ment by invoking the agency of art; it will be remembered that in the essays on the moral influence of the stage Schiller placed art, religion, and law side by side, and found in art, even then, an instrument superior to the other two in accomplishing the work of regenerating man. But it may be doubted, if we emphasize too much the passages in which Schiller dwells upon the merely negative character of the aesthetic condition, whether he could claim for art a place equal or even superior to religion as an instrument of moral education. The claims of religion and the claims Schiller makes for art are indeed very similar. Religion, too, claims to reduce the merely "natural" inclinations of man to a minimum, so that his spiritual nature may have an opportunity, as it were, to assert itself; but it claims more than this merely negative merit. Whatever may be thought of the religious sanctions as permanent and indispensable adjuncts to the machinery of moral education, there is no question that they have furnished important positive motives for morality in the past, and will doubtless continue to do so among certain large classes of religious persons for some time to come. At any rate, whether the dynamic is to come from religion or what not, it is certain that man's morality will not be secured by reducing his desiderative activity to a minimum so that the moral law may have an opportunity to exert its power. That is, to say the least, an unfortunate way of putting the matter. Schiller is never at his best in the more theoretical formulation of his principles, and we may feel free, we take it, since Schiller has himself put the matter in different ways, not to insist unduly upon the passages in the Esthetic Letters just adverted to. It is not the intention of the poet, we must say in the light of all his previous philosophical endeavors, to subtract from human nature, but rather to transform and utilize what is furnished and at hand. And this is what æsthetic education, according to the whole tenor of Schiller's philosophy, tends to do. The function of art as an instrument of education at first appears as in no wise different from that of religion: its appeal, as Schiller put the matter in the essays on the moral influence of the stage, is largely to man's hopes and fears; and it accomplishes its purpose the more perfectly because it employs not dogmas whose

truth is questionable, or sanctions which are too far removed in the future to have any large degree of moral influence, but because it brings before man's very eyes, in the living images of sense, the beauty of virtue and the hideousness of vice, and presents in concrete form the rewards and punishments which these entail. This crass and rather uncharacteristic way of stating the case is nowhere found, so far as I have seen, in Schiller's later writings, where he tends rather to speak of the refining influence of æsthetic objects upon man's nature, so that the unbeautiful, or, what always means the same thing for Schiller, the immoral, will lose its attraction for him, and the beautiful or moral will have more powerful sway. Bildung, that is, is simply Umbildung; education is transformation, or a reorganization, we might say, of man's motives. This is certainly the least that Schiller would say. So far from limiting man's desiderative and rational life and reducing him to a condition of pure passivity, it is rather the function of art to develop every part of man's nature to its utmost extent, so that he may live not less but more: his sensuous nature, as the poet rather strikingly puts it in one place, that he may apprehend (ergreifen) more, and his rational that he may comprehend (begreifen) more.

Precisely how this refinement and development of man's nature is accomplished by art Schiller thought it unnecessary, or, what seems more likely from his own confession about the difficulty of writing those portions of the Letters in which he approaches the problem, found it difficult to state. He has thrown out suggestions in other parts of his writings which may aid us in forming some sort of idea how the matter presented itself to his mind, and which may accordingly be brought together in this place. We find him emphasizing (1) the importance of the relaxation of man's powers, especially after having been one-sidedly employed; and this relaxation, he conceived, was afforded in its purest form in æsthetic contemplation, where all the parts of man's nature receive their due, as in play. (2) Art, especially in tragic situations, affords an opportunity for the exercise of man's moral powers particularly, which may thus be trained and strengthened. (3) It was Schiller's view that a condition of happiness or contentment is in general conducive to that physical and spiritual well

being which is an indispensable requisite for the fullest moral life, and this condition, we may imagine him to say, it is at least one of the functions of art to induce. To these general propositions, I suppose, no serious objection will be made, if only their importance is not exaggerated. The influence upon conduct of æsthetic habituation, as we may call it, or the development of taste through the contemplation of objects of æsthetic value, will also, perhaps, not be questioned. It is no doubt due to the more refined æsthetic sensibilities of the Greeks that they never descended to those depths of moral degradation into which the coarser nature of the Romans permitted the latter to fall. Nor is it necessary that the moral influence of taste be a merely negative or restraining one: it is possible to conceive that the æsthetic nature may be so thoroughly developed and completely refined that "beautiful action," in the sense of Schiller, those more or less typical moral situations which satisfy the moral demand, may exercise a strong and positive influence over the agent. Just as the moral imperative comes to exercise greater and greater influence over us as moral education proceeds, impelling us not merely to recognize an act as moral but also to do it, so the æsthetic imperative, as we may call it, may develop sufficient dynamic, as æsthetic education proceeds, to impel us not only to acknowledge conduct as beautiful, but also to realize it, in some degree, by our own efforts. The two imperatives doubtless combine in determining the actual conduct of the average moral person at any stage of his cultural development. The moral influence of the products of the religious imagination, we may say, in so far as they do not appeal merely to the instinct of fear, is due almost entirely to the æsthetic elements they contain. Indeed, it is hard for one to see how it could be otherwise, if one accepts the view that a large part of the images and ideals of the religious imagination are but the crystallization and ideal construction of those portions of human experience which have stirred most profoundly the emotional nature.

ART. VII.-RECRUITING FOR THE MINISTRY

"WANTED for the United States Army, Able-bodied Men of Good Character." So reads a conspicuous legend in the various post offices of the country. The poster is done in vivid colors. Soldiers in full array, on horse and afoot, arrest the bystander's eye-have often claimed mine for a passing half-mechanical glance. But one day recently I found myself looking with new attention at the familiar print. So, my thought ran, so Columbia must nowadays advertise for men! I wondered if it harbingered the final end of war that soldiers must be solicited on billboards, like customers for some new cereal or washing powder. Times were-heart-kindling times-when the republic had no need to advertise. Men hurried to offer themselves. The cause was obvious and urgent. As was said of Napoleon's route from Elba to Paris, soldiers seemed to rise from the ground, eager for the glory of marching beneath the eagles. But in these latter days, these days of dollar-madness and lust of ease, the government must needs advertise for men to wear its uniform. Surely the times have changed! With somewhat similar emotions I read the editorial in the March-April, 1906, METHODIST REVIEW, entitled "Some Rewards of Life in the Ministry." Its very eloquence and cogency were a sort of pathetic confession. Were the rewards sufficiently obvious, they would need no special tally or emphasis. If people generally believed the Christian ministry to offer half the advantages so finely catalogued by that editorial, or, to speak more exactly, if men counted such rewards to be the most desirable prizes of life, our ministerial recruiting stations would be thronged. What bar association finds it necessary to solicit youths to its ranks? What medical society of good standing puts a sign in the window for embryo doctors? What mercantile union needs to go out into the highways and compel our youths to come in? For some reason, however, the Christian pulpit must cry aloud for recruits. Only a theological seminary, I take it, would ever need to include in its advertisement, "Room and Tuition Free." One can scarcely imagine the same thing from a great law or scientific

school. Yet, notwithstanding such special and extraordinary inducements, the seminaries are still, most of them, unthronged. Just at my hand lie some fresh figures from Germany declaring a startling decline in the number of ministerial novitiates. While seekers of secular reward have increased some seventy per cent in ten years, claimants for the honors of the pulpit have shrunk in nearly the same proportion. Not much more encouraging are the facts at home. A senior, prominent in one of our great American universities, told me that, so far as he knew, not a member of his class was preparing for the ministry. And here is historic Andover appealing, not for money, but for men upon whom to spend its money. What has happened to our age that its highest and holiest vocation should be overlooked in the eager quest of life's rewards? -that the Christian pulpit must needs virtually advertise for men? It may be claimed-indeed, it has already been claimed by certain of the denominations-that the supply of ministers exceeds the demand for them. Heartening reports issue from Boston and Princeton, from Hartford and Madison. Indeed, the same German paper from which I have already quoted tells a very different story with respect to the dissenting bodies of Germany. But the real question is not numerical. That a dozen men step forward for every preacher who falls in the ranks, that there are still plenty of aspirants for the pulpit thrones of Brooks and Storrs proves little to the point. For the real question is not quantitative but qualitative; not crowd but caliber; not how many, but what sort. "Give me a hundred men," said Wesley-but that was not all he said, else would this Homer have nodded conspicuously. His quest was not primarily of numbers. None ever laid more stress than he on quality. He accepted diamonds in the rough, but they must be real diamonds. "Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God." The victories of Cortez in Mexico read like fairy tales. They were not won by numbers; they were won by quality of manhood. Those Spanish cavaliers, whether panoplied in steel or corseted with Mexican cotton, were each worth a score of ordinary soldiers. Had numbers counted the Japanese were beaten before a gun was fired. Whether "one shall chase a thousand" or it shall require a