VOL. III.

No. 1.

L

THE SALT OF CIVILIZATION.

IFE is full of tragedies. In these times of discontent especially, the brute in humanity manifests itself. Emergency epochs in national life develop two phases of human life: The one is the feeling of dependence upon, and a desire for a closer relationship with the Divine. The other is that element in us, which is greater evidence than all of Darwin's well-wrought-out theories, which manifests itself in hatred, outrage and murder.

There is a generally accepted assumption that mankind occupies a distinct plane but little 'neath the gods, and far above that other world known as the brute creation.

Such a premise is false. The range of humanity, in fact, extends from from impulses and passions which would seem to us degrading in a beast, to a scale which almost touches heaven.

It is ours to strive for the realization of a higher state of civilization. Yet even the progress of civilization is full of dangers and weaknesses. Not right civilization, probably, but what the age is pleased to call civilization. It is a striking fact in history which should not be without its lessons, that thus far in the record of nations, whenever a people in their own egotism fancied they had attained to some

thing of an ideal state, that there was something in that development which speedily sapped its life-blood.

We have but one hope: If the Englishspeaking world will grasp a right conception of the gospel of the Nazarene, that might prove the salt of our civilization. If men would only think! Think in the light of the record of the past-but ours is a busy age. We concern ourselves most with what is least or what should be simply an accompaniment of life, not its end and aim; namely, money-getting.

PRESIDENT CARNOT.

The American people, probably more than any other, feel the great blow which has fallen upon the French people. We have the memory of a Lincoln and a Garfield, whose lives were sacrificed at the hands of fiends in human shape. President Carnot will ever be remembered as one of the manly men of the French Republic. That he should be struck down without a moment's warning by the hand of an Italian anarchist, is an outrage which no punishment visited upon the assassin can atone for.

The President had gone to Lyons to be present at the opening of some exhibition. On Sunday, June 24th, as he was riding through the streets of the city, receiving the ovations of his countrymen, about 9:30 o'clock, an Italian, Giovanni Santi, jumped

upon the step of his carriage, and under pretense of presenting a petition, stabbed the President of the Republic so that in a few hours he breathed his last.

The sympathy with the French will be universal. M. Carnot was much esteemed by those in authority throughout the world. He came of a good race. The memory of his grandfather will ever live in the hearts of the French people. The late President was born in 1837, was educated at a Polytechnic school in Paris, and later worked some ten years as a civil engineer. From 1870 his public life dated. He was always active and energetic in the cause of the Republic. His great desire was for the prosperity of his people and peace at all hazards. In 1886 he became President of the Republic, and was the fourth man to be so honored by his country since the later Republic came into being.

THE LOTTERY.

It is a very difficult thing to get rid of such an evil as the Louisiana Lottery. Although it has been expelled from the states, its managers do not cease to ply their nefarious business throughout the country. An effort is being made, which has the support of the best men of the country, to have Congress pass laws "prohibiting under severe penalties, the introduction of lottery matter within our national territory, its transportation from state to state, and the traffic in the matter thus prohibited by any company, firm or individual, in any manner or under any guise whatever."

Legally, the Louisiana Lottery has ceased to exist. Its successor, or in other words, the old fiend in new clothes, is the Honduras National Lottery of Puerto Cortez, Honduras.

It is known that but few of the Company's retinue have ever gone to the land of yellow fever, et cetera. Its managers, on

a special steamer, go from Tampa, Florida, once a month to superintend the drawings. The real business of the concern is carried on at Port Tampa City, Florida. It is pretty clearly shown that tickets dispatched for Honduras do not get further away than Tampa City. Checks for prizes are sent out from the same place, drawn on a bank at New Orleans. The printing, moreover, is done at the same place. We have, therefore, not yet rid ourselves of this octopus. It is as busy in the United States as it is possible for it to be, robbing those specimens of humanity who are constantly seeking to get something for nothing. "Eternal vigilance is the only safeguard against the invasion of any state by this concern, whose wrath is only equaled by its ingenuity." We should constantly use our utmost endeavors in every possible way to counteract its influence.

WHAT ONE MAN CAN DO.

There is little of the true conception of the powers of the individual. Here and there a man feels the power in him to do to the extent of his ability, and he has the courage to do his best.

Great things result.

Spurgeon, in London, was an example of what individual effort could accomplish.

Russell H. Conwell, in Philadelphia, may be called the Spurgeon of America. He has been a Baptist minister for about fourteen years. Twelve years ago he began his work in Philadelphia, with a church of ninety members. To-day the membership of his church is between three and four thousand. But his church work is not all. There is in connection with the church a college, with a curriculum modeled after Princeton's, where over three thousand students are receiving some sort of instruction. Then there is the Samaritan Hospital.

Dr. Conwell's salary is $10,000 a year,

and he probably earns as much more outside. His salary is contributed to benevolent works. To run the church some $33,000 a year is required. The college costs $28,000 a year; while the hospital costs no less than $25,000. In all this work Dr. Conwell has been the prime mover.

"I don't know exactly how to account for it all," he said recently. "It is a matter of evolution. The secret of it? Well, perhaps it comes from an earnest desire to help people- especially the plain people, and a determination to do it, too. There is no feeling of restraint in our church. Any one can come in and wander about and get a welcome from some one." After all, there is nothing like feeling that one has a work to do, and does whatever comes to hand as it comes, trusting for strength and ability to do the things of to-morrow.

ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION.

This country has taken a new impetus forward in the success of the campaign against vice, instituted and carried on by Dr. Parkhurst in New York. And like every good movement, Dr. Parkhurst's work struggled long against great obstacles; but right is right, and if we persevere, is sure to win. So the work is being recognized throughout the land, and its effects are but beginning to be felt. Dr. Parkhurst is honest, sincere, and works with an earnestness which carries with it success over all opposing forces. He is already recognized as one of the most potent forces of reform which New York has ever had. He has already become a part of the history of New York City and of the country. His efforts have been a most encouraging object lesson of what an

individual leader can accomplish. Let the work be taken up until this movement for cleanliness in politics, for honesty in public officials, for purity of home and civic life, permeates every portion of our country. M. CARNOT'S SUCCESSOR.

M. Casimir-Perier has long been a strong man in political affairs. The outlook was that he would succeed Carnot. When, therefore, the National Council, made up of the members of the House of Deputies and the Senate, made their choice, it was no surprise that M. Jean Casimir-Perier was elected President of the French Republic. There were 877 members present. The President elect received 451 votes on the first ballot; twenty-four members did not vote.

His speech of acceptance was as follows: "I can scarcely restrain the emotion I now feel. The National Assembly bestows upon me the greatest honor a citizen can ever receive, by imposing upon me the heaviest moral responsibilities a man can have. I shall give my country all that is in me of energy and patriotism. I shall give the Republic all the warmth of my convictions, which have never varied. I shall give the Democracy all my devotion, all my heart, as did he whose loss we now deplore. Finally, I shall endeavor to do all my duty."

It is to be hoped that the new President will continue the policy of peace for the continent of Europe. The French Republic has probably passed through its worst days, and the cowardly assassination of Carnot will not weaken it.

What a pity all the Continent must go. armed to the teeth, each nation suspicious of the other. The waste of energy, of wealth, of young manhood is more than can be adequately estimated. Another age will probably censure severely the people of the Continent for their short-sightedness, and the folly of not agreeing to disarmament.

WOMAN'S SPHERE.

It really looks as if the women mean to have a hand in politics, and in almost everything else. Perhaps they are quite right. They should know. Whatever comes, let woman still so live and do that we will

think her God's choicest creation. I con

fess I feel a shiver as I see women going into the arena of life, pushing their way, struggling for the almighty dollar alongside of men. It takes away something of the

charm which surrounds womanhood. Making money and the struggle to stand well financially demoralizes most men; it is to be hoped that women will not yield to the same influences. I favor woman's voice in the nation. She has long had it in a way; but by the franchise she will feel more keenly the responsibilities. Yet if she

fancies a vote will so counteract the mother's training in the child, that this may be neglected, she will make a great blunder. Properly fulfilling both trusts would be the right ideal.

THE PULLMAN STRIKE.

The strike which began some weeks ago in the Pullman shops, has already assumed proportions which greatly inconvenience the traveling public. The members of the American Railway Union in Chicago and the West refuse to move the Pullman cars. Trains running out of Chicago do not carry sleeping-cars. It does seem as if reason ought to prevail in all such matters, and that a proper adjustment might be arrived at. If the leaders on either side refuse to come to terms, there should be a higher court of arbitration, made up of irreproachable men, whose duty it should be to settle disputes and thus save to workers their wages, to employers their property and business interests, and to the public the inconveniences which follow these quarrels.

THE STRIKE AMONG MINERS.

I often wonder, as I read the accounts of strikes, how much is really undertaken to uphold a principle. We have had a great coal strike. The miners have had just causes for discontent. It seemed a question

of working and starving, or the next thing to it, or striking with the same results. There has been no occasion for complaint against the miners, save where they resorted to violence. There is another side that simply comes to mind. It may but be a passing thought, a mere creation of the brain. If there is, due to the extended use of gas and electricity, less coal consumed than was mined; if there had been accumulating during a few years vast quantities of a cheaper and much inferior grade of secondrate coal stock, etc.; if certain large dealers in certain large centers had a quantity in stock-I do not say such a thing ever happened but under these conditions there might arise a plan which would be in harmony with operators and dealers, and it might be so arranged that it would be to the interest of leaders of strikes to precipitate a strike. Old stock could be sold at a good round price. Dealers could make a handsome profit on coal in stock and—but one should not attribute to human beings such outrages.

IN BRIEF.

There has been very little in addition to what has already been noted which has happened during the month which merits our attention.

There was a conference at Leeds, in England, to end or mend the House of Lords. Henry Labouchere, of course, was there, and so was Michael Davitt, but few of the great Liberal leaders attended. The House of Lords, like the Senate of the United States, still stands. A little sugar might awaken the English people to their duty. Americans prefer to pay it-the duty-and get a hundredth per cent returned to pay campaign

W

E now open a wholly new and by far most important chapter in the evolution of man. Up to this time we have found for him a body and the rudiments of mind. But man is not a body, nor a mind. The temple awaits its final tenantthe higher human soul.

With a body alone, man is an animalthe highest animal, yet a pure animal; struggling for its own narrow life, living for its small and sordid ends. Add a mind to that, and the advance is infinite. The struggle for life assumes the august form of a struggle for light. He who was once a savage, pursuing the arts of the chase, realizes Aristotle's ideal man, "A hunter after Truth." Yet this is not the end.

Experience tells us that man's true life is neither lived in the material tracts of the body, nor in the higher altitudes of the intellect, but in the warm world of the affections. Until he is equipped with these, man is not human. He reaches his full height only when love becomes to him the breath of life, the energy of will, the summit of desire. There at last lies all happiness, and goodness, and truth, and divinity.

For the loving worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless God. That love did not come down to us through the struggle for life, the only great factor in evolution which up to this time.

has been dwelt upon, is self-evident. It has a lineage all its own. Yet inexplicable though the circumstance be, the history of this force, the most stupendous the world. has ever known, has scarcely begun to be investigated. Every other principle in Nature has a thousand prophets; but this supreme dynamic has run its course through ages unobserved. Its rise, so far as science is concerned, is unknown; its story has never been told. But if any phenomenon or principle in Nature is capable of treatment under the category of evolution, this is. Love is not a late arrival, an afterthought, with Creation. It is not a novelty of a romantic civilization. It is not a pious word of religion. Its roots began to grow with the first cell of life which budded on this earth. How great it is, the history of humanity bears witness. But how old it is and how solid, how bound up with every constitution of the world, how from the first of time an eternal part of it, we are only now beginning to perceive. For the evolution of love is a piece of pure science. Love did not descend out of the clouds like rain or snow. It was distilled on the earth. And few of the romances which in after years were to cluster around this immortal word are more wonderful than the story of its birth and growth. Partly a product of crushed lives and exterminated species, and partly of the choicest blossoms and sweetest essences that ever