pays to give credit to customers; hence credit is easily obtained. Those whose wants, habits of life, and standards of taste are beyond actual income-many of them at least-will resort to credit schemes, and thus evade the discipline that income offers. The pass book, wherein open account is carried, and payment is made in part, as the customers may have money; the installment plan, whereby manner of payment is so arranged as to cause little present inconvenience, and series of payments in small amounts are arranged; borrowing money from loan agents, in order to pay cash, are means employed by consumer to escape discipline. Were business thrown back to a strictly cash basis, it would revolutionize conditions everywhere.

Conspicuous advertisements in our daily papers invite us "to open an account with A." "Everybody's credit is good." "Pay when you wish." A daily paper at hand contains fourteen advertisements of loan companies, which offer money in small amounts for "only $1.33 or $1.66 per month," rates varying from 33 to 40 per cent on the amounts borrowed. Secrecy, dispatch, convenience, are promised, no questions asked. If one might estimate the amount of unpaid debts in the country, one would surely be appalled at the disproportion between income and expenditure. The Secretary of the Treas. ury recently issued a circular to all employees in his department asking many questions, among them, these: "How much are you in debt in excess of the value of your property?" "Does your condition compel you occasionally to borrow money at exorbitant rates of interest ?"†

* An illustration is found in the manner in which some poor men will use credit to buy drink. The saloon may do only a cash business. Then the customer will buy shoes, boots, hammers, ham, etc., on credit, and turn them over to the bartender in payment for drink.

+Advertisements such as the following repay study:

CREDIT FOR ALL.-DON'T TRY TO STRETCH YOUR MONEY beyond its capacity in buying Christmas gifts. You only worry yourself half sick to no purpose, and in the end will be disappointed with what you get. It is far better to give something worth while and pay for it at your leisure, after the necessary Christmas expenses have been settled. We have a host of things suitable for gifts-things that every one likes to receive and which will be of lasting use and beauty. Comfortable Chairs and Rockers, Shaving Stands, Cellarettes, Reading Lamps, and many other things suitable for men; dainty Parlor Pieces, Toilet Tables, Rugs, Couch Covers, Lace Curtains, Portieres, Sewing Rockers, Writing Desks, Parlor Lamps, Vases, Chinaware, and many other things suitable for gifts to ladies. Our prices are all marked in plain figures, and you will find none lower anywhere, but we extend a cordial invitation to you to open an account and arrange terms convenient to you. We make no extra charge for liberal credit, but allow the following discounts:

10 per cent discount for cash with order, or if account is closed in 30 days; 71⁄2 per cent discount if account is closed in 60 days; and 5 per cent if closed in 90 days.

Recent dispatches tell of a trusted clerk in Chicago who embezzled a large amount in order to pay five loan agencies which were threatening him.

A by-product of this situation-which any thoughtful reader will realize in a moment's reflection-is the loss of horror tor debt. Living in debt is so ordinary a fact now, that relatively few shrink from it.

Given then a condition of want, aspiration, and life, in excess of income, exerting pressure on the restraints of moral and civil law, and on the ideals which Christianity presents; given our natural reluctance to diminish our wants, which is looked upon as diminishing life itself; given a habit of pleas. ure-seeking, self-indulgence, and a spirit which resents discipline; what is the effect on moral and spiritual life and standards ?

The falling off in the marriage rate, the decreasing birth rate, are phases of the relations of life and money. Certain girls will not marry certain young men, because the latter haven't money enough; young men will not marry because wives "cost too much to keep." To a great extent, the evil lives of many unfortunates are due to a love of dress and pleasure which their means did not warrant, but sin and shame did. Gambling, embezzling, stealing, cheating, are, in a measure, due to this same disproportion between income and wants. And the added tragedy in it all is, that in none of the cases mentioned is there real and substantial want involved. It is not love of mind and mental pleasure, not love of soul and

LOAN COMPANIES.

FURNITURE LOANS. $10 to $300. Made within two hours after you leave application. The most private and most conveniently located offices in the city. No misleading talk. No "red tape." Salary Loans made to steady employees. Ask for Our Special Vacation Rates.

CUT RATES ON FURNITURE AND PIANO LOANS. Without Removal. $25 for 87c. a month; $50 for $1.66 a month; $75 for $2.25 a month; $100 for $2.66 a month. Other amounts in proportion. No publicity. We are leaders in our line.

$1.33 PER MONTH is all you have to pay us for a loan of $40. Carry loan long as you like. No other charge of any kind, except 50c. notary fee. No recording or publicity of any kind. Larger amounts at even lower rates. Figure up how much you are paying nowthen see us. We will pay off other companies and give you the advantage of our low rates.

WHEN WE SAY $1.66 A MONTH is all we charge for a loan of $50 we mean it. Other companies will tell you this is impossible; that their rates are about as low as ours; that we would confront you with extras by way of commissions; that you would not receive the full amount; that no company could possibly exist on such low rates. Don't be deceived. Let us convince you by facts and figures. Think of it, less than 5 cents on the dollar interest. Over One Thousand Loans taken from other companies in the past eight months at less than half their charges.

its delight, but love of dress, of food, of drink; of social prestige, of travel, of ease; dislike of labor and discipline that exert this tremendous pressure on us, and in so many cases lead men and women to violate conscience, law, and social decency in their tragic effort to gain money for pleasure. Thus morals, religion, conscience, are seriously threatened. Parents ignore this great fact, and continue to give to their children standards and tastes in excess of income; our schools fail to teach us on this fundamental question of life; pulpits are, to a great extent, silent; and we are left to the play of the social forces and instincts, which indefinitely expand our wants.

While we profess and teach everywhere that character is supreme, that conscience is above all life, that law must be respected at whatever cost, that life is in truth and beauty and goodness, and not in money; nevertheless, the main facts of life, the dominating social forces, the personal ambitions of a majority, throw money forward into life in a way to all but overshadow all else. The American passion is "to make money, to get rich"; which Ruskin says "is the art of establishing a maximum inequality in our own favor." Children are taught "to save money"; children are put at work to earn; young men in professions and business see money loom up as the reward of industry, the condition of power, the key to distinction and distinguished association. When one thinks of the directness with which Christ opposed love of money and seeking of riches to his own ideal of life, one wonders how Christianity can be as patient as it is with modern ideals.

The more that life drifts into identity with money, the more it fails to make its definition in terms of life, the greater is the promised disorder. If, then, our complex social processes continue to expand wants, if increasing passion for equalizing social classes upward seize us as a people, if increasing cost of necessaries of lite diminish relatively our income, and every day reduces our sense of discipline while increasing our need of it, who shall say that Socialism may not find in this situation elements of strength on which we of to-day do not reckon? When we hear Socialism plead for life, full, free, equal; when we hear its delusive promise to emancipate man from money; to foster and develop life to the fullest; when we hear its denunciations of unequal incomes leading to unequal life, may we not assume that many will listen with

eagerness, ponder with attention, and embrace with zeal ? The question is worth some reflection.

Our passion for equality without discrimination, our habit of rating men as equal in all things, because equal in some, are working silently with the forces that make for Socialism. Our schools might undertake some sociological work, parents might be more intelligent, the sociological value of Christianity might be impressed more vividly on society by the pulpit. The education of our wants or desires, the introduction of a spirit of discipline among them, definite regard for the limitations which income imposes, even while we strive to increase it, are fundamentally important in these days. The lack of them favors the propaganda of Socialism very directly. It is permanently true that spiritual progress and real peace depend on the wisdom of our definition of life, the degree of our loyalty to it, and the character of the discipline to which we submit interiorly. Hence we should understand the sources whence discipline comes, and we may rightly recognize limited income as one of them.

* Apropos of this, the following from Giddings Democracy and Empire, p. 94, is of interest: "The most important single doctrine that Christianity has to contribute to social science has been forgotten or ignored. The doctrine referred to is that of the distinction between those who are free from the law and those who are under bondage to the law. The key to the solution of the social problem will be found in a frank acceptance of the fact that some men in every community are inherently progressive, resourceful, creative, capable of self-mastery and self-direction, while other men, capable of none of these, can be made useful, comfortable, and essentially free, only by being brought under bondage to society and kept under mastership and discipline until they have acquired power to help and govern themselves. If one should say that we all believe this doctrine-that it is in no sense new-the necessary reply would be that we nevertheless habitually disregard it in every matter save the juridical distinction between the law-abiding and the criminal." Ruskin has the same thought in The Queen of Air: "The first duty of every man in the world is to find his true master and, for his own good, submit to him; and to find his true inferior and, for that inferior's good, conquer him. The punishment is sure if we either refuse the reverence or are too cowardly and indolent to enforce the compulsion. A base nation crucifies or poisons its wise men, and lets its fools rave and rot in the streets. A wise nation obeys the one, restrains the other, and cherishes all."

S

THE PRAYER OF CHRIST.

BY GEORGE TYRRELL, S.J.

I.

URELY it must have seemed like a momentary descent of the spirit of peace on the angry tumult of primeval chaos when, in the name of the oldest and widest Christian communion (and doubtless by a prophetic instinct of that same Spirit), a Roman Cardinal, in the year 1893, opened the Chicago Parliament of Religions with the simple prayer taught by Jesus to the fishermen of Galilee nearly two thousand years before.

At its height the wave pauses before it dashes itself in foam and confusion upon the shore. Such a brief instant of pause, of inward silence, must have been felt in that spiritual Babel ere the many tongues were let loose in the interest of their multitudinous creeds and contentions. It was as when the little child in their midst stood as a mute rebuke to the worse than childish contentions of the chosen Twelve. It was a recall to simplicity, to directness, to the one thing needful; to the point whence all had diverged and scattered, as sheep issuing from the pen, and to which all must converge again, as sheep gathered into the fold at evening. And surely from any other lips than those of a prince of the court of Rome the prayer had lacked the same fulness of significance.

A man's spirit utters itself to some degree in every voluntary movement of his life; but never so fully and perfectly as in prayer-prayer that is really his own. For prayer is "the lifting up of the heart and mind to God"; it is an act in which vision, feeling, and will, the three factors of the spirit-life, designedly blend together and strive to attain their highest and deepest expression. In prayer the spirit pierces down to the root and beginning of all reality from which it springs, and stretches up to the end and summit of all reality towards which it strains and struggles; and between these two poles lies the whole sphere of the finite which it strives to compass and tran