certain that chance does not account for all the phenomena of nature. It is true that

The fortuitous among chemical bodies is quite a different thing from the fortuitous among ponderable bodies. We might shake together the parts of a watch for all eternity and not get that adjustment of the wheels and springs that makes a watch. If a thousand of brick are dumped upon the ground, is there any probability that they will take the form of a house? Or if the letters of the alphabet are shaken up together in a bag, is there the slightest chance that they will arrange themselves into words, and that the words will arrange themselves into intelligent sentences?

In this case the parts have no attraction for one another. But " among chemical compounds, out of which living bodies are built up, there rules the selective force of chemical affinity." Nevertheless in chemistry there is something more than chance :

The elements select their partners. It is a marriage in which two literally become one. Chemistry is on the road to life; chemical transformations lead up to the transformations we call vital. . . . If the worm, as Emerson says, "is striving to be man," the clod is no less striving to be worm. The crystal prepares the way for the cell. The flowing currents of air and water are forerunners of the flowing currents of the living body.

This upward tendency is the essential fact in evolution. In truth, the doctrine of evolution cannot be stated except in terms which imply intelligence, purpose, and improvement. To quote Mr. Burroughs again :

66

"No statement of the universe," says the wise Emerson, can have any soundness that does not admit of its ascending effort." Is it thinkable that man could have arisen from the manlike apes by the mere clash and friction of an irrational environment alone? Is one man superior to another by reason of outward conditions and the discipline of life alone? Is the secret of Plato or Paul or Shakespeare or Lincoln in the keeping of pans and pots? Man arose from his humbler ancestors because the manward impulse, in some way beyond our ken, was inherent in the evolutionary impulse.

This word "inherent" is the key to John Burroughs's philosophy. He thinks of a Creator, but his Creator is not an omnipotent mechanic creating the world from without, but a living Spirit creating and directing it from within. Life within creates and controls. But this life within is something more than a nere blind cosmic force; something more

than an infinite and eternal energy. intelligent and purposeful. seems inseparable from life." dent as intelligence is in some of the phenomena of nature, there are other phenomena from which, in Mr. Burroughs's view, intelligent purpose is conspicuously absent.

The ingenious devices of certain plants to insure cross-fertilization are, to me, just as much an evidence of what we must call mind, though of mind of a vastly different order from our own, as any model or device in our patent offices, while the forms of the rocks, the hills, the shore, the streams, the rivers, are in no sense purposive.

It will be seen from this sentence that Mr. Burroughs in his philosophy is not controlled by any preconceived assumptions. He does not take intelligence or benevolence for granted. He has no axioms; no "C we must believe" or " we must suppose." He faces all the facts of life, not only with courage, but with audacity. He does not shut out from his observation the apparent crudities, imperfections, failures, and cruelties in na

ture.

The creative energy shows itself to be very human, very fallible, often vacillating and shortsighted. Indeed, man is the image of his Maker in this respect. God has gone on with his work very much as man goes on with hisblundering, experimenting, but doing the best he could.

I admire Mr. Burroughs's clearness of vision and his frankness in report; but I do not equally admire his dogmatism in interpretation. A little modest agnosticism might recognize the truth that there may be a higher value which we fail to see in the apparent cruelties of life, as

higher values in the maiming and the mutilation perpetrated in the surgical ward of a hospital which a child cannot possibly comprehend.

The philosophy of John Burroughs will not satisfy the theologian who has his standardized theory of creation and the Creator by which he measures all philosophy; and his definitions of the Eternal and man's relation to the Eternal to which all philosophy must conform or be condemned.

Nor will it satisfy the materialist who poohpoohs at all attempts to interpret life, who counts futile all endeavors to find "sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and good in everything;" who regards such in

terpretations as fit only for dreamers; who can read without emotion Mr. Burroughs's beautiful chapter on the marriage of the birds, giving spiritual interpretation to "The Master Instinct," and inspiring the sympathetic reader anew with the realization that "love is the greatest thing in the world." The materialist who practically denies in the face of the most evident facts of life that natural phenomena "stand related to our mental and emotional condition and edification," and dismisses all attempts to read the message which is ever passing over the wires as mere idle speculation, will find nothing in "Under the Apple Trees" to attract him.

But, without accepting all of Mr. Burroughs's interpretations, I welcome the fundamental truths to which he gives expression, as Henri Bergson has done in "Creative Evolution," and which I venture to express in my own terms as follows:

Life is and always must remain a mystery. The Infinite Power who creates and controls transcends all our defining. The very attempt to define God denies that he is Infinite. But all that we see of life justifies us in at least two conclusions.

God is not a mechanic making a machine by processes from without; he works from within. He fashions and controls the universe, not as the sculptor fashions the plastic clay, but as man's spirit fashions and controls his body. Creation is not a product, but a process. Spirit is always moving upon the face of the waters, always bringing order out of chaos. Every day is a creative day.

As

I am writing these lines and look out of my window upon the grass, the flowers, the trees, I hear him saying, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth. I hear him saying, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth each after their kind. I hear him saying, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and

creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind. And in myriads of homes I see him breathing the breath of life into the babe in the mother's womb and calling on the fathers and mothers, as fellow-workers with him, to make of their babes men and women in God's image and after his likeness.

And I see him doing this in spite of obsta cles and hindrances and by the use of instruments. That he is all-powerful does not mean to me that he works without instruments and knows no difficulties. If he worked without instruments and encountered no difficulties, there would be no more opportunity for him to exercise wisdom than there was for Aladdin when he had only to rub his lamp and prefer his request. Since God has made man in his image, it is in man I look for his image and in man's work for the interpretation of God's work. And therefore I see in the creative work of the farmer, the mechanic, the engineer, the architect, the artist-all sharers in the world's productive industry—an interpretation of the Creator's work. And in the ministrations of man's merciful love I see the interpretation of the Father's mercy, in the hopes and aspirations of humanity I hear the Father's upward calling to his children, in the Supreme Man of history I see at once the goal and the inspiration of human endeavor, and in the difficulties which Jesus confronted, the sufferings which he endured, and the patient courage with which he plucked victory out of defeat I see the supreme interpretation of the spirit and work of the Eternal.

Mr. Burroughs has told us of the secret of life which he has seen when studying nature "Under the Apple Trees " in his orchard. I wish there were some one with equal clearness of vision, moral courage, and spiritual insight to tell us what he sees of life as it is interpreted by that spirit of love, service, and self-sacrifice which has its greatest historic illustration in the Garden of the olive trees and in the cross.

The Knoll, Cornwall-on-Hudson.

A

N impressive event of the present year has been the celebration of the centennial of the American Bible Society. Perhaps no event has aroused a greater, more varied, and more widespread appreciation. And yet we find in "America," the Jesuit weekly, this remarkable statement:

The American Bible Society has just completed a century of endeavor, and throughout the country there has been ringing a chorus of congratulation. Almost the only voice not heard is that of the Catholic Church. . . . What is the reason for this attitude of hostility?

The first reason is that the American Bible Society, from its very inception, has raised the standard of revolt. The Church, from the time of the Council of Trent, has repeatedly forbidden that any versions of the sacred Scriptures should be printed without the sanction and approval of the Bishops or the Apostolic See.

The American Bible Society has refused to recognize the existence of this law. Unau thorized and unguided by an authoritative teaching body, this association has during the past century promoted the translation of the Scriptures. . . . In every copy thus translated or distributed there have been passages more or less tinctured with dogmatic error; from every copy, too, whole books of the sacred text have been omitted. How, then, could the Church congratulate any society on such an achievement?

Besides, the Church wishes by her opposition to emphasize her entire disapproval of the underlying principle which is the motive force of all the activity of the Bible Societies. It is a cardinal Protestant principle that the Scriptures are the one and all-sufficient rule of faith; that the individual reading of the Bible, without assistance from notes or commentaries, is the sure guide to revealed religious truth. Not such is the doctrine of the Church, which has always held that the Scriptures are a supplementary, not the primary, and much less the exclusive, source of revelation; that Christ's doctrines, in the economy he himself established, were to be conveyed to the world by the preaching of the Apostles and their successors; and that Holy Writ is to be interpreted, not at the individual reader's pleasure, but strictly in accordance with the sense of living tradition which has come down unbroken from the Apostles. This doctrine the American Bible Society de

I The Centennial History of the American Bible Society. By Henry Otis Dwight. The Macmillan Company, New York. Set (2 vols.), $2.

nies; in its opinion each reader may interpret the Bible as he thinks best.

This is, so far as we know, the only jarring note. Certainly in the minds of the vast majority of men the centennial celebration marks the development, not only. of popular reading of the Bible, but also the development of the Christian interests of this country all over the Republic-aye, and of the reaching out and ministering by the American Bible Society to the great mission fields of the world, co-operating with the Boards of Foreign Missions in their translations and revisions of the Scriptures, and in the publication and circulation of them under all sorts of adversities and hardships and with all manner of victories.

The man in the street is not very much impressed by a statement that, say, 234,567 Bibles were sold during a given period. On the other hand, if we can say that the Bible is the best selling book in the world, it will interest him.

Dr. Dwight's history gives, not only to religious workers, but to the man who does not care much about religious propaganda, an immense mass of information, collated in no dry-as-dust manner, but in a graphic way to interest every one.

In the first place, we are shown what the missionary impulse towards Bible propaganda has meant, especially during National crises. Such a crisis occurred early in the last century, and by 1815 there were more than a hundred little local Bible Societies in the United States for the purpose of providing Bibles for the poor who had no means of supplying themselves. In 1816 the American Bible Society was formed. It had been preceded by State societies, as, for instance, in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.

The old British and Foreign Bible Society heartily congratulated each of these new societies and made grants of money to them. Those connected with the American societies frequently expressed their affection for the British Society, under the just title "venerable parent." But there was another than a purely American impulse. There was also the missionary influence. Almost every one

of the new societies had in its constitution a provision for extending its benefactions, when

possible, to heathen lands, and not only to them but to the needs of our own frontiersmen, causing the immortal Samuel J. Mills, when a student at Williams College, to query whether " poor dark Africa must wait until all in America had consented to drink of the water of life."

Accordingly, Mills and some other students declared themselves ready to give their lives to work as foreign missionaries. This was back in 1810. The young men so impressed the leading clergymen of their acquaintance that the result was the formation in that year of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

But Mills was not one of the five chosen by the Board to go abroad. Personally disappointed, he was called to missionary work at home, and this connected him with the organization of the American Bible Society. When the American Government made the Louisiana Purchase, there was so little popular knowledge of the people in the new territory that in 1812 the Massachusetts Missionary Society, in co-operation with the Connecticut Missionary Society, appointed J. M. Schermerhorn as missionary to explore the West and Southwest, and chose young Mills as a companion to Mr. Schermerhorn. At Nashville the two young missionaries were introduced to General Andrew Jackson, then on the point of starting for Natchez with fifteen hundred soldiers, the war with Great Britain having just begun. General Jackson asked the young men to go as far as Natchez on his steamer, and from there they went on a flatboat to New Orleans, returning from that city overland to Nashville, a distance of five hundred miles through heavy forests, thick canebrakes, and bridgeless rivers, and with wolves, bears, and rattlesnakes ready to dispute the right of way. Of course they found people who were without the Bible, not only in this but in other regions of the great country west of the Alleghanies, and Mills founded many Bible Societies. In 1814 Mills was appointed to make another tour over practically the same ground. This expedition brought Mills to New Orleans in 1815, a month after General Jackson's victory over Sir Edward Pakenham and the English army.

should be formed. He kept hammering at this, and in 1816, in the Garden Street Dutch Reformed Church of New York City, the American Bible Society came into being. The very street on which that church fronted is now hidden under the name of Exchange Place.

There were great names among the men who met in that old church-Eliphalet Nott, of Union College; Samuel Bayard, of Princeton; Lyman Beecher, of Connecticut; John Jay, of Westchester; William Gray, of Massachusetts; Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, and others.

started. What One imagines Yet this is not

And so the Society was need to describe its course? that it is known of all men. So. It is all very well to say that the Society has placed in the United States some seventy million copies of the Scriptures besides those circulated in foreign lands-a total of one hundred and seventeen million copies. It is all very well to say that the benefits of this distribution can by no means be limited to Americans, pure and simple; but they have also touched the millions of immigrants flocking to this country, have touched the colored people, the Indians, and especially in these later years that class deprived of so much that makes for joy in life-the blind.

By

There is a good deal more than this. a distinct provision the Society helps missions in their translations and publications of the Scriptures and by supporting translators. This co-operation has resulted in Bibles in a hundred and sixty-four different languages. This is an immense feature of the Society's work. It is indicated by the fact that now sixteen power-presses are working, at times day and night, in New York to keep up with the demands, and that abroad there are other presses engaged by the Society, as, for instance, in Constantinople, Beirût, Bangkok, Shanghai, Yokohama, and Seoul. In this foreign field the Society has distributed a mass of Scriptures which has, of course, a direct relation to the success of missionaries. Thus the work of the missionary societies and of the American Bible Society are indissolubly interwoven.

So we come back to the fact which is going to interest not merely the man of religious impulses, but the man who cares little about religious propaganda-namely, the fact that the Bible is now the most popular book in the world. And it is the American Bible Society which, we believe, more than any other agency, has made it such.