uprightly regardless of whether pleasure result to them or pain. To do the right is with them a passion. When they read what is written for their good they will say, "Ye old schoolmaster is right." Others, inclined to obey their passions, will say "He is off."

But ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time will say what it seems to him that he would do now, since he has had a long life's experience and has learned what dangers lurk in the path of the young,-what he would do now if he were a boy again. He would say: "I will climb to the top where there is room." A boy of mine wrote me from South Africa: "There are great opportunities here for young collegemen, free from the drink habit." He had graduated from the college of New Jersey as an electric engineer. There is, indeed, room at the top. But one must be at the top morally and intellectually, as well as professionally, to find room. Clean men are in great demand everywhere. I would find my amusement where only good people are seen. If all dances were opened with prayer, as among the people of at least one religious sect. of our country, and conducted with a decorum befitting a place of earnest prayer, I might not say, "Keep entirely away from the dance." But I would never enter a drink-hell or a tobacconist's den. I would curb my natural appetites and acquire none unnatural.

YE 61ST LESSON.

Institutions-Good and Bad.

What thought should be the inspiring motive of boy or girl in the morning of life? "I will let nature be my guide,' he or she should say. Nature is a builder. Nature is an artist. There is nothing of nature's handiwork that is not purposeful and artistical. So our lives should be purposeful and beautiful. How purposeful? Not a step should we ever take unless to bring us nearer the workshop of the benefactors of the world. In that shop we should go to work. Not a thought should we have except of work to be done. Here mind must hold the mastery and heart be an obedient helper. When passion, which is of the heart, becomes master, then are we an engine off the track. We have come to a dead halt. Life has become a failure, self all we think of. It is well, under the guidance of reason, to be devoted to self to the extent of building up within us a symmetrically perfect manhood or womanhood. Not otherwise or farther.

But how may our lives be made beautiful? By avoiding all pitfalls. Associate always with good people, never with the bad except as a missionary, as does the Salvation Army lassie. She is guided in her work by the angels of God. She is protected by the good that is in every soul. No man will lift a hand to do her harm in the worst hells of earth. She is respected everywhere, for her virtue and moral integrity shine like the sun in mid-heaven. Her life is one of rarest beauty, like that of Jesus, whose life was the highest example ever set or conceived for human guidance--a life of single-heartedness. He lived only to do good, to relieve distress and make men live better lives. His was a life of divine beauty.

Time passes-how rapidly! We reach the end of life so soon! We have not a moment to spare for any purpose not helpful to our own or others' lives-not a moment for unhallowed pastimes-wassai! or revelry. "Did you go to the ball last night?" is asked the young man or woman of the school of right doing. "No, I did not," is the reply. "Did you go to the vaudeville show last Sunday?" "No." "Why not?" "I had not the time nor the inclination to go to either. Really, life is too short to be so wasted," is the sensible answer.

THE CIVILIZED AND THE SAVAGE.

95

There are good institutions, and institutions that are bad. There is the straight and narrow path of right, and the broad highway of wrong. The young must choose which to follow.

Institutions good and bad! Schools, colleges, libraries, churches and Sunday-schools, good. But there is still a better one than all these young people's meetings connected with every church. Every young person should attend these. Here the acquaintances formed are mostly good. But acquaintances formed at the public dance-halls are mostly bad. In the first, you are in good company; in the second, bad. I do not choose to name all the evil institutions. I would to God that they were, all of them, blotted out. That is the work of the coming generations. The cry from above to us of the present is, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make His paths straight!" We are but slowly emerging from a state of barbarism, if not of savagery. What can be better evidence of barbarity and savagery than the late war in the east and the drunkenness and incontinency so general in our own country, and the mad rage for money-making, that leads to graft, the corruption of courts and legislatures, the demoralization of cities-immorality everywhere and the tobacco evil!

But the tide will turn. The forces that make for right doing are stronger, in the long run, than that make for wrong doing. Wonderful, the multitudes of students that crowd to overflowing our colleges and other schools of learning today! They will be heard from in the future. We read of the "students" in old Russia as a power for good amid the gathering hosts of freedom. Yes, the youth of today, whose faces are turned toward the sacred hill on which stands the grand temple of Athena, will right the wrongs that barbarity and savagery have brought upon us, and they will avoid the evils of the old time and write "Excelsior" on the escutcheon of the new.

YE 62ND LESSON.

The Civilized and the Savage.

No people are wholly civilized. There are civilized and savage among most peoples and to individuals alone these appellations are applicable. Now, when may it be said of one, "He is civilized?" The writer can give only his own definition: He is civilized who fills the true measure of manhood, natural and ideal. A savage may be physically an Apollo. But the civilized will have done all in his power to develop to perfect symmetry and healthfulness his physical body. He is natural. He does his manly part,-marries, as a ruleand brings up a family. Has he inherited a fortune, or is he poor? Neither riches nor poverty is a factor of his manhood. Either is indifferent. Civilization belongs to the mind. It is not wholly scholarship. A well-read man may be a beastial savage. It is greatness of mind, natural and acquired. Greatness has many qualities. Thoreau was a civilized man, though he never married. He directed his course of life by compass and chart. He was not affected by what might be said or thought of him, but only by his own sense of fitness or unfitness. He did as he figured that he ought to do.

There is an entire nation, numbering many millions, that square their lives by philosophy, as did Thoreau-the Hindus-the most highly civilized race (according to my belief) on earth. Their dwellings are as simple as was Thoreau's cabin by Walden Pond—no furniture worth the naming; no costly food nor drink; no tobacco, and no alcoholic liquors; their clothing inexpensive. And their economical way of living is not compelled by poverty, but is the rule of their lives, the lives of all, rich and poor, high and low, alike. The Hindu commits no crimes, is faithful to his wife, pays all he owes, is the

best of fathers, performs all civic duties with accuracy, as far as he is able, that fall to his lot, and is a steadfast friend. He is one of the most industrious of mankind, will not steal, is sensitive of honor. and his religion is based on philosophy very ancient, the product of minds of the highest order, evolved from the brains of sages three thousand and more years ago.

With regard to God and the life to come, those ancients reached the same conclusion then, by deductive reasoning, that modern scientists, by inductive processes, are just now arriving at-ideas in advance of those of Socrates, and that St. Paul only caught a gleam of when he said of God, "All and in All." The ancient Hindus' contention was that the universe is wholly made up of spirit and matter under laws; that spirit is imprisoned in bodies-the bodies a combination of material substances which implies ultimate dissolution; that spirit is an emination from God, self-existent, comprehends all things and is the only reality, all else manifestation. Man dies, his spirit (the ego) "returns to God who gave it" and there awakens to universal consciousness. We have lived and do live in all life and are all-knowing in the spirit realm-the children of God, and are divinities on earth. All religions, they say, are attempts of the human soul to grasp the Infinite, and every attempt to get higher is a virtuous act, hence the Hindus (Buddhists) are tolerant of all forms of religion, there being among them at least fifty different forms of its manifestation, as among us as many different sects, the highest of the Hindu cults being free from formula or ritual. No worship. they contend, is sinful that subordinates matter to spirit. Some, like children, require images and ritual to awake the consciousness of spirit in them.

This information I glean from an essay read before the parliament of religions by the Hindu philosopher, Vivacananda, during the Chicago exposition of 1893, and printed in Meredith Townsend's "Asia and Europe." (Putnam & Sons, New York, 1901.) We want, above all else, to be rid of our self-importance. We are savages; yea, worse; we are hogs, doing all we can to devour the wealth that nature has spent millions of years placing in store for the good of man. Better the Hindus send missionaries to us than we to them. What will be the state of society here when we shall have become civilized? There will be, then, no consumers of alcoholic liquors or nicotine or narcotic drug-poisons; no one laboring primarily to "get rich." There will be comfortable homes for all. Abundance of food and clothing will be automatically distributed to each "according as he has need." But the mighty energy of all minds and bodies will be directed to intellectual and altruistic labors for the common weal. And no one will "waste his time making money," as Agassis said that he could not afford to do.

When all minkind have brought their intellectual and aesthetic wants to the maximum and their physical wants to the minimum will the world be highly civilized and not sooner.

YE 63RD LESSON.

A "Peculiar People."

A book has been issued from the press of Ferris & Leach, Philadelphia, 1906, entitled, "The Doukhobors, Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada." This history is a revelation of the power of an idea to control the actions of men and women. They are an illiterate people since not more than three out of one hundred can read and write. They hold a rational view of religion similar to that of the Friends in their adherence to peace principles.

A PECULIAR PEOPLE."

97

They believe that the church is a society selected by God himself. It is invisible and scattered over the whole world. It is not marked externally by any common creed. Not Christians only, but Jews, Mohammedans and others may be members of it, if only they hearken to the inward Word; and, therefore, the Holy Scriptures, or the outer Word, is not essential for the sons of God. It is, however, of use to them, because in the Scriptures, as in nature, and in ourselves we read the decrees of the acts of the Lord. But the Scriptures must be understood symbolically to represent things that are inward and spiritual. It must be all understood to relate, in a mystical manner, to the Christ within.

sense.

The Christ within is the only true hierarch and priest; therefore the external priesthood is unnecessary. In whomsoever Christ lives, he is Christ's heir, and is himself a priest unto himself. The priests of temples made with hands are appointed externally and can perform only what is external. They are not what they are usually esteemed to be. The sons of God should worship God in spirit and in truth and, therefore, need no external worship of God. The external sacraments have no efficacy. They should be understood in a spiritual One baptizes himself with the word of truth and is then baptized indeed by the true priest, Christ, with spirit and with fire. The external sacraments of the church are offensive to God; for Christ desires no signs, but realities. The real communion comes by the Word, by thought and by faith. The priesthood is not an office reserved for specially selected people. Each real Christian, enlightened by the Word may and should pray to God for himself, and should spread the truth that has been entrusted to him. The forms of worship of all the external churches in the world, their various institutions, all the ranks and orders of their servants, their customs and movements, were invented after the time of the Apostles-those men of holy wisdom and are in themselves naught but dead signs. pray in temples made with hands is contrary to the injunction of the Saviour: "When thou prayest go into thine inner chamber and, having shut the door, pray to thy Father, which is the secret."

vi, 6.)

left alone.

To

(Matt.

Yet a son of God need not fear to enter any temple, Papal, Greek, Lutheran, Calvinist or other. To him they are all indifferent. All the ceremonies of the church, being useless, were much better Icons (images) they do not respect or worship and consider as idols. The saints may be respected for their virtues, but should not be prayed to. Fasting should consist in fleeing from lusts and refraining from superfluities. councils should not be accepted.

The decrees of the church and The church has no right to judge

or to sentence any one; for it cannot know all man's inward and secret motives. These people take no pay from travelers who stop

at their houses either for lodging or food.

These are some of the leading tenets of the Russian Quaker denomination the Doukhobors-seven thousand of whose number have

fled

1777

to Manitoba from Russian persecution, as our forefathers fled to America from English persecution. Their order had its rise about in southern Russia. And its founders were men of profound thought. Tradition makes them followers of John Huss. But there is a great uncertainty concerning their rise. It is claimed by some that three brothers, Cossacks of the Don, founded in Russia this order of religion. Through the teachings of the spirit and the careful perusal of the New Testament they were led away from the ceremonies of the Russian church to worship God in spirit and in truth. All are strictly temperate, live on a vegetable diet, use no tobacco or strong drink.

Count Leo Tolstoi and his son, Sergius Tolstoi, have been great helpers of this noble people-the father giving, to aid them, large sums of money and the son coming with the emigrants across the sea to their new home. They are indeed a "peculiar people, zealous of

good works," their mistakes the result of the want of learning, which in their new home and new environment in Canada it is to be hoped will be but temporary. The information given in this article con

cerning those people is derived from the book named above.

YE 64TH LESSON.

Common-sense Versus Mediaevalism.

No thinker ever struck a more impressive blow against mediaevalism than did George Fox. He said, as did St. Paul: "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life." So Fox placed the spirit above the letter, and he renounced all formality and ceremonialism. "There is," said he, "one baptism, as there is one faith-the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Jesus ate only to satisfy natural hunger and drank to satisfy natural thirst. I am," he said, "the living bread; if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever and the bread that

* *

I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. We should hold the Master in remembrance ever when we eat and drink, and there is no middle ground, no child's play in religion. Little children play at sitting down to a make-believe table, not grown people."

"The great wrong," he said, "of ceremonialism consists in substituting it for 'going about doing good,' and it is the foundation on which bigotry rests. If one submits to doing what in itself is contemptible or merely the play of children, he will be the more invulnerable to reason and common sense for fear of deserved ridicule. The less there is in a thing the more there is made of it by ecclesiastics. To say that there is nothing in a thing that has nothing in it and that a glass of water given to a thirsty traveler is more meritorious in the sight of God than all the ceremonials ever invented by Pagan priests, subjects the offender to anathema. One might ignore every moral precept of the New Testament and be forgiven by the church, but the unpardonable sin of denying the potency of forms and ceremonials hath not forgiveness."

And the followers of George Fox stand steadfastly by their contention of a common-sense interpretation of the meaning of Scripture and the holding fast the religion of "well doing." They have ever been the ministers of peace, plain speaking and simplicity of behavior and of dress, and ignoring vanity, advocating freedom to the fettered. whether in prison or the slave pen, and the abolishment of cruel punishments, holding firmly to the doctrine of "overcoming evil with good" and laying aside all weapons of warfare. And now the world is rapidly moving in their direction. It is quite generally believed that soon a world's congress will put a final period to wars. Already chattel slavery is of the past; capital punishment has been abolished by many states; penal institutions have been changed into reformatories, and love is supplanting hate. And the Friends may take much to their credit for this state of things. Soon will the whole race of mankind become one family of loving friends. The universal church is advancing toward the Pentecostal attitude of "all things common" -not only the church but society in general, as evidenced by the open door and common table in times of flood, cyclone, earthquake and fire.

as

Soon the one and only religion of mankind will be that of service, was that of Jesus. We have come at last to the "jumping-off