goes with the builder, and brandy is mixed with the mortar that cements the walls of the temples of justice and nationality. Temperance battles must, therefore, be fought on the Congo, or rather, they should be fought for the Congo, before the nations settle down to their great work. But civilization has always and desperately tried to uncivilize itself; and its policy to-day is in no wise different; it blesses with one hand and curses with the other; it speaks peace and makes war; it teaches virtue and practices vice; it shouts the divine name and suddenly profanes it; it professes philanthropy but exhibits selfishness; it assumes the Christian spirit and prostitutes it to its own ends of greed and lust of power. This double or contradictory influence of secular civilization out of the way, and Christianity can soon redeem Africa. Still even the hinderance may be a providential help, and all things may work together for the salvation of the continent.

Vassili Verestchagin, the Russian artist, was the sensation in American art circles during the winter. His father designed him for military service, but he repudiated the plan, and is now in the enjoyment of merited fame throughout the world as a painter of rarest qualities. In addressing a company of New York celebrities he boldly declared, what is suspiciously true, that Americans have no American art, and are devoid of a flowery taste. This defect in our national and individual life may be owing in part to the fact that our republic is too young to have acquired by this time a full equipment of æsthetics, but we attribute it largely to that commercial spirit that threatens to extinguish among us the love of the beautiful and a belief in the ideal. The American products of sculpture, painting, architecture, and monuments are not worthy of euphemistic commemoration in song or history. Prang's chromos do not relieve the national honor from reproach; Girard College is not a contagious example of architectural perfection; Willard's "Pluck," if the measure of individual taste, does not rival Raphael's “Transfiguration " as the exponent of a people's cultivation; Washington's unfinished monument is not the equal of the Arc de l'Etoile in Paris: nor will the Roman Catholic Cathedral or the Temple Emanu-El in New York compare with St. Sophia in Constantinople, St. Paul's in London, or St. Peter's in Rome. We must not, however, forget our Hudson River school of artists, or our more advanced painters who have taken lessons in France and Holland. In watercolor the influence of Holland is prominent; and in general method the influence of Paris and Italy is very striking. Notwithstanding the foreign element, American art, in Thomas Moran, J. C. Nichol, Jervis McEntee, W. J. Linton, Church, Harding, Inness, and Holmes, is asserting itself, and has the promise of independence and richness. Art is not without a mission in the higher realms of life. Its relation to education and religion is clearly manifest in European countries, where, however, as cause or effect of superstition, it perverts public taste and falsifies the purest religion. Redeemed from its thralldom, Americanized in spirit and method, and developed according to its possibilities, art may attain

new glories—the glory of the lily, the glory of the sun, the glory of the heavens-ministering alike to the spiritual and æsthetical in man, and rescuing the nation from the domination of mercantilism and the coarseness of every-day impurity and stolidity.

The confederation of governments of similar language, laws, aspirations, and tendencies is not an improbable sequel of existing conditions, or of national and international symptoms in both hemispheres. The "triple alliance," temporary or stable; the mutual sympathy of Latin nations; the greedy absorption of territory by Russia; and the colonization schemes of England, portend the rise of nations vast in territorial area, immense in population, and mighty and majestic in strength. In Central America efforts are already in progress for the union of the five republics into a great nation, the only apparent hinderance being a dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua over a canal project, which must soon subside, and the consummation of union will be proclaimed. Even Canada, our pettish neighbor, is in a ferment over the necessity of a change in the status quo, many citizens prophesying independence, imperial federation, or annexation to the United States. Whatever may immediately happen, the drift of things is toward enlarged nations, ample in the resources of self-development and strong in theocratic and democratic characteristics. In the ancient days small nations, as Palestine, Egypt, Greece, and Phenicia, were in the ascendant; but the world gravitates toward unity of language, literature, and religion, which can happily be secured by the extinction of small political sovereignties and the growth of those already large into mammoth kingdoms. Hence the disintegration of the petty government, and the extension and solidification of the large, may be interpreted as the unfolding of a wonderful providential plan for the unity of the world.

If it is true that Mohammedanism is again reviving and rapidly spreading over the Oriental world, threatening to dislodge every other form of religious faith, it is no cause of alarm and no ground for discouragement. As a missionary religion, resorting to the sword for the propagation of its doctrines, its success is not surprising; and it may providentially open the way for Christianity by the destruction of idolatry, which is its chief negative work. Though the most stubborn of all foreign religions and the most difficult to subdue, it may be instrumentally effecting a preparation for the better religion that is not in our calculations. Just as the Mohammedan power in Europe is crumbling to pieces, and when no Mohammedan people, province, or empire is rising into significant strength, it is not the time to imagine that as a religion Islamism will check Christianity or drive it from the field. The Mussulman himself believes that his religion is doomed, and his present activity may be but the temporary brightness of the light that is about ready to expire.

SPIRIT OF THE REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES.

LOOKING through the Reviews of the last three months one cannot help noting the number of their papers written in a spirit of apprehension, as if inspired by forecasts of impending evil. The Review of the Church South, for example, has a writer who says, "The race problem in the South is coming to the fore. It will precipitate a political crisis in the near future. The pressure of the claim of the Negro to "social and political equality," he says, 66 means reckless revolution." In the Review of the African Methodist Episcopal Church it is said that patriotic men have grasped the astounding truth that the nation is slowly but surely drifting to a crisis which may prove a catastrophe. In the Forum Judge Tourgee asserts that the Negro question "still confronts us as unsolved, and growing more perilous every hour," because the South keeps the "Negro as a constituent, but neutralizes him as a factor in the government," as it did in slave-holding days. Again, the Forum has a strong writer, Rev. Dr. W. Barry, who sees “signs of impending revolution" in the prevailing "callous indifference to every instinct which does not make for wealth;" in the fact that "the worship of the almighty dollar, incarnate in the self-made capitalist, is a deification at which Vespasian himself, with his 'Ut puto, deus fio,' would stare and gasp;" in the further fact that the aim of "the average man is by some lucky stroke to become a silver-king, railway-king, cattle-king, master of a syndicate, or creator of a corner," and in "the growing number of workers who look upon capitalism as their worst enemy," and aim at a revolution having for its purpose "the redistribution of wealth on a reasonable basis." In a similar spirit a Baptist Review writer says that "A laxity of public morals, too many instances of which confront us in the social, political, and commercial life of the people, is a sowing of dragon's teeth, and the harvest of armed men may have to be reaped with the sword." Finally, we have in the North American a declaration by Rev. J. B. Wasson that "in no department of American life is the power of money greater than in the Churches. It shapes policy, blinds the view, and compels Christians, as a whole, to take the rich man's views of every moral and social question. American Christianity is confronted by the problem that involves not merely its well-being, but its very exist

ence!"

What do these voices mean? They speak almost simultaneously from very different quarters, but in one tone of apprehension. Grant that much thinking on the evils whose impending effects they anticipate has inclined these writers to magnify the ills of which they speak, and to be despondent rather than hopeful, there yet is at least this much significance in their utterances: they call attention to what no candid thinker can deny, namely, that society, having in many things turned away from right action and surrendered itself to the direction of selfish impulses, is

thus far at variance with the divine law of righteousness, and is thereby exposing itself to the penalties which Providence inflicts on nations and churches for unrighteous conduct. The shadows of possible-ay, and probable-judgments have cast a gloom over the quickened consciences of these writers. They speak as they do because their moral judgments are in harmony with divine law. Though not prophets, they are yet like the prophets of antiquity in that they stand in closer sympathy with the divine mind than the majority of men. If other men would as closely observe passing events, and view them as steadfastly in the light of God's eternal laws, they would share their feelings and respond in startling echoes to their warning voices. As it is, though they may not express a wide breadth of public opinion, yet Christian thinkers will do well and wisely to regard them, not as pessimistic croakers, but as men whose strongly expressed fears, originating in convictions which, if exaggerated, are yet substantially right, ought to infect the Christian mind of the country and lead to a corrected public opinion. Such a quickening of the people's moral judgments would work out a national escape from possibly impending judgments by demanding justice for the Negro, greater fidelity to ethical truth, and such condemnation of existing worldliness on the part of the Churches as would save them from that materialization, that subjection of their policy to the demands of sentimental but ungodly capitalists, which Mr. Wasson deplores, and which, if it were general, would work spiritual death in every branch of the Church. These voices ought not therefore to be despised, since they prove that the moral consciousness of society is not stagnant, but living in some and ready to assert itself in many more.

The Quarterly Review for April treats of: 1. "The Public Life of the Prince of Wales; " 2. "Motley's Correspondence; " 3. "The Old Age of Goethe;" 4. "Waste; " 5. "The House of Percy;" 6. "Mr. Norris's Novels;" 7. "The Civil Service;" 8. "Raleigh's Poetry and Life;” 9. “Wiclif and his Work;" 10. "French and English Jacobinism." The first of these papers places the Prince of Wales among the philanthropists of the times, and points him as a man more worthy of the proud name he bears than is generally believed. The second paper sketches with a master's pencil the career and character of one of the noblest of our countrymen, who as historian, diplomat, patriot, and gentleman won high reputation and imperishable fame. The third article, while appreciative of Goethe's genius, deals faithfully with his failings, and finds little in his character worthy of imitation. The fourth paper shows one source of want in England to be the wasteful habits of both its people and government. The "House of Percy" outlines the romantic history of one of England's most ancient, famous, and fortunate aristocratic families. The article on "The Civil Service" shows a regretted tendency, in England, to plunge civil service into that political sewer which threatens to absorb it in this country. The eighth paper throws the light of great Raleigh's poetry

upon the facts of his eventful life. The article on "Wiclif and his Work" is an admirable paper, which fairly portrays a man who profoundly impressed both his own age and "all time." This number of the Quarterly Review is exceptionally interesting and valuable.

In the Bibliotheca Sacra for April we have: 1. "Our Notable Decade;" 2. "Dr. Lyman Abbott on Paul's Letter to the Romans; " 3. "The Uniformity of Nature;" 4. "The Scriptural Doctrine of the Holy Spirit;" 5. "Notes on Dr. Riddle's edition of Robinson's Harmony of the Gospels;" 6. "Uses and Abuses of an Important Principle of Interpretation;" 7. Septenary Time and the Origin of the Sabbath." 8. "Attributive Aorist Participles in Protasis in the New Testament;" 9. "The Lost Writings Quoted and Referred to in the New Testament;" 10. "Critical Notes." In the first of these vigorously written papers Dr. D. L. Leonard presents an array of facts concerning the events which transpired between 1830-40, which justify him in naming that period "Our Notable Decade." Of the thirty years between 1820 and 1850 he rightly observes that "it may be doubted if before or elsewhere changes so numerous and so varied, so radical and so momentous, have ever occurred over such vast spaces in so brief a period, and affecting such multitudes." But of those three decades, that between 1830-40 was the most notable. In the second of the above named articles, Dr. G. H. Gilbert reviews Dr. Abbott's Commentary on Romans with a pen dipped in the ink of acute and sound discrimination. While conceding the suggestiveness and occasional helpfulness of Dr. Abbott's treatment of this great epistle, he finds it lacking in accurate scientific scholarship, in correct conceptions of Paul's character, in a tenable view of Paul's conversion, in a proper apprehension of the great apostle's teaching respecting circumcision, and in sound interpretations of the words and phrases which constitute Paul's key-notes in this profound letter. He shows Dr. Abbott to be misleading when he insists that by "the righteousness of God" Paul meant divine love, that by "justification " he meant not an act of God by which a believing sinner is declared righteous, but a process by which the soul is set right in its relations to God. Thus, as Dr. Gilbert shows, Mr. Abbott confounds justification with sanctification, between which Paul clearly discriminates. The reviewer also finds the commentator eminently astray when he interprets Paul's doctrine of propitiation as signifying that Christ died "to deliver men from a crude, barbaric, pagan conception of religion," and his death was "a necessity of God's love;" whereas Paul emphatically taught that God "set forth Christ to be a propitiation to declare his righteousness," that "he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth." The reviewer makes it manifest that Dr. Abbott's gospel is not the gospel of which the great apostle was "not ashamed." In "The Uniformity of Nature" Dr. C. Walker elucidates the principle that while the phenomena of nature are not invariable there are "indications of the invariable" sufficient to demonstrate that "we are not in a chaos but in a cosmos. . . . There is diversity in unity. . . . Uniformity of causation