cation and suppress freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. It holds that the magistrate should receive investiture from the priest, and the State be subject to the pope. Strikes and strife between capital and labor, between grasping and selfish monopoly, and honorable manly industry, too often occur. Intemperance, the prolific source of so much poverty, crime, and misery, still rears its hydra head, and the smoke of the distillery darkens our skies and poisons and pollutes our atmosphere. Did we look only on the darker side of affairs there are many fruits of man's fallen nature to discourage, to almost cause despair.

Besides immovable faith in the omnipotent reign of Heaven's love for man, the past history of the Republic encourages us. In the Colonial period, during the Revolution, in the times of transition from a loose confederation of colonies to the adop tion of that Constitution which binds separate States into one grand nation, during the rebellion, when the life of the Republic was at stake, in the period of reconstruction which followed -at all these times destructive influences were at work arousing ghastly speculations quite equal to, if not greater than, any which now threaten. And yet a And yet a gracious providence marvelously wrought our deliverance. The ignorance, impiety, venality around us, the small amount of self-sacrifice and consecration to God among even good people, tempt us to over-estimate a past golden age. Washington and Asbury-the fathers of State and Church-shed a luster on their times which seems to make the present quite inferior. Those days did produce noble specimens of patriotism and Christian heroism. But it does not follow that the hope of the nation was any brighter then than now. No one acquainted with the facts of history can doubt that, with all its defects, and they are many and great, the present outlook is better than before. We are fascinated with the glory that gilds the mountain tops of the past and overlook the dense darkness of its dark valleys. In those days men who had hope in God and the mission of their country had also much of the opposition and oppression which make wise men mad. Dark forebodings of the future were theirs, even while they toiled and prayed and sacrificed for interests dearer than life. How comparatively peaceful and prosperous are our times! How many doors of usefulness open! How

many evils have been corrected, and how many laboring with intelligent zeal and love to help on every good cause in Church and State, in the nation and the world! The Jerusalem Church enjoyed themselves in the smile of the Lord, unmindful of his order to "go into all the world." The persecution that drove them out they thought was ruin. It only served to spread the fire, and illuminate and save themselves and others. So in the dark days of the rebellion, men's hearts failed them with fear when they saw the dismembered fragments of the Union rushing, as they thought, to destruction. What lamentations over the good times gone! Alas! they were hard, rough times, cursed with the sum of all villainies. But after the war how beautiful the dawn of a better day! The thunders that shook the earth and rent the sky passed away, and an atmosphere more fresh and clear, and a larger store of good from a land enriched with martyrs' blood, ensued. What a testimony for God and man was given by those who gave their lives for the life of the nation, and what an inspiring hope as to the future!

True, in this free land popery and infidelity have remarkable opportunity to manifest their nature and tendencies. But while evangelical Christianity is awake, and free to combat their errors, and is advancing in a ratio twice as fast as the population, there is little to fear. One hundred years ago popery and infidelity were relatively stronger in North America than now. Then the Churches had one communicant in thirteen of the population. Now there is one for every six. Nor need efforts toward right relations between capital and labor alarm us. Our great capitalists and corporations were never so much disposed to treat those in their service with fairness and render a just recompense. Never more than now has the interdependence of capital and labor been so well understood, and a spirit of sympathy and loyalty and an earnest effort toward right adjustment been so well and intelligently practiced. Self-interest is leading many of our large corporations to consult the well-being of their employees, and to honor the Lord's day by avoiding unnecessary labor. The ravages of intemperance are not only arresting greater attention, but there are wiser and more determined and successful efforts than ever to end them. Notwithstanding the opposition of

foes and the blunders of friends, the cause of temperance, by local option, legislative restriction, and constitutional prohibi tion is steadily advancing. Our Sunday-schools, and nearly all the benevolences of the Church, now so productive of good, were scarcely dreamed of one hundred years ago. For these millions of money are given, and the intelligent, earnest services of increasing millions of our wisest and best men and women. The work of the highest Christian education is receiving more and more attention. The tone of fashionable society and polities is steadily rising. No avowed blasphemer can secure the suffrages of any considerable number of people, and no production that reviles the name of Christ has any market value, while one hundred years ago infidelity largely ruled our educated classes, and the overthrow of Christianity was thought at hand. Surely, if the fathers of the Republic had reason to be hopeful of its mission, their children have a thousand-fold

more so!

If our material resources have augmented at a rate never before seen, our educational and spiritual forces are advancing more rapidly. Best of all, we are beginning to realize the importance of our work in these directions, and to address ourselves to it in some measure commensurate with that importance and with our resources. What has been done only evidences our energies and indicates what we may yet do. If in the brief period of the past we have redeemed from savage wildness such an empire as now constitutes the Republic, what may we not accomplish when this favored land is brought more fully into the loving service of Christ! If in so short a time the Church has risen from such small beginnings to its present magnitude, what may we not anticipate when all who are called Christians become, in truth, witnesses for God and workers in his vineyard! Such we may humbly and yet confidently hope is, and is to be, the mission of the republic.

Alexander Martin

ART. IV,-JACOB SLEEPER-A FOUNDER OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY.

It was in London thirty-three years ago that I first met the man whose honored name I have placed at the head of this paper. At that time he was in his fifty-fourth year, a striking specimen of manly strength and beauty. Well do I remember the impression produced by his genial spirit wherever he moved, and the naturalness with which among his acquaintance the central place was instinctively accorded him. He was on a journey, and to him as to me the scenes about us were new and full of interest. Our association was for a few hours only, but in those few hours his radiant nature so disclosed itself that I could never again think of him as a stranger. Then, as ever, he was the intellectually alert, highly informed, broadminded, warm-hearted, unassuming Christian nobleman-as much in place in royal palaces as in the humblest home of want. Had I never met him again, I am confident that I should have remembered him as a man possessed of rare and beautiful powers, the whole harmonized and transfigured by a joyous Christian piety.

Four years later, unexpectedly appointed to the Bromfieldstreet pastorate, I was given new opportunity to sun myself in his genial and luminous spirit. Had I been older and wiser than I then was I do not know how I could have commanded the courage to attempt to minister to his experienced and instructed mind, or how I could have permitted him to call me his pastor. As it was I was ever conscious of the incongruity, and well content if I could only feel that as his assistant and representative I was effectually carrying forward our common work. In the inexperience of those years I found many a kind and considerate friend, but of him I must say that he seemed nothing short of a wise and affectionate father. From those days to the present hour a picture of his kindly features has had a place, not only in my heart, but also upon my study wall, and so in a kind of spiritual partnership we have wrought and thought together.

In 1861 a divine voice summoned me away, and for five years the ocean rolled between us. In 1867, however, in ac

cordance with a leading equally divine, I was again permitted to take my stand beside him, and to share in labors of precious interest to us both. At first it was the reorganization and upbuilding of the oldest theological seminary of the Church. Two years later, with his brave colleagues, Lee Claflin and Isaac Rich, he was ready to engage in a vaster and more courageous enterprise, and to assume the responsibility of becoming an original corporator of Boston University. Twenty years ago, the twenty-sixth day of May, the thought become a deed. On that day the charter of the proposed university received the signature of the governor, who by a felicitous fitness of things was the Honorable William Claflin, son of the oldest of the three who bear the name of founders.

Let us pause a moment at this year of the founding of the university, 1869. It is a favorable point from which to make an observation.

Mr. Sleeper was in his sixty-seventh year, though seeming, as usual, at least a decade younger than he was. Admirably had Providence prepared him for the opportunities now opened before him. In his own land he had been called to superintend educational work of every grade, from that of a Sunday-school to that of the oldest of the American colleges. In England he had investigated the endowed charity schools of London with the same care as he had the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He had assisted in planting in Ireland, at Belfast, a noble institution of learning, a college under wise and evangelical leadership. He had participated in the organization of the New England Education Society, and had now served in its Board of Managers fourteen years. As a stateappointed overseer of Harvard University he had participated in the government of that institution twelve years. Of Wesleyan University he had been a trustee twenty-five years, and at this very time was president of its corporation. I have been told that early in his trusteeship in that institution, in a critical moment of its history, his brave words and braver deeds were the chief factor in averting an apparently inevitable disaster. In 1869 both Lee Claflin and Isaac Rich were members of the same board. All three were also members of the corporation of Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham, where successive disasters from fire had called out the beneficence of