the sum total of all things and has no assured hope of immortality.

In spite of this latest result of the effort to produce a conception of deity that shall set aside the Fatherhood of God as revealed by Jesus, it is still true that Christ's portrayal of the divine being and character is indisputably the very best the world has ever seen. That portrayal was eminently his. A few of its elements had been perceived by different sages before his day, but no one had combined them all into one harmonious and perfect character. Much less could any one else have transfused this conception into the spiritual life of mankind so as to make it the organific force that has for eighteen. hundred years been developing in church, society, and state the most stable and yet progressive results of true thought and noble action. Christ's portrayal of God involves no error and lacks nothing. Whence did Jesus get his idea of God? Was it the shrewd invention of an impostor? the dream of a fanatic? the fantasy of an insane person? No. This matchless portrayal of the character of God is itself a proof of its truth.

It is one thing to talk about God and prove his existence by argument; to say with the head, there is a God; but it is a far different thing to feel in one's soul the profound conviction and vivid realization of the sublime truth, God is. It is the most exalted experience of which our being is capable, the joy of the Christian's life. He loves the earth, because as he walks along by its river courses and rambles through its solitudes, and climbs its mountain peaks, and lifts up his head above the clouds, and gazes up into the heavens at night resplendent with flashing stars and silent planets, his breath comes and goes as through these glorious works of creation the being of God. manifests himself to the soul. He loves the Bible, because as he reads it from Genesis to Revelation, with Jacob as he wrestles with the angel for the knowledge of God's name; with Moses at the burning bush realizing the presence of the great I Am; with Elijah in Horeb, discerning the character of God in the still small voice; with the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration stunned by the voice of God; with Jesus as he manifests in his embodiment of truth the image of the divine being, he sympathizes in heart and mind and is led to realize

an aristocracy, a privileged class with vested rights, to whose ranks he may never hope to gain admittance; an ecclesiastical organization for whose support he is taxed, though of another faith; a corporation in whose service he is employed which reduced his wages to a small amount and from whose clutches he cannot escape except he starve; and alas! there is no land for him to till as a freeman. And now he is no longer an ignorant peasant; the printing press has emancipated him; his eyes look out on all the world. Now there comes to him with the consciousness of wrong, the hope of redress, of betterment, of liberty. He sees a vision of a new order of things. From the earth, which the people shall hold as their own, shall arise newer and fairer cities with their columns and arches, their heaven-pointing spires. Having no wars there will be no need of walls. Poverty will be done away, and with poverty crime and its great result. No one can imagine this earthly Paradise, for how can any one tell just how the race will develop under these new social and economic conditions. It is a vision of the future; a golden age. Of this the poets have sung, the dreamers have dreamed. For this the good and wise in all ages have wrought. But now the successful experiments of popular gov ernment have made it not only possible, but feasible. Based on a careful study of economic laws and individual rights, having the advantage of profiting by many previous mistakes, it cannot fail. The time is ripe. For what indeed can a man strive that is worthier, nay, holier, than this new order of things which will enrich the poor and not impoverish the rich; which will humble the proud and cheer the humble; which will give to each and every one the opportunity and the privilege of living unfettered by any restrictions except self-imposed—neither of government, society, or commerce-and so to live his life in the full and perfect development of all his faculties. So arbitrary power, old customs, vested rights in Church and State, push this movement in the minds of men to the front, while the hope, which has ever something of green in the human heart, beckons it on.

In no two countries of Europe has Socialism the same manifestation. It takes its form from its environment. To understand it, however, two great phases must be considered-the

two hemispheres of the world of its existence. These two phases are the Economic and the (to coin a word) Archic or Legislative; the first or Economic the greater. Its professed object is the more equable distribution of the results of labora fair chance for humanity. Economical reform is then its vital principle: the adjustment of social conditions with reference to wealth. Establish, it is said, economic laws; restrict undue class privilege, extortion, usury, monopoly, corporations as you would other evils which infest the State and war against the greatest good of the greatest number; make it impossible for the few to be very rich by taking away the opportunity for large accumulation, and the goal is reached. This implies a philosophy of political economy. Concerning the truth of the socialistic philosophy, the great question of its right to live, the battle wages. This region of thought, the economic, any student realizes, is thick with strife. One looks down upon it as upon a plain where a battle is raging. He sees the contending armies march and countermarch; here a flank movement, now a sudden ambuscade; now the main body is broken; anon the line comes marching on in full front. Conflicting theories of wealth, value, labor, property, taxation, lead one into labyrinths of opposing forces. Socialism does not fear. It can verify its own economic science. It bases its right to live and grow and become, in its great consummation, the new order of life for the world in what it claims are irrefutable economic principles. The archic or legislative phase of the movement, concerns the practical carrying out of its reforms and the status of its condition in the future. Here it is divided into two camps diametrically opposed to each other, the archic and anarchic schools. The two great leaders of these opposing forces are the German Carl Marx and the Frenchman Proudhon. The German would have a strong government controlling and checking, managing the social sphere as if a machine of complicated working. The Frenchman would have almost no gov ernment: it is a useless appendage, a nest of abuses; under pretence of protecting rights it robs of privilege. The world will never be happier or better until absolute individual liberty is secured. Mutuality, agreement to do or not to do with one's fellows, is the only way in which anything like a government is recognized.

The Anarchic school seemingly has more of reason with it. If you institute a strong government, what is to prevent abuses? Do you not repeat the mistakes of history? It accepts Mill's treatise on liberty as representing its views,-in the main. It would seem that with an entire new régime any authoritative interference would militate against the success of its proposed social condition. This Anarchic school holds to individual sovereignty as its watchword. To-day Socialism has its two parties the Anarchists and the Collectivists—the latter a new designation of the German school. It differs from the Anarchic school in that it presents a more definite programme. It is constructive. The School of Proudhon, notably the Nih ilistic Anarchists of to-day, object to any formulas of upbuilding as weakening the movement and causing division. Let us destroy, say they: One thing at a time. There will be time enough to construct, after destruction has done its perfect work. Collectivism has two wings: the Revolutionary, which would gain its end by popular uprising, and the Evolutionary; the latter recognizing the idea of Evolution as applicable to Social Reform as to all things else.

Having now considered the various schools of Socialism, we ask what are its ethical principles or tenets? More than ever before in the world's history does mankind demand of any new movement a declaration of its fundamental ethical bases. Socialism does not refuse the challenge. Primarily it affirms that no real progress, no complete civilization can come unless justice be the rule of the State-"Justice," says Proudhon "the general, primitive, categorical law of all society." The movement is therefore protestant against existing social insti tutions appealing to the sense of right in man, and the rightful adjustment of relations between man and man, which is justice. These relations, everyone admits, are many of them ill-adjusted; concerning this there is no question. Again, equality is sought, equality before the laws, equality as the outcome of proper economic observances. To obtain justice, equality is necessary-equality of right and privilege. This cardinal principle every American accepts as far as the State is concerned; it is the initial principle of our institutions. When a like equality is asked in the economic world, an equivalence

of advantage and opportunity for every child that is born, there is a shrinking from the possible consequences of such a subversion of the existing order.

In the new society one other principle is taken for granted as binding on the individual-in fact its presence is the beating heart of the new régime; the Christians would call it brotherly love; the Positivists and Socialists, Altruism. This altruism is the essential oil of the new machinery; without its magic property the new order of things never can be; without its presence this new social fabric would topple and fall. And yet, strange to say, in all systems of Socialism, the effort to promote the golden unselfishness is neglected. Here the whole movement is weak.

In hope the world is ever young. Here is an attempt to reconstruct society-to establish justice securely, not on her throne; that would savor of monarchy, but in the market place a serious attempt. Here is an effort to abolish all fictitious privileges of custom, or of caste, or of legal sanction; to start all men equally in the race of life from one common base line-a genuine effort. The appeal is made to the generosity of human nature for a common good to yield a special privi lege; once successful it is thought a selfish interest would secure a stable foundation. The new order of things will be its own best argument. Are these men dreamers? Are they misguided? Is this movement which has had many precursors on a small scale during this century, merely the unrest of the age, which like troubled waves of the bay, will subside when the great tide of the world's progress comes rolling in upon it? It has been said that Socialism is influenced by two causes: Despotism, which thrust it into life, and Idealism, which supplies its sustenance through a belief in its "far off divine event " -its millenium. It has the courage of its future. Two grievances also rankle in the bosoms of its adherents. The first the world-old one of poverty with its resultant misery; the second, economic injustice, the mother of poverty. As to the first, the dire results of poverty in our modern civilization, it must be granted by all thoughtful men, that here is abundant misery, and abundant is the need of wisest thinking by the students of social science, and moreover the greatest wisdom of practical statesmanship.