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He: "Like you, they are a little restless at Metropolitanville, and one of them has just been here with the same inquiry. How would you like the Rev. Dr. Able, their present supply? He is scholarly, devout, clean, experienced, and a wise leader with a noble family."

She: "How old is he? If he is over blank years he will never draw our young folks. We must have a cub, not dangerous, but sportive and pretty. Some love of a creature!" He: "Very well, I think I can recommend what you want, though I assure you that I cannot be held responsible for results. The fact is, this demand is very much the fashion now."

She (going away): "I do hope that Metropolitanville Church has not asked for him, for we at J Street would not be suited by what would please them, we are so superior. But if we are first won't we have our own way with him in salary, slippers and all! And we could furnish him with a love of a wife."

Ecclesiasticus (alone): "What are we coming to? Just as our men reach their zenith, and even before, there is a demand for veal instead of steak. When the army has needed leaders trained veterans have been ready for command. Formerly the Duke of Blenheim and Von Moltke, seasoned sons of Mars, led the armies of Europe. Our navy has swept the Spanish fleets from the seas, commanded by those whose heads are gray. Our President and his cabinet went through the war over thirty years ago. Men of like years head the great universities. Leaders of letters and commerce are in their golden prime. Madame Grundy would sweep us all aside for a pet cub. When this same lady is seriously ill she must have the best trained lions of Esculapius. If financial ruin overhangs her husband's business two or three tawny old fellows from the legal den must be had, even if all Gotham is searched for them. Inexperience is called to leadership only in the momentous concerns of religion.'

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It may not be straining our metaphor to inquire whether many a clerical lion would stand the test if sent down to a position of obscurity-or, rather, up to it-where Sheldon in his graphic story sent his pulpit orators and even bishops. A

mighty one may walk boldly and majestically, if well fed and housed, where Madame Grundy fondles and admires; where there are silken robes, crocheted slippers, and electric lights; where applause rings and prima donna notes blend with the basso profundo. But where the meal barrel is empty and the rusty coat must be turned to last another year, where filth and moral vileness prevail, where squalor reigns and despair broods, where such wards as that in which Jane Addams works are bought or beaten into submission by blear-eyed aldermen, "even where Satan's seat is "-if, there, his heart and carriage be that of a lion, he shows that he is fit for any place, even to face the fiercest foes of society in deadly combat.

Lion-hunting is great sport, but it takes a great man to enjoy it, for it is expensive. The carvings on the ruins of Nineveh illustrate this. If hirelings did take part it was as trained hunters to snare the beast, but it took the royal purse to pay for the sport. Amos, the prophet, being a shepherd, knew the animal's habits, and significantly asks, “Will a lion roar in the forest when he hath no prey?" So, when Gotham wants a lion from her western rival, how they tempt the beast by proffers of prey, larger and larger, sufficient to make the whole menagerie roar with envy!

The woods are full of lions who do little roaring. The kingly beast of nature is, for the most part, quiet; he approaches silently, crouching unobserved; but it is in this quiet way that he finds his richest game. Let the fact be written down that there are a hundred thousand clergymen in this western world who are, for the most part, quiet, but who have a courage which never flinches. We have seen hundreds of them all over the plains of the once "great American desert," who, when hungry and poorly fed, would not retreat from brazen skies and parched fields.

To come out a little from the cover of our metaphor, it is no very alluring thing to contemplate the prospect of being a "second" or "third class" minister. The great majority, however, face it and never flinch. There he goes, modest, pure, sincere, manly, preaching faithfully, giving himself to his people, patient under their complaints, sympathetic in their sorrows, tolerant of their prejudices, disregarding censure,

grateful for any appreciation, taking few or no vacations, since his income, with the hard toils of his wife and the needs of his children for education, will not permit such luxuries. He would read widely, but can ill afford books and magazines; he would travel and see the world, but must wait for the opportunity till he sees the "land of far distances." He He goes from "White Chapel " to "Smith's School House," from "Mineral" to "Dugout;" or he may be the only pastor "Jim Town" can afford. The years pass on; his time has come. He has preached his last sermon; the news of his ended work comes on the wings of gossip, or some friend whispers it. Perhaps his wife has seen it; some break, it may be, in physical or mental machinery has announced it. The harness must be put off and he turned out to die. At last, in his coffin, his face wears the conqueror's expression. His spiritual children are in all the land; whole communities have been saved through his life; the colleges have been fuller through those he found out and passed up to them. The professions are blest in his spiritual children. Mission fields are reproducing harvests of his sowing. His wife lingers on this side of the river, or is on the other, awaiting him. His own sons have come to honor as ministers, artisans, merchants, physicians, teachers, lawyers, builders, soldiers, sailors, or statesmen-all servants of their King; his daughters are womanly. As the household bear away the body of their father they thank God that he was a third class minister of the word, having possibly as many sons in the Gospel, as many spiritual descendants in every rank of life, as any metropolitan lion who ever roared, He was molded in his character after the nature of Him who is at once the Lion and the Lamb before the throne of God, who broke the seals of truth to a benighted world.

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ART. VI. THE PREREQUISITES OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY.

SOCIOLOGY is one of the latter-day sciences. It is a branch of general philosophy, and more particularly deals with the phenomena of human society. It is a most comprehensive and complex science. Astronomy, which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, chemistry, which deals with the constituents of the earth, and geology, which studies the construction of the earth's surface, are all simple sciences, not placing any special impediment in the way of comprehension. But sociology, which studies man and his social relations, offers great obstacles; the facts it has to consider are many and varied; and the chief of its difficulties, at least from a materialistic standpoint, lies in the fact that man is not subject to law in the sense that a star is, or a mountain, or even an animal.

And, for this latter reason, sociology can never be one of the strict sciences, for it is a characteristic of a strict science like acoustics or chemistry that there is no room for the play of a force so incalculable as is the human mind. The thinkers, therefore, who endeavor to make sociology as much a strict science as even biology succeed in the attempt only by reducing to a vanishing minimum the free nature of man. Continuous physical causation can have no place in sociology, rightly understood.

Up to quite recently political economy, rightly named the "dismal science," was the only sociological study of man we possessed; but to-day numbers of thinkers are engaged in collecting and collating the facts of human life-in building up a warmer, truer, and, we trust, more Christian conception of man, as he stands touching at ten thousand points the increasingly complex life of society. And this new and developing science is sociology. It is a field where the Christian thinker ought to be much in evidence. Apparently, however, the foundations of the science are being laid by men of other schools. We cannot without ridicule speak of a Christian chemistry, for the simple reason that atoms and molecules are of fixed property and incapable of any interplay or of any

result not already provided for in their essential natures. But man is a molecule in course of development, possessing, it is true, certain inalienable characteristics, yet capable of such infinite modification as to make possible countless modes of society. And the Christian form of society will result from the Christian modification of man.

Between man as he is and man as he ought to be there is an immense difference. Christianity, it should be observed, is not concerned primarily with man as he is; it regards him in the light of his possibilities. And what are mere possibilities for the race as a whole have become actualities for a smaller portion of it. To reconstruct society on the basis of man as he was, or in general at the present is, gives the lie to our aspirations and to the coming of the kingdom of God upon the earth. We cannot accept as true any system looking to the development of society which ignores the forces proceeding from the cross of Christ. Sociology, then, from this standpoint will differ from other conceptions of the science in this, that its subject-matter, man, is viewed as ideal rather than actual. Far from recognizing man as but a link in the eternal chain of causation, we infuse into him a power not himself, and with the modified man lay the foundation of a lasting and righteous society. The greatest stress must be laid on psychic factors, and among these factors the enlightened conscience will hold a prominent place. Not static, but dynamic and tremendously ethical, is the conception we are suggesting.

It may be thought that to construct a science on what ought to be, rather than upon actual phenomena, is an extremely hazardous undertaking. So it would be in any domain outside the sphere of human activity. But what is man? In the answer to this question will be found the gist of the whole matter. It has been remarked by Schmidt, in his Doctrine of Descent, that it might almost be named as the characteristic of the species man that his mental development covers such an exceedingly wide range. And what are the sociologists of materialistic bias doing to-day? Not studying man as he is, more than man as they see him climbing up through long and weary stages to the light of to-day. Indeed, the soci

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