Declaration of Independence and of the Rights of Man are taken seriously. Political power has been enjoyed long enough to excite ambition to possess other and more substantial forms of power. Voters are asking whether the ballot may not be a tool as well as a toy. Why have a voice in the federal government, but none in the control of the factory? Political liberty is a mere picture; the reality is economic freedom, the mastery of the materials of happiness and culture. The present passion of the workingman is to have a share in determining the conditions under which society shall use and use up his physical and mental energies. His ideal is economic self-government. Socialism is fascinating because it seems to show him how to transmute political influence into industrial mastery.

In millions of awakened souls the song of the ploughman poet is echoed:

"For a' that, and a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That man to man the world o'er

Shall brothers be for a' that."

K. Francke, in "Social Forces in German Literature," has, in describing Germany, summarized the tendencies of all modern lands.

"On the one hand, the ruling majority, wonderfully organized, full of intellectual and moral vigor, proud, honest, loyal, patriotic, but hemmed in by prejudice, and devoid of larger sympathies; on the other, the millions of the majority, equally well organized, influential as a political body, but socially

held down, restless, rebellious, inspired with the vague ideal of a broader and fuller humanity. On the one hand, a past secure in glorious achievements; on the other, a future teeming with extravagant hopes. On the one hand, service; on the other, personality. On the one hand, an almost religious belief in the sacredness of hereditary sovereignty; on the other, an equally fervent zeal for the emancipation of the individual. And what is most remarkable of all, both conservatives and radicals, both monarchists and social-democrats, inevitably drifting towards the same final goal of a new corporate consciousness, which shall embrace both authority and freedom. The end of their conflict will be mutual understanding and liberation as the basis of a new and happier home.”

THE QUICKENING OF RELIGIOUS LIFE.-The great revivalist of the last century was a practical philanthropist. John Wesley wrote and preached against slavery and intemperance. He went to the mines to convert colliers. He appealed to the neglected masses. Dead formalism, idle controversy, cold dogmatism, paralytic deism were rebuked by this intense, convinced, sincere herald of the gospel. His influence is still felt in every branch of

the church.

The religious revival was closely connected with a powerful movement of reforms. The Friends had studied the slavery question and found it un-Christian because it was immoral. Clarkson and Wilberforce sharpened the conscience of the nation on the same problem. The discussion was carried into

court and Parliament. At last the law declared that the soil of England made man free. The great commercial nation joined European powers to suspress the traffic in slaves on the high seas. At immense cost the slaves of the West Indies were purchased and emancipated.

In the contest with African slavery men learned to detest the slavery of factories and mines. Revolt against the bloody lash and suffocating slave-ship compelled men to investigate the stories of torture and oppression in the factories.

Enlightened employers, factory inspectors, humane statesmen, gifted sons of toil, writers of poetry and fiction, saved the heart of England from petrifaction and kept pity alive. The Earl of Shaftesbury is a type of the Christian humanitarian. He gave his life to help the insane, the miner, the factory girl, the chimney-sweep, the unfortunate of every kind. To carry his measures he was compelled to educate the ruling classes in justice and in a knowledge of contemporary England.

John Howard and Elizabeth Fry touched with healing power the most hopeless and abandoned classes and forwarded prison reform. The dungeon was changed from a fiendish purgatory to a school of reform. The insane have been removed from the crowd of criminals and treated in hospitals for the sick. The debtor is liberated. Youth and children have been given, though tardily, a chance to learn to read.

The High Church Movement. Startled by the inroads of scepticism and secularism, certain Oxford

scholars sought to kindle a new life in the State Church and induce the clergy to earn their stipends. Reactionary as it may seem to us, this movement had elements of spiritual force. It led men to devote themselves to a cause too large for selfishness. Its mysticism and symbolism, impossible as they are to men of rationalistic temper, did imply a vision of a large human world in which self-seeking came to appear mean and unworthy. That which bears the aspect of mere ritualism and mediæval asceticism carried with it the consecration of the spiritual martyr. Hence the missionaries to the heathen, and the self-denying ministers among the poor of London. This spirit brought men of finest æsthetic culture from the charming quadrangles of the old university down to the dives of the "submerged tenth." Years before the settlement idea was thought of these refined children of the ancient mother of learning, were fighting in their own sad way the evils against which allied forces are now gathering for a combined attack. A religious movement of an entirely different kind prepared the way for those who could not, even to save their souls, make the sacrifice of private judgement. Frederick Denison Maurice, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes, and all the school of "Christian Socialists," went among the working men of London with a cheery, manly, valiant message which had nothing of asceticism in it. Among them were men who taught Bible-classes one hour and boxing classes the next, with equal energy and joy, with equal religious devotion.

The sermons and addresses of F. W. Robertson may be taken as illustrations of the combination of spiritual forces with "secular" interests.

after the Chartists had shaken England-out of moral slumber and suffered pathetic failure of impossible dreams, this fine spirit voiced the best thought of their friends. “There are two ways of improving a nation's state; the one is by altering the institutions of the country, the other is by the regeneration of the people's character. The one begins from things outward, and expects to effect a change in things inward; the other takes this line-from things inward to things outward. The latter is the right plan. If the Chartist got all he wanted-universal suffrage, vote by ballot, equal electoral districts, annual Parliaments, paid representatives, and no property qualification, and he should succeed in transferring all power into the people's hands, and yet it were to turn out that the majority were just as corrupt and depraved as the minority had been before them, every honest Chartist will tell us that his Chartism would have been a failure, and was not worth the having." This was said in the memorable year of revolutions, 1848. Four years later Robertson made an address in which he brings out the other side. Progress means increased opportunities of developing the heart, the conscience, the intellect. It is not each man's born right to be as rich as his neighbor, or to possess the soil. But it is his inalienable right to be permitted to develop all the powers that God gave. If the laborer live so that the death of a child is welcomed by the