welfare, always ready to forgive, is certainly of just the same eminently practical meaning as the moral belief that our worth as men is not derived from the accidental circumstances, which condition birth and fortune, but only from our moral destiny. We have, however, been brought by a lazy habit into so external and mechanical a relation to these ideas on which our true living depends that moments of special illumination seem to be needed to enable us to feel and understand how they are bound up in us. The ideas and ideals which Christianity sets up are not our only subject.

The real historical guarantees of their truth which it gives is: the incomparable historical helps for their realization which it has had the disposal of, claim our attention.

We need not remain standing in the porch, we should enter the Holy of Holies of the Christian religion, if we want to exhibit its incomparable worth as a practical means of culture. Is it possible to desire to retain the moral ideal of Christianity and at the same time to hold in contempt the means which the teaching and the life of Christ furnish us, for its realization, the certainty of reconciliation with God, the moral power of his Spirit which alone deserves the name of Holy Spirit, the hope in the coming perfection of the individual as well as of the world?

Indeed, only such hints as these are necessary to make the attempt, to attribute to the materialistic belief such value as a means of culture as is possessed by Christianity, appear either ridiculous or frivolous.

But what, says some one, is the good of laying so much stress upon the value of Christianity as a means of culture if so-called scientific truth is not on its side but on the side of materialism? This prejudice is very wide-spread, but it is only a prejudice, as hinted above. But even on this point we may insist that purely theoretically considered materialism has no advantage over the Christian faith.

Suppose the Christian view of the world to be one-sided, taking the moral interests of human life as its standpoint, does not the materialistic view start from a consideration of nature in a no less one-sided manner? If the former is unable to solve the problem how the bodily world came out of spirit, the latter

is as little able to show how spirit is developed from matter, or how matter produces spirit. When looked at in a strictly scientific manner each view of the world leaves as many problems unsolved as the other. But when we test the capability of each, the materialistic as well as the Christian, to give men a satisfying explanation of their existence in the world, then, on the theoretical side the superiority of Christianity seems to be beyond question.

We should also clearly maintain that general views of the world, so-called, do not, on the whole, admit of a strict scientific form, and that we have in them always a free explanation of the total life of the world from that standpoint which regards man as the center. We men seek a satisfactory explanation of the total life of the world, with which life we have grown up, and we naturally will feel satisfied with such a judgment only of the world as does not take away from us the ideal and moral interests, which are our standards, but gives validity to its own meaning when used to explain the world.

From this point of view we may assert that, since Christianity makes the spiritual, not the physical world, its starting point, and consequently explains nature as a means of attaining the ideal aims of man, it interprets the world only by the standards of precedence things have for men.

We do not need to become ascetics, if this attitude and the judgment of the world from it are explained as the one necessary for men and therefore true.

Every one who accords to the ideal and moral interests their superior value must also recognize that from them our general view of the world should be derived.

The truth, or as I should prefer to say, the just claim of Christian idealism take root thoroughly in the moral aims which by the power of the practical force of attraction belonging to them, will be recognized to-day, by individuals. as well as by society, as the standard laws of our existence as

men.

If any body wanted to make proselytes for the materialistic faith with the natural consequences he would have to give up our moral culture and bring Christian society back to the stage of men in the state of nature. But who would earnestly pro

pose such a thing. No fanatical adherent to materialistic dog. mas will ever desire it.

Therefore no one should dispute our right to judge of the world, its origin and final purpose in a manner corresponding to our moral culture gained essentially through Christianity. It ought to recognize that the Christian faith is not only the necessary consequence of our stage of moral culture, but also that it is the correct interpretation of the world by the standard of that moral culture.

ARTICLE III.-WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE.

AMONG the social questions now under discussion, none is more important or more freighted with principles and issues that outreach present consequences and take hold of the very life of society, than that of Female Suffrage. The frequency and urgency with which this measure is pressed upon our legislative bodies by a certain class of reformers, encouraged by partial success in some of the newer states and territories, and the recent advocacy of it in full or limited form by some who have very largely the ear of the public, and the apparently increasing drift of public sentiment in this direction manifest in many quarters, call for a sober and reflective revision not only of the reasons and supposed advantages of the so-called reform, but of the very serious issues and consequences involved in it. These issues are not immediate and do not lie on the surface. The question is one which cannot be solved on abstract principles, such as that so often urged, of the 'right' of women to vote; since nothing is more fallacious than the application of abstract theories to practical and political problems. The profound aphorism of Burke is specially applicable here, that in proportion as such theories are logically true, they are practically and politically false. Nor can it be decided by its immediate advantages, supposing them to be real, such as the effect of women's vote in temperance legislation and other politico-moral questions. Such temporary good, even if secured, may be purchased at too dear a price if it bring after it evils outweighing and outlasting the evil it is supposed to remedy. Illustrations of immediate advantages purchased at the cost of great and wide-sweeping evils are not wanting in our history. The admission of slavery into our Republic for the sake of union, and its subsequent ravages, ending in the war of the Rebellion, is one signal example. The exclusion of the Bible from our public schools as a concession to Roman Catholics and infidels, resulting in the secularization of our whole system of popular education, is another fearfully omin

ous fact, the end of which is not yet. Before committing ourselves to one more radical and irremediable error, and plunging blindly into this gulf of women's suffrage, it will be well to pause and see whither we are going, and what this new movement, or reform' really signifies; whether it rests on a true principle or a shallow and pleasing fallacy, and whether its results are likely to be beneficial or disastrous.

We do not propose to discuss the question exhaustively, or as thoroughly as it really demands, but simply and briefly to expose a few points that seem to us to touch the heart of the subject, and which are very commonly overlooked in its discussion.

1. And first, this reform signifies nothing less than a radical and revolutionary change in our whole social system.

Society as at present constituted is based upon the Family as the social unit. The State is not an aggregation of individuals, but an organism, of which the family is an integral part. This social unit is represented by the constituted head of the family, the husband, father, or householder, to whom the care and support and interests of the family are naturally intrusted. Whatever tends to disintegrate this organic family unity is a violation of the divine constitution, and can work only mischief, whether it be enforced celibacy, easy divorce, or female suffrage. Individualism is the bane of our modern social life, as is but too apparent in the theories and practices respecting marriage, which is fast becoming a mere contract, with reserved individual rights, dissolvable at the will of the parties, instead of that sacred and indissoluble union which is its divine idea. It is, whether applied to marriage, the family, or the State, an essentially infidel theory whose legitimate issue is the destruction of the family, of government, and the church, as divine institutions, and the exaltation and assertion of individual 'rights' under the flag of Each one for himself.

The practical tendency of women's suffrage, as all must see, is to impair the unity of the family as a social organism, being itself a denial of it, and to create discord and rivalries between husband and wife, who by the divine ordinance are "no more twain but one flesh," but by this act are legally declared to be not one but two. Besides, such suffrage is a tacit decla