MR. MOZOOMDAR'S remarkable career as the successor of Keshub Chunder Sen, in India, is sketched in connection with our notice of his recent book entitled Heart Beats. The Archbishop of Zante, Dionysius Latas, was one of the prominent preachers of Athens a few years ago and celebrated for his eloquence in the Greek language. Both these men were prominent and honored participants in the World's Parliament of Religions. Since the Parliament closed, both have been engaged for a time in successful work as lecturers in the United States. Their portraits in this number are from recent photographs and are of great interest each by itself, but also as contrasts of some of the best traits of the Greek and Hindu type of countenance.

OUR DAY

VOL. XIII.-MAY-JUNE, 1894.-No. 75.

STRATEGIC POINTS IN CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY.

A SUGGESTED course oF STUDY FOR SOCIOLOGICAL CIRCLES, CLUBS, OR INSTITUTES.

The Royal Law: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

The Golden Rule: "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

The Iron Rule: "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat."

I.

I. INTRODUCTORY STUDIES.

Re

Definitions.-Sociology is the study of man in society in contrast to the study of man in his individuality; in contrast also to theology, which is the study of man in his rela ́tions to God, or, strictly speaking, of God in His relations to man. Christian sociology is the study of society from a Christian standpoint with a view to its Christianization. ligion, as the Bible defines it, includes both theology and sociology, both love to God and love to man. Reform and charity are not "relations" of religion, but its hand and heart. What is now commonly called philanthropy and morality, the Epistle of James calls "pure religion" (1: 27). While sociology, in the etymological meaning of the word, would include the study of man in all ages in all social relations of life that are larger than the family, which is the social unit, yet in reality sociology is a new science, one of the products of the steam engine and electric telegraph, by which both individualism and isolation have been compelled to give way to factories and cities and railroads and newspapers, through

which the world has been reduced to a neighborhood. It can and must be made into a brotherhood also, which is the work of Christianity. The world is smaller than a neighborhoodit has been made into one "body politic," so closely veined together that if one member suffer every member suffers with it. Of this body Christianity must be the heart. This new solidarity of the race will sink all together by the millstones of selfishness, the anarchy of the selfish poor, the avariciousness of the selfish rich, unless all are lifted together by the might of Christian brotherhood grasping the divine Fatherhood.

2.

METHODS OF STUDY.

Inductive Studies. This being man's study of man ought not to be done chiefly by reading books, but as far as possible by reading hearts, that is, by direct inductive studies, not of the defective, delinquent and dependent only, but also of the favored classes. Professor J. R. Commons, of Bloomington, Indiana, Secretary of the National Institute of Christian Sociology, wisely recommends that any one desiring to study this subject shall become a friendly visitor of a charity organization society, in which capacity he would be sent to families applying for aid. Such visits would be studies not only of poverty and wages, but also of their relations to intemperance, gambling, impurity, immigration, Sabbathbreaking, with occasional glimpses at other reform problems, such as divorce and municipal corruption. Prof. Commons also suggests a membership in some labor union for purposes of study. The "University Settlement" is a still better laboratory for social experiments combined with studies. The writer once investigated the homes of the poor, living within range of his Brooklyn church, by getting an appointment as Bible colporteur. He has found the benefit of visiting labor bodies and freely conversing with their members. In Chicago he studied the slums as a member of the executive committee of a law enforcement league, making a midnight tour of saloons with two fellow committeemen and an officer in citizen's dress. In New York the opportunity for inductive social studies was found by joining in the work of a mid