the pathetic historic poverty, of the exhibition. He found in the tragically sacred rooms not a single object of beauty, scarce one that was not altogether ugly and indicative of the absence of means and of taste and of resource. The only charm he discovered in the Museum was the softvoiced, gracious, mellifluous, little old lady who had charge of the exhibition, and whose exquisite good manners made him feel like one received at the gate of some grandly bankrupt plantation and submerged up to his neck in that delightful, tepid medium-the social tone of the old South. For the sorry collection of objects which filled the Museum she did the honors with a gentle florid reverence that made the visitor tender toward the heroic pathetic history there memorialized. The poor assemblage of historic mementos had no beauty; "but the little old lady had it, with her thoroughly 'sectional' good manners, and that punctuality and felicity, that inimitability, one must again say, of the South in her, in the patriotic unction of her reference to the shabby objects about, which transported me as no enchanted carpet could have done. No little old lady of the North could, for the high tone and the right manner, have matched her, and poor benumbed Richmond might now be as dreary as it liked." Having seen her he felt that his pilgrimage was well rewarded. He noticed the passionate flare of the inscription over the frout of the Charleston section of the exhibition, "behind which inscription the Daughters of the Confederacy nurse the old wrongs and the old wounds." He says that, practically, the South is reconciled, but that ideally and sentimentally it still burns with a smothered flame in presence of that heritage of woe and of glory which the Museum enshrines. He says that the collapse of the old order, the bitter humiliation of defeat, with the bereavement and bankruptcy involved, constitute a social revolution, which remains the most unrecorded and undepicted, in proportion to its magnitude, that ever was; and the sore consciousness of this renders the reversion of the starved spirit to these poor memorials of the South's heroic age, those four epic years, a definite soothing salve; even though the aesthetic level of the exhibition is so low that Mr. James finds it impossible to imagine a community, of equal size, more disinherited of art or of letters. For art, he found only the monument to General Lee of which he says: "The equestrian statue of the Southern hero, made to order in far-away uninterested Paris, is the work of a master and has an artistic interest-a refinement of style, in fact, under the impression of which we seem to see it, in its situation, as some precious pearl of ocean washed up on a rude bare strand. The very high florid pedestal is of the last French elegance, and the great soldier, sitting his horse with a kind of melancholy nobleness, raises his handsome head as he looks off into desolate space. He does well, we feel, to sit as high as he may, and to appear, in his lone survival, to see as far, and to overlook as many things; for the irony of fate, crowning the picture, is surely stamped in all sharpness on the scene about him. The place is the mere vague centre of two or three crossways, without form and void, with a circle half sketched by three or four groups of small, new, mean houses. It is somehow empty in spite of being ugly, and yet expressive in spite of being empty. 'Desolate,' one has called the air; and the effect is, strangely, of some smug 'up-to-date' specimen or pattern of desolation." Nevertheless, the greatest object in Richmond is the statue of Lee. This visitor, from over the sea, looking upon the whole scene through European eyes and speaking with untrammeled foreign candor, says that Richmond's plight is a consequence of having worshiped false gods. The statue of the great General perched aloft seems to him to be over-arched by the very heaven of futility; and as he gives it a last look he says: "I recognized something more than the melancholy of a lost cause; the whole infelicitous scene speaks of a cause that never could have been gained." Wandering among the historic memorials he met a handsome and stalwart youth Southerner, who told Mr. James with evident pride how his father had escaped capture or worse by luckily smashing with his musket the skull of a Union soldier. And the gallant young man added: "I myself would be ready to do it all over again, if need should arise. That's the kind of Southerner I am." Looking into his innocent, smiling face, Mr. James did not believe that he would really hurt a Northern fly; but that he felt it necessary, out of loyalty to his ancestry, his section and its history, to cherish this sort of Platonic passion which did not mean anything serious. The visitor from Europe thanked the ingenuous young man for being such a capital Southerner, just the sort of Southerner he had wanted to see a sample of. The one object in Richmond which seemed to the visitor to stand for the large and liberal world, and to make the affirmation farthest removed from the vain vaunt of the narrow old time and from the social order which was founded on delusions and exclusions, was the town Library. Everything else seemed to Mr. James a bequest from a sadly mistaken even though heroic age, part of a heritage of departed glory and lingering woe. The Library stood in the beautiful openness of world-relation, and exhaled the balm of a disprovincializing breath. For our own part, reading Mr. James's cold and unsympathetic criticisms of the mementos of a misguided and illfated enterprise, we cannot help feeling that he expects and exacts too much from a Confederacy whose painfully precarious existence was so brief, and whose energies and resources, for every day of that brief time, were taxed to the uttermost by the mere effort to exist. This frequenter of the rich historic museums of Europe is unreasonable in the demands he makes for stately and splendid memorials upon a people who came out of their tremendous struggle utterly impoverished and destitute, unable for many long years thereafter to do more than barely to subsist. We wonder also that to so bright a man as Henry James it did not occur that in the absence of any large number of conspicuous and imposing memorials of Secession from the Confederate Capital, there may be some sign of a loyal refraining, some play of the larger patriotism which arose in the honest hearts of noble Southern men when, having fought and suffered like heroes and martyrs for a cause they believed in, and the arbitrament of war having gone against them, bravely and faithfully accepted the verdict and gave to the happily reunited Nation the patriotism and loyalty which they had given to their Section. BOOK NOTICES RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE Letters on Evangelism. By EDWIN H. HUGHES, President of DePauw University. 16mo. pp. 104. Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham. New York: Eaton & Mains. Cloth, 25 cents, net; paper, 15 cents, net. We call attention to this little book because it seems to us well adapted to be helpful to the working pastor. Its manner is unconventional, its method unhackneyed, and the note of reality sounds all through it. Its author has come to a college presidency through years of aggressively evangelistic pastoral life, and writes out of knowledge gathered in actual experience and successful evangelism. All its wisdom is practical. These twelve letters are written to a young Christian who longs to be a true teller of the good news, but does not know exactly how to fit the gospel trumpet to his lips, or how to decide when other souls will probably give heed to his notes, to one of thousands of ministers who have the evangelistic spirit but who lack knowledge and confidence for its efficient expression and use. The general secretary of the Epworth League and his coworkers told President Hughes it was his duty to help his younger brethren by writing these messages. "Evangelism," he says, "is the finest art on earth." The church has special reason for thanksgiving when a college presidency is held by a man full of the evangelistic spirit and passion; and the possibility of potent and perpetual usefulness is vast and glorious for such a man in such a place. Indubitable and sturdy manliness, ringing clear and fervent, real religiousness, appealing by character and call to his students, will bring nearly all of them to follow Jesus Christ. To such appeal, youth makes a generous and loyal response. And this little book makes us think how good an omen it is when our culture is becoming more passionately and resolutely evangelistic; as also when all evangelism is becoming less crude and ignorantmore intelligent, rational and convincing. One of President Hughes's letters gives counsel about approaching individuals on behalf of Christ. One admonition is: "Allow me to warn you, my young friend, that this individualism is not easy work. I have worked publicly and privately in evangelistic effort. The private way calls for the more grace and consecration, and it requires more boldness. Be quite sure that your life is measurably consistent ere you undertake the sacred task. Do you know that if every Methodist Episcopal pastor brought one person each month to Christ and his church by this method of individualism, it would mean an annual increase of 160,000? And that, if each evangelical pastor in the republic did the same, it would mean fully 1,500,000 souls each year? And what would be the effect if one in ten of our young lay members should claim for the Lord in this way one person every twelve months? That these suggestions point the way to the Church's power and hope is my earnest opinion; that the call to such work may now come to you is my equally earnest prayer." Another wise suggestion is: "I would advise that letter writing should have a place in your individual work. There are several differences between spoken and written address. A conversation often seems passing-very much as if our words went out into the air and never found a stopping-place; but a letter has a kind of permanent quality. It is easier to file than is a conversation. Spoken address may be laughed away; but it is hard to joke about an evangelistic letter. Men's lips sometimes say what their pens would refuse to write. Besides, a brief note is often an excellent test and forerunner. The recipient feels that he must take some notice of it, and in meeting the law of courtesy he is almost bound to reveal himself somewhat. I am not writing to you a mere theory; I have written scores of evangelistic letters-and with marked results. The post office is used for business correspondence, and for social correspondence. Why should it not be used to carry our personal gospel? But, my friend, in heaven's name be natural and unstilted in what you write; and in all ordinary cases be brief." At one point Dr. Hughes makes unexpected but effective use of Kipling: "We need a promotion of lay preaching not of that type which shows a pride of public speech and which leads its victim to take time in a prayer meeting which belongs to better and more modest folk, but rather of that type which counts it both joy and duty to tell the good news where the telling does not spread abroad the teller's name. Kipling has a poem with an evangelistic lesson for our day. It is called 'Mulholland's Contract.' Mulholland was a worker on the cattle boats-a gambling, cursing, drinking fellow. One day the gale was on the sea and fear came on the cattle. They broke loose on the lower deek and became wild. Mulholland looked into the face of death. In his wild eagerness for life he made 'a Contract with God': "An' by the terms of the Contract, as I have read the same, If He got me to port alive, I would exalt His name, An' praise His Holy Majesty till further orders came." They picked Mulholland up senseless with a vast gash in his head. When he came to consciousness he saw 'the shiny Scripture texts' on the walls of a Seamen's Hospital. These reminded him of his solemn promise: "'An' I spoke to God of our Contract, an' He says to my prayer: "For human life is chancy at any kind of trade, But most of all, as well as you know, when the steers are mad afraid, "They must quit drinkin' an' swearin', they mustn't knife on a blow, "I didn't want to do it, for I knew what I should get, An' I wanted to preach Religion, handsome an' out of the wet, This is the voice of the everyday worker, crude and rasping, if you please, but sincere and penetrating. God grant that this voice may begin to sound in genuineness until factories and stores and fields and roadsides may become the places of the blessed Evangel!" Very judicious is the letter on "Evangelism and Children." On exacting too much of the child this is said: "The question is, Whose child is he? What if he does show inconsistency and weakness? Are we older people perfect? Are we free from inbred taints? And how does this affect our relation to the kingdom? As for the child's questionable conduct, we can match it by the conduct of older people who profess the Lord's grace. The child gets angry! So does the church trustee. The child is forgetful! So is our older listener. The child wants his way! So does that mature steward. The child is selfish! Well, that adult member grasps what he can get and keeps it quite successfully. Of course it is unwise and untrue to idealize childhood too gloriously. Wordsworth says: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. Still, I am inclined to believe that the normal child is as true to his conception of duty as is the average adult to his. It is not fair that we should try the child by a stricter standard than we apply to the older folks. Childhood has its essential immaturities. Let us allow for them. You, my friend, must often be glad to believe that God has yet several million years in which to work on you for your improvement. What does your own childhood experience say about this? Do you recall how fully you believed in God? Do you remember how surprised you were when you discovered that certain people did not consent or profess to belong to Christ? Were not your prayers in the idiom of full trust? Did not the sympathy of your young heart turn toward God? My own experience in childhood confirms fully the Saviour's words. If I have ever belonged to God, I belonged to him then. For thousands of people with whom you work, nothing better could be done than to bring them back to the love and faith of their childhood. Tom Hood writes: "I remember, I remember The fir trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky. "It was a childish ignorance, But now 'tis little joy To know I'm farther off from heaven This speaks of the tragedy of too many lives. If your evangelism can save children from this pathetic experience, you may well count yourself both happy and successful. Let me commend to you, my young friend, Dr. John T. McFarland's pamphlet on Preservation versus the Rescue of the Child. That will make clear your evangelistic duty with reference to children much more forcefully than I have here presented the matter." In the letter on "Evangelism and Men" is this piece of good sense: "A religion that merely empties and restrains will not conquer the young |