Death is a mighty mediator. There all the flames of rage are extinguished, hatred is appeased, and angelic pity, like a weeping sister, bends with gentle and close embrace over the funeral urn.—Schiller.
Season of 1884.
ByRev. J. L. HURLBUT, D.D., and R. S. HOLMES, A.M.
Doceomeans I teach.Doctum, a teaching.Doctrina, the result of teaching—learning. The doctrines of the Bible are simply its teachings. They are the teachings of God to the race, contained in the record of his dealings with the race. These dealings of God produced a supernatural history, in the course of which man originated and fell, the nature and character of the Creator appeared, the presence, power and effects of sin were made known, and the original and ultimate purposes of God with the race were declared. The outline of these teachings or doctrines is not designed to be exhaustive, nor is it formed on the model of any treatise on systematic theology. It aims to prompt to further study in the classics of theology, and to plainly state a few essential truths. These doctrines of the Bible are:
1. The Doctrine Concerning Beginnings.(a) God was without beginning—Genesis 1:1. First fact—“The Eternal God.” (b) The Holy Spirit was without beginning—Gen. 1:2. Second fact—“The Eternal Spirit.” (c) The Word was without beginning—John 1:1. Third fact—“The Eternal Son.” Essential doctrine: the Triune God; unbegun, coequal, eternal. (d) All else, the whole vast universe, began by the power of God—Gen. 1:1—through the Son—John 1:3. Fourth fact—“Man God’s offspring.” Essential doctrine: The Fatherhood of God; his sovereignty and right to demand obedience of his creatures.
2. The Doctrine Concerning Relations.(a) Godis Creator: hencepowerful;a spirit—John 4:24—hence unseen;without beginning or ending, hence infinite and eternal—Ps. 90:1. Formula: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” (b)Man is the creature.Essentially a thing created; he dies daily, to be recreated daily. What of himself man destroys, the Creator by daily sustenance replaces. He is therefore the bread-giver,Hlaf-ford—Lord. The gifts of the Creator are beneficent; so he is the Good-One, God. The Creator is also guardian, protector—that is,Father.
Relation restated. The Creator, Lord, God, Father. The creature—a dependent child. The law of paternity—like produces like. Essential doctrine—man was originally like God, in harmony with him and at peace with him—Gen. 1:27.
3. The Doctrine Concerning Positions.(a) Man supreme in creation. God calls himself Father of no other created thing.Man a thinker, hence supreme.(b)Man free in the midst of creation.No other power to dispute his right. In fellowship with God, his Father. In a place of his Father’s choice, under rules of his Father’s making; with a work of his Father’s planning—Gen. 2:15-16—with power to follow his own will—(Gen. 2:17, last clause)—answerable to no one but his Father. Essential Doctrines—The sovereignty of God—the freedom of man. (c)Man confronted by a foe—Gen. 3:1—A sinful power in the universe: sin before man—2 Peter 2:4, 1 John 3:8.Picture—The Almighty Father—the boundless earth—the wide permission; the single restraint; the only child; the tempter; the fall; sin’s victory—Romans 5:12. Essential doctrine: By man sin entered the world, and death by sin, imparting to man a sinful nature, and separating man from God.
4. The Doctrine Concerning Results.(a) Separation from God; Eden lost; toil, pain and death—Gen. 3:17-19:23. (b) The kingdom of death—Romans 5:14; its prince, Satan; its subjects unclean—Job 15:14-16; its history a record of “sin, schism, and the clash of personalities.” (c) Eternal punishment probable from analogy, reasonable, just. Let the student carefully examine the testimony.
5. The Doctrine Concerning Rescue.(a) Promised early in history—Gen. 3:15. (b)Divine—John 3:16. (c) Yethuman—Gen. 3:15; Romans 5:18; Luke 3:23 and ff. Central fact of history, the God-man. (d) Restoration to God’s likeness—1 John 3:2. (e) A life-giving rescue—Romans 6:23. (f) A cleansing rescue; find the symbolic use of water in Bible. (g) Obtained through suffering and propitiatory death—Isaiah 53. (h) Established by resurrection—Ps. 16:10, 49:15; Hosea 13:14. Essential doctrine: Salvation from God as a free gift of his grace for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
6. The Doctrine Concerning Instruction.(a) God himself the teacher of the race.Adam—Abel—the Altar and Sacrifice. Note:serviceandsacrifice, man’s first lesson; the ark and Noah; rescue from sin’s penalty through obedience, man’s second lesson; Abraham—reckoned as righteous, because believing, man’s third lesson. (b) Moses the teacher of the race; the tabernacle in the wilderness; the same lessons repeated; God using his servant by direct instruction and communion. (c) The prophets the teachers of the race—Samuel—Malachi—the same lesson repeated; God teaching by inspiration; the home; the church; holy men speaking as moved by the Holy Ghost. (d) God by his Son the teacher of the race; Jesus Christ, Galilee, Samaria, Judea, the manger, the desert, the cross, the Easter morn, lessons, service, obedience, sacrifice, victory. (e) God by his teacher of the race.
[This lesson is adapted from the outline of Dr. Vincent, in the Chautauqua Normal Guide.]
I. There are four Uses of Illustrations.
1. They win and holdattention. The ear is quickened to interest by a story; the eye is arrested by the picture or the chalk mark. Nothing awakens and retains the interest more than the illustration, whether heard or seen.
2. They aid theapprehension. The statement of a truth is made plain where it is illustrated, as the rule in arithmetic is seen more clearly in the light of an example; and the definition of a scientific word in the dictionary by the picture accompanying it.
3. They aid thememory. It is not the text, nor the line of thought, but the illustrations, which keep the sermon or the lesson from being forgotten.
4. They awaken theconscience. How many have been aroused to conviction of sin by the parable of the Prodigal Son; and what is that but an illustration? So, many, like Zinzendorf, have been awakened by some picture of a Bible scene. Mr. Moody’s stories have sent the truth home as deeply as his exhortations.
II. There are four Classes of Illustrations.
1. Those which depend upon thesight, and derive their interest from the pupil’s delight in seeing. Such are maps, pictures, diagrams, etc., and when drawn in presence of the scholar, though ever so rudely, they have an increased interest and power.
2. Those which depend upon theimagination. At no period in life is the imagination as strong as in childhood, when a rag doll can be a baby and a picture has real life. Thence come “word-pictures,” fairy stories, imaginary scenes, etc., as illustrations of the lesson.
3. Those which depend uponcomparison. To see resemblance in things different, or the correspondence between the outward and the spiritual, is as old as the parable of the sower, and the miracle of the loaves. “The likes of the lesson” form a fruitful field for the use of illustration.
4. Those which depend uponknowledge. More than for anything else children are eager to know; and the story hasan added value which is true. History, science, art, and indeed every department of knowledge will furnish illustrations of spiritual truth.
III. How to obtain Illustrations.
1. By gaining knowledge, especially Bible knowledge. The wider the teacher’s range of thought, the more readily will he find illustrations to fit his thought. Particularly will the incidents of Bible story be found to furnish the frame for his thoughts in the class. Know the stories of the Bible, and you will have an encyclopædia of illustration in your mind.
2. By the habit of observation. People find what they are seeking for, and the teacher who is looking for illustrations will find them everywhere, in books, among men, on the railway train, and in the forest.
3.By the preservation of illustrations.The scrap book for clippings, the blank book for stray suggestions, the envelope, will all have their uses. Plans innumerable have been given, but each worker’s own plan is the best for himself.
4.By practice in the use of illustrations.The way to use them is tousethem, and use will give ease. The teacher who has once made the experiment will repeat it, and find that his rough drawing, or his map, or his story will always attract the eager attention of his scholars.
IV. A few hints as to the use of Illustrations.
1. Have a clear idea of the subject to be taught. Learn the lesson first of all, and know what you are to teach, before you seek for your illustration.
2. Use illustrations only in the line of the teaching. Never tell a story for the sake of the story, but always to impress a truth; and let the truth be so plain that the story must carry its own application.
3. Obtain the help of the scholar in illustration. Let the pupils suggest Bible incidents or Bible characters which present the traits of character which the lesson enforces. Never add a feature to the portrait which the scholar can himself give from his own knowledge.
4. Do not use too many illustrations. Let not the lesson serve merely as a vehicle for story-telling, or picture drawing, or blackboarding; but keepthe truthat all times in the foreground.
The completing of a course of study affords one of the few unalloyed satisfactions of life. It is an end reached—and it has been reached by personal effort. The class is at the goal, and it is there because it chose to be there, and resolutely and persistently labored to be there. We get many good things without effort, but they give us less satisfaction than meaner things which we have earned. There is a charm in winning a race, which does not consist either in being at the end of it, or in getting a prize. The victory is “our very own,” as the children say. But in a course of study completed one feels that the prize is worth his pains. He may feel discontented with the imperfections of his knowledge, but he would not for the world be put back where he began. We hold many things only with our hands; the fruits of a course of study are more secure—they are in our minds and hearts, and therefore can not fall out of our possession, or be wrested from us.
It is a good thing for the student to take the refreshment of looking back to the place of beginning. “What was I when I began?” This sense of gain is apt to be supplanted by discontent and looking forward; but the student should give himself the comfort of the backward glance. No one has pursued our course of reading and study to the end without very great improvement in mental power and method, or without large additions to his knowledge. “Look to the hole of the pit.” Take a long look at your old self and do not hesitate to prefer the new self. You are wiser, stronger, better. Allow yourself the luxury of fully realizing that. And how little it has cost you! A piecing together of fragments of time that would otherwise have been wasted, that is the greater part of the cost of your course. Whatever else you have spent you would have spent less wisely if you had not been in the course. You have sacrificed nothing of any moment to this object. All else that you had you keep still; this fruit of patient study you have as a clean and pure gain. It is a matter to be happy about. A good hour of self-complacency will do you no harm. Indulge your self-respect a little. All might do what you have done; most of them have not done it. Your graduation is of itself a proof that you have pluck, constancy, and self-control.
It is worth while to consider the elements of this victory. You have mixed time and method with reading and study. Hap-hazard study would not yield the fruit; it could not be ripened in a day. “Four months—and harvest.” Nor could method be left out. There is method in any work; method distinguishes work from play. There is method on the farm, in the mill, in the store. There must be method in gaining knowledge. Method makes tasks easy and combines many strokes into one result. In this combination of time and method lies the power of a course of study. All the mental effort is probably put forth by others spasmodically and unmethodically. You are at the end simply because you harnessed your efforts with years and system. Only stable and earnest characters are capable of the patient continuance in well-doing which is necessary to the completion of a course of study. College men say that the majority of those who begin a course fall out by the way; and they add that, whatever pretexts are used, the real reason is usually defective character. It is a rule in all undertakings of mankind; holdfast is the master quality. The men and women who complete the C. L. S. C. course do so on purpose and because they are capable of tenacity of purpose, and it is an education in tenacity. The man who has run such a racethroughis capable of running other races. He has learned how to “keep pegging away,” as Lincoln put it. He knows how to run—how to study. He likes to study. He has only begun in the great museum of knowledge, but he will go on searching its shelves until he is graduated into the large university of immortality. Ingratitude to our past selves is a human frailty which is often displayed, even ostentatiously, by men and women. Many there are who boast that they learned nothing at school; there are more who complain that they were taught nothing. Dr. Samuel Johnson was truer to himself in saying that he had learned nothing since. We hope that C. L. S. C. graduates will never fall into this cant. Be just now and always to yourselves and to those who have guided you through this journey. You have not learned everything, but you have learned how to learn. What you build yourself into hereafter will be built on this foundation. If you come to more wisdom do not be guilty of the meanness of despising these foundations. If the building rises high and stands firm, the glory of it will be these well-laid stones. If the building does not rise, yours the fault, for you will have neglected the solid base which invites you to build. Go on with the building; but do not forget now and again to bless the years when you were laying the first blocks of a studious life. In short,we have read you a little homily on self-respect. Take an honest satisfaction in your course; keep a just respect for your tenacity and application; cherish your love for those who have helped and inspired you in the good work.
The manufacturing classes of this country doubtless present a much more favorable condition of the workmen than prevails in other countries. The men who are generally described as laborers—whether they work isolated or in bodies—occupy a higher level of life than the same class in the old world. We may pass by, as being, in dispute, the question of the protective system’s relation to this fact. The higher condition of workmen is partly a result of democratic institutions and the absence of social grades in society; partly also of the youth of this country and its abundance of natural bounties. We have had the unexampled good fortune to be a young country rapidly developing wealth. A democratic level, a republican simplicity, vast stores of undeveloped natural wealth, and a system of free schools and free churches, have probably conspired to produce a high grade of workmen. We naturally desire to keep this feature of American society and industry. We note with alarm any sign that workmen are dropping to a lower level. It is not exclusively a humanitarian feeling which prompts us to maintain our workmen on a high level. We have all come to be interested in the prosperity of this section of the community. The economic usefulness of a man may be as conveniently measured by what he consumes as by what he does. In fact, his consuming power is the more accurate measure of his value. It is not so much a question of the number of strokes per day of which he is capable, as of the power he has to buy and use what his fellows produce. In this country the workman’s consuming power is probably at least twice as great as it is in Europe. This means that forty per cent. of our people buy twice as much as the corresponding forty per cent. buy in Europe. The effect is to greatly enlarge the market which we are all supplying with various kinds of goods. The reduction of this growing section of our population to the European condition would cause a contraction of the market, and an arrest of our industrial development, such as we have never experienced. We should be able tomakejust as many goods as now, but the people who now buy them would be obliged to reduce their buying, and this reduction would make an appalling aggregate. If twenty millions of people should at once reduce their annual purchases by one-half, the effect would be a more complete bankruptcy of us all than we have ever dreamed of. The reduction might come about slowly and with less peril; but even then the stagnation would be fatal to a large portion of the community. The truth is that we have a new factor in our industrial life, a new economic co-efficient. It is the well-paid workman, who is a relatively large consumer. Relatively to population the market we are all engaged in supplying is a much larger market than exists in Europe. We are built upon a foundation of which this well-paid laborer is an important part. We added an immense mass to this foundation when we emancipated the slaves. We increased the demand for goods by the difference between the cost of supporting a slave and that of supporting a free man. The new factor is a sum to be estimated only by the study of our own country. It never before existed in any country. It is a fact without a precedent; and it is so large that the whole fabric of our prosperity rests upon it. Gradgrind may persuade himself that he does not care whether poor men can buy goods or not; but his persuasion to that indifference will give way just as soon as the poor cease to buy his goods. In short, Gradgrind can not afford to see the buying power of workmen reduced with complacency. It means, whenever it becomes ageneralfact, ruin for Gradgrind. Whoever has anything or produces anything has given bonds for the maintenance of workmen’s wages.
Well, then, the alarm has already been sounded. We do not refer to the “tariff reform”—though thatmaybe fatal—but to more certain matters over which the tariff laws have no power. It is affirmed that the character, social status, aspirations and self-respect of workmen in this country has already fallen. An observer in a manufacturing center recently said: “The change in ten years is frightful. The old hands have risen in life or gone west. The new hands live in smaller quarters, care less for the comfort of their families, and buy fewer goods of any kind. They read less, take newspapers more rarely, are less careful to dress well on Sunday, and see their children in rags with a complacency which was unknown ten years ago. The new people are from Europe, and nine in ten of them have brought their old habits with them. Higher wages mean to them only more rum and more idleness.”
We hope that this is an exaggeration. But even if it be only very partially true, it opens an unexpected vista, and an alarming one. The only way to maintain workmen’s wages is to keep up workmen’s characters. If the character grows debased the wages will drop to that lower level. A higher grade of living is the only possible security for higher wages. Workmen can not long get high wages to spend in rum shops. Wages will sink to the level of their life. But if the common market is to suffer so great a loss as this fall in wages and consuming power would occasion, then we must all suffer. Nor is this all. The failure would be that of our civilization. We are, every way, in all sources, most deeply interested in arresting the threatened decline of the American workman.
The tenure of office in this country will be the subject of animated discussion for some years. Civil Service Reform aims to correct an abuse, and will probably achieve that end; but it is not certain that the right method of reform has been found. The ideal of good service is presented by a bank in which men serve indefinitely, and yet must serve efficiently. They are removed if they fail; they are not removed if they succeed. The difficulty in applying this rule to any form of public service lies in removals for cause. How to secure the removal of the man who fails? In the bank it is a simple thing to discharge a clerk. In public life it is not at all simple or easy. The clerk has no vested right to his place in the bank; in a department at Washington, a clerk has a vested right to his place. The bank removes because it chooses to do so. The government must invent some pretext orproveinefficiency. Tenure during good behavior makes aquasiproperty of the office.
The ministry presents a good example of the workings of office tenure. Thousands of churches are without installed pastors, and one of the reasons given is that churches find it easier to install a man than to dismiss him. In the Methodist Church a hot discussion over the rule which limits continuous service in one church to three years has afforded good observers a fine opportunity to see the play of feeling and motive around the tenure principle. The change proposed has met with a crushing defeat, because Methodists are more anxious to keep the power to get rid of a poor pastor than they are to get the power to keep a good one. Why? Because they have much more experience of inefficient men than of efficient men. In short, the church says to itself: “Pastors usually fail; they rarely succeed; it is best to be able to send them away quietly.” This is not complimentary to the ministry, but it is the substance of the argument which has defeated a plan which had the sympathy of the best men in Methodism. The fact that in other denominations changes of pastors are about as frequent as among Methodists has the same explanation. For some reason the inefficient ministers are believed to be more numerous than the efficient. There is a suspicion in the general mind that this is true all round the circle of salaried life, and that we need swift and easy and decorous means of removing our public and semi-public servants more than we need tofortify the good men in their positions. In the large view, what ails us is poor work; and people in general think that the poor work is already tied fast to us. The human nature of the public has been too much overlooked. The human nature of the employed has hardly ever received appropriate attention. There are two kinds of persons to be considered in estimating the effect of time limits in any service. To one kind of man security of tenure is a means of increased efficiency. He is zealous and enterprising in his vocation. He is acutely conscientious toward his employers, the more so the less they are visible and near to him. To be secure in his place is to this man freedom to do good work and conduct his career to fruitful issues. Any other tenure means to him a harassing uncertainty in all plans and wearying anxieties about bread and butter questions. Such a man can not serve a cause of any kind well on an uncertain or limited tenure of office. The only possible uncertainty for him—the only one consistent with good work—is that which concerns the quality of his work. That species of uncertainty is one which he feels to be in his power. He will do his work so well that no uncertainty shall exist. But at the other extreme is a man to whose success the sense of security is fatal. He works best under the whip of uncertainty. He becomes lazy when the fear of removal does not exist. Between the two extremes—conscientious enthusiasm at one end and place-keeping inefficiency at the other—are men of a variety of tendencies to one or the other character. Colleges probably present the best view of the effect of security of tenure. The general public does not possess intimate knowledge of the results of the system in seats of learning; but now and then an intestine broil uncovers the college life, and invariably discloses an unsatisfactory condition. For a good professor fixed tenure is most wholesome; for a poor one it is unwholesome in its effects on his character and work. A man of wide experience in colleges tells us that there is not a college in the country but is lugging inefficient men; and he expresses the opinion that less than half of the college men are the best men for their places. In short, even in the college, unfit men get places and keep them, to the great detriment of the college. In an average institution four thoroughly good men carry six other men. A few give the college its character; the majority are a burden, and some men in this majority gloat over their supposed right to be lugged by the college. Any rule which should rid colleges of mere place-holders, of men weak in character, negligent in work, and far behind the times in scholarship would double the usefulness and the patronage of colleges in ten years. But if certainty of tenure is bad in college, it must be worse elsewhere.
What is generally desired in the matter of tenure in service of any sort is to cut off the chances for the purchase and sale of places, and for the capricious and interested removal of good men. The scandals growing up in public life from this base caprice in the appointing power have sickened the popular stomach. Take, for example, the forced resignation of a stenographer, at the end of a session, in order that the speaker of the House of Representatives might appoint his own nephew to the placefor the vacation, during which there were no duties. The filthiness of the proceeding surpasses belief; and yet it seems not to have provoked any proper indignation in Congress. But fixed tenure has more evils than it cures, and some middle way should be found. We can not afford to ignore the fact that average men need the spur. The highly conscientious and enterprising servant is yet too rare in the world for it to be safe to adjust the terms of service to his character and to leave the majority free from the whip.
An English magazine writer on Egypt points out the difficulty which is encountered in all the public life of the Nile country—it is the habit of submission to personal despotic authority. The only system of government which is possible is the old, old one—for it has unfitted the people for any other. An enlightened despotism might give the country rest and prosperity. But western Europe, now master in Egypt, has outgrown the capacity to administer a despotism.
Professor Goldwin Smith has recently stated that Canada is becoming more French. The French not only gain in population faster than the English in what was once called New France, but they are spreading out into the Canadian New England. In Quebec there are only 7,000 British people. The Canadian Frenchmen are cultivating, he says, the relations to France with increasing zeal. The sober truth is, we believe, that the English in Canada never had a chance of salvation except through annexation to the United States. We were never anxious about that; but they ought to have been.
Smuggling is not altogether a lost art. It is said that it is practiced for a livelihood on the Maine coast with some success. The fishermen are said to be experts in the business. But it is not a large business, and our government does not lose much, nor does any one get rich by breaking the revenue laws.
Somebody says that a ranch in Texas has 25,000 more acres than the state of Rhode Island. But don’t infer that this country is going to be a land of large farms. We have always had some such farms; but the number of them is decreasing. They neverpay, and no social distinction attaches to their proprietors.
In Boston, Easter morning, Dr. Withrow dwelt upon the overwhelming evidence of the fact of Christ’s resurrection. Rev. Minot J. Savage said, at the same hour in the same city, that we have not the slightest evidence that any Apostle ever saw Christ after he was crucified and buried. It seems that there is at least one theological difference of creed extant in our harmonious time. Mr. Savage might profitably read Paul’s testimony on this subject.
Mr. W. S. Hallock, the editor of theChristian at Work, has been in Bermuda this season, and in a letter to his paper recalls the fact that the first settlers of that island were a drove of hogs who escaped thither from a wrecked vessel. They thrived so well that the next comers found the land filled with swine. Mr. Hallock adds: “It is probably the only successful instance of the commune to be found in all history.” The point scored is that communism is good for hogs.
This spring the West Indian war is in Cuba. It is commonly held in Hayti. An expedition headed by one Aguero escaped from Key West in April and, being joined in Cuba by many dissatisfied persons, made some headway as a revolution. Our government promptly issued orders to prevent the reënforcement of Aguero from this country. The hot weather will suppress the revolutionists—if they are natives of the United States.
Waiters on roller-skates is a novelty introduced into an Omaha hotel. Labor-saving contrivances in the householdseem to have stopped with the sewing machine—and it is denied by husbands that this machine saves labor. It is rather a means of putting more work on a dress with the same amount of labor of the hand.
Herbert Spencer has been trying to prove that slavery is little different from our ordinary social freedom. A man must work, he says, most of the time for another person in either case. Yes, but it is a great satisfaction to select the man you will work for. And, in freedom, the workman is always workingforhimself. Mr. Spencer should try being a slave for a length of time sufficient to teach him the moral distinction between that state and freedom.
One of the papers, noticing the death of a fast trotting horse, says that he was ill only fifteen minutes. Similar statements are frequently made respecting distinguished men; and the prayer book contains a petition to be delivered from sudden death. We note the facts for the sake of remarking that sudden death by disease, either in horses or men, never happens. Diseases act much more slowly, and the man who dies of a fever has probably been ill for months. The moral is, attend to the first symptoms of illness.
The United States recently transferred a prisoner from the north to the southfor the benefit of his health. He was a “moonshiner,” and had killed several men who had attempted to arrest him. The solicitude for his health shows that we are not wanting in philanthropy toward prisoners.
The native Christians of India are taking the intellectual lead in that country. At the University examinations in Madras there were 2,702 Brahmans, 1,303 non-Brahman-Hindoos, 107 Mohammedans, and 332 Christians. Forty-five per cent. of the Christians passed, and only thirty-five per cent. of the Brahmans, while the other classes were still lower. In India there are seventeen million Brahmans and two million Christians. The former increase at the rate of six per cent. in ten years, and the latter at the rate of eighty-five per cent. These facts furnish a very striking proof of Christian progress in India.
Reminiscences of Anthony Trollope continue to appear in English periodicals. Two manly traits of his character are dwelt upon. He was punctual in keeping his literary engagements, and he never pretended to be indifferent about his pay for work. He made a bargain and kept his promise—and did both like a man. The traditional literary man did neither; he was always behind with his copy, and always pretended that he did not care for remuneration. Trollope’s example deserves all the good things that are said of it.
TheEdinburgh Reviewexpresses the opinion that the novels written by girls must be unreal and insubstantial. The girlsoughtnot, it thinks, to know anything about life, and probably do not know anything about it. The girl knows less of the world than the boy of her own age, and nobody expects the boy to write a novel. Yes, but then the girl often does produce a good story and the boy never does.
Art isstilllong. Steam has not yet been successfully applied to it. A parent said to a teacher of music: “How long will it require to fit my daughter to appear in public? Will nine months do?” The teacher replied: “Nine years, madam. Even a boot-maker takes seven.” Hurrying to the front inflicts upon society a great deal of very poor art.
The vexed question has set in with great vigor in the coal country. Some very “heathenish and filthy” people, called Hungarians, have come in and are competing with low wages. They use no soap, and save all the cost of cleanliness. The question we refer to is whether American labor is to keep its high level of decency, comfort and education. It is noticeable that the Chinese are rapidly climbing to that level. Perhaps these Hungarians will.
Russia finds it increasingly difficult to live in the same house with modern civilization. Count Ignatief killed five newspapers during a year when he was Minister of the Interior. Count Tolstoi has killed nine in two years. Nihilist plots have made some sympathy for Russia; but the fatal disease of that country is despotism.
Our medical colleges, in some sections if not everywhere, need an improvement in the standard of requirements. A story is told of a western one at whose examinations a student answered correctly only three out of twenty-five questions, and was affably informed that his examination was “entirely satisfactory.” It is intimated, too, that the questions were very easy.
Dr. James A. H. Murray, the editor of the new English Dictionary, is a hard worked teacher in a non-conformist school in the suburbs of London. His good work on the first part of the dictionary, recently published, has attracted attention, and it is said that Oxford will give him a good place, and that Mr. Gladstone will add a government pension. The British eye is very quick to detect rare merit.
The British press is dealing severely with this country for tolerating dynamite conspirators. But up to this date no proof is furnished that there is any dynamite conspiracy here. Some indolent gentlemen in New York raise money for use against England and profess to be at the bottom of the dynamite business. But it is plain enough that they would not boast of it if they were really guilty, and that they collect the money for their own use. “Liberating Ireland” by taking up collections is an easy mode of gaining a livelihood.
The French have won another victory over the Black Flags in Tonquin. A very gratifying fact is that thus far the Chinese have not turned upon and maltreated the foreigners within their gates. A general massacre of traders, travelers and missionaries was feared when this trouble began; but it would seem that contact with Europeans has modified the Chinese feeling toward foreigners. It is reported that high officials have lost their offices, perhaps also their heads, but the foreign population has not been disturbed.
The political cauldrons are boiling. But an acute observer still sees that the general public is less partisan than it was ten years ago, or even four years ago. It is a wholesome state of things. Good men will stand the best chance of election, provided that they have some capacity to win popular affection. In politics, at least, there are no good icebergs.
A city marshal was shot dead in Dakota last month by a liquor dealer resisting an attempt to close his place at midnight. Lawlessness and recklessness are becoming more and more prominent characteristics of the liquor traffic; and this is a good sign in a bad situation. The decent men got out of the traffic some time ago; the semi-decent men followed them. The class remaining in the business can not have many friends, and will be disposed of by and by as nuisances.
It is said that the educated Chinese are rapidly becoming materialists. They have lost their old religion and are taking refuge in European scientific materialism. The meaning of this fact is that in Japan, as in America, the fight is between Christianity and materialistic dogmas. It is the same the world over, where enlightenment exists. These two struggle for the dominion of the world.
Actors and actresses have made a scandalous record on the question of marriage during the last four years. Any newspaper reader can make his own catalogue. That theater life is a terrible one for a virtuous woman. The horrible surroundings of an actress—the trial by fire which she undergoes, and so rarely survives, is a crushing argument against the stage.
One of the striking things to an American traveling in Europe is the cheap cab. After many trials and failures that great convenience has been introduced into New York under very promising conditions. A new company has organized the system and seems to be on a solid foundation. The cheap cab is a sign of civilization which has hitherto been wanting in our large cities. The world moves.
A relic of the battle of the Boyne appeared in Newfoundland last month. Orangemen were fired upon by Catholics. It is a pity that the battle of the Boyne can not be confined to Ireland. There seems to be no propriety in transporting it to this continent every year.
New York and Brooklyn are to be the Chinese center in this country. The yellow men are not persecuted there. The number of them now in those cities is estimated at from 3,500 to 5,000. Christian schools among them are growing rapidly. There are now twenty-two schools, with 910 scholars. Most of these schools were organized last year; only three of them are more than four years old.
Prince Bismarck recently said: “The telegraph fearfully multiplies my work.” Does it not multiply the work of all men in public positions? The telegraph travels fast and helps to make us work fast.
A correspondent asks us to make an itinerary for six months’ travel in Europe. Such a plan of travel would require too much space. Write to a New York publisher for a small book on the subject. There are many such books. To “read up” for the journey, procure two or three of the best books on the subject of European travel. Harper & Brothers publish a good one; there are several others. If you are about to invest from $600 to $1,000 in such a journey, you will do well to begin with an outlay of from ten to twenty dollars for special books.
The French have spent four years and $20,000,000 on the Panama Canal, and have not made great progress. An American who worked for a year on the canal, and got off with his life, reports that fever is the great enemy of the undertaking. He says that five thousand deaths of workmen occurred in three months. The company kept fifteen thousand men at work by bringing in shiploads of new men as fast as death destroyed its workmen. If the canal is ever finished it will have cost a hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and as many thousand lives.
General Gordon is at this writing still shut up in Khartoum, and England seems to be doing nothing to save him. Egypt is politically and financially bankrupt, and Mr. Gladstone’s ministry is threatened with overthrow because it has not managed the unmanageable Nile question. There is only one easy settlement of Egyptian affairs, and that is an English government of Egypt.
The drunken man is an increasing nuisance. Recently, in a Brooklyn, N. Y. theater, he cried “fire,” and caused a frightful panic. In a New York City theater he was an alderman, and interrupted the performance long enough to get arrested and marched off to the lock-up. He is always engaged in quarrels in which blood is drawn. In a western city, last month, he killed his best friend. We all have other business, but we ought not to neglect this drunken man, or the places where he is manufactured.
Something new in the matter of mixed metaphor appears in the New YorkTimes. A correspondent, writing of a political organization, described some elements of it as “cancerous barnacles.” We notice, too, a new verb in politics. A dreary and egoistic speaker at a convention is said to have “pepper-sauced himself over an impatient audience.”
A wealthy New Yorker, recently deceased, disposed by will of some two millions of property which he had gained chiefly through the rewards and opportunities of public position. He bequeathed only $15,000 to benevolent causes. A man has the right to dispose of his estate as he will; but then the public has a judgment as to whether he disposes of it in the right way. And less than one per cent. to benevolence is not the right proportion.
There is a bad type of independence in politics. It is that whose shape is made by personal malignity, and whose method is slander and vituperation. Just at this season this sort of independence is noisy. It is a kind of politics which should have little influence.
A recent writing criticises the wealthy men of the country for negligence in the matter of making their wealth minister to philanthropy. Probably most of our millionaires are too busy to see the point, but the point is sharp and will stick in the world’s remembrance of many of them. The only moral justification for holding a large property is philanthropic use of it. Neglect of the kind mentioned breeds socialists and weakens the moral safeguards of all private property.
For two years, Mrs. Carrie B. Kilgore, a lady holding a diploma as bachelor of laws, granted her by the University of Pennsylvania, has been endeavoring to gain admittance to the bar, but has been refused, on the ground that the law was out of woman’s sphere, that it had been put there by custom, and that the aforesaid “sphere” could only be enlarged by action of the legislature. A Pennsylvania judge with a different idea has, however, been found. He declares, and very correctly: “If there is any longer any such thing as what old-fashioned philosophers and essayists used to call the sphere of woman, it must now be admitted to be a sphere with an infinite and indeterminable radius.” Mrs. Kilgore can, at last, use her hard-earned right to practice.
The late A. F. Bellows excelled in landscape, and the value of his productions has doubled since his lamented death last year. Four charming landscapes from his brush are among Prang’s forthcoming publications. They are in his happiest manner, with the tender poetic treatment that especially distinguished his work. Essentially American in feeling, his choice of subjects was always of quiet home scenes, and he is without a rival in the delineation of landscape, seeking his theme among quiet meadows and in pastoral districts, in preference to the wilder mountain views which tempt so many of our American artists. The house which is sending out this artist’s work has given us this year a large amount of very valuable productions. Their Easter cards, we remember, were unusually fine; among them the mediæval cards printed in red and black, and the prints and cards on old hand-made paper, encased in parchment paper, were the most attractive novelties.
Mr. Matthew Arnold had some unpleasant journalistic experiences in his late American trip. Flippant newspaper men punned and joked and told malicious stories about this dignified and scholarly gentleman until he has been driven to the opinion—and perhaps it is a correct one—that “mendacious personal gossip is the bane of American journalism.”
An unavoidable delay prevented our getting the following names into the list of graduates of the class of ’83. We are glad to be able to insert them now: Mrs. Sarah McElwain, Martin, Kansas; John R. Bowman, Iowa; Mrs. Matilda J. Hay, Pennsylvania; Mary S. Fish, California; Lucyannah Morrill Clark, Wisconsin; Annie M. Botsford, New York; Frances W. Judd, New York.