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recover for the nation that unity which is lamentably deficient to-day; to retain for Germany that strength of the German nation which has been pouring into foreign countries and lost to the fatherland; to secure for Germany colonial territory where its increasing population may find remunerative work and a German way of living; to protect Germany from Slavonic races which are ever dashing against her coast. If Germany is to succeed in guarding its present possessions and preserving the German nationality in its present form throughout the world, it must not hold back in the hard struggle for the sovereignty of the world.

"All

This necessity is accented by the rivalry of France, which has created for herself the second largest colonial empire in the world, while the conqueror of Gravelotte and Sedan in this respect lags far behind her. which other nations attained in centuries of natural development-political union, colonial possessions, naval power, international trade--was denied to our nation until quite recently. What we now wish to attain must be fought for, and won against a superior force of hostile interests and Powers."

War is not only a necessity for Germany, it is a duty which she owes to the world. "There is no nation whose thinking is at once so free from prejudice and so historical as the German, which knows how to unite so harmoniously the freedom of the intellectual and the restraint of the practical life on the path of free and natural development." "No nation on the face of the globe is so able to grasp and appropriate all elements of culture, to add to them from the stores of its own spiritual endowment, and to give back to mankind richer gifts than it received.' "We often see in other nations a greater intensity of specialized ability, but never the same capacity for generalization and absorp tion. It is this quality which specially fits us for the leadership in the intellectual world, and imposes on us the obligation to maintain that position." Germans of every profession are actively employed throughout the world in the service of foreign masters. But this is not enough. The fulfillment of Germany's duty to the world will depend on two points: first, how many millions of men in the world speak German; secondly, how many of them are politically members of the German Empire.

this issue Germany must take the aggressive, as did Frederick the Great, and, in more recent history, Japan in her struggle with Russia. Germany must not wait until war. is forced upon her. To wait until war is forced upon Germany, under conditions unfavorable to her, is to court political downfall. "We must remain conscious in all such eventualities that we cannot, under any circumstances, avoid fighting for our position in the world, and that the all-important point is, not to postpone that war as long as possible, but to bring it on under the most favorable conditions possible." In war the advantages are with the attacking party. Germany must therefore during the period of preparation raise the tactical value and capabilities of the troops as much as

possible, and then in the war itself "act on the offensive and strike the first blow."

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In such a war Germany must expect the hostility of the civilized world. The German

Empire "is hated everywhere because of its political and economic prosperity." The Triple Alliance will probably break up by the withdrawal from it of Italy. "Russia at present has no inducement to seek an aggressive war with Germany or to take part in one." But her policy of marking time can be only transitory. Germany will always find her on the side of those who try to cross Germany's political paths. England, whose aim it is to repress Germany and strengthen France, will be Germany's chief enemy upon the sea. Specific protestations of England's politicians, publicists, and Utopians may be disregarded. A specific agreement with England is a will-o'-the-wisp which no serious German statesman would trouble to follow. To England the neutrality of Holland or Belgium would be a matter of no moment. "That England would pay much attention to the neutrality of weaker neighbors when such a stake was at issue is hardly credible." very valuable results can be expected from a war against England's trade. Nevertheless the war against the English must be belligerently prosecuted and should start unexpectedly.

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No

The prizes which fall into our hands must be remorselessly destroyed, since it will usually be impossible, owing to the great English superiority and the few bases we have abroad, to bring them back in safety without exposing our vessels to great risks." It is, however, Thus the issue is presented to Germany: upon France that Germany's attack must first "world power or downfall." In meeting be made. "France must be so completely

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crushed that she can never again come across our path."

In such a conflict the other members of the Triple Alliance will owe no duty to support Germany, for "neither Austria nor Italy is in any way bound to support by armed force a German policy directed towards an increase of power." The neutrality of Belgium will not defend Germany from an invasion by the English, for "neutrality is only a paper bulwark." But if invasion of that neutrality is attempted, it will be the duty of the other Powers to intervene, for by the treaties of London of November 15, 1831, and of April 19, 1839, on the part of the five great Powers, it is made "the duty of the contracting Powers to take steps to protect this neutrality when all agree that it is menaced;" and "each individual Power has the right to interfere if it considers the neutrality menaced."

Our object in the foregoing résumé of General Bernhardi's book is not to criticise or comment upon the platform of the war party of Prussia, but only to report it to our readers as it is interpreted by one of the recognized leaders of that party. We complete that report by adding that there is not in the volume any suggestion that either the Latin, the Slav, or the Oriental races can add anything to the world's development; that anything has been added to music, art, literature, science, or human freedom by Italy, France, Russia, or Japan, though there is a concession that England has done something for commerce. Nor is there any suggestion that it is either possible or desirable to secure an opportunity for Germany's free national development by establishing friendly relations. with either England or France. There is no suggestion that a strong nation owes any duties to a weaker nation, and it is almost explicitly stated that a small nation has no right to exist. There is only a remote suggestion that Germany needs to defend herself or Europe against a Slav aggression, and, on the contrary, it is frankly affirmed that Russia has at present no inducement to seek an aggressive war with Germany or take part. in one.

Such are the spirit and purpose of the Prussian war party which has brought on this European war. Imbued with the spirit of Frederick the Great, that party calls on Germany to challenge the nations to a world conflict in order that she may crush a hated rival, dominate Europe, and win for herself

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a world sovereignty, under which no small nation will have a right to live, and no great nation until it has proved its greatness at the mouth of the cannon and the point of the bayonet.

REFUGES

You are weary of the war. You would escape from it. Your spirit responds to the cry, O that I had wings like a dove, that I might fly away and be at rest! We recommend to you two retreats to which you may fly..

of rage.

Read a good love story. You will rise from reading it refreshed, with a new conviction that love is the greatest thing in the world." Love's silences will outlast the roar When the blare of the trumpet and the boom of the cannon cease, love will spring up again in the hearts of young men and maidens, of mothers and children. For hate is of the Evil One and short-lived; love is of God and immortal. The birds sing and mate on the field of Waterloo.

Then read the Forty-sixth Psalm in the version of the Book of Common Prayer: God is our hope and strength.

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"A very present help in trouble.

"Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed,

"And though the hills be carried into the midst of the sea,

"Though the waters thereof rage and swell, "And though the mountains shake at the tempest of the same.

"The rivers of the flood thereof shall make glad the city of God,

"The holy peace of the tabernacle of the Most Highest."

Chaos leads to creation. The travail of the world is the promise of a new life. The Napoleonic campaigns delivered Europe from the rule of irresponsible monarchs. The present campaign may deliver Europe from the rule of the armed man. "All the armor of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall be for burning, for fuel of fire."

Is this terrible war the fire that is consuming them? That is not an impossible, not an improbable, hope.

The love romance may revive your threatened faith in love. The psalmist and the prophet may re-establish your threatened faith in God.

Love and God are the two refuges.

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It is difficult for me to understand the psychology of profanity. I can easily see why men should steal, should kill, should commit adultery, should slander their neighbors. These sins are explicable. It is very difficult for me to see why they should swear. It seems to be a perfectly useless transgression, not only of the divine law, but of the rules of cultivated and refined society. It never adds anything to a man's reputation, and it often detracts from his reputation. Probably a great deal of it is due simply to stupid, unthinking imitation, a good deal of it to a habit formed the swearer hardly knows how, and continued when the So far as swearer is hardly conscious of it. there is any ostensible reason for it, it is a desire to emphasize one's veracity; it is a kind of travesty on the taking of an oath in a court of justice. As to the remedy, an appeal to the law may sometimes be made, but profanity is one of those vices which the law can do very little to correct. Example and instruction in childhood will do much more, so will public opinion in society condemning profanity as ungentlemanly and vulgar. There are a good many persons who are more afraid of bad form than they are of immorality. The fundamental remedy is the development of a real religious reverence, inculcated in children by the home, and in the community by the Christian Church.

1. What is your opinion of the "Virgin birth"?

2. How do you interpret the statement that to be saved one must "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ"? I know many people who certainly fulfill the second of Christ's commandments-to love our neighbors as ourselves; yet, according to the orthodox belief, they fail in the first, of loving God, for they are, not atheists, but agnostics, honest and troubled doubters. Do you really think that they will be lost, and that others who have accepted Christ and fail to a greater or less extent in living up to his practical teachings of brotherly love will be saved?

3. Do you believe that no orthodox Jew will be saved, no matter how sincere his belief nor how upright and helpful his life?

4. Do you believe in a personal God who directs our lives, and, while not actually sending troubles to us, yet allows them to come, since they are all in his plan? Are we not rather put here with minds and wills of our own, and if we break any of his laws or use poor judgment in utilizing all his facilities-why, we pay the price? If things go wrong, it seems to me, it is " up to us to struggle valiantly, asking God to make us brave and strong, but not asking him to perform miracles and change the S. thing itself. Am I right?

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I cannot answer definitely your first question. I can only say that the question of the Virgin birth does not seem to me to be one of the first importance. It is never referred to by Christ or by the Apostles either in their preaching or in their epistles, nor is it mentioned in the Gospels of Mark and John. To regard the Virgin birth as of the same importance as the Resurrection of Jesus Christ seems to me to put upon it an emphasis that neither Christ nor the New Testament writers put upon it. however, nothing either in the condition of the manuscripts or in the literary quality of the narrative to indicate that it is an addition of a later date.

There is,

Your second question involves another : Saved from what? If a patient has faith in his doctor, he is saved from the apprehensions which beset a patient who is skeptical of his doctor's ability. If a merchant has faith in his bank, he is saved from the fears which beset a merchant who has heard and believed a report that the bank is about to stop payment. He who has faith in a divine Saviour willing to help and able to help all those that come to him seeking his help is saved from the spiritual burden of those who are trying to live a righteous life without any assurance of forgiveness for their failures or of help to enable them to realize their spiritual desires. I admire the courage of my agnostic friends who adhere to a path of personal virtue and unselfish service while professing that they know nothing of any divine Helper here or any future life hereafter, but I am sure that my own faith in a divine Helper here and in a future life hereafter, when much that now seems dark will be explained, saves me from much sorrow which would fall upon me without this faith.

To your third question I will answer in the words of Paul: God "will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life."

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AGAIN

To the fourth question I reply: My whole religious faith rests upon belief in a personal God who is my father and my friend, who often throws me on my own resources and leaves me to fight my own battle because this is the best way to develop my character, but who is alike my friend when he is aiding me and when he is apparently leaving me to fight my battle unaided.

Our minister says that capital punishment for crime is entirely wrong, according to the New Testament, and that officers of the law who enforce this form of punishment are responsible to God for taking life, and that in States where it has been abolished crime has been less prevalent.

I think your minister has fallen into the same kind of error as do those who declare that the abolition of capital punishment is wrong because in the Old Testament it is said, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." The object of punishment is the protection of the community and the reform of the wrong-doer. It is not, however, the reform only of the individual who has done the wrong, it is also the reform of the community to which he belongs. What kind of punishment is best fitted to accomplish this double end depends upon the circumstances and condition of the community. In the primitive condition of the early Hebrew people fines and imprisonments,

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resorted to in our time, were almost impossible, and exile often meant slavery or death at the hands of the nation into which the criminal was driven. Often the only way in which the community could protect itself was by putting the criminal to death. The right of self-protection is a fundamental right, and whenever in any community no better method of self-protection against certain criminal practices is possible capital punishment is justified. But as communities grow in civilization curative punishment takes the place of punishments which are vindictive.

Whenever a community becomes so far civilized that it can protect its citizens from the more heinous crimes by methods of reform or cure, capital punishment should be abandoned. Whether it is true that in the States where capital punishment has been abolished crime has been less prevalent we do not know. There is, however, no doubt that with the diminution not only of capital punishment, but of all forms of merely vindictive punishment, and the substitution therefor of reformatory or redemptive punishments, crime has been diminished. diminution of crime is due not merely, and possibly not at all, to the cessation of capital punishment, but to the general moral development of the community and to the success of the reformatory methods of dealing with crime. LYMAN ABBOTT.

But this

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AGAIN

The article in The Outlook for July 25 by Dr. Lyman Abbott, entitled" Why I Am Not a Christian Scientist," ended with the following sentence:

But I frankly confess to my Christian Science friends that I dread the enervating influence on the human race of a philosophy which denies the reality of evil, calls men off from courageous, patient, and intelligent campaign against it, and bids them regard evil, whether moral or physical, as only a mortal thought to be vanquished by a process of spiritual thinking.

This article has called out many letters both defending and criticising the doctrines ant practice of Christian Science. We print below two representative letters, one pro and one con; with these we must conclude the discussion in our pages for the present.-THE EDITORS.

good and evil come in contact so that the one can be used to overcome the other?

In the same book good and evil are sometimes personified, but they are oftener defined impersonally in mental terms. Some of the Scriptural names for good are "mind,"

"mind of the Spirit," "spiritual understand ing," also "trúth." Some of the Biblical names for evil are 66 fleshly mind," "carnal mind," also "error," "deceit," and the like. Christ Jesus defined evil as "evil thoughts." He resolved all of "the things which defile a man" into thoughts that are evil. Nor did he leave the subject there. If evil thoughts were not different and separate from true consciousness, there would be no deliverance from them. Hence we have his further description of evil as a liar or lie, and his emphatic statement that there is no truth in it (John viii. 44).

Such being the nature of good and evil, the scene of the warfare between Spirit and flesh must be the so-called human mind, the consciousness of both good and evil. This must be the meeting-point where evil can be overcome with good. Here is where the errors of material sense can be corrected with the truth of spiritual sense.

The Hebrew proverb is scientific: " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." Evil appears and disappears only in the so-called human mind. The kingdom of God is in the consciousness which he creates-that is, the consciousness of absolute good.

It was nothing less, therefore, than the practice of Christian Science which Paul and Peter summed up in their precepts: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus;" "Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." This true mentality, this spiritual thinking, is godliness itself, and we are warned in the Bible against denying the power of godliness. Doing that, we are told, is resisting the truth.

"Finally, brethren," says Mrs. Eddy, on page 6 of "Christian Science Versus Pantheism," "let us continue to denounce evil as the illusive claim that God is not supreme and continue to fight it until it disappears, but not as one that beateth the mist, but lifteth his head above it and putteth his foot upon a lie."

To illustrate: An act that culminates in murder must first take form in human thought. The gist of sin, as pointed out in the Sermon on the Mount, is the yielding to a sinful impulse. The temptation or incentive to sin is always mental; it is almost always a false sense of pleasure in evil.

The only positive cure for sin is the truth

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Can it be said, then, that Christian Science calls men off from an intelligent campaign against evil?

Christian Science changes its students into better men and women, not only by giving them true motives, pure desires, and absolute ideals, but also by discovering to them the deceptive nature of evil impulses and the source and power of good thoughts.

In like manner this Science equips its students for the cure and prevention of disease. It teaches them to analyze the conflicting elements of human consciousness and to maintain the true sense of being against the false sense of disorder, thus destroying the essential cause of disease and establishing the conditions of health.

So also the power of divine Mind, acting with true thoughts or truth, is found to be available in every case of human need. As the Psalmist said, "His truth shall be thy shield and buckler."

In a word, the aim of Christian Science is to induce and enable men to realize their rightful freedom and God-given manhood. CLIFFORD P. SMITH, Of the Committee on Publication, First Church Christ Scientist.

Boston, Massachusetts.

IMPRACTICAL IDEALISM

Your article in The Outlook of July 25, entitled "Why I Am Not a Christian Scientist," seems to me so just and reasonable that I desire to have it constantly by me until I have memorized the argument. In my personal experience the Christian Scientists seem to lay reason completely aside from the very beginning of their investigation of the matter. They learn later that the words used by the cult do not mean what they do mean to others, i. e., 64 to cure " is not to heal, but to make one resigned and cheerful in that state of body which we call sickness.

Will not a diligent study of the Bible do the same? I thank you sincerely for your article. L. S. WATERMAN.

Newburyport, Massachusetts.

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