care no more for his opinion in regard to the tariff, than for his position in respect to the Westminster Confession of Faith.

We want a man who will fulfil his duties. For, after all, the city is only a larger officebuilding, in which the houses take the place of the rooms, and the streets take the place of the halls. There is no reason why a city should not be managed as well as an office-building. And the city is only another kind of club, to which we all belong, and in which we ought to be served with the common conveniences, regardless of our income, as men are served in their clubs. The city ought to be conducted on Christian principles. There is no distinction between good business and good religion. That does not mean that there ought to be a prayermeeting in the council-chamber before every session; but it does mean that those who have the rule in the city, and those who set them in authority, ought to desire simple efficiency in all municipal administration, and to apply no other test to candidates in city elections.

One great difficulty with municipal government, in the opinion of some wise people, is that there is not enough to do which is worth doing. It is the people who live in the little country

towns, where all the interests are petty, who fall into miserable gossip and live narrow lives. It is the little narrow country parish in which there are all sorts of parochial fights going on from one end of the year to the other. And it is among those who have obscure and insignificant duties that one finds obscure and insignificant people.

Accordingly, on the continent of Europe and in Great Britain, where the best-governed cities upon this planet are to be found, they are proceeding upon the principle of giving a great deal of responsibility into the hands of the councilmen. The more they have to do with the great public parks, with the management of libraries, with the water and the gas and the means of transportation, and the natural monopolies of the municipality, to be conducted in the interests of all the citizens, the more the great burdens of the town are laid upon them, so much more will they come to feel themselves the servants of the city. And the small men will recognize their inadequate smallness. It will probably be some time before we have another such company of representatives as we have at present, to our serious cost, in Congress; for great questions have confronted

them, and they have shown themselves unable to give answers. We must have men wise enough to solve our problems. The greater the problems, the plainer the need of the best men we have.

The whole desire of the man in the office should be to serve the people to the utmost; and the purpose of the people should be to get a steady and efficient servant. It would be absurd to put a man in charge of a Bessemer mill who did not know the difference between iron ore and ferro-manganese; but no more absurd than to put a man into a seat in a city council who has no real knowledge of the questions which he is to pass upon, who is not only ignorant, but contentedly and conceitedly ignorant, of the history of his city, of the principles of municipal government, of the conditions of civic prosperity, of the new teachings of sociology and political economy.

The Christian citizen goes into politics for the good of the city. When there are enough Christians of the right aggressive kind in politics the city will begin to be God's city.

That was a significant dialogue which took place between Abraham and God concerning the destruction of Sodom. Abraham said,

Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city, would you not spare the town for the sake of fifty men. And God said, Yes. But suppose there should lack five of the fifty, would you destroy the city for lack of five? And God said, No. But should there be but forty, or thirty, or twenty, or only ten? And God said, If there be but ten righteous men in Sodom I will spare the city. It was a fair agreement. For God knew that even ten good, zealous, earnest, righteous citizens, examples of good manners, and missionaries of true religion, could save the wickedest of cities.

NEW QUESTS FOR NEW KNIGHTS.

"And the Philistines were gathered together into a troop, where was a plot of ground full of lentils; and the people fled from the Philistines. But he stood in the midst of the plot, and defended it, and slew the Philistines; and the Lord wrought a great victory."-2 SAM. xxiii. 11, 12.

It is evident that chivalry did not begin with the Crusades. There were brave knights even in the days of David.

Some think that the name "knight" first meant "a youth," in which case it stands synonymous with the strength of youth, with the enthusiasm, the zeal, the fire, the hope, and the high purposes of young manhood. Others say that it means 66 a servant; in which case the fittest motto of ideal knighthood is that princeliest of all heraldic inscriptions, " Ich dien" (“I serve"). And our minds go back to the supreme and consummate flower and pattern of chivalry, the ideal of all knighthood, as of all worthiest manhood, who said, "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."