foundlings and children of unmarried mothers. Only one question is asked of the mother who comes to the Home: "Will you care for your own and one more child?" The creche, day nursery and kindergarten care for the children in their advancing years.

The Children's Aid Society has been the means of the sociological salvation of hundreds of children; educating them, or "placing them out" in homes in the country. For the abused children the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children cares. One of the most helpful agencies for the sick child, regardless of creed, color or nationality, is the floating hospital of the St. John's Guild, which takes nearly 1,500 children on its barge for an outing down the bay. The charity is eminently practical, because reaching so quickly the class for whose aid its beneficence is planned. Views were shown of the crowd going on board, the hospital ward, a little mother, and the seaside hospital. The hospital made six daily trips last summer, and it is a matter of great regret that the committee in charge must see the trips this year cut down to three each week.

For the youth the technical schools were described, particularly those of the New York trade schools and the Baron de Hirsch. Boys' and girls' clubs are excellent means of leading the youth in right directions. Any consideration for the claims of life over those of property are most highly to be commended.

The second lecture: "New York City as a Sociological Laboratory." The large city may be used by a sociologist as his laboratory, just as those used by the physicist or the chemist. The first problem is that of the tenement-house. Pictures were shown of courtyards, alleys, streets, home interiors, illustrating the diseased conditions. One solution of the housing of those compelled to use the existing lodging-houses, is the corporation houses of Glasgow or the municipal lodging-houses of Manchester.

The saloon question is ever present in our cities; but the mere closing of the saloons will not be effective. The saloon is merely an effect. The lavatory was discussed. This is a provision for the public,

of water-closets, urinals and wash-bowls, generally for a small fee, sometimes free. What the city should provide is too frequently supplied by the saloon. Every lavatory opened is a blow struck at the evil influence of the saloon. The same is true of cooking-schools, for a poorly-cooked meal frequently leads the possessor to allay cravings at the saloon.

Pictures of mortuaries were also shown. A mortuary is a place where the dead may be left previous to burial. There are practically none in our cities.

The university sentiment and the institutional church were described and highly commended, because of the personal influence of the workers. The work of the City Vigilance League, under the presidency of Dr. Parkhurst, was made typical of municipal reform movements.

The subject of his third lecture was, "Dr. Parkhurst and His Work." The insularity of the city, the inadequacy of the administrative life, the large budget-thirty-five million of dollars each year-the apathy and indifference of the citizens, are some of the conditions under which municipal misrule flourish. Particular mention was made of Tammany Hall. After a brief biographical sketch of the Doctor, it was stated how he came to take the presidency of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, on the death of Dr. Howard Crosby: "If you are to continue your dealings with individual cases of crime, I will not be your president; but if you are willing to fight the police as the guardian angels of crime, I am in it for all I am worth." Quotations were made from the historic sermon in which he so scathingly arraigned Tammany.

The work of the Doctor in securing evidence on which to base charges against the police captains, and the treatment by the police authorities in rushing to each other's relief, were described. In the Eleventh Precinct, which the authorities declared free from gambling and disorderly houses, the Society caused the arrest of the proprietors of five of the latter, and the conviction of four out of the five.

The Lexow Investigation Committee is substantiating in a masterly way the charges against the Police Department. What was

but moral proof, is now legal proof. Anonymous letters to the Doctor and affidavits were read as corroborating certain points. Dr. Parkhurst's connection and work with his new society, the City Vigilance League, were described at length. What Dr. Parkhurst has done is to show that a Christian minister can and has a duty toward his community; he made possible the Lexow Investigation by his persistency and presentment of the fact of civic misrule; he has gathered together and bound up the interest of a large body of young men in the City Vigilance League, and lastly, he has not despaired of the municipal salvation of his own city.

The principal of the "School of the Kingdom," Dr. Herron, gave two lectures, one on "The Social Communion of the Holy Ghost," in which he said:

"We know a spirit came into the world with Christ; this could not come until it had been incarnated in Christ, as He might express it, and bear witness of it in expressing human life. This Holy Spirit has been going into the world ever since to create it in the image of Christ. The Apostles were emersed in it. No man called anything his own, and the Holy Ghost was the social order of the Christian community. So we and our nation must become. Industry must have the communion of the Holy Spirit that was in Christ. Let us imagine any corporation like the Standard Oil Company, and let it become so imbued, it would then be Messianic, and thus conscience would become its supreme economic factor. Let us, then, prepare the way so that God will dwell in us all and His spirit live, move and have its being in all society; then we shall have the communion of the Holy Ghost."

The other lecture was, "The Justice of Love." Justice has had in all ages the idea of right between men; this more objective than subjective even in most ancient interpretations. "Justice is the Adjustment of men to each other," is "unity," "harmony," "peace," "good will among men." In our times we have justice separated from love; this is wrong. The Gospel shows that justice can only come about by love, and that without it, "anarchy." "Justice is

achieved by sacrifice;" "justice is what love is for," "it is the work of love;" it has no business in the hand of any but the hand of love, and so long as any other holds it, we can have nothing but discord and disorder. It is the "Roman idea in theology which puts the cross to protect us from justice of God." "Cross leads us to justice." "Cross is the way the love of God took to work out and execute justice among men." This is clear in morals. We are not here to change God's will, but to do His will and rejoice in His justice. We can be just to no man except we love him; it is the same with state as with the individual. To do this "we must change from Romanism to Christianity." The same is true of Industry. Want of love in justice is what makes the world what it is. "Justice cannot come about by trying to secure rights." "It can only come about just as we become a sacrifice to any brother." "We must love each other as Christ loved us. This is justice in reality."

Pres. Geo. A. Gates, of Iowa College, gave a course of lectures on the subject, The Church and the Kingdom of God." This was an able effort, and gave us the historical evolution of the Kingdom of God. God's purpose is to have His Kingdom on earth a pure church out of a lost world. What method is He using? How far has He gone? The historical method. first idea was that of monotheism. One people got it, "I am that I am." The second idea was right; third, love; fourth, individual liberty; fifth, unity or brotherhood.

The

Monotheism is the foundation of all. Revelation did not stop here, but went on until we have all five. Each included the other. New soil needed for each; each not only concludes all that comes before, but can only be fulfilled in all. Each rests back on the other-right on God, love on right, liberty on love and brotherhood on liberty. All these are to be wrought in

men.

The idea of unity or brotherhood is the one for which we are now fighting. Capitalist, laborer, merchant, statesman are all against it, while many are hungry for it. All know the country is run on the devil

basis. There must be a radical change. If we want a righteous nation, it must be built on brotherhood, for in unity all is fulfilled that has gone before, and this is the Kingdom of God. What is the church doing toward this end? The church is living too much for itself, "it is wearing the crown of power rather than the cross." Let a new gospel of the Kingdom of God-a new vision, pour into the world, permeating the whole, and let the church lose its life, to find it in this larger life of the Kingdom.

The last lecturer to be mentioned is Dr. Josiah Strong, of New York. He gave the practical side of the program by which the church may go and. conquer the world for Christ.

His lectures were on "Methods of the New Era." First, the "City Problem and its Solution." This is a great question. The city problem is caused by the tide of people going from country to city. New York City is a good example; it is the same all over the world. The causes are (1) the use of machinery in agriculture, (2) rise of manufactories, and (3) transportation. These are permanent, and must be considered so. Again, local self-government and federation are the two columns upon which rest our democratic institutions. We know the latter through the last war. The other is fundamental, but how are they treated to-day by the city? Our cities are America's one great failure. The states dare not trust the cities of to-day, even if they trust themselves. If this keeps on and the population increases as it has, in the year 1920 they will contain 10,000,000 more population than the country; they will then govern the state and the nation.

This movement from country depreciates everything except mortgages, schools, land, property and churches. Isolation sets in, and it is the gangrene of a community.

If the church had realized its mission toward society as it has toward the individual, we would to-day be free from the present problem. The church, therefore, must accept her responsibility to society and solve this great problem. How?

First, divide a city into two districts-"up town" and "down town"-with Christian work different in each. In the first, co-op

eration should be employed, while in the latter, institutional methods. Let us now speak of the institutional church. It must be made the social center of a community and supply the human needs which its members have not physically, intellectually, morally, socially and spiritually.

Second, this work must be divided up among different denominations. Each take a section, establish an institutional church, with rescue missions as feeders, like the McCall, around it, and then go to work in the name of their denomination and their God, putting Christ in the foremost, losing all things else in Him.

"The Country Problem and Its Solution" was the theme of the next lecture. It has already been shown how the city problem is the result of the country problem, but how are we going to kill isolation and make the country communities for righteousness? Denominations must understand each other. There must be organic union among them. To accomplish this we must go on the principle of hands together for a common cause. Establish an interdenominational alliance in all states, making the county-seats responsible for churches in their counties, states responsible for counties, and United States for the states, and thus have a complete co-operation. Here, then, would be a medium through which the church could utter itself and bring itself to be felt upon all life. Gather, then, all the facts and use them through the central office. If our young men were called for two years from the colleges and seminaries on grounds. of patriotism as well as Christianity, they would be forthcoming. "Brethren, God is in a hurry, but the church is not." The Kingdom should and must come as soon as possible.

Here closes the hasty vision of the "School of the Kingdom" and the "Retreat," but as a parting word, allow me to say that this is Christ's cause, and will you not enlist to fight for Him, so that His principle of life by love may permeate human life in every form, whether in the individual or society, so that the Church may become the world and the world the Church, and the world shall be saved through Christ, with God's will done here as it is in heaven?

W

HAT was the condition of American verse in 1855? It is not difficult to find a ready answer. Poe was dead. Dana, Sprague, Pierpont, Halleck and Willis, though still living, had virtually finished their literary labors. Bryant was at the height of his fame, Longfellow was rapidly gaining, and was soon to take, if he had not already taken, the lead among our popular versewriters. His idyl of "Evangeline," published a few years before, had shown to what poetic uses incidents in our history might be turned. In November, 1855, the same poet was to publish the greatest poem ever written on the American Indian. Emerson's first volume of verse was, in its boldness of utterance, the delight of some and the stumbling-block of many. Holmes was well known by his charming lyrics. Lowell had given us the first series of his "Biglow Papers," his "Fable for Critics," and many of his best known sonnets, lyrics and contemplative pieces. Whittier had already well illustrated his real "Americanism" in his "Voices of Freedom" and "Songs of Labor." Many younger poets, like Taylor, Stoddard, Boker and Leland, were pressing forward for recognition. All of these were intensely, loyally American. Their writings breathe the spirit of American tolerance and forbearance, of genuine democracy, an earnest love of country, and a thorough appreciation of what America really stood for in the economy of human affairs. In short, they fairly represented American civilization. Our literature had grown with their growth, and had become a positive force. Bryant, as our poet of the woods, had fitly interpreted the messages of nature.

American domestic, political, social and ethical life was reflected in the pages of Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier and Holmes, and our higher aspirations, freed from all fetters of cant and conventionalism, had found a fit voice in the mystic strains of Emerson. These sang of home scenes and home themes and thoughts, voluntarily, not from a deliberate effort to found a new and "national" system of verse. Attempts to start an obviously, designedly and obtrusively national American literature had become stale and hackneyed years before, even in the dawn of what we to-day recognize as American literature.

Shortly after the Revolution, the good Timothy Dwight, it will be remembered, was dissatisfied with the world's masterpieces, and as an American substitute for the classics had given us "The Conquest of Canaan." Joel Barlow believed that Homer's existence was "one of the signal misfortunes of mankind," and that "the moral tendency of the 'Eneid' of Virgil was nearly as pernicious as that of the works of Homer." As an example of the only kind of poetry fit for Americans to write or read, he furnished us with the "Columbiad." Somewhat later J. K. Paulding, flinging aloft the banner of pseudo-Americanism, complained of the "servile, imitative rhyme" of his compatriots, and inflicted upon the world "The Backwoodsman," a rough and rugged epic, intended to be desstitute of Old-World artistic standards. In the same vaunting spirit John Neal early referred to his own writings as "containing altogether more sincere poetry, more exalted, original, pure poetry, than all the works of all the other authors that have ever appeared in America." Of his own work he confidently declared, "It is poetry, or it is the

All of these wretched works have been deservedly forgotten. In 1855, among American readers, Homer and Virgil had not been displaced by Dwight and Barlow. Paulding and Neal remained unread. Experience had taught us that literature to be genuine must be spontaneous, a natural growth, and not an artificial mechanism. With the history of these abortive attempts fresh in our minds, how jejune and conventional, from at least one point of view, was Mr. Whitman's contention for originality when, discussing his own book, he wrote: "What play of Shakspere represented in America is not an insult to America, to the marrow in its bones? Sure as the heavens envelop the earth, if the Americans want a race of bards worthy of 1855, and of the stern reality of this republic, they must cast around for men essentially different from the old poets, and from the modern successions of jinglers and snivelers and fops." As a remedy he offered his "Leaves of Grass," which, to use his own words, was "to prove either the most lamentable of failures or the most glorious of triumphs in the known history of literature." Americans, however, continue to swallow, with equanimity, the "insults" of Shakspere, and after the lapse of forty years have not yet repudiated the works of Poe, Emerson, Longfellow, and other "jinglers, snivelers and fops" that so exasperated the bard of Paumanok.

It may as well be conceded at once that many of the alleged characteristics of Whitman had already become familiar even to superficial students of literature. His most ardent panegyrists will not claim that his substitution of rhythm for meter is an innovation. Nor is there anything especially commendable in the coinage of words and phrases that serve no purpose not filled by others already in use. His long and verbose cataloguings, aside from Homeric precedent, were anticipated in the very beginning of American civilization. Morrell's "Nova Anglia" (1624) and Wood's "New England Prospects" (1634), were little more than a metrical classification of the fauna and flora of the new colony.

The superficial faults of Whitman are too obtrusive to be ignored in a discussion of his works. It is but just to apply to a consideration of himself, the same absolute candor that he manifests in his own treatment of matters. He chose to pose as a reactionist, while stigmatizing the works of his contemporaries in England and America. He proposed to himself a set theory, and throughout all his verse is the conscious intention to exemplify such a theory. Scorning the atmosphere of scholasticism and even good breeding, he went to the other extreme of idealizing "powerful uneducated persons." The mincing airs of society exasperated him and drove him to the more congenial surroundings of the slums and docks, oblivious of the fact that the jocularities and by-words of such resorts are as stale and trite, and therefore in a certain sense as conventional as the wearisome platitudes of the respectably dull. As music and melody were inherent in his soul, he must have realized that his frequently affected uncouthness was the height of artificialism. That he exaggerated almost to a travesty his own theories. is indicated by his subsequent pruning of much that was objectionable in the early editions. He has, however, left us his finally revised volume of poetry, as commended to his maturest judgment, and upon this, with all its vulgarities and vulgarisms, its affectations and artificialities, his fame as a poet must rest. If he is indeed the typical bard of "These States," there would, at first thought, seem to be some truth in the cynic's sneer that the mission of America was "to vulgarize mankind."

To say that poetry is the highest of all arts is to state a truism. Poetry without art of some kind is a paradox. Without attempting to open a subject now become threadbare, it is perhaps sufficient for our purpose to base our objections to many of the most fiercely condemned passages in "Leaves of Grass," on purely artistic rather than moral grounds. A very small proportion of this volume is taken up with a group of poems entitled "Children of Adam." It is these that have been so unduly extolled by the poet's admirers, and