interest is going on. The Monday issues contain even reports of popular sermons as items of news, so that millions may read what thousands have heard the day before. One editor in New York succeeded, where geographical societies and government expeditions failed, in finding Livingstone in the wilds of Africa, and revealing the mysteries of that continent from the sources of the Nile to the western coast.

This spirit of enterprise communicates itself in large measure to the religious press. Every respectable denomination has its stately quarterly review, its monthly magazine, and its weekly newspaper or newspapers. The quarterlies are intended for scholars, and for that vast and steadily-growing theological lay-public which wants to be posted in the progress of theology and general literature, and to possess itself of the results of the latest learned researches. The magazines furnish light reading for the educated classes. The weeklies are religious newspapers in the proper sense of the term. Of the last class 30 are published in New York City, 21 in Philadelphia, 15 in Chicago, 14 in Cincinnati, 11 in Boston, 9 in St. Louis, 9 in San Francisco, 4 in Richmond.

The weekly religious newspaper is a peculiar American institution, and reaches almost every family. Europe has, of course, its religious periodicals, but with the exception of a few English weeklies, they are confined to purely ecclesiastical or de votional reading, and rarely exceed a circulation of one thousand copies. An American religious weekly treats de rebus omnibus et quibusdam aliis, and requires at least five thousand subscribers to be self-sustaining. It furnishes a weekly panorama of the world as well as of the church, avoiding, of course, all that is demoralizing and objectionable, but omitting nothing that is thought instructive, interesting, and edifying to a Christian family. Miscellaneous advertisements, ecclesiastical, literary, and commercial, take up a good deal of space and pay the heavy expense.

The religious newspaper furnishes throughout the year a library of useful and entertaining reading for the small sum of two or three dollars. It is a welcome weekly family visitor, and easily becomes an indispensable institution, a powerful aid to the pulpit, and a promoter of every good cause.

THE TEMPERANCE REFORM.

Intemperance is one of the greatest evils in America, and the most fruitful source of crime, pauperism, and taxation. It prevails especially among the lower classes, both native and foreign. A great deal of intemperance is imported from abroad, and made worse under the stimulating effect of the American climate and by the poisonous adulteration of liquors. The Latin races are generally temperate (though less so than the Arabs and Turks under the prohibition of wine by the Koran); the immigrants from the British Isles and from Scandinavia take to the strongest drinks; the Germans, whom Dr. Luther in his day charged with being possessed by the "Saufteufel," worship lager-beer, which is consumed in amazing quantities, and, although far less injurious, yet, in the opinion of Prince Bismarck, the greatest of living Germans, "makes stupid and lazy, and breeds democracy." Its effect is much worse in America, where every thing is apt to be carried to excess.

It is estimated that between six and seven hundred millions of dollars are annually expended in the United States for intoxicating drinks. In New York City alone there are 8000 licensed and unlicensed liquor-shops and lager-beer saloons. Chief-Justice Noah Davis, of New York, states from his long judicial experience that "one half of all the crimes of America and Great Britain is caused by the intemperate use of intoxicating liquors; and that of the crimes involving personal violence certainly three fourths are chargeable to the same cause." The liquor interest is a fearful monster: it defies or evades legislation, it uses bribery and corruption for its work of destruction, it devours the hard earnings of the poor, it brings misery and ruin on families, and sends thousands of drunkards reeling with a rotten body and a cheerless soul to a hopeless grave.

To counteract this gigantic evil the best efforts of philanthropists and Christians have been called into action. The temperance movement, while it reveals one of the darkest aspects of American society, is also among the strongest evidences of

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the earnest, aggressive, reforming character of American Christianity. The "National American Temperance Society” covers the land with tracts and books setting forth the baneful effects of intemperance, and acts upon legislatures in behalf of prohibitive measures. There are besides innumerable local and congregational temperance organizations of men and women. Temperance lecturers travel over the land and address crowded audiences in churches, public halls, and theatres, inducing thousands to take the pledge after the example set in a previous generation by Father Matthew in Ireland. Among these lecturers are reformed drunkards like John Gough and Francis Murphy, men of extraordinary dramatic eloquence, made doubly effective by their own sad experience.. The evangelists Moody and Sankey make temperance a prominent practical topic of their revival preaching. The Methodist Church as a body is a vast temperance society.

There is a difference of views as to the best means of curing the evil, but there is abundant room for a variety of methods.

The moderate temperance reformers advocate strict license laws, the prohibition of all artificial alcoholic drinks and the poisonous adulteration of genuine wine. Regarding total prohibition as undesirable or at least as impracticable, especially in large cities, they aim at such a regulation and diminution of the liquor traffic as will make it comparatively harmless. Unfortunately, in a heterogeneous city like New York the best legislation is so often defeated or evaded by faithless magistrates, who are elected and re-elected by the very breakers of the laws, that the independent efforts of disinterested citizens are necessary to bring the police and the judges up to their duty. Two years ago a vigorous Society for the Prevention of Crime was formed under the leadership of the Chancellor of the University of New York (Dr. Howard Crosby), by the influence of which 1739 unlicensed tippling houses were shut up, which had been allowed to do their work of mischief in the very teeth of the license law now on the statute-book.

The radical temperance reformers advocate total abstinence and the entire prohibition of the liquor traffic. They put fer

mented wines and malt liquors in the same category with distilled spirits as alike poisonous. The Maine law, so called, has been actually tried in the State of Maine and several other States, but while it may be carried out in certain country districts, it is a dead letter in large cities.

The advocates of total abstinence differ again as to the ground on which they base their practice. Not a few denounce the drinking even of pure wine and beer as a sin, and thus unintentionally cast reproach on the character and example of our blessed Lord, who changed water into wine, and instituted the holy communion in wine as the symbol of His blood shed for the remission of our sins. I say, unintentionally, and under the strange delusion that the Bible wine was not fermented and not intoxicating, i.e., no wine at all. But the vast majority of teetotalers base abstinence on the tenable ground of Christian charity and expediency; they apply Paul's principle concerning meat (1 Cor. 7: 13) to drink, and deny themselves a right in order to set a good example and to avoid giving offence to a weak brother.

It is certainly a commanding phenomenon that since the beginning of the temperance reform in America about fifty years ago, the use of wine as a beverage which formerly prevailed, as it still prevails all over Europe, has been greatly diminished in respectable society. The majority of the Protestant clergy and church-members content themselves with water, coffee, and tea. You can sit down in any decent hotel or give a social party to the most distinguished guests without a drop of wine. What is the rule in good society in Europe is the exception in America. Thus much at all events has been effected by the temperance. reform. But much more is needed if the lower classes are to be saved from the deadly effects of the scourge of intemperThe temperance movement will not stop until the sale of distilled liquors, such as rum, brandy, gin, and whiskey, as a beverage, is prohibited, and banished from the land..

ance.

THE TREATMENT OF THE FOREIGN RACES.

Our picture of American Christianity would not be complete without a glance at the treatment of the non-Caucasian

races the Negroes, the Indians, and the Chinese, who are brought as wards under the care of our government and our churches. The negroes were imported against their will by the iniquity of the African slave-trade, but have become naturalized and feel at home among the whites; the Indians are the natives of the soil, but are still refused the privileges of citizens, and crowded out by the white men, or flee from them like the buffaloes of the prairies; the Chinese emigrate voluntarily and form a distinct community of their own, but generally return. again to their native China with the gains of their industry.

The conduct of the Americans towards these races is unfortunately characterized by the overbearing pride and oppression of a superior race, but redeemed by many examples of noble Christian devotion and a growing sense of our national guilt for the past and our duty for the present and future. The negro problem is at last happily solved, and it is to be hoped that the justice done to the Africans will ultimately be granted to the Indians and Chinese.

THE NEGROES.

The history of the African race in the United States is one of the most striking instances of God's wisdom and mercy overruling the wrath of man for His own glory. The civil war which brought the government to the brink of ruin was a just retribution for the national sin of slavery, but ended, by an immense sacrifice of blood and treasure, in the salvation of the Union against the suicidal rebellion of the slaveholders, and in the destruction of slavery. It would have been far more honorable if emancipation had been peacefully and gradually accomplished by voluntary action of Congress as a measure of justice and humanity, instead of being resorted to as a necessary war-measure in self-defence, with its inevitable consequence of chaotic confusion and bitter alienation of the Southern and Northern States, which it will take a whole generation to heal. Nevertheless the great cure has been accomplished, and four millions of negroes now enjoy the rights of free citizens. American slavery