most free is really the most restricted, and the man who revels in superabundant leisure, most lacks it. For his labor has no natural limit, his daily occupation knows no holiday eve. While the weary world is resting, his thoughts remain under full tension, and an unsolved problem keeps him day and night in excitement.

The life of the thinker, the investigator, was recognized by the Greeks to be the one most worthy of a man, the purest and most elevated. "Happy the man," says Euripides, in words which the Athenians considered to refer to Anaxagoras, "Happy the man who traverses the regions of inquiry, who has no part in pernicious disputation, who has never desired what was unjust. His gaze is fastened upon the unalterable order of eternal nature, he seeks to know how she arose and by what means. In such a spirit the germ of impure deeds can never spring into life."

And yet among the Greeks an especial class whose business it was to be at leisure, was not formed till very late, and when it was created, manifold evils and dangers made their appear

ance.

The Sophists were the first who made of knowledge a, profession and thereby violated that principle of the Hellenes which regarded as mis-education the especial and one-sided pursuits of the virtuoso. They separated themselves at once from public life; they endeavored to lift themselves above every local narrowness, to make themselves free from every tradition, to settle and reform everything according to theoretical views. Who will deny that they brought to light a vast number of fruitful germs of knowledge! But the beautiful harmony, the directness, and glad security of the ancient life, from which have proceeded the artistic creations of the classic period had vanished, and while the great philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, used every means to remain in unison with the popular thought, in that they made it clearer, deeper, more nobly various, the Sophists caused a breach which has never healed.

The great sages of Greece called their science only "love of wisdom," because it had sprung wholly from the unconquerable thirst for knowledge, and had no external object of any sort. What they discovered was to be the possession of

no class; they communicated it to all, as the sun streams out his light, giving light and warmth to all susceptible natures. By the Sophists, Knowledge, which had developed itself modestly and quietly as but a branch of the tree of the national life, was made an ornamental plant, ministering to vanity, and was trained as a useful herb, by means of which to gain honor, money, and influence. Virtue and Wisdom in so many lessons were offered for sale at so much.

This commercial treatment of philosophy was a reversal of the normal relation, and this violence avenged itself on the very class which had made of leisure a business, and of knowledge a mere source of gain. The most gifted Sophists had but a transient renown and we only know them from what the representatives of popular wisdom have said against them.

But while the first Sophists, the contemporaries of Pericles, had their full share in the mighty movement of the time, and even displayed an intellectual force to some extent creative, the later representatives became more and more pitiful and weak. The narrowness which proceeded from their isolation constantly increased; a philosophy destitute of real subjectmatter degenerated into a dry routine, a pedantic scholastism, which made all those ridiculous who sought therein the problem of life, and with pretentious arrogance declaimed it. Hence the ill sound of the word "Scholasticus," i. e. the man who devoted himself wholly to leisure, the first name given to the professional savant, the term by which even at the beginning of the imperial era was indicated an ossified pedant. We all remember the pleasant stories which enlivened our study at school of the Greek elements.

The doctrine which follows from these considerations is one to be taken to heart indeed, but which does not always lie clear before us. It is that true knowledge, Science or Philosophy, is confined to no learned class, that complete learned leisure is a dangerous gift and that our calling is exposed to manifold depravation and decline, as the example of the first professors, the Sophists, and their successors shows.

In our thought and action we shall have to take our stand between the Sophists and Philosophers of Greece. Learning is either an end in itself or a means to an end, since the striv

ing for knowledge is so overgrown with all sorts of collateral interests, looking to external advantages, that under these parasitical plants the noble tree dies. Let us either tear ourselves from the people to whom we belong, and become something apart by ourselves, a privileged caste, which looks down upon the unlearned and has its own standard for human blessings and aims, or let us remain a living member of the whole body, while we only on our part seek to serve, and fearlessly acknowledge that the moral life, which is not produced by knowledge, that the powers of Faith and Love upon which rest the Church, the State, the Home, must always remain the most precious possessions of the people, treasures which we too should be willing to alienate for the sake of no scientific or philosophical acquisitions or attainments.

Difficult and responsible is the vocation of those whose labor and leisure is at their own disposal! But the task is lightened for us by this, that not investigation alone is our daily employment, that we are expected not only to be always learning more, but to teach the youth of our country who are committed to our care. Without constant progress in learning, teaching becomes but a mechanical exercise. From the onesidedness of learned leisure, and the self-conceit which, owing to the weakness of human nature, so easily clings to it, the office of giving instruction must preserve us a duty we cannot fulfill without self-denial, without love, without a joyful self-surrender to the youth themselves, and also to the Fatherland for whom they are growing up. Thus, there comes also into our life that which is indispensable for every wholesome human existence, the antithesis of labor and leisure-the duty of work and rest. To us is also applicable the charming

motto

Tages Arbeit, Abends Gäste

Saure Wochen, frohe Feste.

After the day's work, the evening's guest,

After weeks of toil, holiday rest.

And at what festival does this come to us with more force than to-day when the doors of our Aula are opened again for the holiday which unites us in full enthusiasm and deep gratitude. When, more vividly than to-day do we feel that we

form no closed guild, that through our especial vocation we are by no means estranged from that which to-day fills a great people with jubilant pride! If we have any advantage over others, it can be only perhaps this, that we more clearly discern how seldom in this world's history it occurs that an illustrious sovereign house stands great and strong in the midst of a free people; that a prince, so favored of God bears his victor's garland with such noble modesty and even to his old age labors unweariedly for the Fatherland. His closing years are crowned by the lofty consciousness of having desired nothing for himself, by the sight of a flourishing dynasty, a family in which the virtues of the Hohenzollern are continued and of a people that under him for the first time happily united, in this general confidence in him and affection towards him is ennobled and formed anew.

We fear, thank God, no envy of the gods. We see in that which has been achieved, an earnest and pledge of the future. We thank God that he has given us Emperor William, and has to this day preserved him in heroic might; we pray Him graciously still to guard that revered head.

ARTICLE III-CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF FAITH IN THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT.

THAT of late, the orthodox doctrine of future punishment has loosened its hold on the minds of many Christian people, admits of no dispute. Whether or not we can trace the process of this, we may be sure that it has not come suddenly, but by the protracted action of forces whose tendencies were not apparent until the result had been well-nigh accomplished. And thus it doubtless comes under those laws which modify moral and religious sentiment, and shapes the social life of each historical period. While not attempting to exhaust the causes which have brought this doctrine into discredit, it is our object, in this paper, to name a few of the more effective.

Let us first advert to two explanations, commonly supposed to account for this doctrinal defection, both of which are unsatisfactory.

It is said that the change is owing to the inadequate and superficial views of sin that prevail even in our Christian communities. It is claimed that if men realized according to its nature, the guilt and demerit of sin, their unbelief with regard to endless punishment would vanish. This is undoubtedly true. But this explanation is no radical solution of the question. For it only throws our inquiry back one stage, and leads us to ask, Why the prevalence of such inadequate views of sin? For, upon the face of it, the same causes which have worked unbelief with respect to future punishment, have occasioned defective views of sin.

It is alleged again, that much of this unbelief has its origin in the unsoundness of popular religious teachers, holding or thodox connections. But the allegation is not satisfactory. For these further questions await an answer, viz: What has occasioned their defection? And how is it that they retain their membership in orthodox bodies, and are tolerated in their pulpits? Not long ago the very smell of heresy on this doctrine would have forfeited them their "good and regular standing." We must look deeper, therefore, for the solution.