they play, it must be pure play. Take Herbert Spencer, who has been in poor health nearly all his life. He has laid out for himself a task which probably he will never live to finish. The one play of his life has been billiards. He is exceedingly fond of the game, and finds in it just the mental and physical recreation that he needs. He cannot go into an intellectual game for play; for he needs all the power of his brain in the accomplishment of the task that he has laid out for himself for the benefit of the world. As an illustration of the overdoing of these things, let me relate an anecdote of Herbert Spencer and his game. He was once playing a game with a young man who played wonderfully well. When he was through, Mr. Spencer gently suggested to him. that he was probably playing too much. He said, Any young man of your age who has any serious work to do in the world must have given more time to the game than he ought to have, to be able to play so well as you do. Here is a principle that must run into all our amusements. If we give too much time to them, they become an evil. Mr. Lowell found his play in walks, in a love for every form and phase of nature and of natural life, and also in a certain class of books. In reading his letters, as I have been doing lately, I find that time and time again, when he was weary, he refreshed himself by reading the Spanish poet Calderon. I find him getting comfort and rest in this way. There is many an English statesman whose life has been given to hard and wearing discussion, who has kept up his work only by change of thought,― by reading Horace or some other book from which he has come back refreshed to his task. George Sand, when she was blue and troubled or out of condition, went for mental and spiritual relief to the books of Dumas. So you will find that many a man has some one book or study in which he finds new strength for the work of to-morrow. I have a friend engaged in a hard profession whose "hobby" is entomology. This hints what I have in mind. He has made a large collection in this way; and he has found it not only a field for the play side of his life, but a means for self-culture. It has taken him out into wider fields of investigation and study. It has brought him into contact with people whom it has been a delight to know, so that he has found not only play, but culture and a wider social range and instruction in every direction. Now, why cannot a business man take up something in this same way? It may be entomology, or geology, or political economy, or anthropology, or history, or a collection of works of art in some direction or other. I have in mind a friend who was travelling about in Europe several years in search of health. While there, he made a collection of pictures representing one department and epoch of painting; and he said afterwards that the finest pleasure of his life came to him when at last he discovered that he had learned enough to know a picture when he looked at it. Here is a field that leads us out into endless play, and to a kind of play which means self-culture, which means the broadening of the range of our life, which means bringing it into such relations with our fellow-men as that we may be of the finest and highest service to them. I believe, as I have said, that the time will come when the drudgery side of life will be less than it is to-day; and the thing we need to eliminate drudgery from our business is to mix the business with our intellect. That suggests the sharp, keen reply of the painter Opie, when asked with what he mixed his colors,-" With brains, sir." That was the secret of his success. The success of the business man in eliminating drudgery from his business is to mix more and more brains with his work, to understand its relations with the general civilization and welfare of the world, and so to come up into the higher range of the artist, and leave the artisan and drudge behind. When we have mastered the forces of the world, and have learned to care not so much for accumulation as for the higher and finer things of life, when we have learned to turn ourselves away from the mere accumulation of money unto the civilization that money is capable of bringing to ourselves and to all mankind, when we have learned to care more for that which is the essence of life, and less for those things which are only the means toward living, then the work itself shall have become play; and we shall take delight in co-operating with God in bringing about the perfected condition of things. Father, may we climb up into the higher sides of our natures, and find Thee, the tireless but the blessed God, and learn to imitate Thee in doing our work for the sake of the joy and the good of the world, and so leave behind us the brute, and the occupations and the tastes and the pleasures of the brute, and find the occupations and the pleasures and the play of that which is divine. Amen. The preface by Mr. Savage gives the reasons, clearly and concisely, why a book like this is needed. It answers a great demand, and it will supply a serious deficiency. Having had the privilege of reading the contents very thoroughly, I gladly record my satisfaction in the character of the work, my hope of its wide acceptance and use, my appreciation of the author's motives in preparing it. The questions and answers allow of supplementing, of individual handling, of personal direction. It is not a hard-andfast production. There is a large liberty of detail, explanation, and unfolding. The doctrinal positions are in accord with rational religion and liberal Christianity, the critical judgments are based on modern scholarship, and the great aim throughout is to assist an inquirer or pupil to a positive, permanent faith. If any one finds comments and criticisms which at first sight seem needless, let it be remembered that a Unitarian catechism must give reasons, point out errors, and trace causes: it cannot simply dogmatize. I am sure that in the true use of this book great gains will come to our Sundayschools, to searchers after truth, to our cause. EDWARD A. HORTON. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Fathers and This little Catechism has grown out of the needs of my own work. mothers have said to me, "Our children are constantly asking us questions that we cannot answer. Perfectly natural! Their reading and study have not been such as to make them familiar with the results of critical scholarship. The great modern revolution of thought is bewildering. This is an attempt to make the path of ascertained truth a little plainer. This is the call for help in the home. Besides this, a similar call has come from the Sunday-school. Multitudes of teachers have little time to ransack libraries and study large works. This is an attempt, then, to help them, by putting in their hands, in brief compass, the principal things believed by Unitarians concerning the greatest subject. The list of reference books that follows the questions and answers will enable those who wish to do so to go more deeply into the topics suggested. It is believed that this Catechism will be found adapted to any grade of scholars bove the infant class, provided the teacher has some skill in the matter of interpretation. GEO. H. ELLIS, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston, Mass. |