ology which claims on evolutionary grounds the title of a strict science has no message for the morrow, and has won for itself few if any principles which would not justify anarchy as the goal of human society. A fading flower is it, of which history is the stem and archæology the root.

Sociology, which term we owe to Compte, is concerned with social phenomena and their forces. It may not on that account, however, ignore the activities of the individual, for that would be equivalent to saying that chemistry is the study of compounds, overlooking the fact that a knowledge of the properties of the elements must come first. Sociology is not analogous to organic chemistry, which is a study of the carbon compounds, but to chemistry as a whole, ranging from the properties of the simplest element to those of the most complex substance. To this it may be replied that specific sciences deal with man, the individual; that, thus, psychology systematizes the phenomena of mind, and physiology the functions and activities of the body; and that there is apparently no room for a sociological conception of man considered as a unit. But a moment's consideration will show that a portion of the phenomena embraced in these sciences are more directly related to his social life, and that he possesses, in addition, many peculiarities which transcend the ordinary method of these sciences.

Man, the genus, belongs more exclusively to psycho-physiological science; man, the species, belongs more properly to sociology. This distinction, however, will be apprehended with greater force when we look at man built up into society. Nevertheless, we insist that scientifically the individual is the true basis of sociology, while, for our part, we require that it shall be the individual idealized in the light of our most holy faith. From this standpoint the whole matter may be put thus: sociology is the science of the variable elements in man, and when these elements are raised to their highest and finest power we have the efficient forces of Christian sociology. If, then, we inquire as to the causes of the difference between French society and English, between the collective life of Peking and that of Philadelphia, we shall not find the causes, strictly speaking, to be either psychological or physio

logical, but sociological. Psycho-physiological analysis would disclose to us merely bodies of men mentally built on the same general plan; the properties, therefore, which differentiate the men so considerably from each other, and which become so apparent when they come together in the formation. of society, are sociological in character.

Thus, in addition to the activities and functions of the common nature of man which supply the phenomena for psychophysiological investigation, we have other factors to take into consideration, such as indeed hold within themselves the potentialities of an immense range of social organizations. We might make the lower sciences cover the ground of these variable and multitudinous phenomena, just as Compte made biology cover the facts of sociology. This he was able to do by calling psychology "transcendental biology" By calling sociology "transcendental psychology" we might refuse to hand over to the highest science the individual traits which allow of the possibility and determine the character of any given social organization, and by retaining them within the lower generalization we might gain a delusive completeness, at the expense, however, of truth. The lower we descend the scale of human life the more completely, it would appear, does the psycho-physiological method correspond with the totality of human existence; the higher we ascend the greater need for a larger method. And it is further to be observed that it is in the interests of the lower science that we withdraw the variable sociological elements antagonistic, as such elements must always be, to the notion of a strict science.

The idea we are endeavoring to convey regarding the nature of the relation between the genus man and man the species is clearly suggested in the phenomena of the strawberry plant. Says Huxley :

Everybody is familiar with the way in which the suckers of the strawberry plant behave. A thin cylinder of living tissue keeps on growing at its free end until it attains a considerable length. At successive intervals it develops buds, which develop into strawberry plants, and these become independent by the death of the parts of the sucker which connect them. The rest of the sucker, however, may go on living and growing indefinitely, and, circumstances remaining favorable, there is no reason why it should ever die.

Keeping up the figure, and with all reasonable qualifications, we may say that upon the "sucker" humanity the various societies of men have their origin and reach their development. The underlying and never-dying life in its nature belongs to the domain of psychophysiology; but sociology embraces the forces which result in the modification of the common life, having to do with the factors which have led to a Chinese bud here and an American bud there.

In looking round, then, for our sociological factors we do not wish to intimate that they will differ absolutely from other phenomena of human life. In many cases the difference will be one of color, direction, temper. Thus, love as an attribute of the genus man will be psychological; but love as manifested in the habits and customs of various societies will be sociological. This universal attribute of man, as we know, plays a most prominent part in his collective life. Taking love, then, as one of the social forces-and, so far as it may be allied with the sexual instinct, confining it to the domain of psycho-physiology-it is impossible not to see that in a body of men in which it has been tempered by the example of Christ and in a body of men in which it has been colored by Mohammed very different results must accrue, making farreaching modifications of habit, custom, institution, and language. The difference between a Christian father and a heathen father is sociological in character, and Christian at that. And the causes of sociological modification, as we see it in its higher reaches, are not evolutionary, but historical, not an unfolding so much as a clothing upon. The men who with arduous labor collect the multitudinous data respecting the social institution which we call marriage, and who crown their painstaking work with the title "the evolution of marriage," cannot surely themselves, whatever may be said of their readers, be under the delusion that they have accounted for the Christian institution. There could have been no Christian marriage unless human nature had undergone conscious modification by the teaching and power of Jesus Christ. Referring to our illustration of the strawberry plant, the early and wild products came about by natural processes, but the luscious fruit we enjoy is the outcome of intelligent modifica

tion of the primal life. The human institution, too, may have had its natural beginning, but, if we know how to produce the finest fruit, this shall be the basis of our further working. The dark underprocesses we would like to know, but have no intention of acting upon them.

To bring to a point, then, much of the preceding, let us say that, finding man, the unit of the science, to be so variable a factor, of a practically unknown potentiality of development and characterized by an element inscrutable and incalculable, we cannot do less than deny to sociology the title of a strict science. We are sorry to find ourselves with no sympathy whatever for the attempt to make the coming science merely the highest expression of cosmic order. In the Romanes lecture on "Evolution and Ethics," in which may be found Huxley's maturest thought, the position taken is virtually a repudiation of the principle by which writers not a few are endeavoring to construct the science of society. Huxley frees man from the tyrannous chain of natural causation, and places him selfcentered and supreme amid the cosmic forces. He says:

Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another which may be called the ethical process. . . . The cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends. The imitation of it by man is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics. ... Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.

These words come from a man whose thought habitually emphasized the cosmic process. As there cannot be a science of sociology in the sense that there can be a science of the stars, of the trees, or of the elements, we advance to the further position that it is this very fact which makes possible and reasonable a Christian sociology.

ART. VII.-THE PARABLE OF THE UNJUST STEWARD-LUKE XVI, 1-31.

THE parable of the unjust steward has been regarded as the crux interpretum. The historical or the logical connection is not such as to aid materially in arriving at a correct exegesis. The interpretations usually given make it teach the lesson of a wise and prudent use of this world's goods. The steward, however wanting in fidelity and care, showed great prudence in the use he made of present opportunities as a means of providing for the future. Such interpretations have never satisfied our mind. Is a master likely so heartily to commend a man who has compounded his dishonesty? At the moment when he is bringing a culprit to justice and threatening to dismiss him from his service is he likely to be turned from his purpose by a new and a shrewder trick, by which he is wronged more than ever? Were the parables of Jesus anywhere else so untrue to nature and to fact? Moreover, we cannot concede that Jesus, so fertile in parable and in illustration, was led into even a semiapproval of such deeds, in advising good men to be thus instructed by the example of the wicked. Though the parable is one of acknowledged difficulty, we venture another explanation.

Let us note the following facts: (1) Through this whole period of his ministry Jesus is ruthlessly exposing the fallacious principles and the shams of the Pharisees; (2) The three sections of chapter xvi have one thought running through them; (3) The parable of the unjust steward made the Pharisees scoff at him, called out a stern denunciation of their hypocrisy, and was followed by the parable of Dives and Lazarus; (4) Jesus makes very frequent use of irony and sarcasm, especially in dealing with the scribes and Pharisees. (Compare Luke xv, 7; xviii, 9-14; vii, 35, and the story of the Gergesene demoniac.)

With these points in view let us examine the story. A rich man had a steward who wasted his goods. He called him to judgment. The steward, long accustomed to such deeds, knew of no escape but to go deeper in; so he compounded his