influence, however good, might hinder the process of pacification. He clearly appreciates the fact that his task is by no means entirely accomplished. When the duty of the soldier is performed, then there are assurances that the way will be made easy for those who are eager to enter with the blessings of a finer and more fruitful civilization. More Fraternity Between Jews and Christians We have learned of still another instance of fellowship between Jews and Christians which is well worthy of the attention of Christian people. The Jews of Bradford, Pennsylvania, recently remodeled their synagogue, and in January it was rededicated with appropriate services. The Jewish rabbi, Louis Reynolds, conducted the services, and, when the time came for the sermon, introduced as the preacher of the occasion the Rev. Augustus R. Kieffer, D.D., rector of the Episcopalian Church of the Ascension in that city. The rabbi described the Christian minister, in presenting him to his people, as one who had the spirit of Savonarola and Thomas à Kempis. Dr. Kieffer preached from Ezra vii., 27. We have examined the sermon, and find that while the preacher was loyal to the truth for which his own communion stands, he yet did justice to the truth which Jews and Christians hold in common and the work which can be best done by co-operation. A Christian minister, and he an Episcopalian, preaching the dedication sermon of a Jewish synagogue, is not a sight which has been common in the past, but it will be more common in the future. The walls between those who are truly religious are fast going down, and every instance like that. above quoted has its direct influence in bringing about universal brotherhood. Ceylon a Key to India Nowhere is the promise, " And greater works than these shall ye do," being more literally fulfilled than in the island of Ceylon. In addition to the numerous branches of evangelistic, educational, lit erary, and industrial work so successfully carried on there for years by the American Board, the Ceylon Mission has a flourishing medical department, where last year over five thousand persons received treatment. Ceylon, from its strategic position at the foot of the Indian Peninsula, is recognized by all the religious sects as a key to the whole continent lying near it. The Roman Catholics have the best-equipped college on the island. The work of evangelizing India seemed a task of such proportions that even the bravest shrank from attempting it. But now the outlook is more favorable. When we see groups of native preachers and doctors, who have been trained in the Christian colleges of Ceylon, setting out into the great Hindu continent, we behold in them at least the beginning of the end of Buddhism; for such a religion cannot permanently resist the real philanthropy of Christianity. We should encourage the sending of medical missionaries to India, because Hindus limited by the caste system, and exclusive Mohammedans who could not be persuaded to enter a Christian church or to attend a preaching service, come in large numbers to the dispensaries for medical aid for themselves and their families. them they have an object-lesson of the spirit of the Gospel. Their hearts are touched by the kindness and sympathy shown them, and after that the truth is willingly and often eagerly received. A brief illustrated pamphlet entitled "Ceylon a Key to India" shows how necessary it is to train native preachers and apostles for India, and what invaluable service the college and medical missions are doing to promote this end. Notes In The American Sunday-School Union will celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary in Philadelphia, in the Academy of Music, on May 25, Morris K. Jesup, Esq., the President, presiding. Several prominent speakers and leaders in Sunday-school work will address the meetings. The Society has organized over one hundred thousand schools, and nearly six thousand churches have grown out of the work. It employs over one hundred missionaries, chiefly in the sparsely settled parts of our country. It commenced its work with only one missionary. It is National and interdenominational. In a recent paragraph we seemed to do injustice to the Rev. Artemas J. Haynes, associate pastor of Plymouth Church in Chicago, by intimating that when Dr. Gunsaulus resigned to succeed Dr. Hillis in the Central Church, Plymouth Church was left entirely without a pastor. The Rev. Mr. Haynes remains in the service of the church, as he was before Dr. Gunsaulus returned to the church, and also during his brief second term of service as pastor. Correspondence The Sunday Dinner To the Editors of The Outlook: In your issue of February 18 (in the Home Club department) we observe with regret a plea for what seems to us a mistaken and unnecessary concession to an ever-increasing tendency to Europeanize our American Sunday. The writer states that the fashion in New York to remove the family Sunday dinner from the realm of home to that of a hotel is one to be encouraged. Would not this aid in the destruction of one of the few remaining links which bind the family together? Modern life, with its business and social claims, seems to be ever up in arms against home life; and Sunday is usually the one day when the family may meet with leisure to foster at least a pleasant acquaintance with one another. That familiar intercourse-the essence of home-vanishes in the publicity of a hotel dining-room. Take the children alone; could the sweet memories of our childhood's Sundays, with their peaceful, softening influences, ever cluster around a restaurant dinner, however elaborate the menu? The drifting toward the European Sunday is often acknowledged and deplored by the religious and even the secular press. What could more tend to make the day a holiday than Sunday emigration to a café? For people of moderate means, too, it would add to the rapidly increasing expense of living. Even the cause for this custom-the benefit to servant and mistress-might be questioned. In the majority of cases the domestics would not spend the day with their families, but in jaunts and excursions of a decidedly demoralizing character. Their work can be greatly lessened, and time for rest and recreation given them, by every considerate housekeeper who has the larger part of Sunday's dinner prepared on Saturday; and the informal Sunday night tea needs no assist ance from the maids. It would seem a fallacy, too, that the cares of a house-mistress have increased. In spite of outside demands on her time, how much is saved her by modern household conveniences, and how multitudinous are the household tasks that have been removed from the home to the factory and what a wealth of already prepared food is at her command undreamed of by our grandmothers! In one household where Sunday is notably set apart for family intercourse, à light lunch is served at midday, and the table set for "high tea " before the domestics' departure. At six a really hearty and delightful supper of salads and similar dishes, prepared before, is brought out by the ladies of the household, and the chafing-dish fills any possible deficiency. These Sunday suppers are famous in the whole connection as uniquely enjoyable family reunions, and the hospitality often reaches out to some one less favoredboarding, perhaps. What would be left of the charm of these particular family gatherings away from the home atmosphere in a private dining-room of some near-by café? The American home is being lost in boarding-houses, hotels, and apartment-houses, and the loss of a Sunday dinner at home would seem just one more encroaching step of the enemy, without giving material aid in the solution of that too much magnified question-the servant problem. We have ventured to send you these few suggestions hoping you may see fit to give the readers of The Outlook the benefit of the other side of the question. Two HOUSEKEEPERS. torial in this issue.-THE EDITORS.] [This subject is discussed in an edi The Home Garden To the Editors of The Outlook: The "Home Garden" is the latest success in the way of work among the children of the poor. It is a sweet bit of home life introduced into the heart of the up-town slums, with an open door for the children of the neighborhood. There are no clubs or classes, though much teaching is done. Even the sewing-school is called the sewing hour. There are books in abundance, games of all kinds, and music. Miss Anna C. Ruddy, the happy originator of the idea, lives in the Home Garden at 424 East One Hundred and Fifteenth Street, New York. Twenty-five or thirty children gather daily out of school hours in the sunny little room. Some of these are truants and incorrigibles, but all alike enter into the spirit of the place. The experiment has proved a success, and should be duplicated in every mission center. The work is supported entirely by voluntary contribution, and will be enlarged as funds come in. Persons paying $5 a year or over are counted as co-workers and are kept informed of the progress of the work. A Misunderstood Verse To the Editors of The Outlook: In the Epistle for the Third Sunday after Epiphany occur the following words from Romans xii., 20: Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." In other words, we shall inflict upon him a pointed spiritual pain. Again and again in my life these words of St. Paul have come to me with harmful effect. Often where my natural impulse was to forgive, or to "make up" in a childish way, the natural expression of the feeling, in some little kindness or attention, was checked by a remembrance of the words "in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." I was ashamed that he should think me capable of anything so mean. I thought that if he, too, remembered these words, he must suspect the sincerity of my forgiveness ! It has been the writer's privilege to hear these words read at least once a year in church, yet she never remembers hearing one word of interpretation of them. This is one example of the way in which the Bible is used and of the harm such use may do. Some morning one may chance to hear a bit of Jewish history. Presented as it is in the majority of churches out of its sequence and its historical setting, it is generally unintelligible and often misleading. Or, again, the chapters read may present truths of the highest spiritual and moral nature. Yet no more emphasis is laid upon these chapters than upon the former. All are read together rapidly, without explanation or interpretation. It is very seldom that the sermon which follows clears the matter up. Generally the sermon expounds some small part of one verse, and seldom enough the knotty portion of that. Either the people should be distinctly taught that the Bible is to be read as all great books of inspiration are to be read, interpretatively and sympathetically, or else no part of the Book, with the possible exception of Christ's simple moral truths, should be read without modern scholarly exegesis. F. H. [It appears to us better to understand Paul's phrase as generally equivalent to the modern sentiment derived from Christianity, that the generous treatment of an enemy is a noble revenge. It is as if the Apostle had said, The way to revenge yourself on your enemy is to do him a kindness. If we take this literally and endeavor to discover how doing him a kindness will gratify that spirit of revenge which we ought not to gratify, we totally misapply not only the Apostle's meaning, but his essential spirit. In the following verse, "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good," the Apostle leads up from the specific exhortation to a broad and general principle: Be not conquered by evil; but this direction can. be complied with only by those who equip themselves with good, that they may of all Christian reform.—THE EDITORS.] thereby conquer the evil. This is the law Notes and Queries NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS.-It is seldom possible to answer any inquiry in the next issue after its re ceipt. Those who find expected answers late in coming will, we hope, bear in mind the impediments arising from the constant pressure of many subjects upon our limited space. Communications should always bear the writer's name and address. Kindly answer the following: 1. Is the philosophy of Dr. Paul Carus recognized very generally? How does The Outlook understand his conception of personality, both human and divine? 2. Wherein does the philosophy of Kant differ from that of Hegel? 3. What judgment does the Zeitgeist of to-day pass to-day upon these philosophies? J. H. 1. Dr. Carus holds that "the soul consists of impulses, dispositions, and ideas,' that "the ego by itself is an empty symbol;" in other words, that there is no abiding self, to whom the ideas, etc., belong. Many hold this view, but it is not the dominant view, or, as we think, the true one. His conception of God, so far as we understand it, is less open to criticism. God is, as he says, "superpersonal," ¿, e., tran scends finite conceptions of personality. 2. Briefly speaking, Kant's representation of God as external to the world is deistic; Hegel's is theistic, representing God as immanent in the world. Kant isolates the human individual; Hegel socializes man in God. Says Professor Andrew Seth: "The advance of Kant's successors, particularly of Hegel, was to connect the ethical as well as the intellectual experience of man directly with the divine life, and by so doing to root Kant's abstract individual in the historic life of humanity." 3. We must refer you to the many critiques. The influence of these men was greater than now. never Jesus gives Simon the name of Peter, or Rock-man, because his faith has reached the rock on which the church is builtthe truth that Jesus is the Son of God. This rock-truth is also the key-truth to the kingdom of heaven among men, and Jesus gives it to Peter as such, that with it he may open the door to others. This key-truth is also a test-truth by which men are condemned or absolved ("bound" or "loosed") in the divine judgment, according as they reject or accept it. See 1 John ii., 22, 23; iv., 15. The language is symbolical, but Protestants regard it as applying not to Peter only, but to all who partake the faith of Peter in the divine sonship of Jesus. 1. What is the best work on Evidences of Christianity? 2. What is the best Outlines of Church History? Please give us your definition of Church, Christianity, and Chris tendom. D. 1. We are disposed to prefer Row's Ban.pton Lectures on "Christian Evidences in Relation to Modern Thought." 2. We doubt if any brief sketch is better than J. H. Allen's "Outli s of Christian History." 3. Church, the entire body of Christ's disciples. Christianity, the spirit and life which Christ inculcated. Christendom, the group of countries in which Christianity is professedly regarded by the majority of the inhabitants as the true religion. 1. What is meant by the expression "the new birth"? 2. In what sense was Christ the Son of God? 3. Is there any foundation for 1. The birth of spiritual consciousness, recognizing one's filial relation to God, and entering into the acceptance and fulfillment of it. 2. Supremely so in the ethical sense, as animated by the Spirit of God dwelling in him in its fulness. 3. This that an (Colossians ii., 9.) "ideal man," in the highest conceivable sense of the term, would be the highest manifestation of God possible in human life. But it is to be borne in mind that the divine and the human nature are identical in kind, differing only as the finite from the infinite. How does your idea of punishment, given on page 377 of The Outlook for February 11, differ from the view held by the Universalist denomination? A. V. B. It differs in this point, viz.: Universalists affirm that the issue of future retribution will be the restoration of` all the subjects of it to ultimate blessedness. We find no sufficient ground for this conclusion, and make no such affirmation. We therefore leave the ultimate issue in the uncertainty in which it is left both by the New Testament, as we understand it, and by the best reasoning that we can apply to the subject. 1. Kindly explain John v., 28, 29. 2. Does the Bible teach that there is an intermediate J. L. E. 1. There is no explanation not open to objections. The least objectionable in our view makes it refer to a continuance of Christ's redemptive work among departed spirits. Compare 1 Peter iii., 19. 2. Some passages look that way, but the weight of evidence, as we think, is against ions through a drill with sticks for guns. He can give all the orders for marching, and carry his soldiers through the several marches. He has learned all the buglecalls, and the tunes the bands play, and sings them. He will call his company of young soldiers out, and call them to attention, and sing the songs to them. The people seem to love music, and learn it readily, and whistle in evident enjoyment the tunes learned from the American band. A Cottontail Rabbit and His Terror 'There was at one time a cottontail rabbit who by degrees permitted himself to fall into a highly nervous condition. Indeed, so mentally prostrated did he at last become that he was actually afraid to leave the precincts of his burrow, for fear of either being shot at by a man or killed by some other enemy. So, while his mind became possessed by all kinds of fancies, his body grew thin and emaciated, and he was, in truth, a pitiable object. One day, having been compelled by necessity to venture out in search of food, he suddenly returned in the last extremity of terror. "Hullo! have you been shot at?" cried one of his neighbors, after the nervous creature had partially recovered his senses, on being assured and reassured that he was in absolute safety. "It was worse, "No, indeed," he replied. far worse, than that," and he shuddered at the very recollection. "Were you chased by a dog, then?" demanded another rabbit. "Oh, no," and he shuddered again. "Far worse, I assure you. I was beginning to nibble, when a most fearful-looking creature stole up, as if out of the earth; and as I ran, it ran after me. It was something like one of ourselves, only much larger, quite black, and noiselessly kept pace with all my movements. I only just managed to scramble into the burrow as it was about to seize my hind quarters." The other rabbits were much astonished and themselves not a little alarmed at the account of such an adventure, until twợ |