with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness," after the wiles of error. It is an awful thing to cause a rupture in the body of Christ or to interfere with a healthful growth of the Church of the living God. The past should be our teacher. Many of the questions which disturb the Church to-day are old foes with new faces-questions settled, many of them, in the early ages of Christianity. The advanced wing of higher criticism, especially in the United States, only echoes exploded theories whose origin may be traced to the brains of some German rationalist. For it is well known that a scientific or philosophical development of these destructive systems has found its greatest advocates in the Protestant universities of Germany, a country where experimental religion is at a very low ebb. These men, as Dr. Schaff points out, "appeal to the Reformation for the right to protest against Christ and his apostles, as formerly Marcion and the Gnostics appealed to Paul."

The modern Protestant Church in this country has more formidable foes in these destructive critics than in Romanism. There is an air of learning and candor about them which is most fascinating to the undisciplined mind not well grounded in philosophy, as well as to the cold unregenerate heart not washed in the blood of the Lamb, while the gross assumptions of Rome are revolting to the practical and enlightened American. The Church of the future, while turning away with pity from the extreme sacerdotalism and monkish inventions of Rome, must at the same time cling closer to the doctrines of Christ and the apostles as revealed in the word of God, and contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. The Church has invariably suffered whenever it has yielded to rationalistic tendencies. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Like will produce like in the nineteenth and twentieth as well as in all preceding centuries. Universalism, Unitarianism, and other forms of socalled free thought have never deepened the piety of the Church nor increased its zeal for the promulgation of the Gospel of Christ. Take away the idea of the absolute necessity for regeneration and sanctification, the utility of prayer, and a firm belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God which contains all things necessary to salvation-take away these or any one of them, and the Church must inevitably suffer. Let the people be taught from our pulpits or professorial chairs to disbelieve the above doctrines or to make light of the Bible, and they will soon learn to do without any kind of church organization. The safety of the Church is conditioned on its faith in the Bible as the word of God; the influence of the Bible is conditioned on its regnancy in the thought and affections of the Church. The Church without the Bible dies; the Bible without

the Church sleeps.

PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

IS REPUBLICANISM the ideal form of government? To the ordinary American, surrounded from his birth with New World institutions and trained in the exercise of the highest rights of citizenship, the question seems easy of answer. The history of the republic, with its glowing pages of yeoman struggle and of later successes, is to him a sufficient refutation of any reflection cast upon his governmental constitution and practice. The history of other republics also, as those of the Netherlands and of Switzerland, is equally confirmatory of the excellences claimed for this form of government. To the political student, however, the evils that inhere in republicanism, if they be different from the defects discoverable in the monarchical or oligarchal order, are nevertheless definite and grave. The whole system of American politics, for illustration, seems fraught with tremendous possibilities of danger to national perpetuity. In the very frequency of our elections is lodged a weighty peril. Some municipal, state, or national officer is always to be chosen. The voice of the candidate is ever heard upon the hustings in importunity for votes; the din of the parade fills the streets; the bluster and brag of the campaign leaders crowd the columns of the daily prints. Men's prejudices by these means are kept at white heat; oftentimes their better judgments are subordinated to partisan interests; repeatedly the weighty concerns of society are jeopardized for selfish ends. If frequency of elections be the proud boast of republics-if thereby the tendency to centralization of power is checked and the promotion of lowly-born citizens to the higher offices of the government is made possible-there may nevertheless be an over-frequency in the exercise of suffrage which does not make for national prosperity.

The quality of the pseudo-statesmanship which engages most actively in our political campaigns is furthermore to be deprecated. Too true is the claim that the better citizenship of the land is indifferent to the theories of the great political parties, refuses consent to nomination for office, and refrains especially from the exercise of the supreme right of the freeman upon the day of election. One noteworthy difference between British and American practice, according to the definition of an observing visitor lately on our shores, is that in England the best men engage in politics and in America the worst. So it is that those of few qualifications and of unworthy aims too often crowd into our lower and even higher elective offices; while occasionally those better fitted who are chosen find themselves trammeled by party expectations of spoils and by unwritten requirements of subserviency to the faction that has accomplished their election. The possibility of subverting the results of a specific election, through the plottings of chief leaders and the illegal acts of returning boards, is furthermore predictive of the gravest peril for republican institutions. Dispassionately, and with no specific reference to any instance that has of

late come under the public notice, it is pertinent to remark upon this tendency and its peril. Not moral qualifications, nor party affiliation, nor intellectual equipment, but the application of the common rules of arithmetic must decide the occupancy of an elective office if government is to be long maintained. The bitter partisanship which would consent to the violation of the statute law for short-lived advantage throws open the door of opportunity through which disorder, anarchy, disruption, will soon enter with willing feet. Because of the constant political debate that is waging, sometimes prompting the notion of the superiority of monarchies with their more fixed institutions, and because of the nearness of another presidential contest with its warring voices, this line of remark seems appropriate. It is not enough, as optimists hold, that none of the evils specified have increased in many years of national history. If republicanism makes for intelligence and virtue there should have been a positive decrease in political chicanery, in bribery, in vote-buying and selling, in greed for spoils. The trend seems toward disaster, and if these and a score of other evils that threaten the governmental life be considered, to every political student they prompt the question as to the ultimate fate of republican government.

THE new cure for drunkenness, which is now agitating the medical and scientific worlds, challenges the notice of every friend of fallen humanity. With the enthusiastic claims of the defenders of the bichloride of gold treatment our readers are perforce acquainted, and need no full definition of the theory and its application. To the exultant testimonies also of patients who have undergone the Keeley treatment and claim full liberation from the drink bondage we cannot be deaf in this hour of their triumphant witness-bearing. If we accept the claim of enthusiasts as to the value of the alleged discovery, a new star of hope has risen upon the drunkard's night. Or if we receive the verdict of conservative judges who wait for a fuller trial of the theory, at least a possible escape is opened up for the victim of intoxicants. Leaving, however, the Keeley theory to the test of time, which tries all things good and bad in its alembic, its relations to the moral phases of the drink habit claim particular notice. We do not understand, though the treatment should prove for the drunkards of the generation all that its confident discoverer expects, that the ethics of liquor-selling or of liquor drinking would be thereby changed. No anathema upon drunkenness which is written in the Book would as a consequence be stricken from the holy oracles. Liquor would still be that fiend with inherent power to sap the physical vitality, to enslave the will, to sear the conscience, to inflame the bestial passions, to steal away life's great opportunities, and to rob the soul of paradise. The organized liquor manufacture of the world would also continue to be that monstrous traffic for which the eternities have no forgiveness. Let it not be thought that Mr. Keeley has come with a new evangel of liberty for men, abrogating the moral law, reducing drunkenness to a peccadillo, and

promising full restoration from intemperate courses for every drunkard. Whatever relief the new discovery may bring to the besotted, it can never rob his vice of its moral quality while the world endures.

Furthermore, the bichloride treatment becomes at the best but an adjunct of divine grace to redeem the drunkard. What Christianity has done in this respect the annals well prove. Though some have fallen who have claimed supernatural support, they have disproved no Christian theory of the almighty help nor invalidated men's confidence that in this is the supreme remedy for alcoholism. Chemistry can never take the place of divine grace in men's struggles for victory over the archenemy. Still further, the bichloride cure, if it should prove all that men dream, would not relieve philanthropists from that loving and untiring system of rescue work which marks the close of the century. There would yet be the need of missions among the fallen, the ministry of charity to the helpless inmates of the drunkard's home, the spread of temperance literature, the maintenance of inebriates' institutions, the insistence upon more rigid temperance legislation, and, in fine, the manifold lines of work which consecrated hearts have already undertaken. The bichloride cure, at the best, could only be numbered among these agencies of good, rather than be expected to supplant them all. To hold that one scientist has discovered the cure-all for the gravest disease that has afflicted the race, and that he alone is to be the saviour of the world of drunkards, would be to foist an absurdity upon the notice of the age. For the fullest proof of the value of the Keeley cure it is the part of patience to wait. Whether it is to be numbered with such semi-successes as the Pasteur system of inoculation, or whether it will take its place among irrational and exploded theories like the recently advertised "elixir” of Brown-Sequard, time will determine. But though the discovery prove of the largest value it has supplanted no established law of personal obligation. Vigilance is still the price to be paid for liberty. Every temperate soul is still his "brother's keeper" among the snares and pitfalls that are spread for human feet. These are eternal verities whose authority is on high.

THE insurrection in Brazil must be added to the already numerous tragedies that have been played by the South American nations. Many of the environments which make for success surround the Brazilian government. In extent it possesses the largest territory of any State in South America. In location it touches every country of the continent except Chili to the west, thus maintaining open avenues of approach to its industrial markets. With a sea-coast of nearly four thousand miles it can send forth its exports to every nation of the world. In fertility of soil it may well be the envy of many of the barren and rock-bound countries of northern latitudes. Of mineral and vegetable products it includes in its bewildering list gold and diamonds, iron, salt, coffee, cotton, sugar, cocoa, rice, dyes, rosewood, and many commodities besides. Enjoying such a largess of natural gifts, Brazil is surely the El Dorado which the Castilians sought. What,

then, is the meaning of the Brazilian unrest, whose latest manifestation is in grave insurrectional disturbances? It does not necessarily follow that the Republic is dissatisfied with its new governmental experiment and wishes a return to the empire, with its throne and state. Since the quite recent disenthronement of Dom Pedro and his virtual banishment, the time has been too short to learn the merits or discover the defects of the new system. Is there not rather inherent in the Brazilian character many of the traits of other tropic nations which do not contribute to greatness? Familiar is the charge upon these southern peoples of a deep-seated and incurable restlessness, a constitutional intolerance of existing institutions, and a visionary expectation of advantages to be gained from change. That the northern nations are less mercurial, more patient workers for success, more submissive to existing forms as a means to wealth and prestige, the philosophy of national life will show. In close connection with which feature is the further fact, of incidental value, that the nations of the temperate zones have been the achieving nations of the world. If Egypt, Carthage, and Persia once filled a large place in the annals of achievement, the general rule is not invalidated. If the Orient gave the God-man to the world and Genoa sent forth one of her sailors to find a new hemisphere, it is yet the men of northern birth who rank the highest in invention, science, military leadership, and letters. To this fact of tropical characteristics may therefore be attributed in part the Brazilian disposition to unrest. Because of this national temper emperors have reigned, some short-lived Fonseca as dictator comes and goes upon the stage, or a provisional junta in turn seizes the reins of power.

The disturbing effects of ignorance may also be enrolled among the possible causes of the Brazilian restlessness. With a population of several millions the lack of educational advantages, perhaps with the consent of a dominating and scheming priesthood, is one of the admitted features of the Brazilian life. Some of its component parts, as Negroes, Mulattoes, and aboriginal Indians, for whom instruction would seem especially fit and necessary, go untutored in the ways of knowledge, and injury can only follow. Whatever other benefits result from the presence of the academy and university in the national midst it surely follows that education helps to the best citizenship. From acquaintance with the science of government, the perusal of the deeds of ancestral heroes, and the study of science and belles-lettres, the most intelligent citizens and the bravest patriots are made. The large absence of all this in the Brazilian life may in part furnish the explanation we seek; to which must be added the adverse influences of the dominant religion in Brazil. Without wishing to speak the language of the bigot, it is not clear that the Roman Catholic governments of the world are the most stable and progressive. Protestantism only seems to afford an enduring basis for governmental life. Additional to all which considerations the schemes of designing men, gifted with some of the showy qualities of leadership, may further explain the insurrectional spirit and its outbursts which come as disturbing tidings from the southern world.