so canvassed as that of the Revolution, and it was not to be expected that Dr. Howard, whose volume deals with the years of debate immediately preceding the appeal to arms, should make any strikingly original contribution to our knowledge of the causes and earlier phases of the struggle for independence. He has, however, marshaled the facts in such wise as to warrant his editor's belief that "this fresh study of the evidence results in a clearer view of the 'difficulties of the imperial problem, and brings out in sharper relief the reasons for the apparent paradox that the freest people then on earth insisted on and deserved a larger freedom." Developing the views set forth in earlier volumes of "The American Nation," Dr. Howard lays stress on the economic aspects of the relations between the colonies and the mother country, finding that war was inevitable because of inherent defects in the British colonial system, and that the mistaken policy of George III. and his advisers is accordingly to be regarded as merely the exciting, not the primary, cause of the conflict. Nevertheless, he does not incline to the opinion, now gaining ground in certain quarters, that the desire for independence was consciously nurtured long before the final rupture occurred. His treatment of the actors and events of the twelve years under review is, as a rule, impartial and informing, and though e. g., in his discussion of the significance of the Regulation movement-the presentation is not always as ample as might be desired, his book should be cordially welcomed by students of Revolutionary history. Phyllis Burton: A Tale of New England. By Mrs. S. R. Graham Clark. Illustrated. The Griffith & Rowland Press, Philadelphia. 5×73⁄4 in. 489 pages. $1, net. (Postpaid, $1.14.) Proposal Under Difficulties (A). A Farce. By John Kendrick Bangs. Illustrated. Harper & Bros., New York. 32X5% in. 71 pages. 50c. Rape of the Lock and Other Poems (The). By Alexander Pope. Edited by Elizabeth M. King. (Pocket American and English Classics.) The Macmillan Co., New York. 4×53⁄4 in. 202 pages. 25c. Reminiscences of the Civil War. By General John B. Gordon. With Portraits. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 5%×8%1⁄2 in. 474 pages $1.50. A new and moderate-priced edition of one of the very best of Southern books of reminiscence, written by a famous Southern soldier. Revival (The): A Symposium. By Bishop William F. McDowell, Rev. Edward B. Craw- net. Seven addresses before the Chicago Preachers' Meeting, designed to rouse interest in promoting a religious revival, are included in this volume. They are excellent as far as they go, but the collection as a whole lacks completeness and proportion. A statement in one of these addresses touches a side of the subject now of such pressing importance as to demand far more emphasis than it Children (The). By Emilie Poulsson. Illustrated. Miss Poulsson here, as in her famous " Finger Russia from Within. By Alexander Ular. Sir George Tressady. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. The Macmillan Co., New York. 5×7 in. 352 pages. $1. A new edition of one of Mrs. Ward's wellknown novels, Songs and Lyrics from the Dramatists, 1533-1777. Pocket Classics. (Caxton Thin Paper Edition.) Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 32x64 in. 243 pages. $1.25, net. Southern Girl in '61 (A). By Mrs. D. Giraud Wright. Illustrated. Doubleday, Page & Co, New York. 6x9% in. 258 pages. $2.75, net. Another in the series of reminiscent volumes dealing with the social side of Secession times which seems to have been inaugurated with the appearance in 1903 of Myrta Lockett Avary's "A Virginia Girl in the Civil War." The present contribution is of special significance as coming from the pen of the daughter of Louis T. Wigfall, of Texas, who was first United States Senator, then Confederate Senator, and who, during the earlier period of the war, stood in very close sympathy with President Jefferson Davis, and later had sharp differences with him. In dealing with these differences and in setting forth the division of mind in Government circles concerning General Joseph E. Johnston -matters that have been occasion of much discussion among students of Secession War history-the book has a substantial interest that only the author could supply, and some of the correspondence introduced has the value of historical documents. The narrative begins in Texas, continues through the author's child-life in Washington; and, during her school days in Boston, carries the thread of the public story rather than her own, reproducing letters showing progress of events in the South. She reached Richmond just after the Battle of Manassas; her record ends with Kirby Smith's surrender; prominent men and women are introduced in incident, anecdote, and by portrait. Story of Edinburgh (The). By Oliphant Smeaton. Illustrated. The Macmillan Co., New York. 4×7 in. 415 pages. $2. As with other volumes in the Mediævai Towns Series, this volume packs an amazing amount of information in small compass, and serves it up, moreover, with commendable freedom from dryness and encyclopædic method. Perhaps the present book has a little more of archæological detail and a little less of dramatic story than some of the other books in the series, but Edinburgh has in its past too many thrilling episodes to make it possible not to hear the clatter of swords and the rallying of factions throughout this record. The pen-and-ink drawings are admirable, as might be assured by the fact that many of them are Herbert Railton's. The book is based on a larger volume published by Mr. Smeaton last year, but has been made an independent work, contains new matter, and in large part has been rewritten as well as condensed. It would be hard to find else where in one volume of moderate compass so satisfactory a book about "The Queen of the North." Study of John D. Rockefeller (A). By Mar cus M. Brown. Published by the Author, Cleveland, Ohio 5x7 in. 150 pages. Tales of the Road. By Charles N. Crewdson. Illustrated. Thompson & Thomas, Chicago. 5x7% in. 352 pages. $1.50. The author's object is not merely to tell amusing anecdotes about his own and others' experiences as commercial travelers, or drummers-to use the less elaborate and more common appellation—but to give some practical hints and suggestions to young men just beginning to "go on the road;" yet the book is, after all, chiefly a collection of anecdotes. Some of these are amusing; others are rather tedious. It cannot be said that the book takes a high place as regards style or expression, but that was hardly to be expected. Perhaps it may most aptly be compared with such a book as "Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to his Son," but it lacks the originality and shrewd homely humor which made that book so deservedly popular. Trident and the Net (The). By the Author of The Martyrdom of an Empress." Illustrated. Harper & Bros., New York. 5%×8% in. 550 pages. $1.50, net. It is not surprising that the author of "The Martyrdom of an Empress" should produce a novel. The material used in this bit of fiction is the same as that served in her other books. Opening with a graphic picture of Brittany, the background for two daring children, the son and daughter of a widowed Marquise, the scene changes to America, and closes in the sordid gloom of lodgings in New York. Loïc, the heir, of wonderful beauty and spirit, is ruined by circumstances and the evil management of his capricious mother. The profusion of sumptuous table furniture and glorious millinery is as kaleidoscopic as one always expects from this fluent writer. Upton Letters (The). G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 5X7%1⁄2 in. 335 pages. $1.25, net. Written by one who uses only his initials to a friend who is designated by the Christian name alone, these letters depend solely upon their intrinsic merit. This is unquestionably high. Without literary affectation, the style is that of a literary man. It is easy to believe that the writer, as he acknowledges, loves to write. Yet he is never garrulous. He strolls with his pen. He is introspective in a healthy way. Being a master in an English school, he writes much about boys-about the way they are taught and mistaught, about their traits, their ambitions, their sports, and their teachers. He says many a quotable thing; for instance, "I have a theory that in education it is better to encourage aptitudes than merely to correct deficiencies." Again, "I don't like vice in any shape, but I equally dislike a person who has a preference for manly vices over sentimental ones." Few essays are better than these letters; few books on education are more full of suggestion than the reflections of this English schoolmaster; and few journals draw a more credible portrait of a human mind that is worth knowing than these friendly confessions of a cultivated man. The end of the book is almost dramatic. Vale of Tempe (The). By Madison J. Village Sermons. By the Late F. J. A. Hort, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D. The Macmillan Co., New Dr. Hort was not only a distinguished scholar, the joint editor with Dr. Westcott of the Greek text followed in the Revised Version of the New Testament, but also a man of noble Christian character. In reading these Sermons one may be disposed to think that the personality of the preacher formed a supplementary part of his message, which, apart from that, is less impressive when read than when spoken. Those who adopt the late Professor Shedd's definition of a sermon as "a sacred oration" will be inclined to class these excellent discourses as homilies. Vortex (The). By Thomas McKean. The J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia. 5x8 in. 324 pages. $1.50. The characters represented here as being swept into a vortex of disaster were hardly worth saving. The story is weak and poorly written, annoyingly commonplace in expression, and quite unnecessary. When Grandmamma Was Fourteen. By Marion Harland. Illustrated. The Lothrop Pub lishing Co., Boston. 5x7 in. 399 pages. $1.25. As a picture of life in ante-bellum Richmond the faithfulness and interest of this story would have to be pronounced upon by "Grandmamma's" contemporaries. As a story for school-girls it may be said to have a distinct mission in exposing the perils and unwisdom of the intense friendships to which, as a class, school-girls are disposed; and also in placing before their eyes in its true light the indelicacy of clandestine love-affairs. Winning His Degree. By Everett T. Tom linson. Illustrated. The Griffith & Rowland Press, Philadelphia. 5x8 in. 312 pages. $1, net. (Postpaid, $1.10.) Young England: An Illustrated Magazine for Boys Throughout the English-Speaking World. Twenty-sixth Annual Vol., 1964-5. 57 Ludgate Hill, London, England. 7%×11 in. 484 pages. [Dr. Algernon S. Crapsey's article with the above title (The Outlook, September 2, 1905) has elicited a number of replies, mostly from clergymen of the Episcopal Church. We give here that one of these replies which contains the most salient points, with Mr. Crapsey's response. An editorial on this subject will be found on another page. Here the discussion of this question in our pages must for the present stop.-THE EDITORS.] SOME QUESTIONS FOR DR. My dear Dr. Crapsey: I have read with close attention, and more than usual interest, your communication under the head of "Honor Among Clergymen," in The Outlook of September 2. Such an appeal to public sentiment allows, of course, if it does not invite, a similarly public answer. I trust that the fact of my being a clergyman of the same religious body as yourself, not to speak of the acquaintance which it has been my privilege to have with you in the past, or of the mutual respect which I am sure exists between us, will seem to you to justify an attempt at one such answer. But the thoughts which your article awakens in my mind naturally shape themselves into questions; and these questions I will venture now to address to you, without, however, at all expecting that they will elicit a categorical reply. 1. Do you mean to be understood as holding that "the two commandments of the law"" the Lord's Prayer" and "the five laws of righteousness as we find them written in the Sermon on the Mount "-constitute all" the basic truths of Christianity" that have "been given to us by Jesus Christ"? 2. The above-named teachings of Jesus Christ relate solely to matters of duty; are there not other teachings of Jesus Christ just as "basic," just as authoritative, just as binding, which relate to experience, and others still which relate to abstract truth? 3. In other words, do the above ethical teachings comprise all of the "foundation" laid by Jesus Christ? 4. Do you regard it as possible that any of the teachings of Jesus Christ with regard to the "fundamentals" of religious truth and life could be found to be untrue? 5. You and I are ministers of a particular religious body called the Protestant Episcopal Church; are we or are we not bound by the provisions and directions of that body respecting its ministers? 6. Whatever may be the liberties and rights of the members of that body in their private and individual capacity, is there no distinction to be made between their rights and privileges as such, and the obligations and responsibilities of those who are formally selected and set apart as its authorized officers? 7. When you and I were solemnly set apart to the office and work of the deacon in the Church of God, we declared our unfeigned belief of "all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament," and were ordained under the condition-among others-of that declaration; if now the time should come that either of us should disbelieve any of the canonical Scriptures aforesaid, in the sense implied in our ordination vow, would or would not the validity of that ordination be impaired? 8. In that act of ordination we promised to "reverently obey" our Bishop and other chief ministers, who, "according to the canons of the Church, might have the charge and government over us;" if the time should come when we could no longer conscientiously render such reverent obedience, could we longer honorably retain the ministry committed to us by the laying on of their hands? 9. From whom, in our ordination as deacons, did we tacitly acknowledge receipt of authority to execute that office, to "read the Gospel," and "to preach"? 10. When, after a year or more of trial and probation, we were, with still greater solemnity, ordained to the priesthood, and declared our heartfelt conviction that we were called to that office and ministry "according to the canons of this Church," was or was not that stipulation binding, so that if the time ever came when we felt that the canons of the Church required more of us than we could honestly and conscientiously render, the validity of our commission would be impaired? 11. In that solemn ordination to the priesthood did we promise and engage to give our diligence "always so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of Christ. . . as this Church hath received the same;" and if so, does the spirit and nature of the obligation then and there and thus entered into allow us thereafter to administer the said word and sacraments not as this Church has received the same, but according to our own private convictions, gained, as we may believe, by new and clearer light? 12. In other words, has any clergyman who has received ordination to the priesthood by the hands of a bishop, according to the form in the Book of Common Prayer, as a minister of the Episcopal Church, the right, either legal or moral or in any other wise, to substitute his own private interpretation of doctrine, sacrament, discipline, or other provision of the Church whose minister he has consented to be, for the formal and pronounced interpretation thereof set forth by the Church itself? 13. Would it or would it not be more honorable in a clergyman who has come to feel, under new and clearer light and leading, as he believes, that he can no longer exercise the ministry of the Church for which the Church has commissioned him, according to the mind and will of such Church as ex pressed in its symbols and liturgy, its rubrics and canons, to lay down that ministry as a sacred trust which he can no longer faithfully and truthfully fulfill? 14. Does a minister's ministry depend upon the authorization of the particular religious body which for the time being he may represent, so that if he surrenders that authorization he is cut off forever after from the exercise of all or any ministry of the truth of God as he himself may see and receive the same? 15. In that for which Dr. Temple, afterward the Archbishop of Canterbury, was "violently assailed as disloyal," did he identify "the two commandments of the law, the Lord's Prayer and the five laws of righteousness as we find them in the Sermon on the Mount," as alone and exclusively constituting the "basic truths of Christianity," at the same time denying and repudiating certain equally great spiritual truths of religion and certain equally great facts and realities of Christian experience as likewise included in the fundamental teachings of our Lord? In other words, did the late Archbishop of Canterbury ever reject the fundamental articles of the Christian faith as contained in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds or any one of them? 16. When our Lord said to his infant Church gathered around him at the last, "Go, teach all nations, . . . teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you," did he or did he not give to that Church a "teaching power ”—that is, a "teaching" authority? 17. Is the clergyman, by virtue of being a clergyman, superior to the Church by which he is commissioned; or is the Church which commissions the clergyman superior to the clergyman? 18. Do you make any distinction between the "clergyman" and the "prophet," and are not the rights and obligations of the "clergyman" prescribed and defined in a way that those of the "prophet" are not? 19. If a" clergyman" ceases to be a clergy man, is there anything to prevent his still being a "prophet," provided he really have anything to say for God to men? 20. When you and I can no longer truthfuily, conscientiously, and faithfully fulfill our vows as "clergymen" of the Church whose ordained and authorized ministers we are, ministering the word of God and the sacraments as the Church has received the same, would it not be more honorable in us, not to say more effectual, to decline longer to serve as her accredited ministers and to seek what we believed to be the larger liberty and freer sphere of "prophets" of the Most High? Faithfully yours, EDWARD ABBOTT. Cambridge, Massachusetts DR. CRAPSEY'S REPLY My dear Dr. Abbott: I can think of nothing that would be more helpful to the cause of truth and righteouscussion of the questions raised by my article ness than a full, free, and dispassionate dission is, however, not possible in the space as expressed in your letter. Such a discu allowed us. I assure you that I am not unconscious of the moral perplexities involved in the position assumed in my article; but these are not of my creating, they inhere in the conditions out of which this contention arises. You and I represent two principles that have been in conflict since the beginning of creation. These two conflicting forces are life and organism. Life creates organism. Organism limits life. Life is eternal. Organism is temporal. When organism no longer yields itself to the uses of life, life forsakes it and the organism perishes. You and my various critics are pleading the cause of organism, I am pleading the cause of life. In the Church the personal soul is the source of all life. Ecclesiastical bodies with their ministries, scriptures, and creeds are simply the organism through which the life of the personal soul expresses itself. Without the personal soul the Church would have no existence. There is not a truth to-day in the world which did not have its origin in the soul or mind of some one man. Man is the divine organism through which and to which all truth comes. Man has intelligence to discern the true from the false; he has conscience to judge between the righteous and the wicked; he has affections which lead him to love that which seems to him to be lovely, he has desires which are to him motives of action. His intelligence, his conscience, his desires, his affections, are living forces subject to the laws of life. Now, the Church is simply a society or association of men organized for a special purpose; the Church life is nothing else than the sum of the life of the men who compose it. The ministry of the Church is made up of men who differ from other men not in nature, but in function; that one man should be a clergyman and another a layman is a mere matter of convenience and efficiency. minister, and did not surrender any of the The clergyman was a man before he was a essential rights of his manhood in becoming a minister. With these principles in mind, and looking upon your questions as the will, by way of reply, give a few headings of headings of a brief for the organization, I a brief for the man, and leave the public to which we both appeal to decide between us. If the man owes duties to the Church, the Church owes duties to the man. If the Church asks the man to devote his life to its service, the Church must respect the laws of it starves his body, cramps his intelligence, that life; the Church sins against the man if deadens his feelings, and depraves his con science. When the Church intrusts a man with the teaching office, it must take into account the personal equation, and expect him to bring out of his treasures things new and old. If the Church wants simply verbal repetition, it does not require men in its teaching ministry; it can make use of the phonograph. Man is subject to the law of growth. He increases in wisdom as well as in stature; the Church has just the same right to require a man to have the same intellectual conceptions and spiritual aspirations at eighteen and eighty that it would to require him to have the same weight and measure. The race as well as the individual is governed by the law of development; a man of the twentieth century cannot, if he would, think exactly with the man of the fourth century. The creed or opinion of one age cannot, in the nature of things, be the creed or opinion of a later age. The conception of the universe which is implied in the catholic creeds, with its three divisions of hades, the earth, and heaven, with its God sitting on a throne and coming down to visit the earth, has utterly perished. The creeds can no longer be professed in their original meaning; they must be changed either in terms or by interpretation. The Church has no authority in matters of astronomy, geology, biology, or history. All statements in scriptures or creeds which come within the province of these sciences must be subject to scientific investigation and judgment. The Church does not exist for the purpose of teaching philosophy or metaphysics, but to manifest the life of God in the world. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bound." The Church may not call upon its clergy to cry up its own doctrines and cry down the doctrines of other religious bodies. It must apply the same critical principles to the life of Christ which it uses to judge the life of Buddha. The clergyman is not the hired man of the ecclesiastical organization; he is the servant of God and the people. If the Church cannot assimilate personality, the Church dies. The various churches to-day are looking death in the face. They cannot assimilate living souls with living thoughts. As a sign of the times, I will close with an extract from a letter by a man of world-wide fame in his line of life-which is that of a moral leader. This letter is written to a friend who is a man of deep spiritual instincts, and is as follows: "I think I wrote you about young E―, graduate of College, who goes back there next week to some educational employment, whom I was endeavoring to dissuade from entering the ministry as a life vocation. Well, he was in here yesterday, and tells me he has decided to turn aside at least temporarily from the pursuit of philosophy and theology and to devote himself to the science of economics, which I had urged him to do. I hope I have been instrumental in diverting a brilliant young man from an effete profession to a useful and effective career." Which is greater, the creed or the man? And will you, to save the creed, lose the man? And here I rest my case. ALGERNON S. CRAPSEY. The Geneva Conference If it was true, as Professor Chantre said in welcoming the Conference, that Calvin scattered the representatives of free thought to the four winds of heaven, they came flock. ing back this August like the gulls of Lake Leman to the third "International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers." From ten different lands and from more than a score of religious organizations they gathered in the aula of the University, where reports from the liberal Protestant churches of Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, and the United States were heard, in addition to which Madame Loyson spoke in behalf of the faith of Mohammed, and Mr. Sen, of Calcutta, for the Brahmo-Somaj. A brilliant rabbi of France expounded Jewish liberality. The eloquent preacher, Père Hyacinthe, whose wonderful oratory has lost none of its fire, though more than eighty summers have passed over his head, was one of the strongest advocates of the spirit of unity and love. The significant thing about this gathering was the contrast between the present and the past; that Dr. M. J. Savage, for instance, should have stood in Calvin's pulpit, in the great, dim cathedral, and preached. On the walls of the cathedral is a tablet to the memory of the "four pious foreigners" who helped to bring about the Protestant Reformation. This time the foreigners were more than four hundred strong, all working for the reformation of the world. Another interesting feature of the week was the hour spent at the expiatory monument to Servetus erected by "sons of Calvin." The British and American Unitarians laid a wreath of ivy and palms at its foot, and short addresses were made by Miss Taggart, of England, and the Rev. S. J. Barrows, of New York. The latter called special attention to the fact that that monument commemorated not only the moral victory of the martyr, but that it was at the same time a tribute to the brave men who had protested against putting Servetus to death-men like Castellio, Zirkenden, and the others though Geneva has not yet reared stones to their memory. Mr. Edwin D.Mead recalled the influence Calvin had exerted on the politics of the world, and his sincerity and courage were held up as models that might well be imitated. The tone of the whole meeting was optimistic, even though certain speakers felt that religious growth was slow. The one point on which all united was that religion is not a matter of belief in creeds, but of conscience and life. ISABEL C. BARROWS. Geneva, Switzerland. |