...

fully through the ribs of it. It is as if God were caught in His own body, and could not move otherwise than according to the laws laid down in the books, and as if all the people that pass in the streets had scared, wan souls caught in their bodies like animals in a trap. . . . Are you grieved to see a crowd of people met together to worship God, but not frankly believing in God, and not daring to risk their lives upon the moral law? Do you long to see men simple of heart and honest, believing flatly in the soul, without dodging or subterfuge? Come, then, it shall be so. Stop here and resolve that you will not compromise any more. . . . You need not be afraid, any more than a duck is afraid of drowning or a bird of falling. In your inmost soul you are as well suited to the whole cosmical order and every part of it as to your own body. You belong here. Did you suppose that you belonged to some other world than this, or that you belonged nowhere at allwere just a waif on the bosom of the eternities? Is not that unthinkable? Incontestably you belong here. Have not the biologists told you all about it? Nothing is plainer than that God has been at measureless pains that you should suit your surroundings and that your surroundings should suit you with a perfect correspondence at every point. Conceivably He might have flung you into a world that was unrelated to you, and might have left you to be acclimated at your own risk; but you happen to know that this is not the case. This is the ancestral domain. You are at home. . . . The soul is the concrete absolute. Every interest that does not directly relate to it is an abstraction. This is the soul's world clear through, and the inmost law of it is the law of the relation of persons. And to deal with material objects or with ideas without reference to persons is to invert the order of the universe and to take things altogether as they are not. Do you suppose that God cares anything for His performances except as they relate to persons? Do you suppose He is vain of the shimmering sea or the tints of the evening sky? Do you not understand that Life rules here, and that everything exists for Life? The sun does not make signs to the moon, and the stars do not beckon one another; but everything beckons the living soul. It is a shame then to dodge and defer to things or to your own achievements or to any man's. It is a shame to take circuitous courses or to desire social consideration and influence as a means of accomplishing one's ends-as if one were a stranger and an alien here, picking his way fearfully through an enemy's country and compelled to make the most of a scanty equipment. . . . If there is any cosmical ordinance that you do not like, there is something wrong with you. If there is any necessary thing that you shrink from-as death, or labor, or growth and long waiting-then you are not well and sound. To draw back from a fact is to prefer a lie. If you say you do not like the contact of the earth, or the contact of the people, and would withdraw yourself from them, then there is nothing for you but to live in a world of phantoms and shadows. Men can agree to reject death, and labor and love, and to pass their days as if these things did not exist, or were altogether alien; but they are dreamers, and the facts remain to be reckoned with. The cosmos is sound all through, absolutely valid; and it covers the whole ground. There is no room for another universe. If you do not like this one, the door is open into the inane. In the old Hebrew story, Adam would not dress and keep the garden, and so get wise in the divine and vital way by daily contact with real things, but would eat wisdom and ruminate upon it. The original sin was the rejection of the real world and a flight to dreamland; and the healing penalty was a hard necessity that should draw back the man and the woman to the firm, resistant earth-labor, in bread-getting and in child-bearing. All the failures of the world have come out of this flinching from the keen and open air-the attempt to escape into a made-up world within fences and behind doors. The failure of history is in egotism, and this is egotism-to consider oneself as having no essential relationships, no rootage in the real world.

Writing of "The Man of the Modern Spirit," the author tells us that the greatness of the modern spirit is that it keeps close to the

puissant ground and walks in the real world; that because the heart of the age is humble it is only by humility that we can enter into its meaning, utter its longing, or fulfill its faith; that the modern spirit stands at its door expecting to see the Lord of Heaven and Earth pass by in the dusty road and get a message from Him; that it challenges all pleasant lies and vain pretensions, seeking only facts and crying, "Truth, the truth; though it slay me, yet will I trust it." And then follows this unique statement:

The quintessence of the modern spirit is faith in the incarnation. The faith that has gone out from the pulpits and the pews is walking abroad in the streets. Parsons and priests, synods and sacred councils, may not be half so sure that the Son of God must needs be brought up in Nazareth as the workers and fighters are, and the plain people that pass by. Do you know why this name of Jesus pursues you; why you cannot turn and look over your shoulder without seeing Him? It is because He is the man of the modern spirit. He deals with facts; does not talk in abstractions; is concrete, practical, personal; rests on what He is-rests on the facts and their self-vindicating power. He makes no boasts and no excuses. He keeps close to the daily earth, and always has firm ground under His feet. He speaks with authority because He is at home in the world; He rises from the dead because He is on good terms with death. . . . The message of Jesus is moral adventure; go on, take the risk, commit yourself confidently to the eternal currents and the natural order. He takes in the unity of the cosmos, and is tranquilly confident of the validity of its laws. He shrinks from nothing, not from disease nor sweat nor grime. He is sure of the inexhaustible resources of health and of the forgiveness of sins. He never compromises because He keeps close to His facts and they do not compromise. He demonstrates the axiom of the concrete: He does not argue, He illustrates. His is the absolute science. He is the pioneer of a new world. He radiates courage and power, and to believe in Him is to have faith.

Touching the soul's possible supremacy over all things and its greatness as manifest in fearlessness of death, this memorandum of modern principles says:

The man willing to die becomes the master of the world. There can be no freedom or true dignity among men who are afraid to die; and a people to whom success is necessary cannot build a city that is great. The cities of the world, New York, London, Paris, are provincial; we have yet to build a true metropolis -a city of the soul, a capital whose citizens are not afraid of death. The soul is infinite. There is no infinity in mere dying; but to see a man who is willing to die for love, who goes to meet death in the way, who makes light of pain, and, with perfect sweetness and sanity, espouses and celebrates defeat-that is to be witness of the palpable infinite. It is like an arrow passing up into the air and not returning; like the still energy of planets or the resistless growing of the grass; or like the haunting, thrilling murmur of remembered music that faded down the avenue as the soldiers went to war. You are left endlessly expectant; you cannot stop, but must follow that which is beyond, and still beyond. In this immense victory is the soul's greatness; by it the soul comes to its own and finds what is forever good. The sight of it consoles and satisfies you. And it remains. After the money-lord has passed by, clinking his gold, and the war-lord, clanking his steel, this greatness stays and is sufficient. . . . History reports that the world is managed by those who are freest from fear and fullest of faith, by the people who are most deeply rooted in the substratum of things and feel least afraid of accidents. A civilization of refinement, wealth, and culture lies at

the mercy of the barbarians across the border, if the citizens are more afraid of death than the barbarians are. The final test as to which of two things shall remain standing and which shall fall, is which can offer the more martyrs-for which do men in greater numbers stand ready to give their lives. Men say the ' world is ruled by force, which is true in a way; but it is more especially true that the world is ruled by faith. For the power behind the throne of force is fearlessness-which is bottomed on faith. If the barbarians conquered Rome, it was because there was more fearlessness and faith in Goth and Vandal than there was on the other side; and because the coarsest kind of faith is worth more than the finest kind of skepticism and satire. In the long run the economy of the world is an economy of courage, and the heaviest battalions are heaviest because they are willingest to die. In their origin aristocracies have generally owed their power to their pluck, and they have kept their places as long as they have been more ready than the majority to put their lives in pawn for the sake of worthy interests-but not much longer. Civilization finds its life in losing it. Its organs do their work well in proportion as they take the eternal for granted and are moved by fearlessness of death or of earthly loss. Grandeur of material structure, multiplicity of conveniences, elegance of living-these incidental accessories, it appears, can be commanded not by a soft and sensuous people rapt in the pursuit of happiness, but only by a people of blood and iron, whose happiness does not depend on conveniences and luxuries, and who do not shrink from death. This fearlessness makes the awe and majesty of human life-the mystery and the magnificence; it makes the rituals of all religions, creates the great temples and pictures, writes the great books, and is the master-builder of the City of Justice and of Truth.

The tactics, antics, and pedantics of some one-sided modern scientists provoke comments like these:

Man is not mere eye and brain. He is heart and soul and conscience. Men of science have fancied they could separate their minds from the rest of themselves-that they could set their brains going in the midst of things, while they themselves stand aloof, disengaged and nonchalant. They operate the intellectual apparatus for grinding out knowledge as far as possible from the center of the warm and vital sphere of human feeling. On the remote frontiers of consciousness, where humanity is reduced to its lowest terms-almost is not humanity at all-there they set up their knowledge-threshing machines. They allow only so much of feeling as goes to the perception that things are bulky and that they move. It is not much of a perception; probably worms can perceive as much as that. Starting off there on the far faint outermost circumference of perception, these savants try to work their way back to themselves, taking notes by the way, automatic, mechanical, exact. They try to explain themselves by something external and foreign to themselves-to construe love and aspiration, rage and remorse, in terms of mass and motion. It is prodigious gymnastics, but it will have to be given up. If there were a being whose entire outfit consisted of those instruments of observation, the physical senses; and a mental machine-why then the creature with such a beggarly equipment might be expected to worship the material universe and natural law, rejecting the Gospel and crucifying the Son of Man. But man is not mere eye and brain, capable only of knowing physical facts and natural laws. The haughty high priests of physical science may rend their gaberdines and cry their cold hard gospel of the flinty fatalistic reign of heartless Law; but we will not listen, for by their law we die. . . . But science cannot keep out faith. The wisest science is laying, or uncovering, some deep and firm foundations for faith; and to-day science is itself venturing everything on one enormous act of faith-an immense and comprehensive assumption, to wit, that the cosmos, the whole creation, is constitutionally one with itself; that it is a universe; that it has no irreducible alien elements, no unassimilable facts, no intrinsic contradictions. This assumption is the great adventure of our age, an adventure in which the intellect does not travel alone. To it the modern man

commits himself. This distinguishes the present age from all other ages as par excellence the age of Faith. Nowhere in Europe or America is any philosophy now accepted which can be called skeptical in the ancient sense. Pyrrhonism has no disciples. Nobody denies to-day the possibility of knowledge, or teaches that the universe is for practical purposes unknowable. It is now held to be reasonable to assume that the whole universe is reasonable, that it hangs together to the minutest detail, and that there are no gaps or crevasses in it to swallow up the mind. Against apparent contradictions, the most irreconcilable, this magnificent modern act of faith ventures on the assumption of the unity of the cosmos, the essential and ultimate congruity of things, and the reasonableness of the creation-which means the reasonableness of the Creator. At bottom it is faith in God, and in ourselves as being made of the same stuff as He is, able to think His thoughts after Him, to trace and follow out and cooperate with His plan, and to understand somewhat of His meaning and messages to us. The scientific faith that the universe is reasonable covers in under its comprehensiveness innumerable particulars. The first comer may tell you that in his opinion death is an incongruity and a disadvantage, and that his interest and yours are at variance. But if death is an incongruity and disadvantage and yet is inevitable, how then can the world be reasonable? And if your interest is opposed to your neighbor's what becomes of the unity and harmony of things? If that is good for him which is bad for you, then there are at least two universes-yours and his; and two gods, or else there is confusion and no God. . . . It is a servile conception-the science of lawyers and pedagogues-that makes God subject to Law. Who then is this God of God? Let us worship Him! If the true Deity's name is "Law," let us stop saying "God;" let us go to the Top, whatever the proper name of the All-Mighty is. Is the Deity bound or free? Religion is coming to see the universality of the miraculous. Old miracle theories were aristocratic; they made miracles a privilege and a monopoly, and God a kind of Stuart king breaking the constitution for the pleasure of his courtiers and the confusion of the commons. Their God gets loose once in a while; the rest of the time He is caged inside the bars of Law. If God has only so much liberty, then Fate is strong indeed. But modern faith claims the miraculous-it is better to say "God"-on an infinitely larger scale. However anything may seem to uswhether more wonderful or less so-a free and reasonable God is working and counterworking in all things according to His own good pleasure. And one great and happifying persuasion grows and strengthens, rising into a song-the persuasion that the universe is reasonable, that everything has relation to every other thing, that everywhere is rhythm and measure, that the creation answers back to the unity of the mind and is sane. ... The world waits for the lead of men whose hearts shall be strong with courage, believing in the freedom of God and their own freedom, accepting the world as reasonable and life as improvable and improving, and who shall rejoice in things as they are while all the time laboring hopefully to make them better, hearing the singing in the heart of God and sending back a brave antiphonal across all the deserts and wildernesses of the world.

This "memorandum of modern principles," whose author is described as a Protestant Episcopal minister, a member of the New York bar, a traveler in many lands, a comrade of ranchmen, miners, and Indians, is a difficult book to characterize. It has won admiring commendation from such men as are quoted in praise of it at the beginning of this editorial. Yet one surly critic scornfully suggests that the volume is a section from that original "indefinite, incoherent homogeneity" from which Herbert Spencer saw matter starting on its way to be something or somebody.

THE ARENA.

CAN YE NOT DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES?

THE Pharisees and the Sadducees, usually so antagonistic to each other, join hands and come to Jesus with the old request, a sign from heaven. John's question, asked from the dungeon, “Art thou he that should come?" is answered by the statement, "The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them." The answer satisfies John and strengthens him for his martyrdom. Certainly the willful unbelievers cannot expect more than the friend faithful unto death receives. Still Jesus was willing to teach if they were only willing to learn. The red sky in the evening, they said, indicated fair weather and the red sky in the morning indicated foul weather. He finds no fault with this reading of the sky, but blames them for not discerning the plainly visible signs of the times. They ask a sign from heaven to prove to them the Messiahship of Christ, but refuse to read the signs of the times which pointed to that fact. Others had read them. The shepherds had, so had Simeon and Anna and the wise men from the Orient. The disciples were slowly learning to discern them. Even Nicodemus and others like him were beginning to understand a little of the great fact which they proclaimed. But the leaders of the people were blind, and their blindness continued till destruction was upon them and their city. The Master's question, "Can ye not discern the signs of the times?" is a pertinent one to-day. Mighty forces are at work and momentous changes are taking place. Everything is moving on a grand scale. What will be the outcome? Some with a pessimistic groan tell us that everything is wrong and getting worse. Some with an optimistic shout proclaim that all is well and getting better. Many are indifferent as to church, nation, and neighbor, and are thinking only of themselves and their selfish hopes. Others, their hearts inspired with the love of the Master, are endeavoring to read the signs of the times aright and are doing their utmost that the individual and society may know Him who alone is able to save.

As at the beginning of the Christian era the signs of the times proclaimed the Redeemer, so in our times they point to him. The great socialistic movement, which demands the attention of every thinking person, points to Jesus. The great truth of the brotherhood of all mankind, which the life and teaching of Jesus so forcibly proclaimed, has especially during the last few centuries been endeavoring to materialize itself. Absolute monarchism and serfdom in Europe had to give way. Then slavery in England and America was overcome, and now it seeks to find a better expression in the social and business life of our day. On the one hand are the immense accumulation of wealth and the formerly unheard-of combination of capital in business enterprises. On the other hand, labor is uniting and making its demands. Everywhere great and successful ef