could be brought to see that their object as he thinks, to feel as he feels, and to is to promote, not Congregationalism, act as he would have them act. He or Episcopacy, or Presbyterianism, or must, therefore, put his mind in conneceven Protestantism, but the kingdom of tion with their minds. It is not enough God, they might then be brought also to for him to give in his own form expressee that they could lay aside or hold in sion to his own ideas. If he is talking abeyance or at least give secondary place to Italians, he must phrase his ideas in to distinctive denominational peculiari- Italian; if to Anglo-Saxons, in Angloties, and work together in harmony for Saxon. Similarly, if he is talking to a common end by compromise adjust- men whose intellectual life is still that ments respecting the methods to be em- of the early half of the nineteenth cenployed in pursuing that end. tury, he must phrase his thought in forms which will be intelligible to and apprehensive by them; not in forms which will make it impossible for them to understand his meaning. It is a principle of mechanics that a body cannot be carried from one point in space to another point in space without being carried through all the intermediate points. It is equally a principle in psychology that a mind cannot be carried from one point of development to another point of development without being carried through all the intermediate points. He who wishes to teach, whether in the pulpit, or on the platform, or through the press, or in the schoolroom, must take his place by the side of those whom he desires to teach. He must understand their point of view. He must in some sense understand their sentiment and feeling. And then he must express just so much as he thinks it reasonable to believe he can induce them to accept on that occasion, and leave to another occasion the expression of the next step in the progress along which he desires to conduct them. he states the ultimate proposition at the outset, he runs the risk of closing the door against him and wholly defeating his purpose. It is sometimes said that Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount. That is a mistake. The Sermon on the Mount was so much of Christianity as Christ's disciples could understand in the very beginning of his ministry. There is a good deal of Christianity in the last chapters of John which is not in the Sermon on the Mount. (2) A man ought not to compromise his moral principles by denying them, as by saying what he does not believe; but he may keep silence respecting those principles. It is often wise to do so. Jesus Christ himself said to his disciples, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." No minister ought in the pulpit to preach doctrines which he does not believe. But a minister may keep silence respecting doctrines which he does believe. No minister ought to lead a congregation in repeating a creed which under any proper interpretation signifies something which is to him untrue; but he may lead a congregation in a creed to some of the clauses of which different members attach different meanings. different meanings. The creed is a symbol, and if those who repeat the creed are at one with their congregation respecting the life which the creed symbolizes, it is not necessary that they should be at one respecting the phraseology in which the life so symbolized shall be expressed. Thus the phrase, "I believe in the resurrection of the body," means now to most men a belief in personal immortality, as distinguished from absorption into the infinite. A man who does not believe that the flesh which is buried in the grave will ever rise from the grave may legitimately join with the others in saying, "I believe in the resurrection of the body," because the spiritual truth of personal immortality is symbolized by the phrase, borrowed from a time when personality and the body were identified, as they are not in our time. (3) These principles are especially applicable to public teachers. He who wishes to teach an audience or a congregation desires to induce them to think If We recognize the danger involved in any proposition of compromise. It is a danger to timid souls. But life is full of dangers, and they must be met and conquered, not run away from. There is danger, on the other side, of a kind of Pharisaic audacity and pride of courage, and contemptuous disregard of human. prejudice and human sentiment, and this spirit has proved perhaps as perilous to real progress in the moral and religious life as the spirit of cowardice. Speaking broadly, we might perhaps summarize the three principles we have given above in one: When you ask yourself what to do, take counsel with your courage; when you ask yourself how to do it, take counsel with your caution. Be uncompromising in the ultimate ends which you hope to see accomplished. Be ready to compromise in the methods. which you will pursue to secure those ends. But, we repeat, the real difficulty lies, not in the perception of a general principle, but in the practical application of it to varying conditions. Have you ever read John Morley's book on Compromise? Without indorsing all that he says in that book, we recommend it to all readers who are perplexed by the problem which our correspondent has presented in the letter given above. The Elder Brother We may paraphrase the words of Shakespeare and say, Some men are born good; some men achieve goodness; some men have goodness thrust upon them. Goodness is inherited as well as depravity. There are other men than John the Baptist of whom it may the strait path is walled in for them on either side. I may safely assume that the reader of these lines belongs in one of these three categories. He was born good, has achieved goodness, or has had goodness thrust upon him. What need have I of a Saviour? he perhaps asks himself. The child of the gutter, born in sin, educated in sin, vanquished by sin, or perhaps never even fighting against it, needs redemption. But why do I need it? I am saved already, by my parentage, by my education, by my own resolute purpose. The other day on a railroad train I fell in with a conductor. He told me of an accident in which his foot was torn from his leg and left hanging by the flesh, his knee-pan was broken, his back was injured, and he was carried on a stretcher to the nearest hotel, his life despaired of. For three months the desperate battle with death was fought; for three months more he was recovering. long imprisonment-saved. But was not the passenger in the same car who escaped unscathed saved also? Are we saved only if we are saved "so as by fire"? Shall the Nile Valley say, I need no rain, for have I not the Nile? What would become of the Nile if there were no rain? A certain man had two sons. One of them remained at home; and his father said to him, Son, all that I have is thine, and thou art ever with The other took his substance, went off into a far country, spent all Then he was released from his me. be said that they are filled with a spirit with riotous living, and returned in rags of holiness from their mother's womb. -repentant. Did not the elder brother owe all to his father as truly as the younger? He who is born good, or has achieved of strength. They have to battle for goodness, or has had goodness thrust their virtues. They emerge from the upon him, is apt to think that he is in no danger. He is in the greatest of all battle scarred, perhaps wounded, but victorious. They have beaten off their dangers-the danger of pride, of selfassailants. St. Michael conquers the conceit, of ingratitude-in a word, of dragon, and not only beats him off, but Pharisaism. He who is saved from puts him under foot. Some men are so temptation has not less to thank God environed with good influences that for than he who in temptation is saved only by a strong will and a resolute purpose could they escape into paths of open vice or flagrant crime. They enter the narrow gate in their childhood, and from sin. The story of the prodigal son is also the story of the elder brother -and that is a fact we are prone to forget, L. A. The Spectator In the long ago, when he was but a boy, the Spectator was one Sunday sitting in church and listening eagerly to a sermon from a great preacher who, then and after, was always able to hold the Spectator breathless, half scared, half afraid, wholly enthralled. The Spectator can see him now, leaning down from his pulpit, his rubicund face-never handsome at the best-flushed scarlet, twisted, fairly terrorizing in its fierce earnestness. It was a political sermon he was preaching, and its last words were these: "Go-go to your homes and take from your book-shelves Carlyle's 'French Revolution.' Read that lurid picture of destruction." The Spectator fled home to bury his boy face in the book, from which he had to be forcibly detached to eat his Sunday dinner. For a week he moved in a trance, and marched in the day-dream of the French Revolu tion, that lurid picture of destruction. 66 When he awoke, it was with no fixed impression of any change wrought in him by this experience; but as time went on, and the boyishness of the boy changed into the mannishness of a man, that adult one day came to ask himself where he had gained his intense belief in the rights of man," which was then to him almost a passion, and indeed today is no less a fixed belief because less emotionally held. "Where was I taught this?" the Spectator asked himself, and then, dropping down from one of those curious upper shelves which are the pigeonholes of memory, came tumbling that old sermon, with all its arguments and its impassioned direct appeal for the rights of man. There it was, and as the Spectator recalled it, word for word in some of its phrases, he knew that he had run his fox to earth. And yet he was not satisfied. No, he did not agree with these remembered phrases. On the contrary, their extreme doctrines were not and could not be his. No such phrases were responsible for his convictions. And then suddenly it all came to him clearly. It was this sermon that had sent him to the fountain-head. From a historical picture, drawn by a master's hand, he had learned unconsciously a lesson never to be forgotten. The impassioned, fierce sermon had passed over the boy's head as the whirlwind; the still, small voice that spoke deep down in the wonderful atmosphere of a wonderful book had made the convert, or, more properly speaking, had educated the unconscious proselyte. Not long ago the Spectator was talking to a young friend, and in the course of conversation casually but heartily recommended the reading of a certain book. The young friend noted down the title in a neat note-book, and then, with pencil poised, he waited. "What should I read it for?" "I don't think I quite know what you mean," he ventured. "What will it give me? What ought I to get from it? I like to know what to expect. Am I to read it for its style, or its plot, or its historical references? What object shall I have before me while reading it?" "Indeed, I don't know," said the Spectator. "I read it because I liked it." And then, plucking up spirit, with most unbecoming levity, the Spectator recalled to this earnest youth the good old story of the three travelers at the inn calling for liquor-one because he had a cold, the other for some equally good excuse; the third, in high scorn, calling loudly for his tipple, hot and strong, "because I like it." The Spectator maintained that in the matter of general reading he was at one with the third traveler. He read books in general, neither to lose one thing nor yet to gain another, but to satisfy an appetite which called loudly for "books!" "That's a vulgar little story" said the Spectator, apologizing, "but it seems to me it illustrates what I mean very neatly. Can't you read a book because you like it? If the book is educative, won't it educate you without your keeping your eye on it? A good book needs no bush." The Spectator paused in his harangue, for his listener had ceased lis tening. "Vulgar," he was repeating, reflectively. "Vulgar. You didn't mean that story had vulgarity? No. I understand. You meant it was ordinary. Vulgar in that sense. Yes. I've had that in Rhetoric." The Spectator retired vanquished and in bad order. Good heavens! Is it coming to this with our young folk? Is reading a serious matter to be entered into with prayer and fasting, or is it one of the cherished diversions of life, as the Spec tator has fondly and ignorantly supposed it to be? The Spectator can look back to see his sister sitting in front of her mirror, with a book spread out on her pincushion, held open by bonnet-pins, while she alternately braided her hair and read from the volume that absorbed "But her. She was a busy girl, and had not time to devour all the books she hungered for, but of what time she had she made such amazing use that the Spectator, who was less rapid, would stand in awe of her power to tear the heart out of a volume in a moment, as it were. when and where did you read it?" the Spectator once heard an astounded youth ask her. "I lent you that book less than two hours ago, and in that time you've got out of your riding-habit and dressed for dinner!" The Spectator's sister deftly avoided reply, for, as she later explained to the Spectator, "I couldn't very well tell him that I read it in the bath-tub." Oh, what a healthy, hearty appetite was there! And an appetite, too, that seemed to know as instinctively as the beasts of the field what to eat and what The to toss contemptuously aside. Spectator cannot imagine his sister asking any one on earth what a book might give her. Who could know that so well as she? For her the one way to read a book was to read it, or to open it, flash through it, and lay it down-unread. In those days the Spectator never took the trouble to sort out for himself his own reading matter. It was his invariable and cubbish habit when a holy-day freed him for the luxury (mark the term) of reading, to rush to his sister's bed room, and from her book-table grab up those books it was evident she had laid there ready for herself. They were sure to be the best in the house, and the Spectator would patiently explain to the pursuing and lamenting selector of the volumes that this was the value of having a sister with an unerring nose for the "jolie good book." Nor does he ever remember giving up his loot or havthus most unwillingly made for him. ing cause to disapprove the selections There was, however, one book that the Spectator recalis as totally routing his sister, and it was, by the way, the last book in the world that he would have imagined as causing her Waterloo. But who can perfectly know the reading mind of another? The Spectator can recall the mournful eye with which she regarded him when she came upon him one day sunk deep in a big chair, and deeper yet in the "Arabian Nights." "How are you getting on?" she asked, anxiously. "Do you know I can't read it. I simply can't. I read it once for a whole week, and I couldn't see that I had made the slightest impression on it; then I gave it up." But family pride obliges the Spectator to assert that, in his belief, this was the young woman's one defeat in the battle of books. One more story of this congenial sister of his and the Spectator will have done. One autumn day the Spectator came upon her sitting reflectively in the sunshine out-of-doors, in a favorite nook which she was pleased to call her "wallow," book in hand as usual, but she was not reading. "My dear," she said, as the Spectator approached, "I have a proverb to tell you; I've just composed it. Here it is: One man's work is another man's wallow.' How do you like it?" "I might like it if I understood it," said "Don't the Spectator, "but I don't." you?" said his sister. "Well, I'll tell you how I came to make it. Polly has just come home, and she asked me what I'd been doing this summer, and I told her, 'Nothing at all.' I said I was ashamed of myself that I'd sat in the sunshine all summer and simply wallowed in doing nothing at all. Then she told me she'd worked hard all summer, she'd read-" Here followed a list of some new historical and critical works. "But," interrupted the Spectator, "didn't you tell her you'd read all those yourself this summer, and plenty more of the kind?" The Spectator's sister looked at him pensively. "No," she said. "I didn't tell her that. It's all right. It was work to her. I came home and made my proverb. Don't you like it?" The Colorado Labor War From a Special Correspondent The Outlook of last week in its comment on the miners' strike in Colorado related many of the facts and events referred to in the following letter; nevertheless our readers will find their repetition here valuable as a résumé of the struggle from an observer on the ground.-THE Editors. A BOUT the middle of April, Dr. Washington Gladden made a flying visit to Colorado to investigate and report upon the labor troubles in the mining camps. He was sent out by a newspaper syndicate. His conclusions may be found in the Columbus "Press Post" of April 14, 16, and 17. They are marked by fairness and evident desire to get at the real heart of the difficulty. He distributes the blame about evenly between the mine operators, the miners, the civic and the military authorities, bestowing some upon the Citizens' Alliance also. There can be no doubt that blame does attach to them all, but the general censure in Colorado of the operators and of the Governor is much less severe than Dr. Gladden's. Dr. Gladden, however, goes to the heart of the difficulty in affirming that "the bottom trouble in the Colorado mining camps is bad leadership." It is doubtful if there has ever been a labor conflict in this country in which arbitrary power has been lodged in so few hands and has counted for so much as in this contest. The Western Federation of Miners, by which the fights at Colorado City and Cripple Creek and Telluride have been conducted, is not a large organization. It claims about 40,000 members. It is not in affiliation with the United Mine Workers of America, nor with the American Federation of Labor, on account of its strong Socialistic tendencies. At its Convention preceding the Colorado City strike, it passed a resolution empowering its executive committee, consisting of only five men, all understood to be advanced Socialists, to call a meeting without resorting to the referendum. This procedure is instructive as suggesting how extreme Socialism is likely to issue in the tyranny of a few. This handful of men, August 10, 1903, ordered a strike in the Cripple Creek district, which nearly every one familiar with the situation condems as utterly unwarrantable. Dr. Gladden soberly affirms of this action: "It was a fatal mistake, and bitterly have the miners rued it. The conditions in the Cripple Creek district were excellent; there was no complaint of hours or of wages; the calling out of 4,000 men was a violent proceeding, for which no good excuse can be given. It demonstrated the recklessness and irresponsibility of President Moyer. When labor unions are foolish enough to put unlimited power in such hands and loyal enough to the organization to follow them implicitly, tragedies may be looked for." But the assumption of power by a few has not been confined to one side in the controversy. Extraordinary power certainly has been exercised, many would say usurped, by Governor Peabody and by General Bell, Brigadier-General and Adjutant-General of the State militia. Extreme arbitrary power has thus been exercised by seven men-five men representing the miners and two men representing their opponents. The Governor has suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the case of a single man, proclaiming, "In the case of Victor Poole I further direct that the writ of habeas corpus be suspended until further directed by me." The militia |