free schools, free churches, popular enlightenment, and political liberty, and the barbarism or semi-civilization of Asia, where womanhood is degraded, human rights are denied, opportunities are limited, deceit and impurity are universal, and where the popular mind has not expanded and been lifted heavenward by a Christianity which teaches the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Heaven forbid that we should go to the Philippines in the spirit with which Spain went to Cuba, or Holland to the southeastern Asiatic archipelago. If we hold them, and I do not see how we can get rid of them, let us hold them, to use the phrase of Benjamin Kidd," as a trust for civilization." Let us show that America does not mean selfishness and spoliation, but means enfranchisement, uplifting, enlightenment, peace, toleration. And if I know the American people, they cannot justly be described as dizzy with dreams of colonial gain," anxious to repeat in distant islands some such history of plunder and crime as marked the career of our conquered enemy in the West Indies and South America.

There rises before me a vision of the twentieth century into whose dawn we are entering. It is to be a great century, perhaps greater than the nineteenth. As a nation we enter it not forgetful of what has been achieved. We already have national unity and local self-government. We shall have a new national expansion in the days to come. We shall see our commerce and our ideas penetrating and controlling the West Indies and the East Indies. Our scholars, our missionaries, our teachers, our books, and our business will have a deep entrance into the world of Asia. In this majestic work we shall be allied with Great Britain, and the closer and truer that moral alliance, the brighter the prospect of peace and of international disarmament. Before the twentieth century shall have ended there may be great upheavals and disasters, but

the empire of peace will be wide and the day will draw nearer when representatives of brotherly nations shall sit down in the parliament of man. God grant that this Peace Jubilee may uplift us and make us readier for the great future.

JAMES W. BASHFORD

THE PHILIPPINES

[From an address delivered at Buffalo, N. Y., September 4, 1899.]

It is a condition and not a theory which confronts us. For a generation our people had been troubled by the groans of the oppressed growing loud enough at times to be heard across the Gulf. Presidents Grant and Hayes and Arthur and Cleveland and Harrison in turn asked Spain to deal justly with her Cuban subjects; but they asked in vain. At last the cries of the oppressed became audible throughout our land. The Maine was sent to Havana on a friendly visit; and suddenly, in the darkness of the night, by treachery, the ship and two hundred and sixty-six American sailors were sent to the bottom of the sea. The people of the United States repressed the rising cry for vengeance; but they informed Spain in no uncertain tones that henceforth she must treat the Cubans justly, or she herself would be swept from the western seas. cup of the divine wrath was full to overflowing for Spain; and in her madness her answer was a declaration of war. In three months' time our warning was made good; and the rule of the Spaniard, after lasting four hundred years, came to an end in the western continent.

The

But before we had expelled a troublesome neighbor from our front yard, the attention of the world was attracted to a more marvellous achievement by Admiral Dewey in our back yard. May 1, 1898, the

United States had her "coming out" party. She had been growing great for a century and more. But from the sinking of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, the United States has been recognized in Europe as a world-power; and henceforth she must play her part either nobly or ignobly upon this larger platform. How we shall end the first act in the drama depends upon our solution of the problem: What shall we do with the Philippines? An illustration will answer the question better than an argument. Suppose your neighbor's daughter had been stolen some years ago by a roving band of Gypsies. The parents have spent their substance in search for their lost child, and have died of broken hearts. On waking up some morning you find the long-lost daughter in your yard. Would you run after the ragged Gypsies and beg them to take the child again, because her father and mother are dead, and her property lost, and you do not wish the burden of her care? Not if you are a Christian. Would you secretly feel thankful that the child is a helpless orphan and resolve to turn her into a permanent servant and make her spend her life in household drudgery for you? Not if you are a Christian. I can read your decision in your faces. You would take your dead neighbor's child into your own home, teach her to toil along with your own children, educate her by their side; possibly you might not go so far as to adopt her and put her name in your will with those of your own children, but at least, in due time, you would help to establish her in a home of her own.

What shall we do with the Philippines? Shall we run after that ragged Gypsy among the nations crying: "Take back the orphans, we dread responsibility? Thank God, we have been saved from the disgrace of such selfish cowardice. Shall the Republic, upon the other hand, become suddenly drunk with blood, and resolve to hold these people in permanent subjection

and use their islands for stepping-stones for Asiatic conquests? Not if we are a Christian people. We must resolve before the nations and the God of nations that the great Republic will not subjugate these island children for our own greed or glory. If we can develop the Philippine Islands into American States, or unite them into a Swiss Republic of the Seas, standing in the door-yard of Asia and seen by her toiling millions, they may become the model of the Republics of Japan and India and China, the leader of the Orient in bringing in the Republic of God on earth.

THE CRISIS

[From an address delivered at Boston, November 20, 1899.]

WE stand at the parting of the ways. Two radically different classes favor expansion. Financial speculators, politicians, and sensational journalists are clamoring for expansion for the sake of glory and of gain. Upon the other hand, missionaries and ministers, teachers and Christian editors, statesmen and philanthropists, demand that the United States accept the great responsibility providentially thrust upon them, and administer the Philippines in the interest of humanity. Those far-off islands are set for the rise or fall of a nation.

The Romans, Greeks, and Jews regarded themselves, each as a chosen people. They exalted themselves above their tasks and felt that the Most High would be forced to use them for the leadership of the race. But while they were dreaming of conquest and of power, God was saying to them, as He says to every individual and nation," Either serve the world or perish." The Jews would have followed Christ to death unflinch