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as if he were a sneak thief. I know how I felt a few weeks ago when an old lady refused my help. It is not always wise to accept, but it is always unwise to be rude.

The world seems to me so much like a mirror-if I smile at it it smiles back-and this is true in the home and in business. Not

long ago I was an observer when two women bought a silk dress. The younger one, pretty, well dressed, and petulant, said, "This is what I want, but the salesman doesn't seem to care if he ever serves me or not." He was busy, but he heard this and similar remarks that did not encourage courtesy. When matters threatened to become unpleasant, the older woman took a hand and her thoughtful tact brought perfect service.

My holiday shopping found me on Fifth Avenue at lunch time of a rainy day. I entered a cafeteria just off the avenue, but the whole process was new to me. It was the rush hour, yet every one helped me along. The girl at the desk smilingly pushed a punch card into my hand, two poorly dressed shopgirls told me how to get my food, the busy man at the counter saw to it that this country mouse got her turn, and the man next to me at table showed me where to find the necessary silver: I have seldom had a more delightful time than I had in that crowded place on a rainy day.

In our suburb lives a cripple who goes about on a tricycle. One icy day I saw that he could not manage the crossing at the end of our block. While I was putting on my coat and gloves to go to him a colored man came along with a heavy load of truck. He stopped his team, climbed down, and, with the tenderness of his race, put the man over the bad stretch of road and on his way.

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A woman on our street was taken ill very suddenly. With her last bit of strength she went to the telephone and said. Central, please send some one to me; I'm very sick and I'm all alone." Central kept the wires busy until she knew that two neighbors had gone to her assistance and were in the house. Of course we meet discourtesy sometimes-why not, when we so often are rude ourselves?-but we meet real heartsome kindness much more frequently. When the unpleasant experiences come, it is well to

"Just be a woman if you can,

And chivalry 'll come back to man."

The average American man comes far short of the manners of the upper-class German, the Frenchman, or my own Southern friends; yet, judging by what I saw in short visits to these countries, I more than suspect that if one penetrates deepdown to the core-the American man leads in real unselfishness and in high regard for woman's ability, her judgment, and her helpful comradeship.

It may be that I am old-fashioned, but when we were reading with streaming eyes the accounts of the Titanic, where the poorest, crudest woman took precedence over the most prominent millionaire, I could not but feel that American women must guard mightily their womanhood if they desire it to be worthy of such manhood.

I heartily indorse the words of the American man who was told in a foreign country that because he was an untitled workman he was not a gentleman. He replied, "In America every man is born a gentleman."

UNPUNISHED

BY AMELIA J. BURR

He walks at liberty the public streets;
The law has weighed his deed and let him go,
And yet is he quite scathless, when he meets
The men and women that he used to know?
Is there no sting in the averted gaze
Of those among whom he has broken bread,
Or in the covert glances that appraise

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The dull dishonored silver of his head?
Cheered by such comradeship as he can buy,
He goes a way that daily grows more dim,
Trusted by none, with none that he can trust.
I wonder if he never, with a sigh,
Confronts the years that gape ahead of him
And wishes that the verdict had been just?

THE LAST DAYS OF JESUS CHRIST'

BY LYMAN ABBOTT

V-WITH THE MOB IN THE PRAETORIUM

HAT is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer. " 8

Nothing strange in that. What was truth in that hour? What protection did it afford against a mob maddened by an egotistical nationalism which it mistook for patriotism and a malignant bigotry which it mistook for religion; what protection against the scheming ecclesiastical politicians who had cunningly planned for this hour and aroused the passionate prejudices of the mob to serve their purpose; what protection against the disappointed ambition of a treacherous disciple? The clamorous welcome of the Galileans on the first day of the week, " Crown him! Crown him!" was drowned by the clamorous execration of the mob on Friday, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Who could then foresee that to-day no enemy would be left to defend the crucifixion, while a throng which no man can number, Jew and Gentile, Christian and pagan, would join 1 This is the fifth of a series of seven articles to be continued throughout the Lenten season.

2 Read the account in John's Gospel, chapters xviii. 28-xix. 16. John was the only one of the disciples with Jesus in the court of Caiaphas and at the crucifixion, and it is reasonable to believe that he was also present at the trial before Pilate. His account of the Judean ministry, including the last days, has the marks of being the account of a personal spectator.

Francis Bacon.

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with the skeptic John Stuart Mill in declaring that there is no "better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life," and with the rationalist Dr. Hooykaas in the reverential acclaim: "Thy triumph is secure. Thy name shall be borne on the breath of the winds through all the world; and with that name no thought except of goodness, nobleness, and love shall link itself in the bosoms of thy brothers who have learned to know thee and what thou art. Thy name sl all be the symbol of salvation to the weak and wandering, of restoration to the fallen and the guilty, of hope to all who sink in comfortless despair. Thy name shall be the mighty cry of progress in freedom, in truth, in purity-the living symbol of the dignity of man, the epitome of all that is noble, lofty and holy upon earth."

This self-conscious age, sitting in judgmer t on its f, declares itself to be a skeptical age. Schumann musically interprets its spirit by his questioning "Warum? (Why?); Golwin Smith, by his essay Guesses at Truth;"J Cotter Moriso by his proposal to substitute "The Service The Servicef Man" for the abandoned service of God. This skepticism is not a mere dour of ancient creeds, not merely a doubt or a disarding of the Carch or the

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Bible as an authority, not merely Tennyson's "honest doubt." It is a doubt sometimes of the value of truth, sometimes of the possibility of attaining it. It is expressed by the agnostic, who tells us that "the Great Companion is dead;" that at death our friend has slid down into "the somber, unechoing gulf of nothingness;" that there is so little basis for moral judgments that it is difficult to find a man so virtuous as to deserve a good supper or so wicked as to deserve a good drubbing. It is expressed by the safe man who, for an eager search for the truth, substitutes an eager search for peace; "who never enunciates a truth without guarding himself against being supposed to exclude the contradictory; who holds that Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church is to be deferred to; that faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify without works; that grace does not depend on the sacraments, yet is not given without them; that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those who have them not are in the same religious condition as those who have." It is expressed by the Athenians, who “spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or hear some new thing;" who throng a forum and occasionally a church, not in search of truth, but in search of the latest fashion in philosophy; who change their opinion as frequently and as readily as a fashionable woman changes her bonnet; who deny every affirmative and affirm every negative; who "make use of their reason to inquire and debate, but not to fix and determine." It is expressed by the cynics who imagine that to believe anything is a sign of a decadent intellect, and pride themselves in being in advance of their age because they imitate the toleration of the ancient Romans, who regarded all religious creeds and forms as equally false, but also equally useful as a political convenience.5

How shall the Church of Christ meet this spirit of skepticism? How did its Master and leader meet this spirit of skepticism in his own age? What answer did he give by his life to the half-contemptuous question, " What is truth?"

Truth was not to him an opinion, tentatively held, for further investigation and subject to future reversal. It might almost be said of Jesus that he had no opinions-as thus defined.

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Nor was truth to him an intellectual conviction borrowed from others. He did not derive his faith from the beliefs of his forefathers or the affirmations of the Scriptures. Nor was it a discovery ascertained by investigation and confirmed and buttressed by arguments. There is no indication in his teaching of a search after truth; no outcry like that of the Psalmist, "As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God;" no sign of personal perplexity like that of Paul's "perplexed, but not in despair." Compare his "Father, I knew that thou hearest me always," with Job's "O that I knew where I might find him!" Read his assurance to his disciples in his last message to them, " And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever;" then compare with it the last message of Socrates to his friends before his death, "And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears, Socrates, when you are gone?" "Hellas," he replied, "is a large place, Cebes, and has many good men, and there are barbarous races not a few; seek for him among them all, far and wide, sparing neither pains nor money, for there is no better way of using your money." We all know some truths which are thus experiences. Long before the child learns in school about the attraction of gravitation he discovers, in his first lessons in walking, that if he is not careful he will fall. He does not formulate the law, nor define it, nor know the methods or limits of its operation. But he has an experience of it, and that experience no argument gave and no argument can take away. So, if he has a happy home, long before he studies moral philosophy he has an experience of parental love and care and a responding experience of filial obligations, honor and affection.

In his teaching Jesus assumed that there is in all men an undeveloped capacity to experience the truth. He acted on the

1"There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds."-In Memoriam. W. K. Clifford; John Morley; David Hume.

Cardinal Newman.

4 Montaigne.

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The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord."-Gibbon.

assumption that truth fits the human soul as a well-made glove fits the hand; that truth and the soul are made for each other. He identified truth and life, and for the most part taught only those truths that are a part of life. He dealt not in surmises, opinions, hypotheses; he dealt only in convictions, and only in those convictions that have their roots in ennobled human nature. In what we call the subconscious self he saw the seeds of truth and life, and his appeal was aimed to draw them out, as the sun draws out the slumbering seed in spring. He often addressed questions to those who questioned him and incited them to find in themselves the answer to their own questions. Thus he asked the rich young ruler, "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God;" and to the scribe asking which is the chief commandment, he replied, "How readest thou?" and called on the group hearing his parable of the Good Samaritan to tell him, "Which now of these three thinkest thou was neighbor to him that fell among thieves?"

In studying Paul's epistles the reader can often see that the Apostle, to convince others, uses the arguments by which he has first convinced himself. Jesus rarely argues. He affirms. His most solemn and weighty affirmations are often preceded by the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you." So far from defending a tradition he often sets his simple affirmation against it: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, but I say unto you.' When he cites Scripture, it is generally as an illustration, not as an argument. He puts his personal experience above Scripture: "Ye search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life."

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All spiritual truths were thus elemental in Jesus. God, immortality, the life eternal, the laws of righteousness, were no convictions imported from the past, no opinions derived from and supported by philosophical arguments. They were a part of his self-conscious self. He says of himself, "I am the truth!" Paul says of him, "He cannot deny himself." And to the divinely conscious sense of truth-perhaps I should rather say to the unawakened capacity to become conscious of it, which all normal men possess he habitually appealed in his public ministry. The awakening life responded to his words; and the people were astonished at his teaching because he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. The authority was the divinely awakened response in their own souls.

The Church must find in the spirit and method of its Master the answer to be given to this age asking, sometimes seriously, sometimes carelessly, sometimes cynically, Pilate's question, "What is truth?"

It cannot find in the recorded experiences of the past an answer which will either satisfy the serious or confound the cynic. The age will not be content, it ought not to be content, with convictions imported whether from the Reformed creeds of the seventeenth century, or from the Catholic creeds of the first four centuries, or from the pre-Christian creeds of the Hebrew prophets.

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Certainly it will not be content with hypotheses derived by the much-vaunted "scientific method and buttressed and defended by biological evolution and literary criticism. The beliefs of the past may help to confirm the believer in his present faith. The modern scientific and literary method may help to clear away some intellectual difficulties which perplex him. But it is the life which is the light of the world. And the doubts of the world will never be solved by either the old theology or the new theology. They will be solved only by a new life, a life in the Church which is a present experience of a living God, bringing with him to the soul which accepts him a present experience of forgiveness that relieves from the burden of past errors and sins, and a present inspiration that gives power for future achievement.

That it is not theological opinions which have made effective preachers of truth is evident from the fact that Savonarola and Luther, Massillon and Wesley, Phillips Brooks and Dwight L. Moody, have been effective preachers of the truth. It is only the truth which transcends all definitions, the truth that is more than an ancient tradition or a modern hypothesis, the truth that is a living experience, which can endow the Church with power to silence the sneers of the cynic or to satisfy and relieve the perplexities of the honest doubter.

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