distribution of that wealth, which is the joint. product of capital and labor, than we have yet attained unto. I am by no means sure that the exact relative value of the brains and hands concerned in all manufacturing is fairly expressed by the relative profits of the employer and employed. The world is still young, and it would be very strange if we had got already to the highest point attainable in these concerns and need not keep our minds open and receptive to some further revelation.

Moreover, in these discontents and aspirations may there not be a hint that our political economy, though excellent in its own sphere, does not exhaust the social problem in its entirety? Within the sphere of political economy it is a lawful saying, "He that will not work shall not eat.” But there are those who cannot work, and, even of those who will not, the unwilling will is sometimes a disease as positive as cholera or typhus. These are phenomena of which our political economy takes no account. So then our social science, inspired by our Christianity or such other religion. as we have, must take account of them. Here is the sphere for our paternal government. It is not for men and women " full-summed in all their powers," but for the weaklings and the drones; those to be cared for with a divine compassion, these to be dealt with firmly and compelled to earn their right to live.

It is not, then, to be denied that in the state of the nation, considered not merely as a working government but also as a society of upwards of

forty millions of men, women, and children, there is much that is not as those who love America would have it, much that is ill and portentous of yet greater ill to come. And in all the horoscope the most baleful star is that which ought to shine with the most cheerful light, the pole-star of religion. And yet I cannot doubt that out of all these sorrows and distresses the Spirit will yet

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lead us up and on. He will bring upon us fear

and dread and trial. He will torture us with the tribulation of his discipline, till he try us by his laws and test our soul. Then he will strengthen us and make our way straight for us and give us joy."

But one word more and I will end your weariness. It may be that you are asking, If these things are so, what ought a man to do who would acquit himself right manfully? Some hints I trust I have given on the way, but the one thing that he should do, and can, is to see to it that one single individual, namely himself, in the midst of whatever falsehood is true, in the midst of whatever dishonesty is honest, in the midst of whatever insincerity is sincere, and that, in the midst of whatever religion of glorified irresponsibleness, his religion is to him first and foremost a principle and law of righteousness. So doing, haply it shall be made plain to him how he can help in other ways to make America a righteous nation whose God is the Eternal,

COMFORT IN RELIGION.

A COMPARISON is frequently made between supernatural and rational religion, in respect to the amount of comfort which is derivable from them respectively. And this comparison is very unfavorable to the latter. Its views of God and Immortality, of Providence and Prayer, are charged with being cold and comfortless, and the assumption is that the views of the prevailing supernaturalism in regard to all these things are warm and comforting. Its related doctrines of sin and forgiveness are also contrasted with those of rational religion, with apparently the same result. Its God expands the human tenderness of Jesus to an infinite degree. Its immortality is truly blessed. Its ideal of this, whatever it was once, is no longer exhausted by psalm-singing, or the contemplation from the height of heaven of the sufferings of the damned who welter in the deep below. Liberalism helps its own case but little, and does not help the struggling world at all, by still continuing to represent these odious and ridiculous features of a dying creed as still thoroughly characteristic. The immortality of the best mod

ern orthodoxy is an immortality of glad reunions with the lost of other years, of growth in goodness and in love, of beatific vision of the transcendent wisdom, power, and holiness of God. Granted that not infrequently the picture that would fain allure is coarse and mean. Granted that absolute annihilation would be infinitely preferable to a heaven so idle and inane as that of many a showman in the churches. The fact remains that many orthodox believers cherish a dream of heaven that is pure and sweet and noble and exalting. And if as much cannot be said for their belief in Providential interference, it will not be denied that there do inhere in this elements of comfort which do not inhere in the beliefs of rational religion. This may have others, but it has not the same. It cannot assure the heart, bereft of its most precious objects of affection, that God has taken these away, either for their advantage or for the discipline of its own warring passions or imperfect faith. This the popular theology can always do. It can represent death as the result of a deliberate and isolated fiat of the omnipotent will, and such comfort as inheres in such a representation it can always give to those for whom this representation has as yet lost nothing of its validity. And that there may be comfort inhering in such a representation that there is for tens of thousands of bereaved and aching hearts, is not to be denied. And as with the popular doctrine of Providence, so with the popular doctrine of prayer, with which it is so closely kin. Certainly it is very

comforting to believe, as George Müller honestly does believe, that charitable institutions can be supported by the prayers of those who have their management in charge. Begging of men for the support of such institutions is never quite agreeable. We always feel somehow as if we were begging for ourselves. But no such qualms afflict us when our petition is preferred to the invisible God. So, too, it must be very comforting to believe that the verbal "prayer of the righteous man availeth much" to raise up the sick and bring them back to life and health again, or that an evil heart, be it one's own or another's, may be made good by agonized entreaty. Naturally enough the comfort that is derivable from such a creed would suffer some abatement from the strain of praying twenty years in vain for the conversion of a single vagrant sheep, though Mr. Müller, who has done this himself, apparently has not been so affected. And so again with the related doctrines of sin and forgiveness. It must be a very comfortable assurance that "Jesus paid the debt, Jesus paid it all," and that however sorely we may have transgressed the laws of life, acceptance of his death as our atonement discharges us from all the penalties which naturally await on such transgression. Rational religion also has its doctrine of forgiveness, but it is very different from this. For here forgiveness is only another word for the recuperative forces of the universe, and is to be appropriated only by long and painful efforts to undo the wrong that we