the American coasts were soon compassed by a company of self-sacrificing, simple-lived, joyous men, who witnessed to a wondering age what the Lord "had done for their souls." They spoke only what they knew. They declared what the heavenly voices had whispered to their hearts among the trees of the forest. They told of the Isaiah-like visions which the Holy One sent them in the night watches. They sang a new songthe song of conscious salvation, which ravished the ear of a weary world and brought an uncounted multitude to the feet of the Redeemer.

The present Salvation Army movement, whatever its grotesqueness and its defects as a working system, progresses also on this same principle. A personal knowledge of forgiveness, a personal participation in the joys of salvation, a personal reliance upon the Holy Spirit, gives emphasis to the spoken words of the witnesses in this recent religious uprising. The philosophy of all true gospel labor and progress is embodied in such examples.

What we have felt and seen,

With confidence we tell;
And publish to the sons of men
The signs infallible.

III. Personal experience may be cultivated by an appeal to the helpful aid of Christian literature. It goes without the saying that other lines of assistance must not be neglected, like the stated worship of the Church and private devotions. But, additional to this help, the warning, comfort, and incentive contained in the literature of Christianity are incalculable.

The Holy Scripture leads the list. Early in his experience Wesley declared himself to be homo unius libri. The maxim is for all his successors; its illustration in any denomination to the very last member of her ministry and laity would make the most magnificent and irresistible Church of human history. The frequent and painstaking reading of the word, for purposes of personal benefit, helps to make great saints.

Devotional volumes deserve an important place in this enumeration. To the student of Methodist history and the lover of her doctrines Taylor's Holy Living and Dying and Kempis's Imitation of Christ, for sentimental reasons will always seem precious. It was over their suggestive pages that the Oxford student bent in search of practical righteousness, and from them he indirectly derived that saintliness which will shine forever in Christian story. An open copy of the same Imitation of Christ was found by the bedside of the dead George Eliot, and maybe had spoken words of consolation to the departing soul. Mrs. Prentiss's Stepping Heavenward has been a benison to the generation. The devotional works of Frances Ridley Havergal are not less useful. The many handbooks of Scripture passages and of quotations from the hymnologies of the Church are aids to grace. In short, this whole department of sacred literature is replete with helps to exalted Christian living.

Sacred biography must also be instanced. The claim is undoubtedly

true that "the great lesson of biography is to show what man can be and do at his best," and that "a noble life put fairly on record acts like an inspiration to others." The direction of Dean Stanley on the use of Christian biography is therefore wise: "Study the lives, study the thoughts and hymns and prayers, study the deathbeds of good men. They are the salt, not only of the world, but of the Church." Nor is the study of the early Christian biography ever unreasonable or uninstructive. The words of Henry Martyn, on his voyage to India, express the benefit in this pursuit for all Christian students: "I love to converse, as it were, with those holy bishops and martyrs with whom I hope, through grace, to spend a happy eternity. . . . The example of the Christian saints in the early ages has been a source of sweet reflection to me. . . . The holy love and devout meditations of Augustine and Ambrose I delight to think of. . . . No uninspired sentence ever affected me so much as that of the historian, that to believe, to suffer, and to love was the primitive taste."

...

The whole department of Christian literature, whether of ancient or modern authorship, is thus a valuable storehouse whither the inquiring Christian may turn for help. Rightly to use the voluminous literature of the Church is to grow in the graces of the Spirit.

IV. Personal religious experience is the concrete illustration of the precepts of the Gospel. It is doctrine in practical operation; it is creed incarnated in flesh and blood; it is theory vitalized in the daily living of the sons of Adam. In comparison with the other proofs for the genuineness of the Christian faith it can never suffer. We must not underrate the value of apologetics as a department of evidence; this is sovereign in its sphere. Historic theology has its place and its recognized worth; the registration of the past is always vital. Systematic theology is an invaluable department of gospel proof; Augustine, Calvin, Edwards, Watson, and Hodge were giants who did an incalculable service for the Church in their mas terly doctrinal definitions. It would be an inestimable mistake to set aside one of these divisions of study in the theological schools of the day; to withdraw the literature of any of these departments from the libraries; or to lay less insistence in the pulpit upon any one of them as indices to the true faith. The supreme religion of human history in its blessings to the race bears the supreme attestations of its truth.

The greatest emphasis, however, in the estimate of the busy and surfacethinking world, falls upon the personal living of believers. Limited in their opportunities for the investigation of the formulated arguments for Christianity, circumscribed by intellectual restrictions in the investigation of abstract doctrinal statements, and averse in many instances to such an employment of their time, the argument from an exemplary Christian bearing is available, intelligible, compelling. Such disciples among the Corinthians were denominated "living witnesses." Wherever in the ages they testify, men feel themselves in the presence of the supreme argument for Christianity, and confess the Gospel true. To maintain which influence on a critical age, as well as for the subjective reasons involved, the heart of the believer must be kept constantly attuned to sacred things.

PROGRESS OF ĊIVILIZATION.

THE RETROSPECTIVE IMPULSE as a characteristic of human living has its striking illustration in the Columbian celebration which for the coming year will occupy the world's attention. In the case of this commemoration there are recalled the foresight of a great discoverer, in his voyage across an unknown sea; the hardships undergone by himself and his fellowmariners, but now softened in their severities by the lapse of centuries almost to the pleasures of a holiday excursion; and his gift of a new continent to humanity, whereon the greatest exploits of modern history are being accomplished. The personal achievements of the great discoverer in the present instance overshadow his personal qualities, and justify his world-wide fame. But the Columbian commemoration, both on the Spanish and on the American shores, is, as before remarked, a concrete illustration of the retrospective quality in the human constitution. Humanity is reminiscent as well as anticipatory; it turns to the past as to some great photographic gallery wherein are arranged in orderly groupings the romances and tragedies of the vanished years; and in this backward look it finds some of the sweetest, if sometimes saddening, pleasures of sentient existence. The different manifestations of this retrospective impulse readily suggest themselves to present consideration. To its existence and operation may be largely attributed the perpetuation of the great festivals observed in the department of religion. Even paganism has its commemorative observances, as the Saturnalia of the Romans. The remnant of the Israelitish people, scattered in the dispersion to the four corners of the earth, yet celebrates such great national events as the passover; and whatever the sense of defectiveness in the Jewish faith felt by those to whom Christian light has come, there is an irresistible impressiveness in this yearly look backward to the days of Moses for the reproduction, so far as possible under the changed conditions of living, of the first passover scene. The universal and gladsome observance of the Christmas festivities involves as well the exercise of the retrospective quality. The star of Bethlehem again shines in the Syrian sky for quickened Christian faith; among their stolid flocks the adoring shepherds hear anew the angels' song; and the eager magi again make their journey to David's town with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In the field of patriotism, no less than in that of religion, is further discovered the operation of the retrospective instinct. No heroes of history are as a consequence held in higher reverence than the great legislators of the past, its martyrs upon the altars of national welfare, and its chief captains in the warfare of the nations. In the indulgence of this instinct pivotal battles are recalled and celebrated, the births of famed warriors are made a civic holiday, and garlands are yearly laid upon the graves of the sleeping And what shall be said of the influence of this instinct in personal life? Obedient to its impulse the most careworn and busy have

braves.

the disposition to notice the recurring anniversaries of birth, to gather up the mementoes of the departed, and to preserve among their sacred treasures some faded flower that in days of youth and beauty came as a lover's keepsake into their eager hands. Naught else was it than this impulse, as far back as the centuries of Genesis, that led the aged Jacob to recall with tender interest the field of Machpelah, and to say in plaintive retrospect, "There I buried Leah.”

Of the value of this retrospective impulse as an ingredient in the strange composition of human nature none can make question. While its undue exercise may tend to the apotheosis of the unworthy dead, to a cynical depreciation of the present, and in general to a spirit of melancholy, in its healthful gratification it is, nevertheless, a legitimate component of human nature. The interests of religion, as we have seen, are thereby conserved, and the connection, always important and vital between the Church of the past and of the present, is maintained. Scientific knowledge, it is not necessary to say, is fostered by its operation, the geologic and archæological collections gathered in the great museums of the world being the outcome of its exercise. And in personal life, most surely of all, the realization of this instinct, if not unduly gratified, tends to well-being and satisfaction. The past thus becomes a factor in the doings of the present. If, on the one hand, through the workings of the imaginative quality the painter adorn his canvas, the poet write his sonnets, or the inventor and the discoverer realize their conquest, under the operation of memory the heart is touched to tenderness and the spirit kept in the vigorous exercise of those elevating sentiments without which man would become a brute.

THE TWO CONVENTIONS lately held in the interests of international harmony amid the natural grandeurs of Berne, in Switzerland, merit the approbation of the Christian world. The presence of three hundred delegates in the Fourth Universal Peace Congress, as the representatives of some fifty separate peace societies existing in eleven independent States, was a significant fact; while the deliberations of the body for five days, under the presidency of the distinguished M. Louis Ruchonnet, were too momentous in their scope and ability to be lightly treated. The hundred delegates likewise in attendance at the Interparliamentary Peace Conference included men of such high standing as Dr. Baumbach, VicePresident of the German Reichstag; Mr. Schenk, Vice-President of the Swiss Federal Council; Dr. Horst, President of the Odelsthing; and M. Ullmann, President of the Norwegian Storthing—their rank and their active membership in the parliaments of twelve independent European States proving the equal importance of this second convention at Berne.

It would be gratifying to notice the impressive personality of many of the delegates in attendance, and to consider in detail their important discussions with the conclusions reached. Yet it is sufficient for the purpose to observe that arbitration was the keynote of the sessions, and that

the trend of the discussions was strongly in the line of world-wide peace. Undoubtedly the sentiment for international harmony is gathering force. Whether the belief in the advantages of peace be based upon such a consideration as the material prosperity of a nation uninterrupted by the alarms of war, or whether the teachings of Christianity as to the intrinsic worth of concord are working their increased results, the horrors of war are growing to be a matter of ever-keener realization. The sword belongs to the barbaric times; the man-of-war is an instrument of fiendish destruction; military science is a dire necessity; the arts of peace are among the noblest activities in which humanity can engage. With this growing sense of the worth of peace, both from the material and from the sentimental standpoint, it will follow that any system of arbitration to be widely effective must be in the highest sense international. In other words, the interest and the active participation of all the great powers of the world must be enlisted. Among the propositions deferred by the Interparliamentary Peace Conference are included those of a general court of arbitration, an international European conference for the maintenance of peaceful relations, and the neutralizing of isthmuses, straits, and submarine cables. It is clear that the adoption of such radical measures as these would leave fewer loopholes for the exercise of war. The increased interest taken in these peace conferences from year to year, even though they are without binding force on the governments represented, are yet prophetic of the end. As students of signs and prognostications we must hail these gatherings as the harbingers of a universal concord between the nations of the globe.

SHALL THE SALOON prosecute its shameful traffic without let or hinderance on the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition? The consent of the highest legislative body of the land, the Congress of the United States, that liquor may be sold within the official inclosure, would seem on the surface a final and affirmative answer to the question asked. Further agitation of the subject would consequently appear both ill-advised and useless. But inasmuch as in matters of ethics the Christian community, with its sensitive conscience, is a higher tribunal of judgment than even the august Congress of the nation, a reversal of the decision of the lower court would seem still possible. On the eve of perhaps the greatest industrial exhibition which the world has ever witnessed, it is to be regretted if final action has been taken on this unspeakably vital question of public morals. The most gigantic curse on the race, since the ships of Columbus touched the American shores, has been the liquor traffic. Not a single commendable feature marks its continued presence in the New World. Throughout the formative American period and since our national establishment, like the Gorgon of the fable it has left its trail of evil wherever it has gone. Financial, social, spiritual, and eternal ruin have followed its introduction. As an institution it is absolutely without justification; as an abiding curse on our present civilization its evils have been told and 63-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.