REFORMS.-There are certain social movements of our generation which are generally thought of as "reforms"; for example, the Temperance Reform, the Social Purity Reform, the Sunday Rest, and others in the realm of politics.

From the first the workers have naturally studied the best methods of diminishing the hold of vicious habits and customs. Those who are conducting the temperance reform merely in fashionable quarters and down-town halls or country districts, may never catch a glimpse of the real state of things where reform is most sorely needed. The best laws become a dead letter in a huge colony of foreigners with a population as large as one of the great towns of their native country. Custom goes before law and sentiment moulds custom. To begin with political measures is not to "hitch our wagon to a star," but rather to hitch our team to the rear end of the wagon. Progress can go no faster than it is led by the best men among the working people of different races in cities. They must change their convictions in relation to the physiology and the morality of drinking customs before they will submit to restrictive legislation. The best work now being done for temperance seldom mentions the subject, but quietly seeks to educate the people in science so that they can judge for themselves.

THE TEMPERANCE REFORM.-Professor T. H. Green was deeply interested in the educational and political forms of the temperance movement. In 1872 he joined the United Kingdom Alliance. In 1875 he set up a coffee tavern in St. Clement's

'Even here in Oxford, which has of late been strangely trying to get up a reputation for sobriety, anyone who goes below the reputable classes finds the degradation and hopeless waste which this vice produces meet him at every turn. It is idle to say that education and comfortable habits will check this vice in time. The education of the families of the sober has no effect on the families of the drunken. Unless the vice is first checked by a dead lift of the national conscience, education and comfortable habits are impossible in those very families which are to be saved from drunkenness by them. Meanwhile an immense commercial interest is fattening upon the evil, and of course doing all it can to disguise it."

Greene's influence was of course powerful with those who went down from Oxford to London to fight the giants of poverty, degradation and misery.

The only

The Settlement people have sometimes been criticised for "friendliness to the saloon." ground for such an accusation lies in the fact that residents among the poor have impressed upon them the fact that the saloon or public house is the only club house accessible to wage earners. The churches have refused to provide for the recreative needs of workingmen, and the temperance societies have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in talk and tracts, in conventions and lobbies, which might better have gone to opening decent club rooms for rent to working men. Even when such places have been opened the working men have often been driven away by patronizing airs or proselyting schemes.

These facts have compelled those who know the real feeling of the independent working men to recognize the social function of the saloon and the utter inadequacy of the merely antagonistic attitude toward it.

H. Religious Activities. The Settlement is not a church and should not be judged by the standards by which we test the success of a denominational mission. It is a group approaching the type of a domestic association, and frequently is simply a family or a number of families living in a selected neighborhood. It should be judged by the standard of family success.

Now families differ in their attitude to religion. In a home where the heads are deeply imbued with a devotional spirit an intimate friend might find some expression of it in family worship. But that is not an affair to publish. It belongs to the sacred circle of parents, children and guests.

In no case known to the writer is there a Settlement which is hostile or even indifferent to religion. The field is open to secularists, agnostics, and all the rest. So long as men and women of any belief or no belief wish to help their fellow men we do not curse or forbid them merely because they follow not us." They may do good after their own fashion. And many a sceptical and bewildered soul has sought in such active ministrations of beneficence that refuge from doubt which mere speculation never afforded a tempest-tossed spirit.

DENOMINATIONALISM.-Perhaps a few of the Settlements are distinctly denominational instit

tions. In such rare instances they might, perhaps, better be ranked with "Institutional Churches.' But mere names are of slight importance. Usually the conditions of work absolutely exclude denominationalism. Residence is an opportunity of making one's whole life felt. But communication means sharing, fellowship, friendliness, and this is inconsistent with the methods of proselyting and sectarian propagandism.

RELATION OF SETTLEMENT ΤΟ DIVINITY SCHOOL. This point has been admirably set forth by Mr. R. A. Woods:

"The University Settlement will become an organized part of the University, one of its professional schools perhaps, where every sort of latent or narrowly applied power which the university develops shall be strongly called out, and sent along lines where it shall begin to be applied to its appropriate function of ministering to the common life of society. The necessity of dealing with the life of the masses of the people, which makes hospital and dispensary work so important to the medical student, is now being felt in a marked degree at the theological seminaries. For several reasons the work of a Settlement of theological students must be nearly identical with that of a general University Settlement; the only difference being that the religious notion will always be kept prominent, and methods of religious work will receive more particular attention on the part of the residents. But the same comprehensive programme must be followed.

The belief in the helpful influence of every

good thing must still be held. Nearly as great a variety of workers can be, or ought to be, called into service. The vast majority of the people in the depressed sections of cities who are inaccessible to direct religious efforts are as distinctly a part of the constituency of one sort of Settlement as of the other; and they must be appealed to upon such sides of their better nature as are sensitive to appeals. Every Settlement must go patiently to work with the hope of developing means for saving the whole of the neighborhood; for reaching all the people who dwell in the neighborhood regenerated in every part of their lives.'

All the Settlements seem to be inspired by religious motives. In the report to the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1896, twenty-seven replies were returned to the question on the religious attitude of the workers, "All the Settlements, so far as known to the committee, are imbued in a sense deeper than that of creeds with a religious spirit. Probably the attitude of a majority of the Settlements is that of the Philadelphia College Settlement, which has thus stated its views by its Head, Miss Katherine Davis: We have no religious service. Each resident attends her own church, and we encourage our neighbors to do the same. Our influence is distinctly for religion, but not for any denomination or creed.'"'

Many Settlements do have distinctly religious services of their own. The Chicago Commons publishes on its programme an invitation to their neighbors to attend daily "Household Vespers"