others; who translate the noble word liberty, with all its implications of self-restraint and self-sacrifice, into the anarchy of lawless self-assertion. By liberty they mean an unlimited opportunity of being selfish, discourteous, and disagreeable; by freedom they mean a chance to make life harder for their neighbors. They constitute an unresolved residuum of barbarism in a civilized society, and they make popular government unpopular with all who care enough for the people to be anxious for their morals or their manners.

Personality is not manifested by emphasizing those things in ourselves which set us at variance with other people, as righteousness is not demonstrated by disagreeing with all our neighbors and being anxious on all occasions to take up the rôle of Athanasius against the world. To be intensely conscious of one's own rectitude and excessively suspicious of the rectitude of everybody else is to be a fanatic, not a saint.

The soul of personality comes to light in the unfolding of the forces and energies of our spirits along the highest lines-those lines upon which all must travel who approach the kingdom of

heaven. As we draw near to heaven we draw near to one another, because we are steadily outgrowing and casting away the ignorance, selfishness, and hardness of spirit which make us suspicious, irritating, self-asserting; and continually developing the love, helpfulness, joy in the happiness of others, which unite men in the peace and bliss of heaven. Those who think that personality is a limitation of time and earth do not interpret it largely or nobly enough; they accept its elementary and crude manifestations as the showing forth of its soul, and find in its emphasis on difference the secret of a power which is fulfilled only in unity. When the mists of ignorance have vanished; when we all seek those best things which, because they are best, are common to all men; when we shall all see eye to eye, and can all say with utter sincerity, "Not my will but Thine be done," we shall reveal the soul of personality. To be at one with one another does not involve the obliteration of that personality in which the moral signifi

cance of life is rooted; to reach the unity of spirit and purpose which we have in mind when we speak of heaven does not involve the destruction of that variety of temperament and nature which gives life its zest and unfailing interest, and in which the possibilities of humanity are fulfilled. The final unity of heaven is expressed not in uniformity but in variety; and its richness and completeness are suggested in these words from a recently published sermon on "The New Song in Heaven" by that master of the deep things of the spirit, Phillips Brooks:

It seems to me that in this variety of Christian anticipation there is a great tribute to the essential divinity of the Gospel picture of our Lord. How is it that all sorts of men have been able to idealize the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, and find in him a satisfaction for all their infinite variety of want? Does it not bear witness to a certain

universality in the picture that the Bible gives us, which is nothing less than divine? Only the whole God can satisfy the whole man and all men. Can you conceive of any other of the great helpers of the human race being idealized with such infiniteness of help? When we see how the times and the minds which, mentally, morally, and spiritually, have had the largest and keenest appetites have been perfectly satisfied with the anticipation of a heaven in which they should see Jesus and be with him, must we not own that there was in his early life some suggestion of this mysterious and divine abundance which has gathered around it, and which mankind has found in it?

When we speak of this part of the joy of heaven-a joy in communion with Christ-that part of the description of the new song that none can learn but they who have been redeemed becomes peculiarly intelligible. It has passed into a region where only the persoral experience can fol low it, the region of most intimate personal companionship and love. None but those who love Christ can rejoice and sing for his presence. Nay, more than this, since each redemption is a separate and peculiar thing, since each redeemed soul passes through its experience of grace, a new feature enters here into the singing of the new songthat, though the song will be but one because redemption is one, it must also be many because redemptions are so manifold. Each voice that sings will sing like all the rest, and yet sing differently. Each singer will sing to his own Saviour. Each will remember his own calling, his own gradual conviction, especially the moment apart from all other Christians' holiest moments, when Jesus made the covenant with his individual soul. Each song will ring with peculiar memories

of the paths, the open plains, the dark mountain passes, when it was practiced alone upon the upward journey.

And thus there will be forever in the new song of the redeemed that mingling of singleness with manifoldness, of combined unity with distinct personality, which is the beauty of all music and character and life.

The Spectator

During a recent Western trip the Spectator became a part of a home-seekers' excursion. Every-day travelers are of little importance to Western railways compared with prospective settlers, and regular trains are ruthlessly divided into sections, while time-tables are apparently forgotten, in the frantic effort to transport several hundred followers of the star of empire to the unbroken plains. This particular company was bound for the Panhandle of Texas, and probably not ten persons in the four coach-loads had ever before been west of the Missouri River. The Spectator left the comfortable Pullman and made a pilgrimage to the home-seekers. It is a good thing for a traveler to visit the chair cars and smokers occasionally. It tends to contentment and satisfaction to see how the "other half" fares on long journeys.

Yet this "other half " was by no means limited in means or unable to secure the

best accommodations on the train had it

so desired. The men had a sturdy, prosperous, yet frugal look. They were a high average of Americanism, and most of them were over thirty years old. They store clothes," to be sure, but the land agent in charge of the party said that practically every one had enough money or credit to buy a farm at the journey's end. Few women were in the party. Two accompanied their husbands; three others were widows going to select land for themselves; two school-teachers

were bent on the same errand. Children

of all ages were in abundance. All were from northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and Michigan, and all came from farming communities. They ate at the lunch-counters after their baskets gave out-and many would sleep in the tourist car sleeper. This was a far different

pioneering than that of the travelers in prairie schooners in early days.

"Yes, it's a long way to move at our time of life," agreed a thoughtful-faced member of the party, in response to the Spectator's remark. "But it seemed the best thing to do. I had a chance to sell my hundred acres for a good price. I could clear up the mortgage and have enough left to buy two hundred acres down in the Southwest-free of debt. I've paid interest on that mortgage a good while," with a half-sigh. The prospect of freedom from debt leads many a home-seeker to make the change. "But how do you know that you can raise crops there?"

"I don't know it, but others are doing it, and if they can, I am willing to try. One of our neighbors has been in Oklahoma four years. He came back on a visit, and told us how well he has done. His land has doubled in value, and he is worth twice what he was in other ways. He got us in the notion of going." This is the turning-point in the decision of the home-seeker-the reports of acquaintances.

"How many are going from your neighborhood?"

"Ten families altogether-three have gone already. Probably I wouldn't have changed if the rest hadn't. I said I agreed to go if we did, and when the would go if the Smiths did, and others agent got us all together, and showed the samples of grain and pictures of the land, we just shook hands on it and We are going to buy land got ready. close together, and we expect to feel just as much at home as we were in Illinoy."

That is one secret of much of the new westward movement. The new country for old neighbors to be neighbors still, and is so expansive that there is opportunity they encourage one another in taking the momentous step. One finds these transplanted neighborhoods all through the plains region, and they usually include much happiness and contentment in their surroundings.

The women were not so sure of the proposition. "It seems as though we

T

...

HE court loungers and hangerson showed evident signs of interest and surprise as the accused told that he had been married to two wives, both of whom lived with him in his scanty quarters in the capitol city of Wisconsin. A few days later, seated in his cell in the jail, this same man wrote on long strips of cardboard, his only writing material: "I want to say a word to the people of the State. I feel in my own heart that I am not a bigamist, for I and my first wife had parted before I married my second wife. My wife and myself agreed to part for good, and we told one another that we could do as we liked. We had troubles on both sides, and thought we best to separate for good. . . . As far as all of us living in the same house is concerned, I want to say that my first wife was badly in need of help. We were going to keep her with us for about two months."

...

In his thought this man takes us back to the time when man claimed the right to change his spouse as often as we procure new garments. Like the Iroquois, he believed in the right of either party to dissolve the marriage bond at will.

To this man marriage and divorce are purely matters of agreement between the man and the woman-a contract that may be made and unmade at the will of these two persons alone-a relationship in which the people as a whole have not so much interest as in the agreement that one may make to have his walks cleared of snow.

ing the close of the Civil War (18671886) 328,716 divorces were granted in the United States, an average of about forty-five for every day of every week during these twenty years. During that period the number of divorces increased two and a half times as fast as the population. In England and Wales there were 718 marriages to each divorce, while during the same twenty years there was an average of only twenty marriages to each divorce in Wisconsin. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, during the twenty years subsequent to this period there were only ten marriages to each divorce.

A dozen States have collected the statistics of divorce for the past twenty years. In all of them except Connecticut the flood of divorces has been steadily increasing during this period. The same is true of European countries, although no civilized nation except Japan has so great a percentage of divorce as the United States. When we read that more divorces are granted in the United States each year than in all of the rest of the Christian world, Protestant, Catholic, and Greek, more than in all Europe outside the Balkan Peninsula, with all civilized Australia and Africa thrown in; when we recall that authors like Dickens, statesmen like Sumner, rulers like Napoleon, naval heroes like Nelson, musicians like Patti, actors like Forrest, orators like Cicero, have all been divorced from their spouses, we are apt to forget that there is a bright side to the picture.

A

hundred thousand Frenchmen land on the English coasts. At a meeting held in the capitol of this Nation in February, 1906, it was solemnly recommended that the divorce problem be solved by attaching a divorce coupon to every marriage certificate, which coupon would doubtless be good for one divorce whenever and wherever presented.

We are liable to jump at the conclusion that the increasing number of divorces marks degeneracy and an increasing sway of passions, that it means an absolute decline in social morality. Absence of divorce does not prove ideal conditions of domestic life, more than powder proves the pure white complexion. There were fewer divorces in England in the two centuries preceding the enactment of the Divorce Act of 1857, during which time only the wealthy could afford the luxury of a Parliamentary divorce, than in the single year 1902.

Nor does the number of divorces equal the number of families in which there is serious trouble, imperfect or vicious domestic conditions, homes like that of Charles Dickens, where "nothing can put them right," to use Dickens's own words, "until we are all dead, buried, and risen." These divorces show only the number of those who are willing to disclose to the public their intimate personal family relationships rather than longer endure the real or imaginary troubles from which they suffer.

Milton perceived that there would be some hesitation in rehearsing family troubles in court. As a matter of justice to women, he contended that the head of the family should in all cases determine whether there should be a separation. He writes, speaking of the women: It is "

an unseemly affront to the sequestered and veiled modesty of that sex to have her unpleasingness and other concealments bandied up and down and aggravated in open court by those hired masters of tongue fence."

The procedure advocated by Milton was a strictly private trial in which the husband discharged the function of prosecutor, furnished the evidence, and played the part of judge. He convinced himself that there is no injustice to the wife in such procedure, for, if the separation

is deserved, it is right. If it is not deserved, the man who puts her away is in all likelihood unjust, and to part from an unjust man is a happiness and no injury to be lamented. This argument must have been formulated during the bitter days when Milton's wife dwelt with her father and refused "to comfort and refresh him against the evil of a solitary life."

Back of the divorce problem are fundamental instincts which may be regulated, but not destroyed nor completely changed. Cicero by his oratory ruled men, but at the age of sixty could not resist the charms of a young heiress, rich in physical beauty and worldly goods, so he put aside the wife of his early manhood, who was old, faded, and poor like himself. Henry VIII was destined for the priesthood and a life of celibacy, until the accident of the death of his elder brother left him heir apparent to the throne. Patti moved an audience as if each obeyed her command, yet fell into such relations with her tenor that even her spendthrift husband was forced to divorce her, and thereby lose his "gold mine," as he called her. Warren Hastings preserved the British Empire in India, yet lost himself to one who was then the wife of another, with whom he lived an ideal married life for nearly fifty years after she had obtained a divorce from her husband that she might marry Hastings.

These instincts have prompted the marriage and separation of men and women throughout the ages. Primitive people separated with little formality; the husband's clothing was thrown from the house, or the purchase price paid for the wife returned to the husband.

Whatever the formalities required to bring about a separation, ways have always been found to release the unhappy spouse. Where the person seeking separation had sufficient means, the old ecclesiastical courts usually found some impediment to the original marriage which rendered it null and void and thus left the parties as if there had been no marriage.

When spouses quarreled, they straightway became as much interested in their pedigrees as does the modern Daughter