subjects are not good to look upon just before bedtime, though that would probably make little difference to a nerveless monk with his two hundred and forty pounds of avoirdupois. Before these halls are turned into rest-cures some of these paintings will have to be turned to the wall. The sight of twenty martyrs crucified in a row is not soothing; the spectacle of a man impaled upon a stake, or of a bishop with his head half cut off smiling down upon the streaming blood, is bad for the nerves.

The Augustinian convent is the most extensive and complete of any in the Philippines. Behind a bare exterior stands a group of magnificent buildings containing quarters for hundreds of monks. The inner courts are beautiful with verdure, and so far from the street that the perfect quiet is unbroken by any hint of strife from the world without. The cloisters are broad and roomy and a sense of great comfort pervades the buildings. The refectory is a splendid old hall, with seats for a hundred and fifty at the tables, and with its raised dais and lifesize crucifix takes the visitor back to the days of yore with the sudden completeness that makes such an experience so refreshing. The architecture of the pile is in striking resemblance to the Spanish Escurial, and the careless visitor may become lost in the maze of courts and cloisters. The old building is connected with the fine new structure across the street by a covered passageway over the thoroughfare, and one may wander all over two city blocks without leaving the building. The library is the finest in the islands and contains a range of five centuries and twenty languages. It is open to visitors on special occasions only, and there is little evidence that any practical use is made of its treasures by the inhabitants of the convent. The recreation hall in the third story, overlooking the bay, is two hundred and twenty feet long and is a treasure for the relic hunter. The old padres were no believers in "all work and no play" for Jack or his father confessor, and every convent contains its rest hall. The scene in one of these halls with its massive beams, and its aged inmates puzzling their shaggy brows over a game of chess, would furnish a subject for a Rubens, or a Titian.

To the booklover the libraries are veritable treasure houses that put a severe strain on the tenth commandment, if not on the

sixth. Musty volumes that left the press three hundred and fifty years ago stand beside modern books that are worthless. Paper so fine and strong that it may last for a thousand years, and press work old and beautiful after its kind, are bound in the indestructible pergamino (rawhide) that neither moth nor rust has been able yet to destroy. The materials and workmanship of these old books quite put to shame the modern cheap productions. Some of the work is done in two colors, and shows a painstaking care that has been rewarded by results that have stood for three and a half centuries. What would a bibliomanic do in these libraries if for an hour there were no guardian? What would we not pay for one of these priceless volumes? If only-but what's the use? If they were for sale, they would not be here; and if they were not here, they would be very high priced; and if they were high priced, they would be made to order at whatever the traffic would bear. If we are to have the genuine thing, we will have to pay the price of finding it at original sources, and look with guarded eyes upon relics, any one of which would be the prized treasure of an American library. The range of languages is not wide. The Augustinian collection includes Hebrew, Latin, Greek, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, English, Chinese, Japanese, and all of the leading Malay and Philippine dialects. The subjects are much the same in all the libraries. The works of the fathers are well represented, the bulls of the Popes are kept, with a general list that runs through the history and theology of the church as well as the sciences of the old age. It is a little surprising that there are not more works purely Philippine; but the friars were no exception to the rule that no time seems great while passing, and there is plenty of data for research if sufficient time is spent in the finding it. It is evident that the collections are kept exclusively for the use of the priests and that they are but little used at any time. It is not strange that the monks have no idea of the antiquarian values of their treasure. Their education has not fitted them to appreciate other than ecclesiastical values, and the whole atmosphere of the place is that of a museum rather than a workshop. Most of the libraries are closed except at certain rare intervals, and the guardian of one of the doorways informed the

visitors that it was impossible for any but the priests to see the books, and that even then they were to be read only under closelyguarded conditions.

The individual quarters of the priests are nearly all single rooms, built in long rows, with all the doors opening into the cloister of the inner court. They are bare of decoration but comfortably furnished, with easy chairs and good beds. There are servants in profusion everywhere, for the priest is not in the habit of doing anything for himself that he can get anyone else to do for him. Every convent has on the second floor a large room with a doorway to the choir of the church. Here in the afternoon the padres congregate to pray, and they pray so audibly that the big sanctuaries echo with the resounding roll of their chanting. The furniture of most of the convents is very plain, and was built rather for strength than for ornament. The libraries are walled with rough shelving, and the tables are usually covered with a dust that shows no signs of recent disturbance. The empty shelves of the Recoletos bear witness to the fact that many books were sent for safe keeping to Spain in the troublous times of the insurrection. Now comes a disappointment to some fair reader, but the truth must be told: all of these interesting things are inaccessible to half of the visitors, for no woman is ever allowed beyond the doorway of any convent. She may enter the church-with covered head-but thus far and no further. She will have to be content with hearing the men describe what they have seen and heard. It is a pity that it is so, but so it is.

The convents and their contents are fascinating, and the padres are both interesting and picturesque, but after much time spent in seeing things the visitor at last leaves with a feeling that he has seen only the outer shell of something that he can never fathom from without nor understand by sightseeing methods. The mills of the great church grind slowly, but they grind some strange grists—which is no concern of this paper.

George G. Miller

ART. VIII.-CHURCH UNITY

EVERY year the religious statistics are forthcoming. Then we are duly admonished that there are one hundred and fifty and more religious sects and denominations in our country. Many excellent persons believe this to be a deplorable fact, an evidence of the great weakness of Christianity, and they make it the theme for a frequent lament. "Surely this was not the purpose of the divine Founder," they say. "When Saint Paul called the church the bride of Christ it was not a harem he had in mind." Deplorable or not, we know that this fact of the apparently divided condition of Christ's cause in the world is made the occasion of much criticism from those who stand outside the churches. With many church unity is a favorite subject of discussion. New interest in it has been awakened of late by the broad fraternal spirit recently manifested in the governing bodies of Wesleyan and Canadian Methodism and by the Disciples of Christ. And perhaps the most noteworthy event of recent years bearing on church unity was the great Church Federation Conference of a year ago in New York city, where thirty of the largest Christian bodies got together by delegations and discussed, not how they could fuse their separate organizations into one body, but how they could better cultivate a unity in sympathy and in Christian service; a unity in effort for realizing more perfectly the great purposes of Christ's kingdom here and now. Now, in discussing the apparently divided condition of Christianity and the prospects for church unity we shall find much aid and comfort in clear and worthy conceptions of "church" and "unity." These words by any means have not one fixed and constant meaning. The word "church" has two meanings in the New Testament, the latter implying far more of ecclesiastical organization and polity than the earlier, and in modern speech at least three or four meanings are distinguished. Church unity discussion in which the use of the word "church" is shifted from one meaning to another is a great source of confusion, and is one of the unfruitful works of darkness with which much newspaper and magazine discussion of religious subjects abounds.

The truth is that the best of us are often victimized by the terms we employ. We fall a prey to what an old writer has called "the exceeding imposture and deceit of words." Language is relative, and we need constantly to beware of the confusion in which its imperfect nature is apt to involve us. The value of words is not like the value of coins, fixed by law and always the same. We often need to "focus" the terms of a discussion, especially in the realm of morals and religion, and appeals to the dictionary do not suffice. Etymologies are not always the pathway to truth. Theology, for instance, has suffered grievous things at the hands of the wooden literalists and the orthodox sticklers for the ipsissima verba. These people think in perpetual bondage to mere words and figures of speech, and usually miss the truth of which the human word and rhetorical figure are the imperfect vehicle. Their method has a marvelous show of rigor but has produced no end of confusion, dogmatism, and pugnacity. No; etymology settles few things, and fruitful exegesis needs more of an equipment than a grammar and a dictionary. Some words are altogether too great for the dictionary; if we would find an adequate definition, we must turn to the book of human life. If, then, we attempt to discuss church unity it will be quite in order to ask just what we mean by the church and in what the unity is to consist.

A recent writer in a church paper spoke of "the church founded by our blessed Lord and existing, an unbroken organism, from the days of the holy apostles until now." A moment's reflection convinces us that this is not full of meaning. We recall the long list of Christian communions each claiming to be just as truly the church as the others. We can find no valid cause, from reason or history, why we should acknowledge the claims of only one (or two) of these to be the "unbroken organism." Conscious of imperfection in these variously named churches, and having heard perhaps the ecclesiastical machinery creak with friction, we crave a higher ideal and possibly take refuge in the notion of the true and perfected Church of Christ on earth, an unblemished organism existing back of the visible organizations. But alas for this notion, so fondly cherished by many Protestant churchmen of all denominations, that there is really nothing on earth to correspond to it.