"We invite the cordial and active coöperation of all honest citizens at the approaching election, to the end that our municipal administration shall be redeemed from political parasites and be made the pride rather than the reproach of this great city. "The League wishes to enroll all voters who desire the election of honest and capable men. If you will sign the enclosed blank and mail it to Hoyt King, Secretary of the League, at 59 Dearborn Street, he will mail you from time to time the publications and recommendations of the League. No membership fee is charged or expected. However, as this is a popular movement, cash subscriptions of any amount, whether large or small, to meet necessary expenses are earnestly solicited. Remittances may be made to the Secretary or Treasurer at above address. "By order of the Executive Committee." Following is the report of the League on the record of the members whose terms of office expire in April: Ist. Out of thirty-four members only six are unquestionably good. 2d. The profession or business of an alderman is no indication of character, except in case of saloon-keepers. 3d. Only one has a mixed record. The record of these men is made up from their votes in favor of corrupt ordinances, and this is quite a sure indication of boodle. It is difficult to secure good men to serve as aldermen, for the office is not honorable nor remunerative. Church-membership does not yet include unselfish duty to the state. When civics is made a branch of religion, it may be otherwise. The desire to acquire and the love of a good name take on two manifestations: it urges the poor man into politics, where he is tempted beyond his power of resistance; and it deters the "respectable" and wealthy from entering into it, because they are busy ac quiring in other directions, and the newspapers are conscienceless in their abuse of public servants, even when clean, if they do not as they are told. The daily newspaper does much to purify politics, but it seeks to control votes of public officials when honor is not at stake. Good men are not seeking office to be called thieves and robbers because some editor favors some measure which they cannot support. One of the first steps in the direction of civic reform, in order that honest men may be induced to enter politics where there is no money inducement or honorable distinction, is a more strict law on libel, making it dangerous for newspapers to attack honest men for the purpose of controlling their votes. Another step in the right direction will be for the clergymen to urge duty at the polls as one of prime importance, and for men of Christian standing and culture to be willing to serve in public positions of responsibility and trust without the incentive of gain either in money or public applause. Such men are rare, and it is unfortunately true that church-membership is yet too largely a subjective matter, haying more to do with religion than with civics or politics, and in too many instances, even with ethics. Hence the cry of the socialist that wageearners should also seek a corner lot on earth, not in heaven; a larger share of earth's products, and not a crown in some heavenly sphere for they see Ruskin's definition of religion 1 too true to life and practice. Z. S. H. THE CANONS OF CRITICISM. ENVY no less than death loves a shining mark. If a clergyman is successful and distinguished, he must pay a high price for such a crime. A prominent clergyman, a man of most lovely spirit and of genuine worth, has been charged by a Chicago evening newspaper with using the thoughts of others without quotation-marks, in a series of sermons which he has preached and printed. The real instigator of the article proves to be a dissolute critic, the brother of a well-known poet; but the columns and the head-lines of a supposably reputable newspaper are open to his virulent pen, because, forsooth, the paper must live, and sensation is its meat and drink. The proprietor personally apologizes, the editors hang their heads in shame when the facts confront them, but not a word of retraction appears in print to help undo the great wrong done to a Christian gentleman. This is modern journalism, enterprise, the exercise of the desire to acquire, not by the greedy capitalists, but by literary men who have large 1 Our national religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work while we amuse ourselves. theories of altruism and find this practical way of expressing it. This clergyman dictates to a stenographer, and in two instances single quotation-marks might have been used without injustice to the authors quoted; but because the stenographer omitted them, the author becomes a criminal, a purloiner, a plagiarist. What matters it that in fourteen discourses seventy-two thousand words are used, each one in its place and full of meaning, and that the discourses are full of genuine merit. That awful fly-speck, a period, must mar the feast and scatter the guests. An invited friend without wedding garments, not like him of old--speechless, would that he were! rudely pushes back his chair, slams the door and rushes forth to slander the host, to revile the feast as one fit for harpies. Like one who hath no music in himself, but is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils; like the idle gossips of the lazy port who hinted at worse in either when Enoch Arden was on the dreary island, so the literary critic must look for fly-specks and for dirt. Not such was that great critic, George Ripley of the New York Tribune, for he found merit where it existed; and if there were none, then charity closed the book and was silent. But the modern newspaper critic, the dudes and dudines of literary walks, know not Ripley, for they have forgotten how to spell some simple words like civility and truth. The Ingersolls find only weeds and poisons in nature, and then, forgetting the utility of even these, revile their Author, when all nature is but a tribute to his love and intelligence; so the narrow critic looks for the fatal spot in the heel of Achilles that he may wound to the death. To him all precious stones are barbaric pearls and gold. And this spirit finds its counterpart in every place where human nature seeks expression. It crops out in churches, colleges, theological seminaries, and ministerial associations. In higher circles it is not the crude oil, of course, but is refined and disguised under the forms of good-will. It is not the desire for the truth that inspires, however, so much as it is the love of error, because it affords an opportunity to drag down some growing author, some popular professor or pastor. Then envy, hatred, jealousy, finds some ingenious outlet, and it differs not a whit from the spirit of the vulgar homicide, but only in the refinement of its cruelty. There is not a place where men act in an organized capacity that this spirit does not threaten dissolution. General Grant became familiar with it no less than every clergyman that has ever become distinguished. Such critics are usually parasites, and the slight admixture of pietism with this parasitism is all that confuses the zeal that ill-will inspires with the earnestness that is born of love. Defenders of "the faith once delivered," heresy hunters, and haters of mankind may all be from the same piece of cloth. A genuine desire to know and follow the truth and to prevent teachers of error, like grievous wolves, from entering the fold and destroying the sheep, bears all the marks of the Master,-good-will to the wolf, and a shotgun for his teachings. A model of perfection of such a spirit is seen in the review of Dr. Lyman Abbott's views of Genesis by Professor William Henry Green, D.D., LL.D., and in an article by ex-President Samuel C. Bartlett in the Advance. The true critic is a broad and generous nature who hopeth all things, who believeth all things, who thinketh no evil. A book or a sermon is a feast to which one is invited, and the guest must have enthusiasm for the truth, lack of suspicion, a glowing good-will, or the shadow will cross the threshold, and the joy of the feast will be turned into a hollow laugh. Like the one who, after wandering through our World's Fair, could remember nothing but that statue with the arms broken, little realizing that even then the Venus of Milo is a tribute to genius; so hypercriticism finds in every book and in every sermon a missing arm. Judged by this standard, Tennyson must return from the great beyond to give an account of the deeds done in the body before the bar of human judgment, the sanctum of the associate editor of an evening newspaper; for in his Edwin Morris " Tennyson has quotel from Horace's Ode to his Friend and has given no credit. Virgil borrowed from Homer, and Milton from both, and Shakespeare from every source under the sun, but the quotation-marks are missing. Does Tennyson in his “May Queen” need to remind us that he quotes from Job, or may we find so much of merit in 'Locksley Hall," 'In Memoriam" and "Enoch Arden " we can pass over the punctuation-marks in the poet-laureate? Every poet, from the Elizabethan age to our own Longfellow, Whittier, and Browning, has thumbed the classics for material and form of speech. The patents on ideas, no less than on inventions, expire by limitation, and then ideas become public property. A hundred thousand graduates of Oxford and Cambridge need no footnotes, asterisks, quotation-marks, or parallel lines in their editions of Tennyson in order to detect the beauties of Horace, and the songs of Dante and Tasso. Only the Dick Bottom in literature needs them. The artist who painted Daniel in the lions' den, and explained that Daniel could be told from the lions by the green cotton umbrella in his hand, would be the ideal in the mind of such a modern newspaper critic. The ignoramus, not the scholar; the frank fool, not the honest thinker, needs such explanations. The farmer brings his produce to market, not his farm machinery; his eggs, not his hens; his milk, not his cows. So the preacher, the artist, the poet, need not show us his raw material, if only he will convince us that his own powers of assimilation have worked upon it and given us a new combination, the fruitage of his own genius. Each one has his own word to give the world, his own poem, or picture that must be himself, given generously and lovingly as a part of his very being, and when this is done he passes into the great beyond for his reward. Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him 1 For a reprint of this, see infra, pp. 383-386. Z. S. H. 2 It is not necessary to explain that this is a quotation from Bryant's Thanatopsis. ARTICLE XII CRITICAL NOTES. THE PLACE OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. A SERIOUS error seems to be increasingly prevalent concerning the place which the Sermon on the Mount was designed to occupy amid the remedial agencies of the gospel. We hear much said about going back to the Sermon on the Mount, as if by so doing we should gain a distinct vantage-ground, and clear ourselves from later and useless excrescences; whereas the fact is that the Sermon on the Mount, by reason of the time at which it was delivered, if for nothing else, is occupied with only one phase of Christian truth, and would be extremely defective if made to stand by itself. The Sermon on the Mount is the law, and not the gospel, and, like the law of Moses, is but the schoolmaster leading to Christ. The more distinctive elements giving power to Christ's works and words were brought to light subsequent to the delivery of this sermon. Indeed they were not available to the world until after Christ's death and resurrection and the spiritual manifestation of Pentecost, and would now be largely beyond our reach but for the apostolic epistles which unfold and enforce them. The truth of these statements will appear from even a hasty glance at the sermon. The Beatitudes pronounce blessings only upon those who have kept the law, and the standard set up is one to which none of the hearers could say that he had attained. Who of Christ's hearers could have said that he was one of the really poor in spirit, of the meek, of the merciful, of the pure in heart, of the peacemakers, and of those that hunger and thirst after righteousness? But only they were to be blessed. What chance therefore did the multitudes have, or does mankind in general have, to become partakers of these promises? In the specific sections upon the fulfilling of the law, the exalted character of the standard set up appears in most emphatic terins. "Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be cailed least in the kingdom of heaven. . . . But I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire. . . . Agree with thine adversary quickly, . . . VOL. LIV. NO. 214. 12 |