the consciences and sentiments as well as the intellect of modern readers. It received from thousands of readers the response, "That is true," and gave to social life a new impulse in a new and better direction.

DELAYED JUSTICE

Among famous murder cases there are few which have such elements of suspense and dramatic coincidence as that which is known as the Stielow case. A German by the name of Stielow, illiterate and not over-intelligent, living in New York State, was put through the police inquisition known as the third degree after the murder of a neighbor, was told to put his mark as a sign of his signature on a paper which he could not read, which was his alleged confession, and was then convicted of the crime. He has now, after a narrow escape from the electric chair, been pardoned by Governor Whitman.

It is morally certain that the man had nothing to do with the murder. Indeed, another man had voluntarily confessed, though he afterwards repudiated his confession.

The story of the fight on behalf of this innocent, illiterate man is one of the modern parallels to the parable of the Good Samaritan. A number of people worked hard and long to secure his release. Early steps to prove his innocence were taken by Mrs. Grace Humiston. Philanthropic organizations helped in the effort to get at the facts. At one time Stielow was within forty minutes of death by execution when he was reprieved through the intercession of the late Mrs. Inez Boissevain with a judge. Later, after Stielow's punishment was commuted to imprisonment for life, the New York "World" took up his case and got evidence which so impressed the Governor that Stielow was ultimately pardoned.

From such a case the public has much to learn, but there are two lessons which it has especially impressed upon those who have followed it. One is the cruelty and injustice of the third degree, and the necessity for substituting for it a carefully guarded inquiry by a judicial officer. The other is the importance of work done by people whose object is to search not for guilt but for innocence, and the consequent value of supplementing the office of Public Prosecutor with the office of Public Defender. If there had been assigned to the Stielow case a public defender, such as exists in California, the evidence which private individuals and a newspaper were fortunate enough to discover would have been secured in an orderly way, and its discovery would not have had to depend upon the good will and self-sacrifice of those who chanced to become interested in the case, but would have been the function of a public officer.

THE DAY FOR PRAYER

In designating Thursday, May 30, as a day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting, President Wilson pointed out with patriotic reverence that it is "a duty peculiarly incumbent in a time of war humbly and devoutly to acknowledge our depend ence of Almighty God and to implore his aid and protection." The observance of the day should, the President declared, include "the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God for the safety and welfare of our cause, his blessings on our arms, and a speedy restoration of an honorable and lasting peace to the nations of the earth.”

In well-chosen and feeling words the President urged that the day already freighted with sacred and stimulating memories should be in homes and in churches devoted to prayer to the Almighty to forgive our shortcomings as a people, to accept and defend that which is just and right, and also to beseeching Him "that He will give victory to our armies as they fight for freedom, wisdom to those who take counsel on our behalf in these days of dark struggle and perplexity, and steadfastness to our people to make sacrifice to the utmost in support of what is just and true, bringing us at last the peace in which men's hearts can be at rest because it is founded upon mercy, justice, and good will."

In presenting this proclamation to its readers, Hearst's New York" American " deliberately omitted all the sentences which we have included in quotation marks above, with the exception of the clause beginning" bringing us at last the peace." What the motive was we leave to our readers to decide. The clear inti

mation of Mr. Hearst's version of the President's ringing procla mation is that it is a call to peace instead of a call to victory.

POLITICAL PARTISANSHIP AND THE WAR

T

HERE has never been a war fought since the days of the Cæsars to the present time in which political partisanship has not played a sinister part. This was true in our Civil War, perhaps more on the Northern than on the Southern side. It was certainly true in the American Revolution, when Washington was hampered most fearfully by political opponents in Congress. It has been true in France, Great Britain, and in this country during the present war. But national unity has almost completely been substituted for political parties in France, and the recent Parliamentary indorsement of Lloyd George shows partisanship in Great Britain. how largely national unity has taken the place of factional

There are many signs that the same process of elimination of narrow partisanship is going on in this country. ExSenator Root in an eloquent speech at the recent meeting of the National Security League at the Metropolitan Opera-House in New York City said that, while he had always been a Repub lican, in the Congressional election this fall he should pay absoSocialist, a Prohibitionist, a Progressive, a Republican, or a lutely no attention to the question whether a candidate was a Democrat, but only to the question whether that candidate was a loyal, win-the-war American. This sentiment was greeted with overwhelming applause. We believe that this is the sentiment of patriotic Democrats.

There are unfortunately, however, indications that there are some members of the Government in high authority in Washington who do not take so broad a view. They appear to be more interested in the slogan, "Make the United States safe for the Democratic party," than in President Wilson's splendid motto, "Make the world safe for democracy.

Postmaster-General, Mr. Burleson, has publicly put himself in In a recent controversy with Colonel Theodore Roosevelt the a position in which he has been adjudged too partisan even by some of his own party newspapers, notably the New York "Times" and the New York "Evening Post." Mr. Roosevelt in an editorial in the Kansas City "Star" had said:

During the last year the Administration has shown itself anxious to punish the newspapers which uphold the war but which tell the truth about the Administration's failure to conduct the war efficiently, whereas it has failed to proceed against various powerful newspapers which opposed the war or attacked our allies, or directly or indirectly aided Germany against this country, as these papers upheld the Administration and defended the inefficiency.

as

Whereupon Postmaster-General Burleson issued a public statement and challenged Mr. Roosevelt to give the facts, saying that Mr. Roosevelt's criticism was manifestly aimed at the postal service. Mr. Burleson asserted that, if the charges are true, "I am utterly unworthy of trust and should be scourged. from office in disgrace." Mr. Roosevelt then made public a statement giving facts and names. He specifically mentioned the "Metropolitan Magazine" and "Collier's Weekly having been the objects of irritating attacks by the Government. The Outlook has already reported the fact that the "Metropolitan Magazine" was held up in the New York Post Office by the postal authorities presumably because of an article which it contained criticising the President, although the "Metropolitan Magazine" has been a loyal winthe-war paper from the very beginning. To this instance Mr. Roosevelt adds a still more significant one, namely, that a special agent of the Department of Justice called on an advertiser of the "Metropolitan Magazine" and intimated to him that he had better discontinue advertising in that periodical. Mr. Roosevelt also points out, with quotations, that the Hearst newspapers have been full, not only before our entry into the war, but since our entry into the war, of editorial passages which are distinctly unpatriotic and disloyal, and which, if they had been published in English or French papers, would undoubtedly have been treated as seditious and treasonable. Yet

only two weeks ago Mr. Burleson himself telegraphed to Mr. Arthur Brisbane, the chief editorial writer in the employ of Mr. Hearst, congratulating him on the acquisition by Mr. Hearst of a new newspaper in Chicago, and commending him, and inferentially Mr. Hearst, for the splendid patriotic work which had been done in the Hearst newspapers for the country.

To these detailed statements the only reply Mr. Burleson has made is that Mr. Roosevelt has obscured the issue. Mr. Roosevelt promises that he will give further details in a letter to some United States Senator so that the matter can be brought up in Congress.

We think Mr. Burleson's judgment pronounced upon himself, that if the charges are true he ought to "be scourged from office in disgrace," is too severe, but it is certainly true that Mr. Burleson owes the country some better explanation of the undisputed facts than he has yet given. In the meantime it is interesting to note that despatches from Washington to the daily papers indicate a growing restlessness in the Senate with regard to the administration of the Post Office Department, and that in the city of Poughkeepsie, New York, the other day copies of Mr. Hearst's "New York American " were burned in a public square by a group of citizens to show their indignation at the fact that that newspaper omitted from the President's proclamation, making Memorial Day a day of public humiliation and prayer, the passage which refers specifically to the hope for victory by our armies in the field.

A TRIUMPH FOR ALLIED UNITY Ordinarily it is wise for public opinion in one country to refrain from expressing itself vigorously concerning political issues in another. Americans with very pronounced views as to the relative merits of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hughes in the last Presidential campaign would not have welcomed a vigorous expression of choice between them by English public organs. There are occasions, however, when the political issue within a country is a phase of an international issue. Such was the case in the crisis in England which was brought to a close by a triumphant vote in the House of Commons sustaining the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. That vote was welcome to every American who saw the danger which threatened the Allied cause. We have no doubt it was welcome in France and Italy. The issue before the House of Commons was the issue of unity among the Allies. Lloyd George stood for unity. His opponents stood for policies which would have weakened the bonds between the Allies. If Lloyd George had gone down to defeat, his opponents would either have had to take his place and responsibility or would have had to appeal to the country to sustain them. In either case there would have been disturbance and disruption that would certainly have been felt by the armies at the front.

The particular occasion for this threat to Allied unity had its source in a military faction. We must remember that England's army is now practically as new an army as ours. Its spirit is totally different from the spirit of the old military establishment of England. And the old military establishment of England cannot understand this war. Traditionalists in military affairs, like traditionalists in religious affairs or in legal affairs, are terribly shocked when they find that the world has broken away from them. The old English army was built up on an inexorable caste system. It had splendid traditions; but it was altogether incompetent in numbers and spirit to deal with a world war. Of course the higher officers in that army became expert in military affairs. General Maurice is a type of these experienced English officers. It was his business to tell reporters for the daily press about military movements and give information such as the War Office thought it safe to make public; and he impressed the reporters with his knowledge of military matters, and was described by one correspondent as having the manner and, in every respect except his uniform, the appearance of a Prussian general. To such men it is inconceivable that there should be democracy in an army, and it is equally inconceivable that anybody but a Briton should issue commands to British soldiers. It is this old element in the British army that has withstood the demand on the part of the

Allied peoples for unity in this war. The proposal that all the armies of the Allies should be made into one army, all the fronts should be treated as one front, all the wars that are being fought against Germany should be welded into one war, and all be placed under a common Allied Commander-in-Chief, outraged the sensibilities of these military traditionalists. It was natural, therefore, that General Maurice should want to discredit such a proposal. Whether purposely or not, he yielded to the impulse to do this when, in likening the present battle at the front to Waterloo, he put General Foch (the Commander-in-Chief of the whole Allied armies, it is to be remembered) into the rôle of Blücher, and then asked his hearers, who were newspaper reporters, what had become of him. This was worse than an offense against Great Britain's ally, France. It was sedition in the widest sense, for it tended to breed rebellion against the cause of the unity of the Allies.

So, when he was removed from his office to a place where he could not commit such an indiscretion, he accepted his removal as a challenge, wrote and published a letter charging the Prime Minister with a misstatement of fact on military matters, and thus tried to unseat the Government which had stood for unity. Whether Maurice was the instigator of this crisis, or was simply the tool of others who wished to instigate it, he was in fact the center of the trouble-makers. Around him as a nucleus gathered other elements who for one reason or another would like to see Lloyd George and his Cabinet displaced. Most prominent among these was the former Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. It was his policy of Wait-and-See which retarded England's preparations, which doomed one English enterprise after another to the verdict of "too late." He is temperamentally disinclined to any policy of vigor. There are people in America who declare that if he came to power in England he would make England's course conform more closely than Lloyd George has done to the ideals set forth by President Wilson; but this we believe is to misinterpret the American President and both English leaders. Mr. Asquith's association with the Maurice element in the army shows how far Mr. Asquith is from the democratic ideas that are exemplified by the American Army under President Wilson; and Mr. Asquith's association with those opposed to unified command shows how far he is removed from the spirit of President Wilson, whose influence was a decisive factor in putting the armies of the Allies under one commander.

Another element that gathered about General Maurice was that represented by the London "Daily News "-the semipacifist element.

Still another element somewhat affiliated with this is represented by Arthur Henderson. There are, we suppose, no real Bolsheviki of any influence in England, but those who think as Mr. Henderson does have Bolshevist inclinations. They are capable of imagining it possible to sit at a conference table with a Hun. Among such there are even men who have lost sons in the war, but that does not prevent them from proposing a parley with men who consider the cowardly murder of little children and the raping of women as legitimate means to be used in getting what they want. And people of this kind of thinking rallied around the military traditionalist, General Maurice.

Another element of considerable proportions which took this occasion to try to unseat Lloyd George was represented by Lord Lansdowne. He is a Tory of the Tories. To compare him and his kind, as some have done, with the German Junkers is altogether unfair, for even the most aristocratic of Tories in England have convictions concerning civil rights that a German dares not even entertain. The aristocrats of England are the heirs of Magna Charta. They believe in common civil rights, but they see in the present war the breaking loose of forces which threaten the loss of vast privileges which they not only prize for themselves but regard as a part of civilization. Such men as these want to see the war end before it overflows too far into aristocratic preserves.

So it happened that Lloyd George had confronting him various elements which for various reasons opposed a too vigorous prosecution of the war and feared a policy which too closely bound together England with France, Italy, and America in the fight against the Hun. And that is just the situation that Lloyd George welcomed. Before the decision was rendered there were many in America who were apprehensive; but not

so was Lloyd George himself. He finds such situations to his liking. He met it like a warrior, and he won.

The vote by which Lloyd George was vindicated was a vote for a war to the death and a vote for Allied unity.

PRO-GERMANISM IN THE ORIENT To the Editors of The Outlook:

I read the article "Japan, Germany, Russia, and the Allies," by Gregory Mason, of The Outlook's staff, in your issue of May 1, 1918, with much interest. It is of considerable moment to have an expression of the opinion of so eminent a statesman as Count Terauchi, Prime Minister of Japan, on international affairs during this world crisis.

As a regular subscriber to The Outlook, a Canadian, and therefore a British subject, I take exception to the publication by you of portions of Mr. Mason's correspondence to which I will refer. I submit that certain of his remarks are not well considered, and should have been " censored " by your editorial staff. Mr. Mason's article is "An Authorized Interview with Count Terauchi." At the conclusion of the interview he takes occasion

to express the opinion of, shall I say, "the man on the street," and presents to your readers such views as the following:

"This is an inclination toward the view that the value of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance has been nearly exhausted by Japan, and that a more valuable ally for the Island Empire will be Germany or America."

Why, at this juncture, should he give expression to that phase of Japanese opinion on such a vital matter? It strikes me as a fling at our Empire. He continues:

"For her own peculiar purposes Japan is inclining to consider both Germany and America greater Powers than Great Britain." Has Mr. Mason forgotten that through the might of Great Britain's naval power his country's coasts have been rendered inviolate from Hun invasion since the outbreak of the war?

In further elaboration of Japanese opinion toward events which have occurred, or which may eventuate, he writes:

"The Japanese seem to feel that England will be so exhausted by the war and so engrossed with making good the economic drain on her own resources that she will have little support to lend to Japan's programme in the Far East. There is also an opinion that the British Empire will break into a flexible group of nations after the war."

I can only express my keen regret and disappointment that The Outlook should permit such claptrap as the above-even though it be the opinion held by some irresponsible ignoramus of the Orient-to be given place in Mr. Gregory Mason's letter. Not content with forecasting the financial ruin and disintegration of the British Empire, Mr. Mason's Japanese informants give him to understand that "the war will probably leave the Germans in a position of great strength."

Such an opinion, I care not from what source it emanated, is unworthy of publication by any pro-Ally journal of repute.

Does it not occur to you that in publishing this expression of Japanese opinion Mr. Mason is, perhaps unconsciously, expressing his own doubts of the ability of the United States and her allies to win the war? and that he presupposes Germany's triumph?

Obviously, if England after the war is so exhausted and Germany so strong, the Entente Allies, of which his country is one, will have been vanquished. Does Mr. Mason believe for one moment that we will be vanquished? Then why does he publish in his letter such vaporings as those with which he closes his interview with Count Terauchi?

A word in conclusion. Without question, The Outlook is one of the most ably edited publications on this continent. It is owned and controlled by Americans, whose Nation is, happily, one of the Entente Allies. For this reason I submit that those portions of Mr. Gregory Mason's letter from which I have quoted are not merely ridiculous, they are mischievous and misleading, and therefore calculated to give comfort to the enemy (of whom you doubtless have many readers), and they should have been suppressed. Not only so, but they express sentiments which are gratuitously insulting to the British Empire as well as to your many British readers.

Personally, I think that an experienced journalist such as Mr. Gregory Mason undoubtedly is should have been more guarded than to embody in his article such sentiments as I have referred to, even if they were those of the Prime Minister of Japan-which they are not. And I am also of the opinion that The Outlook should have had better journalistic instincts than to publish them. You are free to publish this letter in The Outlook if you

1 Mr. Mason is referring to what he calls "an unmistakable and highly interesting drift in Japanese official opinion to-day."-THE EDITORS.

choose, and I would be glad if you would give an expression of
The Outlook's opinion on the matter to which I have referred.
St. John, N. B.
G. W. PARKER.

Mr. Mason is a careful observer and a trustworthy reporter. Like other careful observers and trustworthy reporters, he may be mistaken, but in all his correspondence his aim is, not to report his own opinion or to further his own views, but to give to the public his impressions and interpretation of events for their information and guidance. We do not believe, and we see no reason to think that Mr. Mason believes, that the value of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance has been nearly exhausted by Japan, or that a more valuable ally for the Japanese Empire will be Germany or America, or that Germany and America will come out of this war greater Powers than Great Britain, or that Great Britain will be exhausted by the war and at its close will break into up a flexible of nations. group But there is no reason to doubt that he has come across in Japan those who hold such opinions, and in giving our readers the information that such opinions exist he has rendered both the American and the English public a valuable service.

Since there are pro-Germans in the United States and in Great Britain, and it is said even in Belgium, it is not unbelievable that there are pro-Germans in Japan. This world war is not merely between many democratic nations and four autocratic and semi-barbaric nations-Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. It is a phase of that world conflict between the physical and the spiritual which has been waged in individual man and between groups of men ever since man began to emerge from the brute creation; the conflict which in Old Testament times was waged between the Hebrew commonwealth, an essentially democratic organization, and the pagan nations which surrounded it, all of which were autocratic; the conflict between those who believe only in military power and those who believe in the supremacy of moral forces. ProGermanism is belief in the supremacy of military power. Pacifism is the spirit of cringing to military power. There are in every country-in America, in Great Britain, in France, in Belgium, in Italy, and undoubtedly in Japan-men who believe in the supremacy of military power, and men who either lack faith in the value of moral force or a courage of faith sufficient to enlist in a war against military power. It is very desirable that we who believe in moral power should recognize the facts. We shall not win this war by serenely assuming that it is inconceivable that terrorism can vanquish patriotism. It was because the majority in England, in France, in Belgium, in America, thought it inconceivable that Germany would initiate such a war that they were unprepared to meet the first assault. It was because the United States thought it inconceivable that the Germans would not regard appeals to their professed friendship and their moral sense that the war was allowed to assume such proportions before we entered it. If the Allies are defeated in the war, it will be because the Allied peoples allowed themselves to be persuaded that it is inconceivable that the Huns should triumph. Pacifism will not win peace. Russia has proved that. Pietism will not win justice. God will not fight our battles for us. He will give us an opportunity to fight our battles for ourselves. That is as it should be. For no nation is truly righteous unless its people are willing to fight for righteousness. "The Lord shall fight for you," said Moses to Israel at the Red Sea; and the Lord answered, "Why criest thou unto me? speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." The sooner we understand that the foes of human brotherhood are to be found in every land and that .sometimes the most dangerous foes are those who are loudest in their professions of brotherhood, the sooner we shall win the world's war against the world's enemies. The most dangerous enemies are those who are in our camps.

That we may not leave any chance for misunderstanding, we add that we do not believe, and we see no reason to think that Mr. Mason believes, that the pro-Germanism which he has found in Japan dominates Japan, any more than the pacifism of Bryan and Stone and La Follette dominates the United States. But it is well that we should know that it exists, well that the press should smoke the pro-Germans out from their holes and compel them to fight in the open. We do not believe, and we see no reason to think that Mr. Mason believes, that the

war will probably leave the Germans in a position of great strength. On the contrary, we believe that it will not end until the Predatory Potsdam Gang is entirely destroyed and the way is open for the regeneration of Germany. We do not be lieve, and we see no reason to think that Mr. Mason believes, that England will be exhausted by the war and Great Britain will break into a feeble group of nations after the war. But that the feudal autocrats of Japan think so is very probable, as the feudal autocrats of Great Britain thought that the United States would be broken into two republics by the Civil War. In both cases the wish was father to the thought. The United States was cemented by the Civil War into an indissoluble union of independent States; and Great Britain, bound together by moral bonds which the pro-German can never comprehend, is being welded by this war into a stronger union of independent peoples, more than ever one because they have paid the price in blood and treasure for the freedom which makes them one.

IMMORTALITY AND A PERSONAL GOD Do you dread for yourself or for your children or your friends the skeptical spirit of the age? Then you must understand it. The two letters published on another page one on immortality, the other on a personal God-admirably illustrate that spirit. They are worthy of thoughtful study. For that skepticism is not an immoral skepticism. It is not that of persons who wish to cast off all fears of the future and all authority of God that they may live idle and vicious lives. It is not the skepticism of indifference. It is not that of persons who have no interest in the questions whether men create their own gods and are themselves only a higher type of animal. Both these phases of unbelief exist and always have existed. But the unbelief which is distinctly characteristic of the present age is one of courage and candor, an unbelief which dares face facts and will not accept traditions for demonstrations or pictures for realities. And the preacher, the teacher, the parent, must meet it with courage and candor or he will not meet it at all.

What do we mean by immortality?

What I mean is that I am more than the body which I inhabit.

The pains of the spirit and the pains of the body are characteristically different. Remorse and headache both follow a drunkard's bout; but the remorse and the headache have nothing

in common.

The pleasures of the spirit and the pleasures of the body are characteristically different. Some of the happiest persons I have ever known were chronic invalids.

The body is obedient to the calls made upon it by the spirit. The late Dr. William Thomson, a scientific authority on diseases of the brain, has told us that when a section of the brain fails to fulfill its function that function is often transferred to another section of the brain. Who makes the transfer? Napoleon said: "My mind is a chest of drawers. When I wish to deal with a subject, I shut all the drawers but the one in which that subject is to be found. When I am wearied, I shut all the drawers and go to sleep." Who opens and shuts those drawers of the mind?

There never was a time when faith in the powers and values of this spirit was as strong as it is to-day. My correspondent tells us that by exerting pressure on a certain part of the cranium its owner can be turned into a scoundrel. I have heard that before, though I have never come across a well-authenticated case in which it has been done. But what then? Release the pressure on the strings of a pianoforte and Paderewski can evolve nothing but discord from the instrument. But purely spiritual influences have in unnumbered instances revolutionized character without a surgical operation. What was it that transformed the character of the boys in the stories Mr. Chandler has recently told in the pages of The Outlook? To say nothing of churches at home and missionaries abroad, there are thousands of settlement workers-Christians, Jews, agnostics-who are proving their faith in the power of the spirit to transform character by their use of spiritual influences to illumine darkened lives and inspire dwarfed and paralyzed lives. To-day millions of young men-Belgian, French, Italian, English, American

are carrying their mortal bodies into experiences sure to be those of great discomfort, liable to be those of excruciating pains. And there are millions of fathers and mothers who are proud that they have sons who dare to carry their bodies to the torture chamber. The world has often witnessed a like faith in spiritual values; a like conviction that the spirit of honor, patriotism, humanity, piety, is worth dying for. But never has it witnessed that faith on so great a scale. And never before has been so terribly illustrated as Germany is illustrating in the present war the effect on character of a belief that the only values are material values, the only prosperity a material prosperity, and the only force a material force.

I am more than the body which I inhabit. What will become of me after the body decays I do not know; how long I shall survive its demolition I cannot tell; but the fact that it will be demolished does not afford the slightest indication that I shall be demolished with it. I can live the immortal life here, refusing to accept the unproved hypothesis of the materialist that the tenant dies because his house falls into ruin. Immortality is more than a future hope; it is a present fact. What the world wants of its preachers, parents, and teachers is not an attempt to burnish the fading pictures of a celestial city in another world, but an endeavor to strengthen faith in the spiritual values of life in the world in which we are now dwelling.

T. R. Glover, in his suggestive little volume, "The Jesus of History," says, "The first thing that Jesus had to do, as a teacher, was to induce men to rethink God," and he adds that it is a characteristic of Christianity that " we are still exploring God on the lines of Jesus Christ-rethinking God all the time, finding him out." This is the reason why thoughtful men to-day are rejecting the old ecclesiastical images of God and the old theological definitions of God. The dogmatist who says that it is wrong to rethink God and the agnostic who says that it is useless to endeavor to rethink God are equally unchristian.

A great many thoughtful men of our time think they do not believe in God, whereas they really do not believe in the definitions of God which they find in the churches. For example:

A modern man finds in a Christian church the people reciting the Apostles' Creed: "He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead." He pictures a king sitting on a great throne and a prince sitting by his side, and says to himself, "I do not believe that there is any reality which corresponds to that picture." He is quite right. There is no reality which corresponds to that picture. But to us who are reciting that creed it is not a picture, it is a symbol. Spiritual truths are habitually expressed in symbols. An idea strikes me:" there is no reality which corresponds to that as a picture. But it is not a picture. The speaker does not image to himself or to me the idea as one material thing striking against the mind as another material thing. If he were to express his thought in unsymbolical language, he would have to use some such circumlocution as, "A thought presented itself to my consciousness so suddenly that it quite startled me." And yet even in such a circumlocution he would use a symbol. When we unite in saying, "He sitteth on the right hand of God the Father, we are expressing by a symbol our belief that the spirit which Jesus Christ manifested in his earthly life is the spirit of goodness and truth which is at the heart of the universe.

We believe in such a God because we have had an experience of him. It is not true that God is merely a human experience, but it is true that all any one can know of God is what he has experienced. The ecclesiastical images and the theological definitions are fading away and there is coming in their place the earlier, simpler, but profounder conception of God, embodiedto quote one passage out of many-in the One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Psalm:

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there;

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there;
If I take the wings of the morning,

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,

And thy right hand shall hold me.

This consciousness of the Universal Presence finds different expressions according to the differing experiences of different