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Correspondence

The Churches in Cuba

To the Editors of The Outlook:

In the number of The Outlook received yesterday I read with interest the statement made by Archbishop Ireland.

As a pastor in Cuba I must object to the assumptions of the Archbishop that Cuba is a Catholic country, etc., etc., and that therefore Protestants should not attempt to labor there.

I presume that England, Canada, and Australia may be considered Protestant lands, but the Catholic Church appears to consider it has a right to labor there.

I tear the Archbishop's knowledge of the religious condition of Cuba is very faulty, or he surely could not have written as he did. One Protestant church in Cuba alone has a membership that counts by the thousands. During my eight months' stay in Cuba I have visited thousands of homes, and have found the following state of affairs:

(1) Thousands of Cubans do not hesitate to say that they not only do not belong to the Catholic Church, but that there are reasons that make it impossible for them to become members of that Church.

(2) Hundreds of Cuban families have the Bible in their homes; they have not attended the Catholic Church for many years, and state that they are Protestants.

(3) A great number of persons (children of persons referred to) have never been inside a Catholic church, and wish to attend a Protestant place of worship.

(4) A large number of persons who - once frequented the Roman Catholic Church have left that body, for reasons which I will not grieve your Catholic read ers by stating. These have drifted into unbelief, and are the least susceptible to religious impressions.

Our worthy Archbishop is indignant that American occupation should seem to be confounded with Protestant supremacy, and that some American officer should be present at the exercises in connection with a Protestant church. What a pity that the objection was not raised at a time when Church and State were one in Cuba, and when at every function of the Church the country of Spain was represented!

What a difference it makes when our Church is not the one favored! I am sorry to disagree with the Archbishop. but my conviction is that it would be a cruel thing to leave thousands of Cubans without a church home, as, for reasons given, they are outside the pale of the Roman Catholic Church.

A. DE BARRITT,
Pastor of the First Congregational Church, Havana.

Religion in the Philippines

To the Editors of The Outlook:

I read with unusual interest Archbishop Ireland's reply to The Outlook's letter. It is a very shrewd statement of the Roman Catholic Church's attitude to Protestant aggressiveness. It is because we believe that Roman Catholicism is "partial and fragmentary Christianity" that we insist upon the immediate dissemination of Protestant truths, freed from superstition and corruption. I say it is a very clever argu ment for the Church he represents, because the longer Protestants delay in sending missionaries, the firmer his Church will become established and the harder it will be for the introduction of Protestantism. I speak for a truly Christian civilization that has benefited our own native land, and which will also add to the Filipinos and West Indians innumerable liberties, both civil and religious. Shall we wait for the saloon and army canteen, with their debasing accompaniments, to control Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines before we advance as a missionary church? No; "Forward, march !" is Christ's command to the Church. We must obey. Christian missionaries can greatly assist our govern. mental representatives in the delicate task before them. Let every Church select its very best and wisest members, who will also be loyal American citizens, to continue the evangelization of the world in these newly acquired territories. Norfolk, Va.

DANIEL T. MERRITT.

Mr. Moody at Northfield To the Editors of The Outlook ·

In the current issue of your paper, under The Religious World, I notice an extract from a report of Mr. D. L. Moody's

remarks at the Northfield Conference in asking the prayers of Christians for the country. The quotation contains one or two mistakes which we would ask you to kindly rectify. There is a mistake, first of all, in the amount reported to be expended on the chapel, for which thirty thousand dollars and not three hundred thousand has been raised. And a similar mistake has occurred in the statement that ten thousand people attended the opening of the chapel, instead of one thousand. In the words attributed to Mr. Moody regarding our statesmen the insertion that they "live near to God" and are "noble men of God" is incorrect. Mr. Moody would not make so general a statement of the religious life of any body with whose members he was not personally acquainted. What he did wish to emphasize, however, was the fact that the members of our Federal and legislative bodies were men who were honestly, and often at personal self-sacrifice, rendering to the country the best service they were capable of, that they were men of integrity, and in their number it would be difficult to find one who could be drawn from what he conscientiously believed to be right by any motives of personal aggrandizement. Mr. Moody has no sympathy with Christians who give vent to personal animosity against the leaders of opposing political parties. W. R. MOODY.

Social Distinctions in the United States To the Editors of The Outlook :

Among the anomalies presented to the curious observer by the complex structure of social organization in this country, none are more patent or more baffling than the discriminations recognized between employments and professions equally useful, honorable, and important, and to which, in point of fact, the best people of every community belong.

It would seem that where the hand hardened by early labor at the plow, at the forge, in the machine-shop, in the mines, may take up the temporary but magnificent powers of Chief Magistrate of the greatest people under the sun, the special pursuits of citizens would be unconsidered, and that a nation of shopkeepers, artisans, and speculators would treat with equal respect persons of ability and courage engaged in the highest and

the humblest avocations. That this is not the case it is hardly necessary to say. To foreign peoples, with their peerages, their almanacs, their privileged classes, we present the spectacle of a great and free people, absolutely independent in thought and deed, gloating over its freedom from old prejudices, yet deliberately shackling itself with all sorts of petty, arbitrary social distinctions. Having no privileged class, we proceed to manufacture one, or rather to adopt many, all hampered by very amusing discriminations. The obvious qualification of birth and good descent is blurred by the fact that our families, losing fortune, undergo many mutations, and that the best blood of our country may be often found in very low and even menial pursuits. A society of birth would be sorely puzzled to maintain its splendor in the United States did it really open its doors to all entitled to enter them-and only to those. Therefore it makes its gilded sham in another fashion, based upon money, yet not hon. estly or admittedly so grounded. Its men all have professions or trades, or are engaged in some branch of commerce; between these avocations society proceeds to draw its lines.

The profession of teacher, for instance, graced by the brightest minds and loftiest purposes of the age, and to which a large proportion of our most eminent citizens have at some period of their lives belonged; this profession, set apart from-may I say above?-all others by the refinement of its duties and the greatness of its responsibilities, is said to entail a loss of "social standing" upon its mem bers. The army and navy, although necessarily composed in part of very coarse native material, rank high in the social scale, and few questions are asked as to the social antecedents of the lieutenants and captains who, thanks to the recommendation of some favored son of the people, went as rough farmers' or shopkeepers' boys to be polished into gentility at Annapolis or Wes Point. The lawyer, successful in business, holds his own in the highest circles, provided that by some means or other he make money enough to enter them. Between the doctor and the dentist a broad dividing zone is found. Both men may be equally well or poorly born, with university education, with love

of science, with good success and ample fortune but the physician, who sits by a woman's bedside and applies the knowledge attained in the hospital and the clinic, ranks, in the opinion of society, his brother who applies his scientific skill to the lady's teeth, in the chair of his luxurious operating-room. Among merchants similar grades exist, but sharper and more intelligible; there is at least an appreciable distinction between the man who counts the dimes and pennies of a retail shop and him whose gains are heavy in the money-bags. We can all enjoy the naïveté of the schoolgirl who, when taxed by her young companions with the charge that her father kept a grocery shop, replied: "Yes, but a very little one!"-the horrified young aristocrats, the tormentors of this little plebeian, being, par parenthès, respectively the granddaughter and daughters of an eminent jurist, originally a carpenter, and of a prominent citizen whose large fortune had been scraped from the narrow margin of sugars.

To the honor of our land be it said that the ministry is treated in the United States with universal consideration. Whether of the church or the meeting-house, the Christian minister and his family are respected by the wealthiest and most distinguished members of the oddly constructed, curiously combined, and most motley association known as "our best society." M. V. E. C.

Is It a Fetich?

To the Editors of The Outlook:

I have read with much interest Mr. M. G. P. Rice's timely and forceful protest in The Outlook of August 26 against the college examination. Educators generally will be inclined to applaud much that he says, especially when he inveighs against the injurious overstrain that is being put upon our youth at the behest of modern scholasticism.

But, to my view, Mr. Rice's article is weak in two important particulars: first, he quite ignores the well-known fact that nearly if not quite all our colleges and universities accept, without further credentials, the graduates of any preparatory school whose work reaches an acceptable standard; secondly, he fails to point out any adequate test, other than the conventional examination, by which the au

thorities of a college may know that a proposed matriculant who brings no credentials is fitted to undertake the college work.

As a teacher I had for many years much to do in preparing young people for entrance into colleges and universities, and it has been my experience that the authorities of these institutions never refuse to give full credit for elementary work when the fact of such work is properly proved. I have even had my pupils passed in certain branches of study at Leland Stanford Junior University and the University of California, upon my personal certificate as their instructor in these branches, although I was personally unknown to the professors in charge. I am credibly informed that most of the Eastern institutions are equally liberal. Certainly this is true of Ann Arbor and the University of Chicago, neither of which institutions shows any d sposition to withhold from the entering student due credit for work that has been faithfully performed.

As at least ninety per cent. of the matriculants of our colleges consist of students duly accredited from high schools or academies, it is evident that the importance of the entrance examination "fetich" has been somewhat overrated by your contributor. From the instances of seeming hardships which he cites, I am inclined to think that his arraignment of the examination system has been written in behalf of those applicants for college entrance who have been prepared outside the ordinary channels. Now, as to them, the college must have some way of determining their educational fitness other than a facile acceptance of the judgment of too partial friends. The college would surely fail of its purpose were it to throw open its doors to the rabble of raw and halftaught youth who, with the entrance examination abolished, would quickly flock through its doors. No doubt the examination red tape is often too binding, and no doubt, too, the set examination rather than the instructor's general knowledge of the student's work is too often made the test of advancement. But no one has found a better ready means of testing educational acquirement than that afforded by the written examination, rationally conducted. If Mr. Rice knows of such a means, he would render a dis

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To the Editors of The Outlook:

The article by M. Gordon Pryor Rice in The Outlook for August 26, entitled "A Fetich in Education," condemning the modern system of college entrance examinations, indirectly refers to Cornell University as an institution where the worshipers of this fetich are of the strictest sect. The fact is that the system of admission by certificate prevails here almost to the exclusion of admission by examination. During the past four years the number of applicants admitted by school certificate or Regents' diploma and by examination, respectively, was as follows:

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Notes and Queries

NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS.--It is seldom possible to answer any inquiry in the next issue after its receipt. 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 mention (1) the best modern work on sermonizing for a young preacher, one that will help in the analysis of texts and the logical development of a discourse. 2. What is that "complicated cycle" discovered by the Swiss astronomer, M. de Cheseaux, and referred to by Professor Austin Phelps in his "My Note-Book" as having been known and used by the prophet Daniel in his predictions of coming events? 3. Has there ever been, can there be, any prophetic significance or bearing on human life and destiny in the appearances and movements of the heavenly bodies? 4. Did the late Professor Loomis, of Yale University, claim to have discovered with the telescope a great vacuum in the northern heavens which he believed to be the "empty place" spoken of by Job in chap. xxvi., v. 7? 5. If so, what kind of a vacuum is itthe absence of worlds, or the absence of ether, a real vacuum which "nature abhors"? 6. How did Job learn that the earth "hangeth upon nothing," when the universal belief of

his time regarded it as built upon a moveless foundation? R. J. B.

1. The Rev. Dr. Broadus's Lectures on Preaching have passed through more editions than any other we know of, and may be regarded as good as any on that subject. 2. We do not know, but it has no relation to Daniel, whose "predictions," as most scholars believe, so far as relating to historical events, were mainly of later date than the events. 3. No. 4. We doubt it. Some parts of our sky are more thickly starred than others, but astronomy recognizes no "vacuum anywhere. 6. Whatever the popular belief, men of culture in the ancient world had more correct theories. Pythagoras, in the sixth century B.C., taught that "the earth and planets move in oblique circles." Anaxagoras, a century later, explained the theory of eclipses. The author of "Job " may have learned something of these theories.

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The book of Daniel having been written some four hundred years after Daniel, with the design of encouraging the Jews to resist the Syrian tyrant, the tradition of that deliverance from the Babylonian tyrant was well suited to the design. that it was believed then is not enough now for any one who has discovered the unquestionable fact that there is a legendary element in the Bible. One criterion of any action whatever is that there should be an adequate cause for it. But, according to the story, the most that resulted from the stupendous event was a decree of the king forbidding disrespect to the God of the Jews. No lasting effect accrued, as from the mighty works of Jesus. Such a miracle for so slight a consequence would be like firing a cannon at a fly. There is no adequate cause apparent for an act so unproductive and inconsequential.

I would like to ask, How can I make a man believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he died, was buried, and rose again for the redemption of the whole world? I ask this because we have a man here that is a

good fellow in every sense of the word, sings in our choir, and I was anxious for him to identify himself with us by confirmation. He is much interested in the church, but says that he cannot bring himself to believe in the Creed. J.

It is difficult to answer such questions without personal acquaintance. The root of difficulty is sometimes intellectual, but oftener moral. In the former case, provided your friend is thoughtful, Professor Clarke's Johns Hopkins lectures, "What Shall We Think of Christianity?" (Scrib ners, New York, $1), might prove helpful. In the latter case some quickening of the conscience to meet the demand for such righteousness as the Sermon on the Mount requires will in time dispel many doubts of an intellectual sort. Note also

that the Rev. Alfred Momerie, in one of his little books, maintains that the only qualification which the Anglican Church insists upon for admission to her communion is the earnest purpose to live righteously.

I am for the present making my reading bend in the direction of a study of the life and times of St. Paul. Please favor me with the titles of a few works that you regard as valuable. I am now reading Farrar's "Life and Work of St. Paul." I have read Dr. Abbott's "Life and Letters of Paul." I have also Stalker's "Life of St. Paul," Meyer's "Paul, a Servant of Jesus Christ," Taylor's "Paul the Missionary," Conybeare and Howson's "Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul," "The Pauline Theology" by Stevens, "Paul and His Friends" by Banks, several lectures on St. Paul by Stalker in his volume "The Preacher and His Models," Half-Hours with St. Paul" by Steele, and also several commentaries.

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We suggest these others: Matheson's "Spiritual Development of St. Paul," Sabatier's "The Apostle Paul," Renan's "Saint Paul," Ramsay's "Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen," Stevens's" Epistles of Paul in Modern English," McGiffert's "Apostolic Age."

Please tell me-1. How shall I convince an agnostic friend, who has read Huxley, of the divine inspiration of the Bible? He doubts on the ground that the Old Testament attributes to God actions and qualities which we look upon as sinful in man. 2. Will he, if he continues till death to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, be eternally lost? 3. We are taught that the Epistles are divinely inspired, and that the Sermon on the Mount is divinely inspired. Do the words have precisely the same force in both cases? Or, when there seems to be an inconsistency between the

teachings of Christ and the teachings of one of his Apostles, are we justified in disregarding the latter and accepting the former as having a higher authority? 4. Would not the plan of basing every doctrine on the words of Christ himself meet many of the objections of this? agnostics? 5. Is there any church which does ORTHODOCIUS.

1. He has probably imbibed a mistaken idea of inspiration. Let him read a little book, "The Early Pupils of the Spirit," which will set him right on that subject (T. Whittaker, New York). 2. No man is "lost" by a merely intellectual error. 3. "Divinely inspired" means the same in each case. The inspiration is

not in the words spoken or written, but in the speaker or writer. We must recognize a larger inspiration as we recognize a larger life in Christ than in his disciples. Everything in the Bible, as in the world, must be tested by the judgment of Christ. 4. As a mere matter of fact, we fear it do so, but few do it strictly. The docwould not. 5. All churches think they

trine of the fall of man, for instance, is otherwise based.

Please name a list of works or magazine articles to be consulted for information about "Curious and Little-Known Religions of the World." G. W. D.

Probably your best source of information on this subject would be in a work which gives a full account of the lowest races, such as Ratzel's "History of Mankind," of which two volumes have already been issued by the Macmillan Company, New York ($4 each). Some of the latest and most important data on this subject may be found in Lang's "The Making of Religion " (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, $4).

Can any one tell me the remainder of the poem from which the lines below are quoted,

and also the name of the author? These lines were quoted in a letter dated 1880, and this is the only clue I have:

"Stay for me there, I will not fail
To meet thee in that lonely vale;
And think not much of my delay,
I am already on the way.

Each moment is a short degree,
And every hour is nearer thee."
C. H. B.

Will you tell me, in some issue of The Outlook, the whole or a part of the poem called "Fanny Forrester's Bird," or suggest books in which it may be found?

A. B. L.

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