a republic and he at least attempts to show that the Roman Church, in view of its doctrinal position, can- not tolerate any republican form of government, because the Pope has political doctrines and revelations of an inspired character, which must interfere with a government, which is outside of the range of its influence. He charges that the late papal Syllabus "declares war on civilization, on liberty, on democracy, on all contemporary thought." Here is a hint which the American people, and, par- ticularly, American politicians and journals might do well to ponder. While not sympathizing in full with the utterance of Combes, we quote a paragraph of it in full for our readers, as follows : 43 "The history of the, past will serve us as a lesson for the future. It teaches us that any new Concordat will be violated as the old one was. And, in fact, the establishment of the republic coincided with the revolu- tion introduced by Pius IX into the church. This revolution consists, as you know, in the fact that the personal decisions of the Pope are invested henceforth with the infallibility which belonged to the whole church as- sembled in council. The religious, political, and social doctrines of the Pope constitute so many revelations, for the Holy Ghost inspires their au- thor. Such is the new doctrine set forth in the encyclical 'Quanta cura' and of which the Syllabus is the applied commentary. The Syllabus, in fact, declares war on civilization, on liberty, on democracy, on all contemporary thought. I invite all of you who have not read it, or who have read it only superficially, to study it attentively. Those whom the preconceived ideas of faith do not prejudice against the suggestions of reason will see how this initial doctrine of contemporary Catholicism renders out of the question any durable and serious accord between church and state." These very serious utterances on one of the most funda- mental questions of the day, affecting every nation, including the United States, that comes into contact with the Roman curia, has led to a new study in Europe of the Roman church as a temporary power. Anatole France, a celebrated member of the French Academy, thus sets forth the Roman theory : "The Roman Church is at once a temporal and spiritual power. She rests her right to rule the world upon the cano- nical evangelists, upon the tradition of the primitive church, upon the concession of Constantine, upon the sacred cano- nical books and the sacred decretals. "Whether the Roman Church now possesses a territorial domain or simply dwells in a palace, she is a state. She is a temporal power distinguished from the Powers with which she negotiates in that the latter have set boundaries to their sovereignty, whereas the church can recognize no boundaries to her sovereignty without repudiating her origin, changing her nature, without betraying herself and contradicting her- self. In opposition to the other Powers, which, because their feet rest upon that which is human, recognize the. conditions which man and nature impose upon them by subordinating their will, their disposition, and their laws to the force of cir- cumstance, the church must not yield any of her power, which, as she always teaches, was given to her as a sacred bequest. Nor should she yield rights which she professes to have re- ceived from heaven. 44 "The very nature of this institution, as the church ex- pounds it to us, invests her with civil and political authority over the whole world. Because she is a spiritual power, she is a temporal power. Because souls should be subject to her, she undertakes to subject bodies to herself. And in fact it is difficult to imagine a domination of the spirit without a domi- nation of the flesh. It is true, that the church raises herself above the things of this world. It is equally true that she em- braces these things and permeates them. She rules the world, but she is of the world. . . . "The church makes it her mission to save the world, and to this end she has prescribed certain formulas and customs, has set forth rules of life for the union of the sexes, for food, days of rest, feasts, and education of children, the right to write, speak, and think. To make sure of the carrying out of these rules — which, so far from affecting the purely spiritual domain only, come to a great extent within the police power of the state — the church must exercise a right of control over the government of all nations and hence must assume a place in the government of all peoples." The Bishop of Seez, in a pastoral letter in August, 1904, has strikingly defined this exalted and special mission : "The church has inalienable rights over men as well as over So- ciety. She holds these rights from God and no one can take them away from her. . . . She is the. authority of God upon earth, and this authority must be exercised with reference to souls, which are subject to her, with reference, to bodies in all questions that are questions of conscience, with reference to all social questions that affect the spiritual domain. "Every duty implies a rig"ht. As the church alone possesses truth, she undertook the task of propagating it and of opposing antithetical error. This task she can not fulfill with- out supporting herself by means of temporal principles, or to use her own language, without making use of the secular arm. . . . The. Pope is sovereign. Kings, emperors, are his representatives. The Pope, to employ a phrase of Pope Innocent's, is to the emperor what the sun is to the moon." . If this doctrine, announced so frequently within the last 45 twelve months, and practiced for centuries by Rome, be true, is it not also true that the President, the government and the people of America, when it comes to a crucial ques- tion between church and state, must necessarily be estimated by Rome as "the moon," of which she herself is "the sun?" "The official organ of the Vatican, the Osservatore Ro- mano, declares regarding the relations which should subsist between church and state : "Separation of the two perfect societies, constituted such by God, is a monstrosity, and to this monstrosity the church can not adjust herself in Catholic states and has to combat it." And on the attitude of the church toward liberty and toleration, the organ of the Vatican says: "Freedom of the press is an error condemnable and condemned. It is contrary to sense in philosophy, and in theology a monstrosity, in the same manner as freedom of worship and of conscience, and of thought." "Distinguishing rationally, there emerges the acceptable, and accepted maxim of toleration of freedom of the press, of worship, and of conscience on the part of the church, and even invoked, as hypothesis. Toleration is one thing, approval is another." . . . In plain words, freedom of conscience, worship, thought, speech and press, are an error, interdicted in Catholic coun- tries, and tolerated, but not approved elsewhere. What the Roman church tolerates, but does not approve, she will set her- self at the opportune, moment to remove. Perhaps our readers may have forgotten the remarkable character of the terms which the state and the church entered into, when, in 1801, the Concordat, or treaty governing the relations of France and the Papacy, received the signatures of Napoleon, the First Consul, and of Pope Pius VII. The Concordat proclaims full liberty to the Catholic-Apostolic- Roman religion in France. But the church must adapt itself and its worship to such regulations as seem to be necessary to the government for public order. And the so-called "Organic Articles," which Napoleon as Consul added in 1802 when the Concordat was made public, further emphatically declares that, "'No bull, no breve, rescript, decree, order, nor any other mis- sive of the Roman court, even if it concerns private persons, may be received, printed, made public, or in any wise given power in France without the authority of the French govern- ment. No one, whether he called himself nuntius, legate, 4 6 vicar, or commissioner of the Apostolic See, or whether he use any other title, can exercise any of the functions pertaining to the Gallican Church on French soil, or elsewhere, without such authorization." It is true that the "Organic Articles," to which these very decided limitations belong, have never been formally recognized by the Vatican, but have been granted only silent tolerance. It may be remarked in passing that these articles still retain the old national name, "Gallican Church," presumably to show that the ideal of a national self- existing Catholic Church for France bad not entirely disap- peared. As to the filling of vacant bishoprics, the state chooses them from among those priests fitted to discharge such functions. The Pope bestows upon them the canonical institution. The appointing power then is really the minister of worship of the republic, and the statement has been made that for many years this vast power has been in the hands of a single individual in France. One of the most important of the stipulations of the Con- cordat, to the Roman Church, is that the French government is to devote the sum of ten millions each year to the stipends of the bishops and parish priests. If this should be repealed, the French clergy, like our own American priests, would be dependent on the voluntary contributions of their flocks, and probably as a result, there would be a serious decline in the amount of subscriptions annually sent by the French govern- ment to Rome for the maintenance of the Papacy. THIS brings us to the Papal finances. For finances have played a much larger part in the political policy of the Papacy than the uninitiated world at large supposes. Only a short time ago it leaked out that the real object of the recent visit of Cardinal Satolli to America (the object was un- known even to the Roman episcopy and clergy), was the secur- ing of a large sum of money for the Peter's Pence fund of the Pope at Rome. It is stated that the amount that Satolli laid at the feet of grateful Pius X exceeded two million francs. This was a fine sum to add to the Vatican funds. And yet it by no means suffices to allay the financial stringency of 47 the treasury of the one who claims to be the only Vicar of Him, Who had not where to lay His head. The diminution of the amount of Peter's Pence annually sent to Rome from Eng- land, and the seizure of Rome by the Italian government, thus removing from the Pope's coffers the wealth of the city which had always been his principal source of revenue, has greatly reduced the working capital of the pontiff on which he de- pends for a sure income. When Pius IX died, the capital of the Pope amounted to £ 1,200,000, but Leo XIII became so exceedingly anxious to increase the capital that he was in- duced to invest in several very risky financial enterprises, which ended in a severe disaster in 1893, when the Holy See lost £400,000. Leo, who was an uncommonly good representa- tive of a close fisted business man, felt this reverse most keenly, and after ten months of strenuous struggle, told one of his car- dinals a few months before his death that half of the money had been recovered. By this he meant that he had again brought his capital up to £1,000,000, by saving interest; and out of the offerings made directly to him in the twenty-five years of his Pontificate, he had saved £600,000 more; so that he really left more to his successor than he had received from his predecessor. And yet in addition our economical pontiff had spent no less than £2,000,000 in church buildings, restora- tions and works of art, having lavished £280,000 alone upon the apse and the repairs in St. John Lateran in Rome. When, consequently, Satolli returned and laid his bag of 2,000,000 francs at the foot of the Papal chair, it was no won- der that pious Pius X patted him approvingly on the head, and said to him, "Good son. Thou art worthy of thy spiritual parentage." Yet for all this the papacy has never been able to forget the day when the treasures of Rome herself were poured into its lap rather than into the coffers of the Italian government. But if the difficulties with the French Republic should prove disastrous in the final result, there is still one way open for the Pope. It turns out that recently the Vatican has been cultivating a much more cordial relationship with the Italian government, than has ever been the case before. If the Holy 4 8 Father can bring himself to forgive (at least temporarily) Italy for the wrongs done through so many years to the Prisoner of the Vatican, there is still six hundred thousand dollars a year in the Italian treasury , at the Pope's disposal ; and not as a stipend, but as the quid pro quo for the property of the Papacy which was taken by the state in 1870. It really looks very much as though the Pope would bring himself to accept this hitherto despised gift from the hated Ital- ian government. The Holy Father would certainly be in a more independent position, and be able to maintain the pres- tige and discipline of the Church in France much more effec- tively, if he preferred this amount to the ten million francs which has been furnished annually to the Gallican clergy by the French government under the terms of the Concordat. It is noteworthy that the pope, a few months ago, used the influence of the Roman Church to preserve Victor Emanuel upon his throne. It has been four years since Victor Emanuel succeeded his father to the throne of Italy, and since that time the legislature has never been dissolved. But when, this Fall, the socialist leaders declared a paralyzing strike which tied up the whole, country, simply for the purpose of giving a public demonstration of their power, the King resolved to dissolve the parliament and to appeal to the country by means of a gen- eral election. It was an election for the throne itself, rather than for the cabinet. Now, ever since the Papacy has lost its temporal power, that is since 1870, Roman Catholics in Italy have been forbidden by the Vatican to take part in parliamen- tary elections. Much pressure was brought upon the last two popes to withdraw this order, but of no avail. Pius the X has been known as favoring the participation of Catholics in par- liamentary elections, and while he did not revoke the prohibi- tion issued by his predecessors as to voting, yet, as a matter of fact, an immense Catholic vote was cast in favor of the House of Savoy. For, instructions had been sent through the bishops to the clergy throughout the kingdom, authoriz- ing the faithful to go to the polls and vote against the declared foe of the Church, that is to say against the socialists, and consequently in favor of King Emanuel. By this move the 49 pope has not only gained a great victory over the socialists against the Church, but he has also supported the conserva- tive power, that is the monarchy in Italy, and thus apparently has taken a step in the direction of reconciling the Church and the State. It is the first time that the monarchy and the Church have united at the polls against socialism. By way of most striking contrast with the Papal hierarchy the proceedings of the Congress of Freethinkers, which this Fall held a session in Rome in the Roman College, in the face of the Vatican, and which was largely composed of French del- egates, was an extraordinary spectacle. Though really a fiasco, and composed to a large extent of French delegates who took advantage of cheap tickets provided by French rail- way companies to visit Rome, the spectacle it presented was picturesque. The chairman is represented as wearing the leather cap of a motor chauffeur while presiding. Prof. Haeckel is said to have made a speech wearing a huge felt hat. M. Berthelot, the French Minister and intimate friend of Renan, sent a letter to the Congress in which he advised real tolerance of liberty of thought, whether Christian or not. This is taken to be a rebuke and disapproval of Premier Combes' measures for prosecuting the Catholic Associations in France. AVERY interesting minor dispute between Roman Italy and the antiquarians of Great Britain has been raised by the demand of the chapter of the Ascoli Cathedral, supported by the Italian government, that J. Pierpont Mor- gan should restore to the Cathedral at Ascoli the cope which disappeared from thence a few years ago and which Mr. Mor- gan recently purchased from professional art collectors and placed on exhibition with other of his treasures at the South Kensington Museum, London. The British, it seems, unanimously dispute the Italian de- mand for restitution. Even the Roman Catholics in England are against it. Since the cope is of English workmanship, and a superb specimen of the Opus Anglican embroidery, fa- 5o mous in mediaeval art history, it would be more just, it is claimed, that the vestment remain in England. The fact that it was presented by Pope Nicholas IV, somewhere about A. D. 1290, to the Cathedral of his native town of Ascoli, and has been preserved there since, does not weigh with the English mind. The British claim that no one knows how it came into the hands of Nicholas IV, who may have purchased it inno- cently enough. The incident opens a very large question with reference to the ethics of historical property. If the claim of the Italians is to be admitted, and the possession of art treasures and his- torical relics is to be determined by their original title, the museums and churches of Europe, and the public galleries of America would perhaps be morally obliged to give up their most precious treasures. Thus the British Museum ought restore to the Greek government the famous Elgin marbles, which were purchased in a legitimate way by Lord Elgin who in turn disposed of them to the British Museum. Yet had these marbles been left with the other sculptures at the Par- thenon, they would have been most lamentably injured by want of proper care. On the same principle, the Louvre at Paris would be compelled to give back Murillo's Immaculate Con- ception to Spain, whence it was carried off by the French Mar- shal Soult when Joseph Bonaparte was on the Spanish throne. The first Napoleon and his generals despoiled all public insti- tutions and palaces of the countries through which his armies went ; and after his downfall, they found their way through va- rious hands by means of sale until they reached their present destination in the palaces and museums of countries in the old world. Since the battle of Waterloo, the forcible appropriation of valuable articles in wars between civilized nations has been abandoned. But the practice still continues in conflicts with Asiatic and African nations. Windsor Castle is said to be full of priceless porcelains, silks, enamels, etc., taken in this man- ner. The splendid treasures of King Theban of Burmah ; the personal valuables of the two kings of Ashanti ; the crown of Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia, are at'the South Kensington 5i Museum. Many splendid jeweled ornaments taken from the Indian Empire, are preserved at Windsor Castle. The Water- loo gallery of Windsor Castle contains gold and silver, much of which was used for sacramental purposes in past ages by the Roman Catholic Church ; and was taken in the days of the Spanish Armada, when the British ships plundered and sacked the churches of the Spanish main. Emperor William only four years ago received as a portion of the plunder from Peking a number of very interesting astronomical instruments several hundred years old ; and these are now one of the attrac- tions at Potsdam. The churches of Europe themselves con- tain a great many relics and memorials which were undoubt- edly removed by violence or in an unlawful manner from the place of their original ownership. If the question respecting original ownership were carried consistently to its deepest source, it would at last reach the basis of all permanent owner- ship, viz., territorial possession ; and the right, for instance, of Americans to their property, which originally had been taken from the Indians, might be disputed on ethical grounds ; while the colonial possessions of Italy, Germany, France, Rus- sia, Spain and Great Britain, would hang trembling in the bal- ance. In our opinion, while possession is not nine-tenths of the moral law, and twenty years possession is not sufficient on moral grounds to establish legitimate ownership ; yet, if any generation of men finds the actual custody of alien property to be actually vested in its hands, other questions, in addition to that of original title, enter into the consideration of the problem. Mr. Roosevelt puts things right when he somewhere declares that the justification for any other than original owner- ship must ultimately rest chiefly on the better preservation and usefulness with which the custodians in fact are able to surround a property, and we may add, to make it serve its highest pur- pose. Grounds such as these would be totally unlawful if de- clared operative in the seizure of property ; but we may apply them, after long periods of historical interruption, to the re- tention of property. The questions as to whether Lutheran- ism has morally forfeited title to the Old Swedes' Church at Wicaco; whether old German foundations can be claimed by 52 English descendants ; whether the endowments made for an orthodox institution can be) morally used by incumbents who no longer teach in accord with the old foundations, are instances, speaking legally, of the principles that underlie a proper dis- position of Mr. Morgan's embroidered mediaeval cope. Since writing the above, it has been announced that Mr. Mor- gan has concluded to present the cope to Italy. This is good sense. It first of all teaches doctrinaires and theorists that possession legally belongs to Mr. Morgan, and that if he parts with it, it is not as a matter of legal right, but as a gift. Sec- ond, Great Britain's only claim is that the cope is "of English workmanship." The British cannot point out any original owner, nor any chain of title. They would not be able to prove that the "English workmanship" had not been done on Italian soil, or purchased (as German paramenta to-day are purchased in America) with Italian money. On the other hand Italy can point to a definite claimant, the Chapter of Ascoli, and to an uninterrupted chain of possession and safe custodianship through six centuries. Many vague and sweep- ing ecclesiastical and political claims of the British and of other people would vanish under the application of a little business sense. Here, for instance, is the Roman archbishop of Chicago, who a year ago, startled the country with his dictum : "The new world was discovered by the Catholics and the Cross was planted in the name of the Church. We cannot get it out of our heads that Catholics will yet claim the new world again." If their second rule is to be as corrupt as their first was, Amer- ica may well pray that the day desired by the Bishop be post- poned. Yet the Bishop declared that the national constitu- tion has been made more secure by the increase of Catholicism in this country, and he pleads for the establishment of a subsidi- ary system of public schools "for the benefit of the minority, and which should be paid for by the state, but controlled by the Church." He declared that the rule requiring public school teachers to have normal school training is tyranny. The fun- damental error of the age, said he, is liberalism. Liberalism delegates to the state all rights, and this where the state and 53 church conflict. "The education of the child should rest with the church and not with the state." The archbishop is a Canadian by birth, 50 years of age, and he handles this vital question of the day very much as a man with a keen insight, but narrow outlook, would be prompt- ed to do. It is entirely true that the state has not all right to the child,, but it is also true that the state has some right, that is a secular right over the child. It is not true that Pro- testants are undertaking through the present public school sys- tem to prevent the Catholic children from becoming firmly cemented to their church, or that the public school system is attempting to prevent the growth of the Church ; but it is true that Protestants are opposed to the appropriation of public mo- neys for the teaching of religion. It is true that the state should offer an education to the minority as well as the ma- jority ; but it is not true that the Roman Catholic minority is the only minority ; and that the minority would be satisfac- torily provided for if Romanism had its way and its wants were supplied. That sound constitutional Americanism is not always fur- thered by the Roman Church is evident from a number of facts. Last March ., for instance, a very curious suit was brought into the civil Tribunal of Rome against the Supreme head of the Jesuit Order, Lodovico Martin. It is an action attempting to recover expenses said to have been incurred for services ren- dered in destroying the separatist movement of the Roman Catholics in the United States under the alleged leadership of Archbishop Ireland and the Paulist fathers. The plaintiff avers that the work he did was undertaken with the approval of the Jesuit general and upon his promise to pay for it. In this action the plaintiff affirms that the Paulist fathers were organized to take away 10,000,000 American Catholics from the jurisdiction of Rome. The plaintiff claims that the Jesuits made unsuccessful attempts to oppose this new move- ment until his project was put into operation. It was the ob- ject of the new movement, according to the plaintiff, to extend the influence of the Monroe Doctrine "to the practice of the Roman Catholic faith." "Various priests and their followers 54 accepted the reform movement inspired by the Spiritualism of the so-called Patilists, who preached direct relations between God and man, without any priestly intervention." This Paulist movement aimed at the independence of American CatJwlics over all foreign influences, including the Papacy. It is claimed to have received the support of the Federal government, headed by President McKinley, and took as its motto, "America for Americans," and became known as Americanism. At the critical moment the plaintiff, the Roman corre- spondent of the New York World, perceived the great danger to the Holy See, especially as the Jesuits were unable to cope with it, and after gaining abundant information through secret agents from America, he went to the head of the Jesuit Order and explained his plan for the defence of the Roman Church, which included the cooperation of the Jesuits by having them induce the Pope to issue an encyclical against Americanism and to discipline Archbishop Ireland "the leader of the reform ideas." Then the plaintiff was to induce American correspond- ents to censure the Papal attitude, which he would defend, through a newspaper to be published in Rome. On Febru- ary 4th, 1889, the plaintiff issued his Italian-English paper called "True American Catholic," which he distributed widely. On the January following the Pope issued his Encyclical against Americanism, and thus, "the Hydra of Americanism was crushed ; the victory of the Holy See was complete." The only evidence that seems to legally connect the head of the Jesuit order with a plan of this kind was an interview which he admits, and a statement made by him as follows : "There are good deeds that we compensate." We give this episode, not with any idea that the plaintiff could make good his claims, but as an insight into the possi- bilities and ways of working things through the Jesuits in the Roman Church of America. One of the genuine religious sensations of the year was the public renunciation by a French Countess, formerly the American Miss Mary G. Caldwell, of the Romish faith. Miss Caldwell lias been the founder and the leading patron of the Roman university at Washington, and her case awakened great 55 interest. The Associated Press published the following in- terview : • "Yes, it is true that I have left the Roman Catholic Church. Since I have been living in Europe my eyes have been opened to what that church really is and to its anything but sanctity. "But the trouble goes much further back than this. Being naturally religious, my imagination was early caught by the idea of doing something to lift the church from the lowly position which it occupied in America, so I thought of a university or higher school where its clergy could be educated, and, if possible, refined. Of course in this I was greatly influenced by Bishop Spalding, of Peoria, who represented it to me as one of the greatest works of the day. "When I was twenty-one I turned over to them one-third of my fortune ior that purpose. But for years I have been trying to rid myself of the subtle yet overwhelming influence of a church which pretended not only to the privilege of being 'the only true church,' but of being alone able to open the gates of heaven to a sorrowful, sinful world. At last my honest Pro- testant blood has asserted itself and I now forever repudiate and cast off 'the yoke of Rome.' " It will be remembered that Miss Caldwell was the daugh- ter of a wealthy citizen of Louisville, Kentucky, who became a Roman Catholic shortly before his death. At his death the daughters were placed in the care of Catholic friends, and Bishop Spalding was their guardian and the administrator of their father's large estate. Miss Caldwell became interested in the new project of having a great Catholic university in America and offered to endow the proposed institution. Her first gift was a half-million dollars. She purchased 80 acres on the edge of the city, turned the land into a park, and built three of the costliest buildings of the present group of 14, in- cluding the chapel, and provided for the maintenance of the university for three years. Whatever the cause of her re- nunciation of the Roman faith, it must be a stunning blow to the church, which, so far as we know, has endeavored to main- tain an attitude of absolute silence with regard to the matter. A NATIONAL Catholic Church has been organized in the Philippines, it is said, entirely free of Rome. Our read- ers recall that the Philippines exhibited hatred toward the Spanish clergy, especially the monastic orders, and that the monks received seven and a half-millions of dollars from the state, and left the islands ; and that the Pope organized a 56 new hierarchy, which, however, has not been able to hinder the rise of the new national church. Its head -is the for- mer Roman priest Aglipay in Manilla, who bears the title Abispo Maximo. The new church has published an official weekly for about a year. The new communion with fifteen bishops is in possession of the churches, but this possession is disputed by the new Roman Bishops. Aglipay and his fol- lowers assert that the possessions were gathered by the Philip- pines and not by Rome, and that they belong to the people and to the national clergy. The matter will probably require judi- cial decision. This national Catholic Philippine Church stands in friend- ly relation to the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, and praises the wisdom of Governor Taft's administration, as pro- tecting all forms of worship equally, without being influenced by any. Roman papers in Europe assert that "the schism has already come to a lamentable end." The former Superintendent of education in the Philip- pines, Frederic W. Atkinson, has given us a discriminative in- sight into many things that need be done in the Philippines be- fore these people reach a common American standard. The first great movement was the separation of church and state. The second was the division and co-ordination of judiciary, legis- lative and executive powers. The third was the right of suf- frage, the writ of habeas corpus, and assemblv. The fourth was the abrogation of obligatory military service, and aboli- tion of the practice of banishment. Remember Spain has jus- tified her conquest on religious grounds, but as the United States professes hers on moral grounds, there are many more things which America must undertake. She must cultivate a greater political trustworthiness, and respect of the minority, and freedom from aristocracy and caste, which would be fatal to a democratic form of government ; a reliance on the security of property in the interior, and on prompt justice and a power of moral restraint. Mr. Atkinson asserts very positively that no jury system will be possible for sometime to come, and that all public money must be handled by American officials of in- tegrity. No matter whether we consider the Philippines to 57 have been acquired rightly or wrongly, the Philippines are bound to develop in some way, and we are now to a large ex- tent responsible for the right or wrong of that way. IT is not only in the Philippines, or among uncivilized peoples, or in the Roman Church that church quarrels and unex- pected religious developments take place. A most aston- ishing thing happened last August in the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Twenty-four ministers and their congregations were declared by the British House of Lords as legally con- stituting the whole Free Church of Scotland, and as the owner of more than $10,000,000 in accumulated capital, with over a thousand churches and manses throughout Scotland, with col- leges, assembly halls, and missions throughout the world, and with a total property which could not be replaced without an expenditure of $50,000,000 ; while at the same time 1 100 minis- ters and congregations, constituting almost the entire Presby- terian Church of Scotland and forming the new United Free Church, were dispossessed of all this property. The total working assets of the United Free Church have been taken away, and the 1100 ministers have been at least nominally de- prived of their pulpits and homes. This extraordinary British decision is the culmination of a four years' legal battle, which came as the climax to a gen- eration's effort to unite the Scotch Presbyterian Church. These Scotch Presbyterians have ever been interminable in their sectarian off-shoots and, in migrating to America, laid the foundation for more than their share of this new world's sectarianism. Thirty years ago Dr. Rainy, Principal of New College, Edinburgh, proposed to make an effort to unite the many scattered kinds of Presbyterians. There were the Secession- ists of 1733, and the Relief Church which was founded in 1761, which two bodies fused together into the United Presbyterian Church in 1847. I n addition to this United Presbyterian Church there was also the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland, from which the Secessionists had revolted. In 1843, 45o ministers, with Dr. Chalmers at the head, seceded 58 from the Established Church and constituted themselves into the Free Church of Scotland, which in the course of several decades attracted other bodies of separatists. Among these were the earlier Seceders who united with the Free Church in 1852, and, after a long struggle, the New Lights united with the Free Church in 1876. At last in 1900 the life-long effort of Dr. Rainy proved to be successful and he had the satisfaction of being able to fuse together the two largest religious bodies in Scotland, viz., the United Presbyterian Church with a membership of almost 200.- coo and the Free Church with a membership of nearly 300,000 into one body, dependent upon voluntary support. . This was now the one great body dissenting from the established order of the Scotch Presbyterian Church. This great reunion, which was a matter of property adjust- ment rather than of theological discussion, was arranged by a Joint Committee who took five years to making a series of compromises. It was adopted in the vear 1900, unanimously in the United Presbyterian Synod, and by a vote of 522 to 29 in the Free Church. It is this protesting remnant of 29, which was reduced to 24. and which remained outside of the New United Free Church, which has been creating the sensation this year. They have actually gotten absolute control, as far as the law is con- cerned, over the ecclesiastical funds and properties of the Church. They constitute the more ignorant and less benevo- lent congregations in the Highlands. First of all they appeal- ed to the Scottish Courts, and were twice unsuccessful. Four judges united in the decision that the Free Church was a self- governing body, and that the majority had the right to carry the property with them into the United Free Church. But these 24, still unabashed, appealed to the House of Lords and this highest authority, amazing to say, sustained their appeal. The decision of the House of Lords is based upon the legal effect of the disposition of a trust. Its foundation is the dictum that the original purpose of a trust predetermines the 59 use which is to be made of the accumulations of money un- der it. Lord Halsbury declares that the Free Church was not a revolt against the principle of an Established Church, but against an inequitable enforcement of it ; and that therefore its funds could not be diverted to the United Church which had been founded and administered on the voluntary principle. He also finds essential differences between the two Bodies on the Cal- vinistic and Armenian doctrines of Predestination, and decides that fusion involves abuse, and violation of trust, and that the remnant of 24 is entitled, as the real Free Church, to ad- minister all the vested interests of the Church founded in 1843. Three judges and the Lord Chief Justice concur with the Lord Chancellor in this view, but two other judges dissent. The majority declares that when men have subscribed money for a particular object and left it behind them for the promotion of definite principles, their successors have no right to divert it from the original purposes. Meantime, however, this decision is so sweeping that the Highland ministers cannot fail to be embarrassed by their very wealth. They cannot administer the properties declared to be theirs, nor expel the ministers of the United Free Church, and supply the vacant pulpits. It is supposed that the only remedy will be an act of Parliament which will have to arrange some sort of Concordat between the two parties. One comment on this final decision of the House of Lords has been that while it is doubtless good law, it may be very poor sense. And it is not the first time in ecclesiastical controversy that good law and good sense have come to an absolute divorce from each other. The constitution and discipline of the Lutheran Church may seem to be very primitive in comparison with the more highly developed type of ecclesiastical Presbyterianism, and our resorts to ecclesiastical procedure may be quite crude and bungling, on occasion ; but let us be thankful that the energies of our Church are not devoted to the development of bristling technicalities in connection with ecclesiastical law, and that our leading Lights, do not, as sound Lutherans cannot, lay the emphasis on the external side of ecclesiastical organization^ 6o even though Dr. Carroll and other American unionists deem it criminal not to do so. WHEN we come to look at Europe as a whole, in its po- litical and religious development during the year 1904, one of the most, striking Twentieth Century features that wc behold is the fact that the heads of the great nations are now themselves taking the leading and decisive role in af- fairs, and their prime ministers and foreign ministers are be- ing relegated to the background. In olden times it was Bis- marck rather than William, Gortschacoff rather than Alexander II, Crispi rather than King Humbert, Disraeli, Gladstone, Bal- four, Chamberlain, rather than Queen Victoria, who ruled. But to-day it is Edward the VII himself ; it is the Italian King; it is the German Kaiser, who are standing at the head of af- fairs, as representatives of their own nation. The fact that in France President Loubet is a secondary figure, and in Russia the Czar only rules in his own majesty on occasion, does not in- validate the principle. It is quite possible that Edward VII, who has adopted the policy of his mother, in keeping in his own hands a direct con- trol over the foreign affairs of Great Britian, has been under the influence of the German Emperor, whose imposing per- sonality has been so prominent in his several visits to England. But the conviction is gaining ground that Edward is winning a place in the political world by the side and at the expense of the German Emperor.f In Europe he seems to be regarded as the first and most accomplished diplomatist of his country, as a great constitutional sovereign, respected by his people and deferred to by his ministers. It is the pen of a Frenchman, of course, that has drawn the following picturesque compari- son : tThe Kaiser, according to news of December 21, has just thrown down the gauntlet to England and told the British Cabinet that if it wanted war, it could have it at once. The trouble has arisen from a series of articles in the British army and navy gazette stating that the, Kaiser's navy was growing so as to be rapidly becoming a menace to Great Britain. 6i "Edward VII. abuses neither pen nor language. He does not. yield to the temptation of uttering oracles. He constructs no sermons, no courses in history, DO theological dcflnilioiiK. He has never spoken of Hammurabi nor of Baruch. He says what i.s necessary, and be Kay« it. with moderation. iii« realistic sense would prevent bim from recalling the Hobenstauffens to the memory of our epoch, if he has thought It necessary to mention Water- loo, he would have refrained from ascribing the whole credit of the victory to l he, heroic re.-ii.si a rice of Wellington. I lis tact, permif.H him to venture upon bistorlcal illusions without giving offense. "Edward the VI 1. hat) a knowledge, a practical acquaintance, an under- standing, of other nations. He doe« not interpret everything instinctively, as do the majority of his countrymen, in accordance with his insular con- ception*. This gift is precious at a time when England begins at last to perceive that most of her recent vexations must be attributed to her self- esteem, SO disdainful of everything foreign." England perhaps places the scheme of the Bagdad Rail- way, which loaded upon London the loan for Emperor Wil- liam's Asia Minor railroad project, and the action of Great Brit- ain in the Venezuelan expedition, also, perhaps under stimulus of the German Emperor, to the discredit of Edward VII. But in extricating his country from the international difficulties of the Boer war, and in the present prudent position of England in its delicate situation in connection with the Russo-Japanese war, the wisdom of Edward is extolled. Edward the VII, during the past year must be given the credit for bringing about the agreement signed last April, which provided for a satisfactory settlement of all or most of the difficulties hitherto existing between England and France, and for drawing these two hereditarily hostile nations much closer together. One of the most satisfactory features of this settlement is the end of the long dispute between Erance and England over Egypt. For more than a score of years Erance has maintained theoretically that Great Britain should withdraw from Egypt, or at least set a definite date for withdrawal, and has been blaming the British administration for managing Egyptian finance as it deems best. Under the new treaty the French government declares that it will not obstruct the government of Egypt in England in any way and that it will assent to the proposed changes to be made in the revenues. This settles one standing source of quarrels between these nations. 62 The management of Egypt and of the Soudan by the Eng- lish during the past twenty years is one of the great and vast accomplishments of modern civilization. For a thousand years Egypt had been falling deeper and deeper into the slough of misrule, infertility, and financial hopelessness. What England has achieved to alter these conditions is one of the most bril- liant and hopeful facts of modern times and points to what might be done in Turkey and Asia Minor under similar eco- nomic management. When Egypt assigned for the benefit of her creditors it was freely prophecied that she could never be restored finan- cially. The fellaheen were groaning under impossible bur- dens of taxation and the dreary desert, with famine in its bosom, was encroaching every year upon the beautiful fields. Then came a modern Joseph. Lord Cromer wrought his won- drous administrative change. He built the Delta barrage, the new barrage on the Zammeita and another at Assouit, and con- structed the Assouan dam, 126 feet high at its deepest point, turning the river back upon itself for a distance of 140 miles. In twenty years he has spent $45,000,000 in irrigation and drainage, and has made the country prosperous.* Last year the revenues of Egypt exceeded the estimates by a handsome sum, the debt was reduced, the area under cul- tivation was greatly increased and the prosperity of the people advanced. It is said that Lord Cromer's expenditure of three and a half-million Egyptian pounds has done more good for *Mem:s is said to have made the first attempt to control the extreme high and low floods of the Nile. Lower and upper Egypt was more or less successfully irrigated by a system of diked terraces, and in these days was the granary of the Mediterranean. With the coming of the, Arabs, 700 A. D„ i ho deterioration began. By 1800 A. D. the population was reduced from L2.000.000 to 2,000,000, and the greater part of the Delta had become a desert- id swamp. But Mehammet Ali was sent to Egypt as Viceroy in 1S10. Me- Lammet tried to build the first barrage by dismantling the pyramids. This was impossible. Yet lime-stone quarries were opened near Cairo and foun- dations of the barrage were dug. But it was not until 1872, long after his death, that this first barrage was in a condition to be used. Ismail, the reigning Khedive, at once determined to extend the. system to Upper Egypt, and I lie following year, the great Ibrahimiyah Canal was dug giving per- petual irrigation to three provinces. But when the British came to occupy Egypt, the barrage, like the government, was in a wretched and decaying condition, and it has only been by Lord Cromer's efforts for a generation that the country has been restored. 63 the people of Egypt than the one hundred million pounds spent by the Ismail Pacha. It may not be generally known that Cairo is the headquart- ers of Moslem jurisprudence and orthodoxy, and possesses a university which for many years has been the principal seat for Mahometan learning, to which teachers, clergy and judges flock from even the most remote portions of Asia and Africa, in order to obtain the purest interpretation of the doctrines and law of the Koran ; and any decision reached here will be ac- cepted throughout the whole of Islam. It has been impossible ever to get the Moslems to deposit their moneys in bank. Mahometan countries have often been called grave-yards of gold because they swallow up this pre- cious metal and remove it from circulation. In India the 80,- 000,000 prosperous Moslems have been continuously abstract- ing from the gold supply of the world to the amount of over a billion of dollars within the last forty years. It has been esti- mated that there are at least twenty million gold sovereigns that have been thus hoarded in the Presidency of Bombay alone, and the practice of the Mahometans has been extended to the Hebrews. All that the Christian nations can do through the discovery of gold mines to increase the supply of gold seems to be very ineffective in increasing its annual volume. Jew- els, too, which are more easy to conceal than gold, have found their graves in the Mahometan world in large quantities. But Lord Cromer, who has gained the confidence and respect of the Mahometans in Egypt, Soudan and India, because of his unblemished integrity as well as because of his deference to Mahometan prejudice, has this year had a number of inter- views with the Grand Mufti and other high authorities of Ismail law for the purpose of securing through them a more liberal interpretation of the Koran which deal with usury, so that while usury itself shall be prohibited, the followers of the prophet may be permitted to make use of banking institutions and re- ceive non-usurious rates of interest for their deposits. The Koran has all along strictly forbidden usury, and de- nounces it as one of the most unpardonable of offences. For more than twelve centuries the Mahometans have abstained 6 4 from lending money out at interest, and have never made use of hanking- institutions. But with the religious permission of Mahometanism for the populace of Egypt to deposit their hoarded millions in the banks, a much brighter period is likely to dawn in the history of Egypt. It was Disraeli who twenty-nine years ago purchased the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal for the British government. This interest the United Kingdom would never relinquish. Gladstone plunged England into war and drove Bright out of the British cabinet in order to protect this investment. France, under the machinations of Bismarck, refused to work with Eng- land in this undertaking, and the most intense jealousy was awakened between these two lands. It is all this which has been removed during the past year. BUT the jealousy between France and Germany abides. The effort of France to destroy the Triple Alliance and isolate Germany was thwarted by William in a brilliant way when he just happened to call upon Victor Emanuel im- mediately before President Lon bet's widely heralded visit, and when William succeeded in drawing from the Italian King a public reaffirmation of the continuance of the existence of the Triple Alliance, and a public admission that the bonds which united the three countries were closer than ever before. We have reviewed at length the uncompromising attitude of President Combes toward the Pope. If we turn from this attitude of the foe of the German empire toward the Pope, to that of William II toward Rome, we shall find something very suggestive. Although a Protestant Sovereign, William has acquired an influence and favor at the Vatican and in the Cath- olic Church throughout the world to which no Catholic mon- arch, not even Francis Joseph himself, can pretend.* Perhaps the most important religious event in Germany during the year is the abrogation of the law by virtue of which the Jesuits were expelled from the German Empire in 1872, through the influence of Bismarck. This law has now been in *It has been publicly boasted that this has been done "without alienat- ing the good-will of his Lutheran subjects." 65 force for a whole generation, thirty-two years. Although the Redemptorists and the Holy Ghost Fathers were authorized to settle in the German Empire in 1894, the law of 1872 has remained unchanged up to this year. But on the nth of last March, the Reichsanzeiger published the following decree rati- fied by the Emperor: "We, William, by the grace of God, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, order in the name of the empire and in accordance with the de- cision of the Bundesrath and of the Reichstag, as follows: 'Paragraph 2 of the law of the 4th of July, 1872, concerning the order of the Society of Jesus is abolished.' Given at the Palace of Berlin the 8th of March, 1904." A Roman writer in a French journal, commenting on this imperial decree, says : "While France is driving Jesuits and other religious orders away, Germany is opening her doors to them ; while the eldest daughter of the Church wages upon Catholicism a war without mercy or respite, Protestant Ger- many protects Catholic interests, respects the Holy See, main- tains and increases the power of the clergy, and combats secu- larizing factions. France expels the congregations, Germany recalls them, and repeals old decrees that seem to her unworthy of a state claiming to respect individual liberty and solicitous of promoting the interests of the Fatherland. In France the Catholics are oppressed, in Germany they triumph." ON the 30th and 31st of last August a remarkable celebra- tion took place in Spires, Germany, in connection with the consecration of the splendid new Church built in honor of the Protestation of 1529. The streets of the city were decorated with flags and crowns, and the auditories in the new Church were completely packed with a mass of humanity. It was a great Protestant festival. The unveiling of the Luther statue in the Memorial Hall of the Church began the exercises. Luther stands in the at- titude of protesting; his eyes turned toward heaven, his right hand clenched, the Word of God in his left hand, and the Papal Bull under his feet. The unveiling was" by Prof. Gtimbel, who for nineteen years has been the heart and soul of this great building enterprise. The statue, it will be remembered, was 66 contributed by friends in America. An address was made by Mayor Schieren, of Brooklyn. The great assembly was held after the tolling of the five bells in the tower. Of the fourteen states who once had pro- tested, delegates were present from Nuremberg, Reutlingen, Rindau, Isny. Nordlingen and Heilbronn, together with repre- sentatives of principalities and of free cities, and of many asso- ciations, as well as delegates of fifteen universities. The Kaiser was conspicuous by his absence. He did not even per- sonally answer the telegram that was sent him, although on the 1 2th of March, 1890, he had personally said to the deputation of the building commission, "Begin to build with confidence, and I will see to it that the work will be completed." About the time of the consecration the Kaiser sent a warm personal greeting to the Catholics in Regensburg! The speeches made at the evening consecration festival were of a historical order, and inspiriting. The main festival, held on the 31st of August, began with a procession starting out in a pouring rain from the Trinity Church, and passing between immense throngs of people. Every congregation in the Pala- tinate had sent one clergyman and a lay-representative to par- ticipate in this great Festival of Protestantism. Any one not a delegate was obliged to stand for hours before being able to gain an entrance to the Church. Dr. Dryander preached at 10 o'clock on Heb. 10: 23-25. Pastor Wessel preached at 12 on II Tim. 2: 19. Pastor Cantzeler preached to the children, at two o'clock, on II Tim. 1 : 5, and Dr. Decker preached the xmsecration Sermon. The ceremony closed late at night with the illumination of the Church, fire-works, and tolling of bells. The cost of the building was 2,127,660 marks. GERMAN Colonial expansion increases to a marked de- gree. This is particularly true in South America. Ger- many is increasing her trade more rapidly than North America. In large ocean going steamers, Germany is second only to Great Britain to which she is steadily catching up. Ger- many is working scientificially to secure foreign trade. She studies the desires and needs of foreign countries. She manu- 6 7 factures goods expressly for export, and educates the young people in technical and commercial schools. In 1903, the total increase in German trade with all America was over forty-one million of dollars, and that to South America was over twenty- nine million of dollars alone, and, in 1904, the result will prob- ably be more remarkable still. The Kaiser himself is deeply interested in commercial trade and industrial expansion. He has sought interviews and information from American captains of industry, and is credited with having invested the greater part of his fortune in industrial enterprises and with being a large stockholder in steamship companies. In his usual systematic manner he has prescribed commercial studies for his three youngest sons. The year has made it evident that the troubles of Germany, and of the German missions, in South Africa are of the most serious character. One of the results of the Boer war in South Africa seems to have been a loss of respect by the blacks foi the conquering white race, and some European journals pre- dict that Great Britain, Portugal and Germany may be face to face with a rebellion of the whole black race against a white rule. The situation is particularly serious in German South- west Africa. The imperial troops have failed to subdue the Herrors, the formidable tribe in the north of the colony, and as a result one race after another has revolted against the Ger- mans. The revolting tribes appear to be well armed. One German paper declares that Germany has lost every army of- ficer in this up-rising who knew anything of the war. In Ger- man military circles the mild rule of the German government and the leniency of the missionaries are charged as the cause of the insurrection, whereas, as a matter of fact, the poor mis- sionaries who are risking their lives, did their best to keep the natives in check by moral suasion. Fears are entertained in many quarters that the war will be one of extermination and that the male population will either be killed or driven away. 68 ONE of the most remarkable facts in Germany to-day is the unsettled condition of the intermediate educational prob- lems. The school question is causing intense agitation. For any one to point to Germany and the Germans, to-day, as a model for parochial and religious education would be to stultify one's self. The poor Lutheran Church (that is those sound in the Lutheran faith) is in embarrassment, because she cannot stand with either of the two great parties in the strug- gle. The one great party is that of the radicals and the ra- tionalists. The other great party is that of the state churches, with the Emperor at the head. Under this party the public school system of Prussia has been bound hand and foot under the two state churches, the Evangelical and the Catholic. With the receding of socialist and radical victories, reactionary meas- ures have become very strong in the German empire. The so- called school freedoms of the Prussian type, which have been adopted by a large majority, is a measure so retroactive in ed- ucation that ten years ago it would have seemed impossible in Germany. It is no longer safe for sound Lutheran parishes to send their children to parish schools. In Wuertemberg there has also been a very severe struggle between the Liberals and the Ultramontanes for the possession of the schools. The Evangelicals have come more and more to the conviction that the close connection between church and school, justified as it was in former times, can on longer be maintained. For the Ultramontanes are too strongly entrenched. Nearly all the Evangelicals have concluded that the influence of the clergy on flic sclwols should be zveakened, and the religious Minister Weiz- saecker, the son of the Tuebingen historian, is decidedly of this opinion. But the power of Roman princes in the govern- ment has negatived the endeavors of the Evangelicals. It is very evident that the school teachers of Germany, who are organized into associations, and who more and more resent the control of the clergy over their department, do not desire any supervision or direct relationship with the churches. This is an astounding fact. The Simultan plan introduced into Germany has caused a demand to be made there that even the religious instruction 6 9 in the schools shall be "Simultan," that is, shall be the same for Catholics, Lutherans, Jews and heathen. It appears that the Koenigsberg Association of teachers has requested that the teachers be freed from church supervision and be permit- ted to give religious instruction which shall be based on the moral truth inherent in all Confessions! The following is said to be one of the prayers from the "Modern School Prayers'" which one of the teachers' associations is using: "We will conduct ourselves with earnestness that the teacher need not •become angry. We will not speak, not make noise, not laugh, nor throw things on the floor. We will show ourselves attentive, diligent, ready to speak when asked, conduct ourselves in all respects in such manner that parents and teachers will be heartily pleased." We hope that America will be delivered from parochial and public schools in which human promises are hypocritically substituted for approach to our Heavenly Father in the name of Christ. FROM Germany to Hungary is but a short step. Here, too, the predominant problem is that of the schools. And the conflict, as usual, is between Protestants and Romanists. During the past year Tisza, the son of the Pro- testant minister of Hungary, was named as the Ministerial President. His advent was greeted coolly by the Clericals but enthusiastically by the Protestants, in whose interests he had determined to treat all legally established churches with im- partiality. The clericals used every effort to obstruct the Hun- garian Parliament, but he has successfully overcome all diffi- culties. There is a universal desire in Hungary for the establish- ment of a Protestant university. The lower schools are hav- ing their troubles. In 1869 the so-called inter-Confessional schools were introduced into Austria. In these schools the Church retained the right of supervision in religious instruc- tion, and the state the right of rule. There was to be a place for educating the children of all confessions without distinct- ion in order to make them citizens of one kingdom. Evan- gelical schools were declared to be private schools. As a con- sequence of this only those Evangelical congregations kept up 7o their parochial schools who were determined to bear the double cost because they believed their own schools to be bet- ter than the public schools, or because they did not fully trust the new law. Ever since that time, Rome has been persistent- ly seeking" to undermine the Confessional equality which ob- tains in these schools. And, in 1883, she succeeded in passing a law that the school teacher must belong to the same religion to which the majority of pupils belong. This seemed to be a just and harmless provision. But the result was that the Evan- gelical teachers were removed from their positions, and though all citizens are paying for education the ruling spirit in them is strictly Roman Catholic. The children are taken into the Roman Church before they go to the school. The school building is dedicated by a Catholic priest. This conse- crated building dare not be profaned by*the holding of hereti- cal services. Several times a week the children are obliged to attend the Roman mass in procession, including Corpus Christi and other Roman holidays. In fact the inter-Confessional school law, which was intended to give equal rights to all, is now used altogether in the interests of the Roman Church. The instruction throughout Austria begins with a prayer, gen- erally the Lord's prayer, and then follows the greeting to the Virgin Mary, when the children make the cross. This is also demanded of the Protestant children. Roman hymns are used in the singing, and in many schools the Protestant children must participate. The national school board of Bohemia last year decreed that the children were expected to participate in the celebration of the mass, in the pilgrimages of the Church, and that it was the duty of teachers to see that they took part. If Protestant children should attend these schools, the services should not be intermitted, as such scholars are not obliged to participate in them. Recently a number of nuns were ap- pointed school teachers in these inter-Confessional schools and have become very influential. It is said that Protestant chil- dren have been ridiculed by the teachers, that books have been denied them, that they have been compelled to attend the Cath- olic instruction, to make the sign of the cross, to sing the Cath- olic hymns, and to hear their teachers tell them that Protest- 71 ants have no God. This is said to be the case in Vienna itself. However, the Away-from-Rome movement in the Ger- man provinces of Austria has not diminished in strength. In the first half of 1904 according to the report of the ec- clesiastical authorities in Vienna 2263 persons joined the Evan- gelical Church of which 2069 persons had been Roman Cath- olics. On the other hand in the same period, 566 persons left the Protestant Church, of which 511 became Roman Catholics. This shows a gain from the Roman Catholics of 1588 persons in six months. Of these about 253 were of the Reformed type, and the remainder adhere to the Augsburg Confession. Dur- ing the last six years 25,000 persons have been converted to Protestantism, and the Roman Catholic Church leaders and papers are beginning to combat the movement. For instance, a Roman Catholic journal in Bohemia has been publishing a series of articles in which Luther is made to appear as a drunk- ard. It then argues, Was Jesus a Protestant? No! Was Mary Protestant? No! Were the Apostles Protestant? No! Is then the faith of the Protestants the faith of Jesus? No! Great scandals are attributed to the Protestant Church, and every argument is used to appeal to the people. They are told that they will have to pay large amounts of yearly taxes for the support of the Protestant pastors, their wives and children, while on the other hand it costs nothing to keep a Roman Catholic priest and he charges nothing for his work among the poor. Very curious news from Germany reports it as the com- ing temperance nation. The. Imperial Health Office at Ber- lin is sending out elaborate literature against the use of alco- hol as a beverage. The Journal of the Imperial parliament prints pages of temperance arguments by the brother-in-law of the Emperor, one of the most prominent "temperance re- formers" in Germany. German University Professors are said to be leaders in this reform. Within the last fifteen or twenty years 871 books have been printed, and there are now $7 newspapers and magazines and annuals in this language devoted to the same, subject. At this rate German Americans who delight to speak of the fanaticism of temperance reform- 72 ers in the churches of America may, in a few years, find them- selves in a somewhat awkward position because of the situ- ation in the Fatherland. As the Kaiser takes a paternal in- terest in the welfare of his people, it would be a striking thing' if he should determine, that, though the Jesuits are admitted, beer must be exiled, — from Germany. AS in Germany, and in Hungary, and in France, and to a less extent in America, agitation on educational prob- lems is a leading political issue also in England. The question, at root, is the same throughout the world. Shall the state control the child, or the church? Or. as a political question, how can the state, the majority of whose members are Christian, with a minority that is not, and with the Chris- tians themselves divided, so use the moneys raised by tax- ation that the child will receive the education proper to a citizen, and not be brought up unbelieving and godless. We noted in our Survey of the year 1902 that the Anglican Church and its Clergy, by act of Parliament, had gotten hold of the whole school system of England, and if we mistake not, we pointed out at the time what the consequences of such a clerical usurpation would be. The result is as expected. Last summer Lord Rosebury declared that the government "has wantonly raised against themselves the whole body of non-conformist opinion in this country," and that it has brought to a head bitter questions that have lain dormant since Mr. Gladstone's Irish disestab- lishment bill of 1809. Lord Rosebury has probably not ex- aggerated facts. The Anglican Church in England has acted just as that part of the Episcopal Church which considers that it is the one thing needful to our American nationality and institutions, often acts in America. Throughout Eng- land the opponents of the Education Act have been engaged in systematic passive resistance. Every week from 1700 to 2000 summonses are issued by London provincial magistrates to delinquent tax-payers who make it a matter of conscience to refuse payment of the school taxes. Those who refuse are ministers, great councillors, prosperous merchants and even n magistrates and members of Parliament. The whole pro- eeedings are conducted with great dignity, and no indignation meetings or exciting scenes are taking place. The rate-payers will not pay because of conscientious scruples against supporting what they consider dangerous re- ligious teaching. The. magistrates are forced to collect the arrears by law. Private property is seized and sold at auction and, in extreme instances, delinquents are imprisoned for short terms. That this is not a slight affair may be seen from the. fact that there have been over noo sales, and nearly 33,000 summonses together with 33 sentences of imprisonment since the movement began. Throughout Wales the resistance is even more thorough. Under Lloyd-George, who is sacrificing his political future to this work, county and town councils have dismissed their teachers, schools have closed, all non-conformist children have been withdrawn from schools, and voluntary schools have been opened in non-conformist chapels. Thus there. are neither boards of managers nor teachers for conducting the government schools, and the whole system of elementary education, which is managed by the educational department in London, is most seriously embarrassed. Though the government may be harsh on these delin- quent tax-payers, the day of reckoning will come, and the sweeping away of the present Education Act is a foregone conclusion. But that does not settle the great question of the age, viz, What is to take its place? Lord Rosebury's remedy is that all schools supported by public money should be taken from the church control and placed under public con- trol ; and that, subject to that requirement, ministers should have free entrance to teach children of their own congrega- tion their own Creed. The American principle that public money can be given only for schools conducted on secular and undenominational principles is being quoted. Dr. Dale has asserted that the only solution is to be found in the absolute severance, of the official syllabus from religion in state supported schools. 7A "This seems to be the path of moral justice, and what is morally right can never he religiously wrong." Thus again has the narrowness of that church whose priests believe that their religion is the only one that is fitted to become the governmental type, over-reached itself. FOR the last twenty years "the Protestant Episcopal Church" in this country has desired to change its name. The high church party does not like the word "Protest- ant." and others declare that this title is a misnomer. The Gen- eral Convention before the last appointed a committee "on change of name." and the following names, among others were proposed : "The Church." "The Church of America." ''The Catholic Church," "The American Catholic Church." "Ameri- can Church." "National Church." The committee has reported "that any change of the name of the Church at this time is in- expedient." This is the judgment of the laymen, though the priests of the Church would undoubtedly prefer a more im- posing, more exclusive and arrogative, and churchly designa- tion. During the past summer America "enjoyed a gracious visit" from the genuine archbishop of Canterbury, the Pri- mate of all England, and the chief jewel of the Episcopal Church. For the foundation of the See of Canterbury dates way back to A. D. 507. and St. Augustine himself is claimed as the first holder of it. while a number of Roman saints, in- cluding St. Thomas a Becket. who was murdered in the Cathe- dral of Canterbury 733 years ago. are among his successors In England the archbishop ranks next to royalty, having the 'pas' over every one of the king's subjects, no matter whether duke, premier, lord high chancellor or secretary of state. The present archbishop is the 05th in the line of suc- cession. He lives in the stately Lambeth Palace in London, on the banks of the Thames, almost opposite the House of Parliament, which has been the metropolitan abode of the archbishops of Canterbury since the Twelfth century. Be- sides this residence, he has the use of an official residence within the cathedral precincts of Canterbury. He receives a 75 salary of $75,000 a year, which is only a drop in the bucket for the Anglican Church.* The archbishop lives in great state throughout the Lon- don season. His household is run on a princely scale. He lias gentlemen-in-waiting, chaplains, secretaries, purse-bear- ers and chamberlains. He gives entertainments and grand dinners and evening parties at the palace at least three even- ings a week, and shines in lavish expenditure and great splendor. The present archbishop in his personal appearance does not measure up to the stateliness of his position. He is in- significant to the eye. But he is keen of mind, and has an infinite amount of tact. He is now about 56 years of age. Though president of the Church of England Temperance So- ciety, he is not a total abstainer, but believes in the use of alcoholic beverages in strict moderation. It was through his efforts that the habitual Inebriate's Law was enacted in 1901. His name is Dr. Randall Thomas Davidson. He might have had the office prior to the appointment of Arch- bishop Benson eight years ago, but then declined it. He has been very intimate with the reigning family, and until his elevation last year was the spiritual adviser to King Albert as he had been to Queen Victoria. His rise to his present position is enveloped in a curious romance. Shortly after leaving college he received a gun shot wound which threatened to make him helpless for life. By and by Archbishop Tait of Canterbury took an interest in him from sympathy, and made him his chaplain and then his secretary. This, very naturally, led to his becoming the Bishop's son-in-law. The rest of his history follows logically. Last May the Protestant Episcopal Church permitted an adoption of the. Monastic system within its borders by the dedication in West Park, New York city, of the Monastery of the Holy Cross. The placing, a few weeks later on, of a mural painting entitled The Epiphany in which the Virgin Mother is the most prominent figure, in the. Protestant Epis- *lts rich property is supposed to yield an income of about $40,000,000 a year, and is used in paying the stipends of archbishops and bishops, the salaries of minor dignitaries, and in improving buildings. 7 6 copal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in West 46th street, New York, is an indication of the growing power of the ritualistic idea in certain parts of Protestantism. In this painting the Holy Child is shown upon his Mother's breast, while, she is seated upon a raised Dais or Podium. Near Joseph, stands St. Anna, mother of the blessed Virgin, hold- ing the partly open book of the Prophecies. The services of this Church of St. Mary the Virgin have been noted for their similarity to those of the Roman Cath- olic Church. There are in it several confessionals, and on the walls the stages of the Cross. Suspended from the ceiling before the altar are vessels of ever burning incense. In the altar is a tabernacle for the preservation of the Sacrament after it has been consecrated for use. In the confessionals, confessions are heard and absolution is granted ; but con- fession is not obligatory. Connected with the church is a branch of the Order of the Holy Nativity and Sisterhood, whose members have taken the vow of celibacy for life. The. Church has two choirs; one a surpliced male choir occupy- ing seats in the chancel, and another a mixed choir stationed at the gallery in the rear. The mass is sung, the clergy wear- ing special vestments. At the High Mass the congregation does not receive the Sacrament. Candles and a gong are used, but the service, is entirely in English and is simply that of the book of Common prayer. The elevation of the host is practised. In Great Britain ritualism has apparently suffered a tem- porary check. The ritualistic controversies which have been going on since 1889 have resulted in the formation of a Royal Commission to investigate the reputed violations of the laws by the ritualists in the order of worship and in the fitting out of buildings. The. Commission is to draw attention to the laws already existing for the purpose of curbing irregulari- ties, and to propose new rules that may be necessary. It consists of fourteen members including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the. Bishop of Oxford, the President of the Bible Society, and the Church Missionary Society and some lawyers 77 and parliamentarians. No extremists seem to have been in- cluded in its make-up. The appointment of this Commission appears to be an attempt on the part of the government to oppose the grow- ing - Catholicization of the Anglican Church. The greatest difficulty it will encounter will be to determine, what acts are lawful. For the ritualists assert that they have the full right to interpret the thirty-nine articles and the Book of Common Prayer in their own sense and that thus the mass, the adora- tion of saints, prayers for the dead, the use of incense, etc., are permitted. But they are unable to deny that they ar^ violating the civil acts pertaining to the Church, particularly the so-called Public Worship Regulation Act. On this ac- count the ritualists long ago came to the conclusion that the Church should be. entirely free from the state. The high-church Church Times believes that the report of the Commission may result in the direction of a dissolution between church and state. But the Bishop of London evi- dently believes that the ritualistic movement is nothing but an over blown soap bubble, and that instead of 10,000 clergy- men and half of the bishops, out of the 22,000 in the Anglican Church, not more than a few dozen are leading the church toward Rome, and that the remainder of the 10,000 are the historical high church party of England, which has just as much right in the Anglican church as any other party. Never- theless, this governmental interference can be regarded as a successful move on the part of the anti-ritualists. It may not be generally known that the high-church party in England has been hoping to have the Anglican succession of Bishops and the Anglican ordination recognized by the Greek Church, and that an association termed the. "Eastern Church Association" has actually been formed for the fur- therance of this purpose. The association last spring pub- lished the letter of the Russian Holy Synod to the Oecumeni- cal Patriarchs on the attitude of the Orthodox church to Non-Orthodox confessions. The position taken is interesting to us Americans not only because of its views with regard to the Anglican Church, 78 but also because of its clear statements with reference to the schismatic position of the Roman Church. The position is as follows : The Western churches are one and all schismatic. The first step was the smuggling in of the filioque into the creed. After Rome had introduced the schismatic spirit by this act, she cannot complain of its spread: for Protestantism is only the logical development of the principle that the individual stands higher than the church. Thus is Rome herself, who is so fond of charging Protestantism with the spirit of secession, separation and division, laden with the charge of being her- self the. mother of all the offspring of schismatic Protestants. The letter divides non-orthodox Christianity into two parts, viz, Latin Christianity and the Protestants. But it dis- tinguishes the Anglicans from the Protestants. Curiously enough it charges Protestantism with laying more stress on external good works, and especially on social improvement, than on religious faith. Protestantism is also charged with fanaticism, and with a growing contempt of orthodoxy. It is supposed that the utterances of German University the- ology, with its wild conclusions, its prejudgments, and its pride of culture, has much to do with the formation of this estimate of Protestantism as a whole by the heads of the Greek Church. The Anglicans are absolved from all these Protestant sins (mirabile dictu). "Their love for our welfare," says the Russian Synod, "awakens also a love on our part nourishing in us the hope of a future, union." But the Anglican Church is given to understand that the High Church desire in this di- rection must first embrace the whole Church of Great Britain in its grasp and that the said Anglican Church must entirely give up any Calvinistic tendencies. THE Episcopal Church in this country, and indeed a great many people and denominations outside of that Church, have, within the last year, been giving renewed atten- tion to the. subject of divorces. There is no Christian country in the world where so many divorce processes are served as 79 in the United States. In 1902 the number of divorces granted was exactly double the. number granted in Germany and France taken together. In 1901 there were 61,000 divorces in the United States, while in the same year England had only 177 and Canada only 19. This state of affairs has not come on suddenly, but has been gradually gaining in strength for the last 20 or 30 years. Between 1867 and 1886 the average annual number of di- vorces was 16,436. In 1867, it was only 8939, whereas in 1896 it already registered 25,535. Fifty or sixty thousand divorces a year would seem to be enough to ruin the soundest moral life of a nation. Last March an Interdenominational Conference was held in New York on the invitation of the Episcopal Church which was joined in by the Presbyterians who had five delegates, the Methodists three delegates, the Reformed Alliance three delegates, and the Baptists two delegates. A number of other denominations were also represented (excepting Uni- tarians, Universalists, and the Roman Catholics, which last church nevertheless expressed its sympatny with the move- ment by letter). The proceedings were behind closed doors, but the following resolutions were made public : Resolved, That in recognition of the comity that should exist between Christian churches it is desirable, and would tend to the increase of a spirit of Christian unity for each of the churches represented in this conference to advise, and, if ecclesiastical authority will allow, to enjoin its ministers to refuse to unite in marriage any person or persons, such ministers have good reason to believe are forbidden by the laws of the Church in which either party seeking to be married holds membership. Resolved, That the report of the committee on national and State leg- islation be recommitted to the committee for further inquiry and sugges- tion as to the best methods of securing such uniformity of law and usage among the churches as may tend to secure legislative harmony. Resolved, That the Executive Committee be authorized to prepare and issue in their discretion a declaration and appeal to the public as to the sanctity of marriage and the grave dangers of existing laxity in the fre- quency of divorces. The greatest difficulty which a good strict divorce law has to encounter lies in the fact that each one of the forty- five states has its own mamage laws, of which some are strict, others more free and others quite lax, as for example in the 8o states of Rhode Island and Michigan. The Congress of the United Stairs lias no right to interfere with the divorce laws of the individual states. There seems to be nothing' to do but for the Churches to make stricter laws in marriage in doubtful eases, and to awaken the conscience of the people for the sanctity and permanency of the marriage vow. The Methodists and Presbyterians have approved of the action of the Conference. This matter has heen before the General Council for tin- last six 01* eight years. At Norristown the following action (with more still to come) was taken: Whereas, The great and Increasing disregard of the plain teaching of tlu> Holy Scriptures concerning the nature of the marriage covenant, de- mands the serious consideration of all Christian people, their most earnest protests against all violations of God's Law, and their hearty co-operation in all measures that would remedy the 'evil; Resolved, That we deem it the solemn duty of all pastors to Instruct their congregations concerning the permanency of the- marriage relation, and to warn against its violation or disparagement, as a crime against God, thai Cannot be mitigated ox apologized for by any defects of the, civic laws or any lowering of the standard prescribed In God's Word on the part of i lie community around them, or those who may be regarded leaders of public opinion. 2. That this testimony should be given not only when some notorious violation of God's baw attracts general attention, but in frequent instruc- tions and admonitions from the pulpit, even where no occasion for it seems to be immediately urgent; and especially with all fidelity and earnestness in the instruction of catechumens. ;'.. That we regard every pastor who performs a marriage ceremony as testifying, by that very act, that, so far as he has had the opportunity of discovering, after earnest endeavors to ascertain the facts, said marriage Is regular ami in accordance with God's Word; and that it is our conviction. further, that in invoking God's blessing upon the union, he becomes partici- pant in the gu.lt. if he be without reasonable assurance that both parties to tiie contract comply with the Divine requirements. 4. That wo teach that the licenses, issued by the State, and compliance with every civil requirement, while indispensable, cannot of themselves be a gnult to the conscience of either pastors or individual Christians; anil the distinction bet ween the standards that avail before man and before God, Should never be forgotten. Nor can the State by its enactments and per- mission ever legitimate what the Word of Hod condemns. Till*- predominant importance of the subject of Education, both as a practical question for the rising generation, and also as a keen and sharp test of the nature of our civilization, has often been emphasized in these pages. And 81 we have frequently expressed the judgment that there is no more important question, technical or practical, before the Lutheran Church to-day. In the United States present educational ideals and ef- forts, as far as the higher education is concerned, seem to be projected on a quantitative basis. The great universities of America are running a swift pace with each other to increase the number of their students and professors and the amounts of their endowments. This year Harvard still leads in the race with nearly 6000 students. Columbia comes second with 4700 students. Chicago lines up third with 4400. Cor- nell follows with 3400 students. Yale is set down 20,00 students, while Princeton and the State universities bring up the rear. One of the great events of the year in college life was the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the. Columbia University at the end of October. The charter of the University was issued on a historical Lutheran day, viz, October 31st, 1754. It was given by George II. The name given to it was King's College. The President re- ceived a salary of $1125 a year, and the vestry of Trinity Church gave him an assistant at a salary of $750.00. The founders of the College did not wait until the char- ter arrived to begin their work, but at once chose an English minister by the name of Samuel Johnson as the. first Presi- dent. Already in the Spring of the year he made the follow ing newspaper announcement : To euch parents as have now (or expect to have) children prepared to be educated in the College of New York — it is proposed to begin tuition the first day of July next, in the vestry room in the new school houee adjoining to Trinity Church. The work began with eight students, who sat on wooden stools, placed at regular intervals along a crack in the floor, in the vestry room of Trinity Church. The names of the students are still known, viz: Samuel Verplanck, Rudolph Ritzema, Samuel Ritzema, Philip Van Oort- landt, Robert Bayard, Thomas Marston, Henry Cruger and Joshua Bloomer. The finances of the institution came from a public lot- tery, an act having been passed as early as 1746 for raising 82 £2250, which ten years later was increased to £6404, of which one-half was given to the College. The College also received £500 from the internal revenues of the state. The first commencement of the College is reported to have been more like a funeral than anything else, the speeches of students and professors being heavy and interminable. Church at- tendance on the part of the students was necessary as a mat- ter of law; and laughing, jostling or winking at public wor- ship was a punishable offence. There were prohibitions against fighting cocks, playing cards, dice, and any unlawful game. With the Revolutionary war the Tory name "King's College" disappeared, and the patriotic name "Columbia Col- lege" took its rise. The growth of the. Institution was slow, and in 1857, when it moved into its second home, it had only 13 instructors and 172 students. In 1878 it had 94 instructors and 1400 students. In 1888 it had 203 instructors and 1700 students. In 1890, under the Presidency of Seth Low, it be- came a university, and in 1898 it had 339 instructors and 2600 students. At present it has 455 instructors and 4709 students. Seth Low reorganized the institution and has brought it in matter of size beyond all its older rivals, viz, Harvard, Wil- liam and Mary, Yale, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Washing- ton and Lee, excepting Harvard. It is connected with the Episcopal Church. The present 150th Anniversary is marked by the laying of the corner-stones of four more buildings, viz, the chapel, to cost a quarter of a million, the school of mines, to cost the same amount ; and two dormitories each to cost $350,000. It is said that the new buildings will increase the wealth of the University to nearly $30,000,000. How small, in comparison, is the educational effort of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in spending $200,000 upon its buildings ! Some keen ob- server has remarked : The more Columbia gets the more it wants. Little old Columbia Col- lege of a generation or two ago seemed pretty well able and content to get along with the endowment which it had; hut when it joined the university movement and began to enlarge its borders and its work there was a dif- ferent story. Money came to it by millions, but still it needed and called for millions more. To-day it ranks, we believe, as the third richest insti- tution in America, and yet scarcely any other is more earnest and urgent S3 in its calls for further gifts. Nor are those calls idle or unfounded. Co- lumbia needs more money. So does every university and college worthy of the name. The more it gets, the more it needs, for the reason that with every addition to its resources it increases its work and its liabilities to a still greater extent. That is the story. It is natural and inevitable that it should be so. The highest interests of the human mind and soul are not pecuniarily profitable in themselves. They cannot pay their own way. But they do pay the way of others, and they are objectively profitable in the highest degree. Columbia University cannot pay its own way as a business enterprise; but the instruction it has given in all these years has added to the money making power of the com- munity to a simply incalculable degree. To say that because of Columbia and its influence the wealth of New York has been increased by uncounted millions would be safely within the truth. It is upon that ground, if no other, that this and every other worthy institution has an unanswerable claim, in justice and in equity, to the most generous material support of the public. With greater endowments, more complete and more magnificent equipments, there comes also naturally a great increase in the luxury of college life, and a disposition to the enjoyment of the period of youth, as a holiday, and a season of elegant leisure. It is said that the average student in Yale University spends a thousand dollars a year, while at Harvard the average expenses are considerably higher. One great argument for the value of church colleges is that such ex- travagances are neither fashionable nor possible. President Roosevelt, himself a graduate of Harvard University, does not propose to allow his son to remain there for the full four years. He believes that the student should be under pres- sure and should get his education in the shortest time possi- ble, that he. should not dawdle along, spending time and money and dissipating when he ought be engaged in the seri- ous pursuits of life. He has given his son several years in a preparatory school at Groton, Connecticut, and has now put him under a private tutor for a year and will then expect him to take his degree at Harvard in three years. The recent expansion of Muhlenberg College into a first- class institution, up to the full limit of what should be ex- pected for young men who are to become the intellectual toil- ers and burden bearers of state and Church, is a matter for congratulation. Too long has the Lutheran Church delayed in the educational field. Now she has moved. Now the 8 4 loyalty of Lutherans to their own higher educational insti- tutions should be cultivated zealously and judiciously by those who hold in their hands the power of advice, and di- rection. The inauguration of the new President and the increase of the Professors in the Faculty of this Institution at the end of the College year, together with the entrance of the students into the new buildings during the present Christmas vacation should mark a great epoch in the educational history of our Church. For upon this educational Institution both the Home and the Foreign Mission Work of the Council and the activity of both the Chicago and the Philadelphia Theological Seminaries has to a large degree depended. At St. Louis, this year, the. meeting of the National Edu- cation Association which hoped to show an enrollment of 50,- 000 persons and which was one of the 250 Conventions, many of them scientific or educational, which met at the St. Louis Exposition, might be termed typical, in one sense, of American intermediate education. The school exhibit of the Missouri Synod received the Gold Medal at the St. Louis Exposition. This is very high praise indeed, and it is deserved. Lehre und Wehre says it is the best refutation of the assertion which Dr. Haas made in The. Lutheran some years ago against congregational schools, that they are doomed to perish because they cannot accom- plish anything of such a thorough character as to be com- pared with the schools of the state. We do not recall any as- sertion of this kind by Dr. Haas, but we will here and now say that Missouri may win many a medal within the coming generation without disproving the statement that parochial schools of the regulation order are doomed to perish in this land. Let Missouri herself get one-half century older and then she will be in a better position to pass judgment on this point. We went through the Missouri Synod exhibit and State School exhibits at St. Louis with considerable care, and we know the strength and weakness of both. The question has been vigorously disputed, in view of cer- tain attacks of Cardinal Gibbons upon the public school sys- *5 tern of America, whether denominational and church parochial schools produce a better type of moral character than the pub- lic schools. This is one of the favorite assertions of the advo- cates of German (and English) parochial schools in the Luth- eran Church, and we are not sure but that it is true. How- ever, it will not do to take the matter for granted, or hastily to approve the cry that "the godless public schools are rush- ing America to ruin." The parochial schools of this land, Lu- theran, and especially Roman, have their own tendencies and peculiarities toward moral weakness, which could be described if necessary, and which form an element in the sober considera- tion of educational problems. In view of the charges made by Cardinal Gibbons, nine- teen college presidents are said to testify almost unanimously that the moral character and conduct of public school boys is quite as high as that of boys from religious or other private schools. The President of Cornell University gives figures to show that the public school actually produces a larger percentage of church members than the private schools. He says that from a system of inquiry in use, he has learned that 6$ per cent, of the young men coming to his university from the public schools declare themselves to be church members, while only 56 per cent, coming from private schools make such declaration. He continues : "The fact that practically two-thirds of our freshmen who come from the public schools are church members is a conclusive refutation of the allegation that the public schools are breeding an irreligious, immoral and anarchical class of citi- zens." This same President of Cornell, in completing his statement, makes one of the most important remarks that we have ever yet seen emanating from the head of an American University. He says: "I do not believe the American people will ever consent to vote public moneys for denominational schools. But I see no reason why voluntary arrangements should not be made by the clergy of the respective localities for the systematic religious instruction of children in the public schools under such conditions of time and place as the school authorities might permit, the attendance of pupils at such in- 86 struction, of course, to be wholly optional." This remark is important not because the method proposed cannot be im- proved on, but because a great secular educational authority here recognizes the need and the right of the Church to give systematic instruction to its own rising generation. Last year the Mosley educational commission visited America in the interests of English education, and the report, which is now out, makes some comparisons. It declares that in America "the teachers seem filled with enthusiasm and there is a thirst for knowledge shown by pupils which is largely lack- ing in England." "The average American boy when he leaves school is better fitted for his vocation and struggle in life than the English boy." The fact that struck the Commission in going through the public schools was the success attained in making the scholars self-reliant, in bringing out their indi- vidual qualities, and teaching them to reason. "In some re- spects this seems to be the most important factor in all Amer- ican education, and largely accounts for the success of the pu- pils in after life." Another striking fact was "the large pre- ponderance of women teachers in all branches of education throughout the country. Personally I should favor the em- ployment of female teachers for boys and girls up to the age of say. twelve years : for the reason (as it appears to me) the woman claims the sympathy of children in younger years and understands the working of their minds in a way and to an ex- tent that no man can. Beyond this point, however, I am in favor of turning the pupils over to a man ; here, if I may say so. American education in my view requires some overhauling. Not only did I find comparatively few men engaged in teach- ing, but also few preparing to become teachers ; and upon fur- ther investigation I discovered the reason to lie in the small- ness of the remuneration. This is a serious defect." This is a corroboration of the principle for which our German Synods have, rightly, been standing in education. What the growing youths and maidens of church and state need, in this free land especially, in Sunday school, parochial and secular school, after they reach a certain age, is a schoolmaster. 87 THE Religious Educational Association has published that out of 946 superintendents of public schools in all parts of America 454 superintendents have reported that the Bible is read in all their schools, 295 superintendents have reported that the Bible is partly read in their schools, and only 197 superintendents have reported that it is not read at all in their schools. That is the Bible is read, at least in part, in four-fifths of the schools. Another report shows that out of 808 cities, 651 use the Bible in public schools. In 157 cities there were no religious exercises, and in "jj cities they were forbidden. In 53 of these cities prayer was used. In only 99 cities was it forbidden to explain the sections of the Bible that were read. The Missouri Church assumes that it is a breach of the Golden Rule to justify the taxing of Roman Catholics for pub- lic schools in which the Protestant's Bible is read. One might as well say that it is a breach of the Golden Rule for the United States to tax those of its citizens who were opposed to the Spanish and Philippine war for the payment of the expenses incurred by this war. Or one might say that it is a breach of the Golden Rule for the state of Pennsylvania or New York to tax bachelors, who have no children, for school purposes at all. Or one might as well say that it is a breach of the Golden Rule to justify the taxation of property belonging to women, for municipal purposes, from a voice in which women are ex- cluded by their inability to cast a ballot. It is right and proper in all these instances for the minority to pay taxes to be used as the will of the majority may decide, provided that in none of these instances the minority itself be forced against its own conscience to make use of the improvements thus provided ; and, if we were a Papist, or bachelor, or a woman, we should feel thankful to the state for the. introduction of even a little Christian religion into the public schools, not because of its influence on the souls, but on the citizenship of the pupils. A Christian citizen, whether he be. a Methodist, a Roman Cath- olic, or Congregationalist, is a better citizen and of more value to the state than an atheist. We are among those v/ho believe that America is a Chris- 88 tian nation both by extraction and history, and also by ma- jority ; and that if the President of this country affirms that things are done "In the year of our Lord" 1904, the teachers of our country may and should use the name of our Lord in their prayers, and that the church is giving- away a most valu- able heritage, by consenting to allow the state, "the vicar of God," to be regarded under the rationalistic conception of "a neutral." In our judgment, minorities must yield to the majority, and while special care should be taken to give fullest religious freedom to even the smallest minority, and to per- mit and encourage religious exercises of their own for mi- norities and to excuse them from the religious exercises of the majority, yet the fact that there, is a known non-Christian mi- nority in the land should not oblige the Christian religion and Christian training to be excluded from the public schools. SECRET Associations in America, we regret to say, have had a flourishing year. The newer orders in particular have been spreading through the land. One of these orders, that of the Elks, is especially harmful to the Church, in its religious, social and moral point of view. Its funeral service is almost a travesty on a sound morality and religion, and its annual services of tribute to the dead, for which some ministers can always be found to deliver addresses, and which are generally held on some Sunday afternoon toward the end of the year, are notable for their open defiance of Christian teaching with respect to death and judgment. At one of the rhetorical addresses delivered in Philadelphia this year, the memorial speaker said, "Not with funeral balm and the minor form of grief, but with music and eulogy we mourn through resurrected radiance. Brotherly love should rule the world. Then there will be no more crime. We are progressing. The altruistic decree of 'Live and let live' has been changed to 'live and help others to live.' " Another order of remarkable growth is the fraternal order of Eagles. It is said to have been formed in 1898 by five men in Seattle, Washington, and is stated to number 300,000 men, and, if the recent rate of growth continues, will before -89 long reach a million. The five men who organized the order met in February, 1898, on Sunday. They were all connected with the management of variety theatres. They gathered on succeeding Sundays with headquarters in the theatre and ini- tiated new members. The order has swept through the West and then came into the East. The secret orders are not the allies, but the enemies of the Church. An article in the December Arena, just out, is written to disprove this statement. It takes exception to the recent stern attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward Free Masonry, and exhibits both of these ancient organiza- tions (it says, The Roman Catholic Church has a history of two thousand years, but Masonry antedates Catholicism "far beyond the apprehension of finite minds") as divine brothers who should walk hand in hand on the same pathway : "Brothers all are the members of the two organizations, one in the es- sentials of rectitude and righteous living, making towards the same humani- tarian and spiritual ultimate Therefore, as 'Brother Soldiers' let us salute. And as Knights and Companions of the true Cross, let them join in the bat- tle for Truth, Purity, and for Peace, ready to fight, and if necessary to die for the Rig^i." We would be interested in seeing the Roman Church re- turn this brotherly salute! The Arena claims that there was a time when there was no prohibitive injunction in the Roman Church against Masonry, when the District of Columbia had for its first master a devout Roman Catholic, Captain Hoban, of Dublin, the architect of the nation's capital and the White House. This writer claims that originally "America was fron- tiered and bulwarked with the spirit of Masonry. Out from its living hearts sprung those sentiments and principles of true liberty and impartial laws which led to the formulation of the Declaration of Independence." He does not cite Thomas Jefferson as a member of the Masonic Order, but he mentions George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, and states definitely that "the generals who commanded the Revo- lutionary forces, together with four-fifths of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, were Masons." He men- tions that very strange fact, viz., that Roman Catholics are permitted to join the Society of Elks, the Odd Fellows, the 9° Maccabees and others. We are curious to know whether the writer of this article is in good standing- in the Roman Catholic Church ; also the reason why that Church admits an Elk and excludes a Mason : and whether the broad assertions made concerning - the universality of Masonry in connection with the origin of our free institutions are correct. Tn Europe it is well known that the members of royalty are connected with the Masonic Craft. Edward the VII, the German Emperor and King Oscar of Sweden were all Masons. Erederic the Great of Germany with both of his successors were Masons. Tn Erance King Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, Charles X. King Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. were Masons. But the present reigning Monarchs have found it neces- sary to withdraw from lodges to which they belonged. The German Emperor and King Oscar have taken steps to sever their connection with the Craft. During the last year of Queen Victoria's reign. King Edward as Grand Master of the English Rite was obliged to denounce the French Masons be- cause they had instituted an Atheistic Masonic lodge in Eng- land. For the grand Orient of France in 1877 banished the Almighty from its lodges, and excluded from its ceremonies all reference to the grand architect of the universe. A few weeks after the accession of Edward the VII. among the ear- liest petitions received by him was one by a large number of Turkish Free Masons, calling on him to use his influence to secure the freedom of the ex-Sultan Murad who has been im- prisoned for the last quarter of a century at Constantinople by his younger brother, the present Sultan. This principle of brotherly help works against justice as often as for it. OF the many sad tilings that occurred to shroud weeping hearts in sorrow, during the year 1904. we have space to mention but a few. New Year's day itself opened with a dreadful disaster. Chicago was draped in mourning. Five hundred and eighty-two beings lost their lives in attend- ance at the Iroquois theatre. The attempt of the clergy to prove this a Providential punishment upon theatre goers was 91 not very successful under the sarcastic remarks of the secular press. The truth is that Providence was working- then, as al- ways ; but was working in mystery, as is God's wont. The Saviour's Word concerning the tower of Siloam is the key to a proper interpretation. The fact that this disaster cannot be proven to be a direct punitive visitation of God, or that the medium of visitation was human negligence or crime, does not at all prove that theatre going is not wrong, nor that pun- ishment was not visited on some or all of those theatre goers. On the other hand, the fact that the people in the theatre were good, or respectable, and that many more wicked than those escaped this fate, does not prove that justice and punishment will not in due time be meted out to all. Finally, the fact that good people were taken away from life in a doubtful place, while it bears its warning, cannot be used in a wholesale way by the Church of Christ to decide on the fate of these people. Early in February a mighty outburst of fire ate out the heart of Baltimore's business district ; the loss is said to have surpassed that of the great Chicago fire in 187 1, and of the Boston fire in 1872. We believe that has run to almost two hundred millions of dollars. None of our churches were di- rectly affected by the conflagration. Few horrors have ever shocked the American world so thoroughly as that which was connected with the burning of the General Slocum, with over a thousand Lutherans on board, in the East River, New York, last June. It has been said that even Herod himself could not have devised a more awful fate for the hundreds of women and children that lost their lives on this steamer. Raising the question of Providence, our dear friend and co-worker, the Rev. Dr. G. C. F. Haas, who lost his own dear ones (including a little daughter, a special friend of the writer), and came near losing his life, the great bulk of whose congregation was swept at one stroke into the other world, made a notably strong and effective reply to unbeliev- ers, and a very powerful contribution to apologetics, in the words that sprang, in the depths of his stricken soul, from the faith in which he has hitherto lived. He was indeed a hero. It was the greatest disaster that ever appalled the metrop- 92 olis. The President ordered a rigid investigation and ap- pointed a committee of five prominent persons including mem- bers of the army and navy and of the departments of corpor- ations and commerce and labor for this purpose. They found that out of a total list of 1358, 955 persons lost their lives, while 175 persons were injured. The Commission is very severe in placing the moral and legal responsibility on the owners of the vessel and the crew. In less than a month later the Danish steamer "Norge," bound for New York, foundered off the coast of Scotland and the majority of the crew, 774 souls in all, perished. It is said that if the vessel would have been built within the last ten years and with the improved bulkheads she would probably have made a port. The vessel was afloat only twenty minutes after striking. The captain went down with his ship, but was sub- sequently rescued. IF we turn from disasters to deaths, the year has much to tell. Last July it was just one century since Alexander Ham- ilton fell before the pistol of Aaron Burr on the shores of the Hudson. The work of Hamilton for America, and his invaluable aid to Washington, have not been fully appreciated. He was not merely a good soldier and brilliant lawyer, and great financier, but he stood for that in statesmanship which has to-day rendered America a nation rather than a congeries 01 quarreling commonwealths. Talleyrand, a good judge of men pronounced Hamilton the greatest man of his epoch. Neither Hamilton nor Jefferson dreamed of a state dependent on uni- versal suffrage (something given to America by the democ- racy of Jackson). Nevertheless his ideas of nationality have been followed out by our American government. The begin- ning came with the annexation of Louisiana which transformed the country from a confederation into a national sovereignty. The long line of Chief Justice Marshall's decisions was a vic- tory for the principles of Hamilton, and the Civil War con- firmed the work begun by him. Hamilton laid the foundations of our commercial and revenue systems, and, despite his sins, deserves to be held in great gratitude in this land. 93 The death of Isabella, the deposed queen of Spain, this year, takes us back to the history of the nineteenth century. Inheriting the proud crown of Leon and Castile, she became the centre of the stormiest scenes of modern Spain — the Carlist wars, the last effort to unite the French and Spanish crowns, the revolt of the Spanish people, and the establishment of a short-lived republic. Our readers may recall that the candi- dacy for her vacant throne was made the pretext for the war which turned France into a republic, and united Germany into an Empire. After her own exile she had the satisfaction of seeing" her son and grandson ascend her throne. She was a wicked woman, with a kind heart and a generous nature. On the 12th of last August, the death of M. Waldeck- Rousseau, the greatest of French advocates and prime minis- ters and the saviour of the Third Republic, took place. The real career of Waldeck-Rousseau began in June, 1899. And it was only three years in length. But it was the longest on record in the history of the present Republic. In the six years preceding it there had been no less than nine ministers. Wal- deck-Rousseau, when France was in great confusion because of infamous wrong, including a corrupt military caballe and the scheming of a fanatical clericalism, took the French portfolio, and reopened the Dreyfus case. He crushed the intrigues of the army and the clergy so thoroughly that little has been heard of them since. But he did more: He cured France of her capriciousness in administration and convinced her of the advantages of a stable cabinet. Waldeck-Rousseau was one of the most eloquent oratorical advocates in France, not fervid and flowery, of the style of Gambetta, but perfect in form, fault- less in logic, and often cold. At heart he was tender and gentle, like many public men, and his distant bearing was due to a secret timidity which surrounded him with reserve in public. On July 14th Paul Kruger, the former president of the South African republic, died in exile at Clarens on Lake Ge- neva, Switzerland. Flow quietly this sturdy old Dutch Presi- dent, seated at his front door in Pretoria, pipe in mouth, Bible on knee, an elephant gun in hand, has disappeared from the 94 page of history! He has missed a martyr's fame and fate. That he transported the bulk of his fortune out of the country and left it in its dying position did not add to the respect of the world for him, nor did he enjoy the life of a deposed ruler. The absoluteness of his rule, which he believed was from God, and inspired of God in every detail, so that a word or blow against him was not only treason against the Transvaal, but blasphemy against the Anointed of the Lord, was a remark- able thing. In many respects he was like unto a patriarch of the old type, and in others he has been compared with the Judges of Israel who slew the tribes of Canaan that God's peo- ple might enter in, and who ruled as with a rod of iron. On the day of his death A Last Appeal in behalf of the Boers was circulated through Germany, imploring the German people to aid the downtrodden nation in the establishment of parochial schools, for the Christian training of their orphaned youth. It appears that the English government does not pro- pose to allow the state schools to be used for this purpose by the Boers. The Church has consequently organized its own schools, over two hundred in the Transvaal alone. From 60,000 to 80,000 marks will be needed to accomplish the pur- pose. The funeral expenses of Kruger will be borne by Eng- land, it is said. Sionism has lost its leader, Dr. Theodore Herzel, of Vi- enna. His death was an ovation to his ideas. In eastern Eu- rope he was regarded as a Messiah. But he died at the op- portune moment. His scheme, especially in view of the Sul- tan's definite opposition to Herzel's settlement of Palestine, was visionary. His plan of Uganda only served to conceal the failure of the original scheme. Nevertheless he has reached a high stage of historical significance by his influencing great heads of the earth, the emperor, the sultan, the pope. As one born to rule, though he was but a simple journalist, by his per- sonal appearing, his writings, his agitation, his colonial pro- jects, his Zion, he has awakened the national Jewish feeling in a manner that will long be felt. He has given the Jews a con- sciousness of national unity, and he has done for them in a less degree what Cavour did for the Italians, or Bismarck for Ger- 95 many. He is one of the spirits of the nineteenth century who wrought for national unification. Among other men of affairs who died during the year were Prince Herbert Bismarck of Germany, and ex-Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania ; James T. Lewis, one of the war gov- ernors ; and a former premier of New South Wales. Sir William Harcourt, who died in England early this Fall, was one of the historic figures of the British House of Parliament. He has been called "the last of the Whigs." Though he played the part of a democrat, he was an aristocrat as far as family pride was concerned. But if he could not sympathize with the spirit of his grandfathers, he also despised the crew who entered the Parliament in search of titles or to get into society. It has now been nearly six years since he retired from the leadership of the Liberal party in England. His letter to Mr. John Morley, announcing his retirement, may still be remembered for its vigor. But he remained in the House of Commons as a great personal power. His scholar- ship, his legal learning, his nimbleness of wit, his editorial skill, his vigor of debate, made him an effective if not an oratorical speaker. He was a tower of strength in his party, one of its wisest and most authoritative counsellors. But, he had drop- ped out of the ranks as a political force. He was one of those men, sitting on the front bench in the House, who in difficul- ties, in excited debate, would rise and recur to the annals of the last half-century or bring forth some clearing principle from the mazes of international law. Early in October, the death of Senator Hoar took place. Entering Congress in 1869 he has served there continuously ever since. He always had to be reckoned with as a force in legislation and in public policy. He was fearless, intelligent, enthusiastic and had great confidence in the rectitude of his own opinions. He believed that his views represented the correct position of the American people. We cannot say that we always admired Senator Hoar. The second week in August, Senator George G. Vest, whose public activities have covered nearly half a century, dropped from the ranks. At thirty-three years he was sena- 96 tor in the Confederate Congress, and at seventy-three he had been in the United States Senate for twenty-four years con- tinuously. He was a trusted and influential, intellectual leader of the South. He had spoken for the South in i860 in the Missouri Legislature, fought for the South, and had been elected to the Confederate Congress, but he accepted the con- stitutional results of the war, throwing himself particularly into the crusade against protection. He was a true Cobdenite, and an enthusiastic advocate of free silver coinage. On the 7th of last July, General Howard, of the Confed- erate Army, and a veteran of five wars was taken by death ; and on the first week of August, the wife of General Nelson A. Miles was taken in the same way. On the second week in November Paul Cassagnac, the Bonapartist deputy and well- known journalist, died in Paris ; and on the first week of Oc- tober F. A. Bartholdy, the French sculptor and designer of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, died in the same city. On the second week of July the Golden Rule Mayor of Toledo, Samuel M. Jones; and on the last week in July Rear Admiral Taylor, chief of the Bureau of Navigation ; and James N. Galvin, the newspaper man who unearthed the St. Louis boodle scandals, died. Among inventors and men skilled in the technical arts, were Robert Schwarzenbach (died July 2d), head of the largest steel manufacturing business in the world ; John N. Jones, who is said to have made in 1855 the first typewriting ma- chine in this country ; Charles H. Mosley, in Brooklyn, the first dentist who used nitrous-oxide gas ; in September, in Chi- cago, Mr. Haskins, the inventor of the multiple telephone switch board ; and in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Mr. Pollack, Ericsson's chief assistant in the reconstruction of the Monitor ; in Brooklyn Henry Waterman, the inventor of the steel strap pulley block ; in New York, G. W. Pach, the widely-known photographer, and General George Smithwick, for a long time Superintendent of the Harper's Art Engraving department and recently of the Ladies' Home Journal. Mr. Cornelius Shields, who has figured very largely during the past year as the manager of the Lake Superior Corporation, a financial 97 concern that brought great losses to many of the smaller in- vestors, died early this Fall. Among clergymen and lecturers we find the death of Dr. Leonard Moss, a prominent Baptist lecturer and editor, in the second week of July ; Colonel Copeland, a famous Lyceum lec- turer, in the third week of July. In the second week of Au- gust Prof. Frederic Ratzel, the eminent German geographer, died in Leipzig, and in the last week of August Prof. Charles W. Shields, of Princeton, died. Prof. Shields was a widely read and erudite philosopher, the author of "The Final Philoso- phy." His work in these fields was always esteemed very highly by Dr. C. P. Krauth. The first week in October S. F. Upham died in New Jersey. In September Rev. Dr. G. C. Lorimer, pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, and author of a number of volumes, died unexpectedly. During this Fall Archbishop Elder, of Cincinnati, died in his 86th year. He was a fluent speaker and possessed a facile pen. He passed herocially through the yellow fever epidemics in Mississippi, and was transferred to Cincinnati in 1881 to straighten out the unfortunate financial situation brought into this bishopric by Archbishop Purcell. Turning to men of art. we think first of all of the death of Bohemia's great composer, Antoine Dvorak, by apoplexy, on the first of last May. Like most great composers, Dvorak was of humble origin, his father being a butcher and inn- keeper near Prague. At sixteen he was playing a violin in Prague at $8 a month. In 1883 the performance of his Stabat Mater in London attracted a great deal of attention and he was brought to New York in 1892. Dvorak is regarded as having done for Bohemian music what Liszt did for the Hun- garian, Chopin for the Polish, and Grieg for the Norwegian. He was spontaneous and inexhaustible as a melodist, as also was Schubert, his model. He was influenced by Brahms, Liszt and Wagner, but the beauty of his song is its fresh, un- expected, and inexhaustible orchestration. England has had two great painters die this year, Blake and Watts. Blake was an idealist to whom the body was the symbol of the soul. The image of fire was a constant haunting presence to him, running linos of water, the gestures and atti- tude of the body or the trembling of lines, was an enhancement to his spirit. Watts was a painter who embodied moral and religious lessons in his work, and who had an extraordinary genius. All that ho did hail a certain relation to God. The lust week in August Robert C. Minor, a landscape painter, died at Waterford. ^mong men of letters who died during the year was the young man's friend. Dr. Samuel Smiles, in London, April 10th. at the age of 92. I lis hook. "Self-Help," was commer- cially one of the most remarkable publishing successes of the Nineteenth Century and has keen translated into a score of languages. "Duty," "Thrift.'* and "Character" followed from die same pen. Mr. Smiles was the son of a Scotch country doctor, and his mother was a widow with eleven children to educate. He himself was a surgeon, an editor, a railroad clerk, and finally he gave himself to authorship. About four weeks later, the death of Henry M. Stanley, the African explorer, took place in London. Stanley made three great expeditions to Africa between 1S70-1S00. and lived to see his routes through the forest threaded by the telegraph and traversed by steamer and locomotive. It has been said that Stanley was not a conquest seeker like Cortez. Pizarro. Cabot and Columbus. Though he carried the Stars and Stripes through the heart of the dark continent, he never once planted it there. But he went armed, and not as a missionary like Livingstone. He opened the way for commercial development and for the partitioning of Africa. In September the wife of William Cullen Bryant died in Connecticut, and in November Mrs. Will Carlton, the wife of the poet. On November 20th W. M. Paxton, of Princeton, died in his Si st year, after a two weeks' illness, caused by a paralytic stroke induced by overexcitement in attending the Yak- Princeton football game. The third week in December L. Clarke Davis, for many years editor of the Public Ledger, died suddenly of heart dis- ease. He was the husband of Rebecca Harding Davis and 99 father of Richard Harding Davis, the novelist and war corre- spondent. He was a close friend of President Cleveland. As a youth lie was brought up in a boarding school at Norris- town. He became the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1869, and nearly twenty years later under George W. Childs he became the editor of the Public Ledger, succeeding W. 1 1 . Keene. Davis was a writer of energy and experience, and had regard for "the broad round of human interests." He nearly always stood on the right side morally, but the religion of the Public Ledger, especially in later years, was of a very humani- tarian character, and "broad" enough to include the Semites within its fold. On the 24th of last March Sir Edwin Arnold, the oriental writer, author of The Light of Asia, and The Light of the World, died in London in his seventy-second year. As a young man, Arnold was a Liberal, and was sent by his party to India as the Principal of Poona College. He here laid the foundation of his oriental studies, becoming a master of San- scrit. He began to publish his writings as early as 1853. In 1862, he brought out a history of the administration of India during one of its Governors. After his return to England he became the editor for the London Telegraph, and he said that the hardest work of his life was done on a daily newspaper, "I have written more than eight thousand editorials." He was of a nervous temperament and a stout muscular physique, and always bright and entertaining. For many years he wore a black silk skull cap well down over his fore- head. His Light of Asia was published in September, 1878, with little expectation of its making a stir. His Light of the World was published in 1890. He always expressed his love for Japan, and after that for the United States, and this may have caused him a loss of the Poet Laureateship. He was mar- ried three times, the last time in 1897 to a Japanese woman. In 1901 he was stricken with blindness and had troubles that brought gloom into his declining years. We cannot say that his influence, with the impetus that it gave to the study of com- 1 -re. IOO parative religion and the exaltation of what is good in Orien- talism, was wholesome. Sir Leslie Stephen, the great English critic, who died early in the year, broke away from the Evangelical religion of his family in early days, and joined the party of Clifford and Mill and Spencer. He is noted for his patient study of the Eigh- teenth Century Life. He was editor of the Dictionary of Na- tional Biography, and president of the British Ethical Society. It is said that "conduct meant, for him, three-fourths of life." He composed an apology for agnosticism and was noted as a powerful periodical writer on its behalf. Death for him had no rays of hope. In the Lutheran Church the past year has been notable for the death of no less than three Presidents of the General Council, the Rev. Dr. J. A. Seiss, who died in Philadelphia on June 20th at the age of 81 ; the Rev. Dr. E. F. Moldenke, who died in New York on June 25th at the age of 67 ; and the Rev. Dr. Carl Swensson, who died in California on the 16th of last February, in the prime of life, at the age of 46 years. To this list must be added the Rev. Frank Richards, D. D., former President of the District Synod of Ohio, whose son is a missionary to Porto Rico, and G. W. Frederick, former pub- lisher of The Lutheran and of much sound Lutheran literature that the English Church now possesses. All these men were prominent at the meetings of the General Council, and to them must be added the Rev. W. F. Ulery, a veteran in the service of the Pittsburg Synod, who died at Greensburg at the age of 74 years, and the Rev. Prof. J. Steinhaeuser, D. D., who died at Allentown at the age of 54 years, the Rev. Dr. J. M. Anspach, who died at ^'illiamsport at the age of 63 years, Rev. A. Det- zer, Sr., of the Missouri Synod, who died at Niles Center at the age of 86 years, the Rev. O. Leopold, at the age of 75 years, and the Rev. G. E. Youngdahl, at Colorado Springs, at the age of 42 years. Extended mention has already been made of the death of Dr. Seiss. Dr. Swensson, who was born in Sugar Grove, Pennsylvania, graduated in 1877 at Angustana, entered the Royal College in Upsala, and was ordained in 1879 in Chicago. IOI He took charge of the Bethany Church in Lindsborg, and in 1881 founded Bethany College. In 1893 Upsala University conferred on him the degree of Ph. D., and in 1901 he was made a knight of the Royal Order of the North Star by the King of Sweden. He was the author of several books, and very active in social and political circles in Kansas. He was the leader of the distinctivelv American view in Swedish- American circles Among the deaths of prominent business men during the year was that of Mr. Oliver Williams, of Catasauqua, a former president of the National Iron Association, and a friend of the Presidents Lincoln and Arthur. He was a member of the Lu- theran Church, and a very ardent co-worker in the establish- ment of the new Lutheran. Members of the General Council will remember him as he arose at the meetings of that body to which he was a delegate for many years, and with short, sharp, nervous speeches made good natured hits at the clergy. On the 7th of December, Prof. Augustus L. Graebner, one of the most valuable members of the Missouri Synod, and a Professor in the Seminary at St. Louis, died at the age of only 55 years. Prof. Graebner was an overworked man, and though he went abroad in search of health, was too far gone in disease to be restored by his trip. He was born in Michi- gan in 1849, studied in the parochial schools in St. Louis, went to College at Ft. Wayne, and was a graduate of Concordia .Seminary. One of the ablest men that that institution has produced, in 1887 he became Professor of Ecclesiastical His- tory. He was a fine writer with a trenchant and eloquent style, and a most devoted propagandist of Missourian princi- ples. He was the founder of its English Theological Quarterly, and an adaptor of its doctrines to the English situation. Prof. Graebner was by taste a historian, and would have left one or two imperishable historical works to the Lutheran Church, if his judgment had not been so thoroughly biased by a tendons in favor of Missouri. Indefatigable as an investigator, charming and spirited as a composer, the vice, of his work was a use of all historical facts to support the theories of his Church. He was not merely an advocate, stating the facts and construing 102 them in a certain direction ; but he was a partisan in the most detrimental sense of the word. In this spirit he came east and made a splendid investigation of original documents, especially those in the archives at Gettysburg, and some connected with the history of the New York Ministerium. But when his "Geschichte der Lutherisehen Kirche in Amerika" came out, one of the sprightliest and most vivacious works that has ever been written on American soil, well organized and abounding" in a wealth of historical material.it was found alas! not to be re- lied on either for its facts or for its conclusions. What mag- nificent men. of sound and victorious faith, of keen and irre- sistible intellect. Missouri might produce, if they were not so trained as to regard fidelity to their organization and its past as of more importance than fidelity to actual historical truth. THE year {904 has been fruitful in invention and mechani- cal progress, and we should like to speak of inventions, if there were space, especially of the new style, of mo- tive power, which may work a revolution and economy in all use of machinery and kinds of locomotion, viz, the Turbine Engine; also of the proposed substitution of electricity for steam on the Lackawanna and the New York Central Rail- roads, of electrical progress during the year, of wireless teleg- raphy, of the use of concrete in structural work, and especially of the great curved concrete dam nearly 500 feet long, erected in Australia, of aeronautic attempts and failure, of the mono- rail system, of transit by subways, and of new adaptations of the telephone. We should like to speak of the bearing of the discovery of radium, and the extensive investigations that have been con- ducted with it during the past year, of its successful use in an instrument to measure electricity, of the researches of Sir W il- liatn Ramsay, who intimates that the ordinary chemical ele- ments may be the products of the breaking down of radio- active elements of high atomic weight: and of the possibili- ties of the transmutation of substance. \\ e should also like to speak of the tendency to introduce an acceptance of evolution into the elementary schools, as in- 103 dicated for instance in the following extract of a London speaker: "I think," he says, "the time has arrived when all educationalists should consider the desirability of teaching the principles of evolution. I believe that all the schools accept the evolution theory and that it would not be difficult to pre- sent the facts in such a way that children could understand them." We have spoken elsewhere of the effect of the intro- duction of critical and evolutionary principles into the schools of the land. LET us turn for a moment to archaeology. Prof. Harnack has been appearing in America on return from the St. Louis Exposition and has lectured before Harvard Uni- versity, the Boston University, and the Union Theological Seminary of New York. Friederich Delitzsch, the noted Babylonian scholar, who has just returned to Berlin from the field of his oriental inves- tigations, will visit this country in February and lecture in the leading American Universities. At Baalbek the German Orientalists have continued to excavate the ancient temples, and are also conducting work at. Palmyra, in the Hauran, and at Gerash, and Aman. They have been working at Mesheytta, in old Moab, east of the Jordan. This remarkable ruin in the desert was presented out- right to the German Emperor by the Sultan. Under the di- rection of Dr. Shumacher, the remarkable stone facade of the great enclosure of the Khan or palace has been taken down, boxed and sent to Berlin to form one of the adornments of the new Friederich Museum. The German Oriental Society, of which the Emperor is a member and to whose work he is one of the largest contribu- tors, in connection with the Palsestina Verein, has been exca- vating on what is supposed to be the site of the ancient Me- giddo on the southern edge of the plain of Esdraelon and at the neighboring Leggun. The same Society has been continuing its work in Egypt and Babylonia. It has been engaged in a systematic excava- tion of the ruins of Babylon for the last five years, with minor 104 excavations at Borsippa, the sister city of Babylon, and in Fara. and Abnhatab, two ancient cities to the south of Baby- lon, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Excavations have also been begun at the ancient Ashur, and the historical im- portance of this city has been found to be very great. A suc- cession of palaces has been discovered in Ashur. This city continued to be occupied as a resident city for the ancient kings into the Seventh Century B. C. THE practical effort and energies of the Church in Chris- tian countries show no signs of diminution. Dr. Car- roll has given us an estimate in figures of the adher- ents of various forms of belief in the United States, together with their increase in membership during the past year (that is 1903). He tells us that American Catholics number 9,891,- 869 communicants ; increase during the last year 166,110; the Methodists 6,192,494, increase 112,946; the Baptists 4,725,775, increase 61,146: the Lutherans 1,715,910, increase 39,567; the Presbyterians 1,661.522, increase 26,506; the Episcopal 782,- 543, increase 15,209; the Congregationalists 659.704, increase 15,209; the Reformed 390,578, increase 5540. The Quakers lost 2069 members in the last five years, the Free Will Bap- tists lost 19, 655 in the last five years, the Salvation Army lost 15,000, and the Christian Scientists lost 10,000. The Mormons number 342,072 members, an increase of 1982 dur- ing the last five years. In commenting on Dr. Lenkers statement that the Lu- theran Church in the world numbers over six million more white members than all other members of the Protestant Churches taken together, Lehre und Wehre says : "Dr. Lenker, like many others in the General Synod and in the General Council, is suffering from the disease of distention. For instance, he counts among the Lutherans not only every- thing that has legs in Lutheran lands, but also the twenty mil- lion members of the Prussian Union. But this is un-Luth- eran, and is one proof out of many that the true Lutheran Church is much smaller than the number of those who claim the name. Lutherans must not desire to be considered im- io5 portant in the line of large figures but in the line of the great truths which she represents and which cause her to be the true visible Church even where she is a small and despised little Hock." We agree entirely with the wholesome portion of this declaration. Truth, that is, sound doctrine, is first and fore- most : numbers are secondary. But our trouble with the state- ment is that it does not declare the whole truth. If Brother Lenker's mind is suffering from the disease of external disten- tion, the Missourian mind is suffering from the disease of in- ternal distention : it believes, with reference to the Lutheran Church, that it is the whole thing. Qualitative exaggeration of one's own importance, is not less unfortunate than quanti- tative exaggeration. Humility is a necessary quality even in the true flock. The Methodist Church at the meeting of its General Con- ference at Los Angeles opposed changing the position of the church on meting out solid discipline to those enjoying im- proper amusements. The vote on this question was 441 to 188. The same church in Brooklyn early last spring almost unanimously acquitted Dr. Borden P. Bowne, one of Method- ism's philosophical scholars and college men, of the charge of heresy. Dr. Bowne is professor of Philosophy in Boston Uni- versity, and is the author of works in Metaphysics, Psycho- logical Theory, the Philosophy of Theism, and the Princi- ples of Ethics. He approaches theology from a philosophical standpoint, and is attempting to give an adequate background in theology and philosophy to modern sociological and re- ligious problems. His recent thinking has been far from or- thodox, but so has that of many other Methodist leaders. Rev. Beeby, pastor of the Episcopal Church in Birming- ham, recently denied the Virgin birth of our Lord in the Hib- bert Journal. His bishop, Dr. Gore, requested his resigna- tion in consequence of his having taken this position, and Beeby handed it in. Canon Henson, of London, then came forward and accused bishop Gore of tyranny, declaring that "many of the clergy are not able to assent to all the statements in the Creeds of the Church, and if a man by accepting the Creeds as a whole declares himself heart and soul a Christian io6 that test ought to be sufficient." The world over, the battle with rationalism within the church is raging. We should like to follow the work of Dr. Harper and his University , if there were space, and especially the discussion awakened by Dr. Harper when he stated that neither the Theo- logical Seminaries nor the churches can be relied on for the solution of religious problems. We content ourselves with quoting a single criticism : "If we are to learn from Germany how the university does this important work, we are inclined to think that the university raises more problems than it solves, that it chills rather than warms the religious life, and that its work is theoretical rather than practical." It is the fundamentals of evangelical Christianity, and not external problems of church work, polity and worship that need the chief emphasis in the Christian pulpit. While the Church is adjusting its fringes, reason is chloroforming its vital organs. Professor Osier, the newly appointed Regius Professor at Oxford University, delivering the annual lecture on immortality at Harvard University, recently drew atten- tion to the growing indifference of educated people toward everything connected with the future life. Other writers, for instance, Dr. John Watson, of Liverpool, and Dr. George Gordon, of the old South Church, Boston, are emphasizing the same fact. People seem to be less solicitous about the future even at death than about the welfare of their kindred, their business and those whom they leave behind. So many doubt the future life, and have no strong confidence respecting it, that a paralysis has come over an intelligent and thinking people with regard to it. The typical American of culture, with his physician, attempts to hide the shadow of death from those who are taken with mortal illness, and the faithful pas- tor, even in the dying hour, sometimes by order of the trained nurse, is excluded from the presence of his parishioner. The family, at the funeral, through the undertaker, provides the choir, selects the hymns, and intimates to the clergy that the deceased has been of exceedingly virtuous disposition, and must, on the day of the funeral, be ranged with the saints in heaven. The whole conception of grief is subjective, and often ie>7 divorced from God and the Church. One of the merits of the Roman Church (though the means, viz, the mass, is not com- mendable) is its insistence on an objective and churchly rela- tion of the soul to God in death. Our readers in the East probably do not realize the great gains that are being made by the Disciples of Christ as they are found throughout the middle West. No less than 16,500 delegates are said to have met in St. Louis this Fall at the In- ternational Missionary Convention of this denomination. This church is less than a hundred years old, and has a membership of 1,200,000, and a net gain of 40,000 during the last year. The Fourth International World's Sunday-School Con- gress was held during this present year in the city of Jerusalem. English and American delegates sailed thither on two German steamers. The session was held from the 16th to the 18th of April in a tent near the Damascus Gate, and was attended by from 1500 to 1800 people. Seventeen denom- inations were represented and at the close the Apostles Creed and the Lord's Prayer were used in common. The Lord's Supper was celebrated in a common way, twenty or twenty- five ministers distributing the elements. Good Lutherans could not have joined in this communion. The reports show- ed that the bulk of the work represented was done in America and England. A committee was apointed for the establish- ment of Sunday-Schools in the Holy Land. Calcutta was re- garded as possibly the next place of meeting. The first International Congress of the Salvation Army took place in London last July, and not less than six thousand representatives, from all lands, were present. The Salvation. Army is said to number more than a million. Among those present were Japanese, New Zealanders and persons from India. General Booth, who was present in person, was re- ceived by the king of England, who assured him that he re- garded the Salvation Army as an important element in the religip-ethical education of the people. The Army is dis- tributed throughout forty-nine lands, and devotes itself espe- cially to the recovery of drunkards and the fallen. Its methods often provoke irreverence even among the ignorant. An io8 Italian fruit vender, with a stand across the street from the writer's desk, when he hears the shouting and drumming of the approaching Salvation Army, frequently admonishes pass- ers by, in sarcasm, "Why don't you go up to the corner and get your soul saved?" In Norway the battle between the old and the new has continued incessantly throughout the year. Prof. Jeager (Dr. Jur.) made an address before the Association of Norwegian students, taking as his theme "Orthodoxy the enemy of Chris- tianity." Jeager is one of the most popular young professors. What made this address particularly significant was the fact that Jeager was formerly an outspoken adherent of the Danish Agnostic Dr. Brandes and here openly renounced Agnosticism and accepted Christianity. Jeager said, "There never has been a thoughtful materialist who has not been obliged to come to the stunning result, that all our life is without a meaning. But this view is the most absurd one possible. It is a foolish imagination to suppose that Agnosticism can ever become the religion of youth. Per- sonally I am of the opinion that those who are thoroughly im- bued with the spirit of Christianity possess a goodness of feel- ing and instinct, and a purity of morality, and a degree of cour- age and consolation in darker hours, as well as a joy in life and a fearlessness in death, that cannot be found elsewhere." At the same time, Prof. Jeager declaimed against Church dogmas, particularly against the orthodox doctrine of Hell (ut sine fine crucientur. Augustana XVII) and the doctrines of the absolute divinity of Christ, and the Trinity. He tried to preserve something more than mere manhood for Christ, as over against the rationalists. Christ to him is the ideal and therefore the divine Man. In his address Prof. Jeager showed strong traces of the influence of the Swedish thinker Victor Rydberg. His address had no sooner been made public than it was violently attacked, particularly his attitude toward the Luth- eran Confession. The conflict has been made more intense by the issue of two writings on Old Testament criticism, the one by Faerden, on the Old Testament in the light of more re- 109 cent investigation, and the other by Prof. Michelet, on Old Sanctuaries in a New Light. Both works are popular presen- tations of Wellhausen. Faerden writes with thrilling convic- tion and in a glittering style. Faerden is one of the most highly respected clergy of Norway, and Michelet, who seeks to bring out the devotional power inherent in the new views, is the only Old Testament professor in the University. Bishop Heuch, whom we have already noticed at length in an article of this Review as the head of the Conservative tendency, died on the 3d of February in this last year. IT was our intention to indicate the development of theo- logical literature, in its characteristic publications, during the year, but its discussion will have to be postponed, for the present at least, from lack of space. AS we take a parting glance, perhaps for the last time, at the events, issues, struggles, Providences, calamities, tendencies, developments and advances, and warnings of the year 1904, realizing that great men have fallen all along the line, and that our day and generation has already made a perceptible inroad on the reserves of opportunity accorded to the Twentieth Century, it behooves us to stand in our faith, earnest in spirit, lifting up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, that the name of our Lord may be glorified in us, and we in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. hbBBHBH HwT™~ '' .■.'•■ ; ' .1. ;.'".." : ■'•'•,'■•■'■■' llililSI .'■■' i" ••.'■.•-■■:..■■-'..-'■'■■•■■ ■ (.■;.,';.■.■• swwwSMB '.-'.-•■■-'.:• 2HQSSafc28S£ ■'■■ : " ■■-■■ -' ■ ": % - '■■■■ v/ /■;••/::■;•■; ■: .-.■■.■. 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