of their existence. Moreover, the highest aim of the "Theology" of the future will surely be to translate the historic creeds and systems, still represented by various sects and religions, into the simplest terms of modern thought, to show what realities in human experience the authors of the old formulas struggled to express, to discover what common ground of faith may have existed under diverse forms, and so to enable men henceforth to understand one another's religious language. This service will be useful for all. There is already great need of it. For the educated minister it is coming to be essential. It may be asked whether there ought not to be special training for the ministry. To this question I am inclined to answer a qualified No. The minister's work differs from other professions, in that it is not special. It deals with human life. It rests upon universal needs and experience. Its purpose is to bring men's lives into accord with the characteristic idea of the university, namely, the conception of a divine universe. What other welleducated men ought to know, the minister ought to know with a larger thoroughness of conviction. The educated man ought always to be able to view life from the religious point of view. It ought really to be his own point of view, being the point where all things are seen to work in harmony. But it is essential that the minister should live and work and speak from this point. To him the science of the outward world, literature, art, music, history, political economy, are all so many manifestations of the life of God working through nature and humanity alike. His work is to interpret the divine thought into divine and noble action. There is nothing special about this large and lofty ideal. The professor of botany, chemistry, or astronomy ought to be as truly the helper and inspirer to this result as the Professor of the Semitic Languages. The study of psychology is quite as near to the minister's office as the study of New Testament Greek. The history of the United States, as well as the history of the Jews, surely illustrates the working of "the Power that makes for righteousness." I am aware of the strong feeling that still exists, even at Harvard University, that a minister should at least be a Hebrew scholar, and know all about the Gnostic heresies. The truth is that the knowledge of Hebrew to-day, except for philological experts, is merely a scholarly accomplishment. The average minister, both for training his mind and for practical benefit and helpfulness, had far better make a study of music. The minister had far better know what the best representatives of the religious denominations of the present are thinking about, so as to be able to interpret their utterances and to be in sympathy with genuine men among them, than to be versed in the wearisome discussions of the early centuries. In other words, the minister wants to know whatever the best educated man should know. It is true, however, that the minister has a specialty of purpose. He must interpret life from the religious point of view to other men. He must bring his faith and hope to meet their needs. He must set forth his beautiful ideals by parable and illustration, and especially by notable examples. He must persuade men to trust and actually to follow the Christlike life. But I cannot think that he needs for this purpose to treat the writing and preaching of sermons, or even the conduct of worship, as a separate department. He merely needs to know" the art of putting things" forcibly, persuasively, sincerely; he must write, read, and speak as any man must who would accomplish results. Let him do this as a genuine religious man, and the rest will take care of itself. There is probably one advantage to be gained when students for the ministry are grouped together by themselves. There is a proper esprit de corps that belongs to men of common pursuits. I believe, however, that the breaking down the barrier that distinguishes divinity students from others would not forbid the quite natural grouping that comes from sympathy and common ends. Indeed, the frank recognition of the study of religion as the highest and most central point of university training would tend to bring larger numbers of students into the bonds of religious sympathy. If it is true that the men who go into the ministry are students of uncommon earnestness, then the University needs the presence of these men. It cannot afford that they should be grouped together in a separate inclosure. But many of the most thoughtful students are not going to be ministers. It will be good for them, and it will be even better for the men who are to be ministers, to meet each other in the close terms of the most interesting and noble of all studies. The "professional” spirit does not need to be fostered among ministers. It is the humane spirit that should characterize them. Of all men they need most to know intimately what their peers and comrades in other departments of life are thinking about. To sum up my plea, it is briefly as follows: I believe that the University, in its broadest sense, ought to be what our forefathers intended Harvard College to be, a divinity school. It should train all students to the conception of a divine universe. It should result, in the larger meaning of the word, in making its graduates ministers, that is, helpers, teachers, and leaders of men. I therefore believe that the tendency is a wholesome one that is already wearing down the old-time artificial distinctions that separated the students for the ministry from the rest of the University. I would remove these distinctions altogether. I would have students for the ministry free to choose whatever course of study they may find most profitable. I would treat them as men, and not as children, and leave them to take the consequences of their occasional mistakes. I would trust that such courses as have heretofore been specialized for their benefit would stand or fall on their own merits, as students come to recognize their relative importance. I would permit no course of study to be considered as for "ministers" only. I would encourage students for the ministry to room in the buildings where other students are. I would require the same price of tuition which others pay. I would make all courses of instruction, now practically confined to the Divinity School, University courses, open to any who may be fitted pursue them. I would surely take such courses as may attract the general interest of students from the lecture rooms in Divinity Avenue into the more central buildings. I would make a special point of attraction of the courses of study presented by the professors of theology. There should be University lectures under their charge in the most spacious rooms. I believe that the natural and wholesome development of the University proceeds in this way. I look thus for a truer and more rational training for the work of the minister. There is reality in the ancient motto, Christo et ecclesiæ. No graduate of the University should fail to find what this reality is. to JAMAICA PLAIN. Charles F. Dole, '68. RECENT VERSE.1 To read Finis at the end of James Russell Lowell's latest volume, and to know that it is the last, would cause even a hostile critic to be reticent; the present writer, who has accepted the pleasant task of looking through a batch of books of verse by Harvard men, needs no such warning, for to him Lowell has long seemed one of the three foremost American poets. Moreover, Lowell's work is literature; and at this time, when most of the most popular books have not the least fragrance of literature about them, it is well to reverence the writer who from first to last was above all literary. Less In this little volume, which Professor Norton edits, the lines "On a Bust of General Grant" are the most memorable. sonorous and fluent than the strophes in the "Commemoration Ode," describing Lincoln, they are, as criticisms of a great historical personage, equally acute. The poem on "Turner's Old Téméraire" is in the vein which Lowell long ago worked with great success. He draws an obvious moral from a dignified simile, yet without sinking into the ethical or pious platitudes of most persons who moralize in verse. "The Nobler Lover" throbs with passion almost Browningesque in its intensity. This poem, and the still unappreciated "Endymion," mark a new lode which Lowell discovered late in life, and worked with surprising success. The portrait prefixed to this volume is rather too dreamy; it would not convey to a stranger Lowell's alert personality. 1 Last Poems. By James Russell Lowell, '38. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. : Boston.) 2. Chocorua's Tenants. By Frank Bolles, '82. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Boston.) 3. Poems of Home and Country: also, Sacred and Miscellaneous Verse. By Samuel Francis Smith, '29. (Silver, Burdett & Co.: Boston.) 4. The Old-Fashioned Garden and Other Verses. By John Russell Hayes, '89. (J. C. Winston & Co.: Philadelphia.) 5. The Wind in the Clearing, and Other Poems. By Robert Cameron Rogers, L. S., '85. (Putnam: New York.) 6. The Hawthorn Tree, and Other Poems. By Nathan Haskell Dole, '74. (Crowell: Boston.) 7. First Poems and Fragments. By Philip Henry Savage, '91. (Copeland & Day: Boston.) 8. Words for Music. By William Wells Newell, '59. (C. W. Sever: Cambridge.) 9. Behind the Arras : A Book of the Unseen. By Bliss Carman, Sp., '86. (Lamson, Wolffe & Co.: Boston.) 10. Stops of Various Quills. By W. D. Howells, h '67. (Harper: New York.) 11. Folia Dispersa. By Wm. C. Lawton, '73. (Corell Press : New York.) The poems by Frank Bolles have this twofold merit: they give a very dramatic description of life as it appears to birds, and they are free from fin de siècle affectations. The trochaic metre in which they are written, although its unfitness for varied or lofty poetry was proved in Hiawatha, serves Mr. Bolles's purpose. The simplicity of his pictures is likely to be undervalued by those who look for bizarre epithets and vagueness common to much of the verse now in fashion; but other readers will find in "Chocorua's Tenants" a charm similar to that by which Mr. Bolles drew the public to his prose sketches of Nature. He does not so much seem to create the atmosphere of lake or brook or mountain, as to bring Nature herself into his book. Quite different is the quality of Mr. John R. Hayes's "OldFashioned Garden." Here also speaks a lover of Nature, and one who observes her closely, but he speaks preferably in academic tones. He has the poetic vocabulary, the literary man's refinements. He has fancy, too, which discovers for him many similes and images, as this of mullein : — "He dares to flaunt his vulgar woolen face Among the garden's aristocracy." The objection to the poem is that after you have given epithets to fifty or sixty flowers, there seems to be no reason why you should not go on forever. Half a dozen of the best stanzas would, therefore, be more effective than the forty-four which Mr. Hayes has printed. A word of commendation should be given to his cluster of poems for children, "Flowers and Fairies," - in which the gracefulness which pervades the little volume is particularly noteworthy. When we say that Spenser, Drayton, and Herrick are Mr. Hayes's forerunners, we give the key to his verse. Here are three pretty specimens of his sprightly fancy: THE SNOW-DROP. The snow-drop, pearly white of hue, THE ROSE'S REPLY. I said unto a lovely rose, |