Christ's own planting, thinking that he would soon begin to hew, let him draw near quietly, with silent steps and uncovered head, to remove the mislaid ax.*

In approaching the temperance reform, I am embarrassed by the fact that some saloonkeepers claim to be Christians. My embarrassment would be increased an hundred-fold if some one should find a saloonkeeper's license in the New Testament.

On the other hand, it is more pleasing to

*In looking for what may be said of the Church as an impediment to reforms, I incidentally notice that freethought people are still expecting much from science as a means of overthrowing Christianity. Logic and ridicule have done much, and are still valuable auxiliaries; but science is furnishing a corps of sappers and miners who weaken the foundations of the walls. Soon Christianity is to cave, like a great sand-hill, and great will be the benefits to the people!

After reading matter of this kind for half an hour, one feels that free-thought people must be about to establish colleges and schools to teach the people science, as the Churches have these years been doing. Perhaps they will do so; but for the present, having read the books on astronomy and geology, with other of the books required, in the Chautauqua Course, I am convinced that the Chautauqua University alone is doing more to spread the facts of science among the people than is being done by all the free-thought people in the world. The Churches have prospered while religious people have been doing this suicidal work.

believe that, of every one hundred earnest workers in the cause of temperance, ninetynine are Christian women or Christian men.

The usefulness and the beauty of the words "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise," will be sufficient reason for continuing my practice of quoting.

I

We are told that among men engaged in labor agitations there are those who "cheer for Jesus and curse the Church." It is pleasing to think that these men have caught a glimpse of the "Light of the world," and, to some extent, recognize their best Friend. could not, however, join them in cursing the Church; for, notwithstanding the defects. which can doubtless be found in Churches of every name, and notwithstanding the parasites before inentioned, I have found, in my observation, more of the true spirit of Christ in the Church than anywhere else.

Especially will the laborer err in departing from his well-furnished armory, the Bible. I need not repeat the words before quoted from the Old Testament, which recur so often, concerning the poor, the widow, and the father

less, nor those which rebuke the oppression of the stranger and the unfortunate. The shield of Divine authority appears to have been held over these classes to protect them against the rapacity of such as would oppress them. Old Testament words on this subject are echoed in the New, where James says, "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." "Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them. which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."

Those, however, who would cite the rebukes to rapacity and oppression should also profit by the checks to violence, which are equally abundant.

Conclusion

1. My believing readers I shall leave, each for himself, to consider the importance of a consistent life.

2. In answer to the question introduced in the first chapter, "Do the writers and teachers of the Bible place suitable emphasis on morality?"-in view of the quotations which have been made from the Old and New Testaments-I think it prudent to say they do. If, to use Gibbon's expression, “a pure and humble religion" had not "gently insinuated itself into the minds of men," the civilization of modern Europe and America would have been something very different from what it now is, and something greatly less pleasing than it now is.

When we consider the tendency of Bible teaching in regard to morality, from the giving of the Decalogue to the latest expressions of the apostles, consider the reputation of the

Church which took its part in forming the new order of things when ancient kingdoms and ancient customs crumbled to dust with the fall of the Roman Empire, and consider the influence of Christianity in later periods, wherever it has been preached in its purity and practiced in its purity, we can scarcely avoid the conviction that the friends of morality have great reason to rejoice that the rays of the Sun of righteousness have, either directly or by reflection, been thrown about them. They will find in their surroundings no reason for holding the progress of the gospel in check. On the contrary, there appears in the Bible and in Christianity, to be a force which the friends of morality can not dispense with without serious loss.

3. Unbelief sometimes says, "If God had intended to reveal his will, he would have" done this, or "he would have" done that. If, however, the reader has taken a short journey in the scientific field, he will know that to examine what we have before us will be the more scientific and rational course.

Our religious and moral powers are the highest that are in us. It is here that we