Jesus, is the child of God. The doctrine of an especially chosen people, and peculiar revelations limited to a few, is not in keeping with the idea of fatherhood as Jesus taught it and as he lived it. To him the Jewish people were only a fraction of the great human race he sought to save from sin. Whether it was a member of the Sanhedrim, a poor outcast, a Roman centurion, or an inquiring Greek that he met, it was always, if not in word, then in spirit, "Our Father, my brother." If it were a dangerous thing for Jesus in answering the scribe to give as the two great commandments, love to God and love to man, and, in telling the lawyer what to do to inherit eternal life, to commend the good Samaritan, and, in giving the wordpicture of the judgment, to exalt those who had administered to suffering humanity, and, in teaching the disciples to pray, to say, not "My Father," but "Our Father," then Unitarianism may be a dangerous thing. But if the answer to the scribe, the example commended to the lawyer, the righteousness exalted in the judgment picture, belief in the fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man, and the final triumph of righteousness, are calculated to lift community and world life to higher levels and fill the souls of men with nobler impulses, then have we justification for the faith that is in us, and which we most earnestly commend to all "Our Father's" children. HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE OLD TES TAMENT. From a Sermon by Rev. John W. Chadwick of Brooklyn, N.Y. There are many incidental gains (resulting from the higher criticism) which are of great importance. What a gain, for instance, to the character of God, to find that Deuteronomy is no authentic revelation of his character and purposes, but a magnificent literary tour de force to effect a compromise of diverse religious elements! The character of the Hebrew people makes an equal gain when the slaughter of the Canaanites, for which such lame excuses have been made, and which has often furnished terrible instructions to fanatical religionists, is remanded to the ideal sphere: some pious soul so dreamed what ought to be, but never altogether had his way. Another incidental gain is in the matter of Isaiah. The criticism which makes chapters xl.-lxvi. a separate prophecy, two centuries later than the rest, leaves to the prophet Isaiah all that he needs for his imperishable fame. The later portion gives us another prophet equal to, if not greater than, Isaiah, singing "the Lord's song in a strange land," singing it with the pathos and the passion of a captive Jew rejoicing in the prospect of his people going back to rebuild the waste places of Jerusalem. We have a similar gain when the book of Daniel is transferred from the sixth century B.C. to the second, where it becomes the expression of that passion of revolt against the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes which raised the standard of the heroic Maccabees and carried it to victory. If it is any loss to have even a criticism so conservative as that of Dr. Driver detach the Psalms entirely from King David, surely the gain is infinitely greater which interprets them as the growth of several later centuries. As much as ever they contain "Words that have drunk transcendent meaning up From the best passion of all bygone times, Steeped through with tears of triumph or re morse, Sweet with all sainthood, cleansed with martyr fires," though not unmixed with baser elements. Henceforth they are the spiritual biography of Israel for five hundred years, with here and there an accent so purely personal that we feel as if we ought to veil our faces from the agony and contrition of a troubled soul. As the name of David became the centre of aggregation for the hymns and spiritual songs of Israel, so did Solomon's name for its proverbial wisdom and pessimistic philosophy, and the name of Job for the long debate concerning the misfortunes and the sufferings of righteous men. In every case the gain is large which makes the individual wither while the race is more and more. How grandly, too, the Higher Criticism has rescued the book of Jonah and the Song of Songs from the contempt of vulgar literalists and the qualms of prurient prudes (the latter no less from the stuff and nonsense of allegorical interpretation), and set them both on high as worthy of all honor,-the one for its catholic sympathy with alien peoples, and the other from its praise of simple, faithful love, so radiantly beautiful and so passionately pure! But these incidental gains, to which indefinite additions might easily be made, must not detain us from that larger synthesis which is involved in the gradual evolution of the Hexateuch and the other books that correspond to the successive stages of its development, which was a business of some five centuries' duration. The positive, constructive achievement, par excellence, of the Higher Criticism within the Old Testament limits is the history of a national religious evolution from a fetichism or totemism deifying trees and stones to the worship of one God, not of and for Israel alone, but of the universe, and, if through Israel, for all mankind. WHY WORSHIP TOGETHER? From a Sermon by Rev. Charles A. Allen of Bridgewater, Mass. What can be the reason why many good people to-day are indifferent to public worship? Must it not be that they are more or less lacking in religious feeling? They may be bright, strong-brained, keen-witted, honest, too, and kind-hearted, perhaps even public-spirited and patriotic; but the distinctive sympathies and aspirations that constitute the religious life have been somehow so neglected that they are seldom or never felt. The life of Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist, is an instance of this onesided growth. He was a man of many admirable traits, but was so absorbed in scientific studies through his early years that he neglected everything connected with art and with religion. He grew up "atrophied" in these departments of human life, precisely as a man would be in his arms and fingers if from boyhood these had been so bandaged and tied up that he could not use them. He took no interest in music or pictures, because his perception of beauty was undeveloped; and he felt no attraction to anything religious, because his religious nature was undeveloped. In later life he confessed that this had been a great mis take, that he was not so much of a man as he would have been if he had not allowed these highest parts of his nature to be atrophied. He was blind to beauty and to religion, precisely as a man would be blind to all the color and grandeur and loveliness of the visible world, who had always kept his eyes so bandaged that they lost the power of vision, like the rudiments of eyes in the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave. It is true that some people are naturally not so religious as others. But is this a reason for doing nothing to develop their religious instincts? If a boy cares very little for his studies, should we not insist that he must try to make up for his natural deficiency by more resolute effort? If a child is naturally delicate in health, should we shut him off from all kinds of exercise? Should we not rather see that he has ample exercise adapted to his needs, so that he may perhaps grow up to be as robust as most men? And so, if either old or young have never been trained religiously and perhaps have become atrophied in soul, is this a reason why they should neglect everything religious? Is not the mistake of many good people to-day, intellectually bright and socially interesting, and personally blameless except with regard to their religious duties, who frankly say, "I am not religious by nature, and therefore I do not care to go to church,"-is not this precisely the mistake that a man would make, who had sat so long at a desk as to have weakened his legs and lungs and digestion with a risk of fatal illness, and should then plead his feebleness as a reason for taking no exercise at all, but letting himself gradually sink into a hopeless invalidism? And could his friends do a greater kindness to such a man than to give him a thorough shaking-up day after day, despite his protests, until he began to really enjoy taking exercise and felt an interest in recovering his health? We have a duty, therefore, not only to ourselves, but also to others, precisely as it is the duty of a community and its leaders to provide for the schooling of all the children, and especially to see that even the dull children are thoroughly trained by the most approved methods; and also to provide for the physical health of all the people by guarding against epidemics and taking care of unhealthy places and giving gratuitous medical aid to the poor, and teaching the laws of health so that the feeble may be eager to gain bodily vigor and all the joy in life that goes with vigor and health. So it is the plain duty of a community and its leaders to care for the religious health of all, both old and young, to teach them how much nobler is the fully developed life, which is religious as well as intellectual, than the stunted life which has no personal faith in God, no aspiration, no gratitude, no penitence, no immortal hope, but lives from day to day with as little thought of divine and immortal things as the beasts that perish. HYMN.* Tune, "Hold the Fort." Grows the everlasting Bible God hath never sealed: Right and Justice shine forever, Truth is still revealed. CHORUS. Wide to all the winds of heaven Man, the child of Love Eternal, Stands with forehead bare, Sees the shining heights above him, Lifts up hands of prayer. CHORUS. Wide to all the winds of heaven Heaven's gate is shut to him who, Selfish, comes alone: Save a soul with loving service, CHORUS. Wide to all the winds of heaven J. T. SUNDERLAND. * Written for the Young People's Religious Union. Embodying the Union's three cardinal principles. A STUDY OF CARLYLE. BY GEORGE W. BUCKLEY. III. The Prophet. I use the term "prophet" to comprehend the faculty of the seer and apostle of righteousness; to signify the man who has spiritual insight and spiritual foresight, and the moral courage to bear witness to the same. In the blood of the prophet often flow the black disks of pessimism. Some of Carlyle's pessimism is constitutional melancholy, like that of Dr. Johnson. Some of it is the lengthened shadow of Scotch Calvinism, in reference to both God and man. Some, however, is the sable offspring of dyspepsia and insomnia. In In a letter to his brother John, whom he loved and assisted generously, though in straitened circumstances himself, he confesses, "I have sometimes wronged you; but, John, it was not I, it was biliousness." Such expressions as the following are all too frequent: "My spirits are equal to the ninth part of a dyspeptic tailor"; "The ground of my existence is black as death"; "I am getting weary of suffering"; "Truly, all human things, favors, promotions, pleasures, prosperities, seem to me inexpressibly contemptible." Things animate, things inanimate, fall within the sweep of his censorious and complaining temper. divers places he alludes to his generation and his fellow-men as "Apes by the Dead Sea." "The population of England is twenty-seven millions,-chiefly fools." am sick of the stupidity of mankind. I had no idea until late times what a bottomless fund of darkness there is in the human animal, especially when congregated in masses." Mrs. Carlyle understood well this attitude of her husband's mind. When some acquaintance expressed the fear that Carlyle would open his lecture with "gentlemen and ladies" instead of "ladies and gentlemen," she replied, "It is more likely he will begin with, 'Fool creatures, come hither for diversion.'" There is a deal of this sort of contemptuous pessimism in the writings of Thomas Carlyle. Sometimes it is excusable, relishable, as largely the exaggerated expression of humor, which makes all the "I even world fit game to sport withal. But too often it is merely a scolding and contempt of one's fellow-men, of one's contemporaries and times, that is both reprehensible and somewhat shallow. In weighing him as a teacher and practiser among men, we are not permitted to ignore the influence of a bad liver and an abnormal nervous apparatus, that made him a victim to the frictions and irritations of this world, and caused it oft-times to seem a bedlam of unclean and painful things. Moreover, he is not only constitutionally irritable: he is constitutionally a Stoic, with the self-sufficient pride and a certain narrowness of sympathy native to the stoical temper. Add to this, also, a strain of the granite-like Scotch Calvinism, which exalted God, but degraded men. Herein lies largely his tendency to unduly appreciate the past in comparison with the present. He loves the heroic and stoical in human life; and, it must be confessed, one finds more striking examples of such virtue in the aristocratic than in these democratic times. Accordingly, he overmeasures the personalities of great men as shaping forces of society, and ignores correspondingly the more hidden shaping energies, albeit rude and ill-directed, that are resident in the masses of men. The development of character in its national aspect is quite too much out of his point of view. Although forever preaching justice, he shows a strange aloofness to popular movements for freedom and self-government. The emancipationists look for an encouraging word on the slavery question, and get instead the blasts of a sneering criticism of the "nigger emancipation." Our civil war is "profoundly foolishlooking," "a smoky chimney which had taken fire." Not at all beautiful to him is the balloting principle and the counting of heads for determining who shall rule. For Vox populi vox Dei he would likely substitute Vox populi vox diaboli. As one of the statesmen of our American Revolution, he would have had Hamilton's scepticism rather than Jefferson's faith. Carlyle was right in maintaining the vast inequalities of men in their intellectual and moral natures, and in their capacities for progress. He was right in deploring the decline of true hero-worship, in emphasizing the need of wise and virtuous rulers. Who would want to dispute the last truism? But how to get them? To determine this vexed question he is neither wise nor just in wholly counting out the masses. By his method, when would they become competent for self-government and that disciplined obedience to the true hero which he would have them manifest? His paternalism would keep the masses the mere children he held them to be. Through the educative experiences of exercising power themselves must they acquire the wisdom to exercise it well. The higher privileged classes have done an infinite deal of experimenting and blundering in attaining whatever governing capacity they may have. The masses must have the like discipline. The time-factor is very indispensable in the matter. Carlyle lacked the wisdom of faith and sympathy, the sympathetic faith and patience to wait for the development that issues out of the experiences of failing and blundering. Hence he chose to indulge in much cursing, "to rail at the ill" rather than "to fight for the good." What Emerson said of Byron might be repeated here, "Cursing will soon be sufficient, in the most skilful variety of diction." But let us not censure Carlyle too severely for holding so tenaciously the contemptuous sentiment expressed by Goethe, ""Tis the rule: With all its hundred thousand pranks, The world is one enormous fool." He is not the only one of worth who sometimes feels, as Robert Ingersoll once remarked, "The more I see of men, the better I like dogs." To keep one's self from despising the masses of men for their low aims and sordid ways—well, the noblest souls who have earnestly cherished the vision of a kingdom of wise, valiant, and righteous men on this earth, have found this exceeding difficult. But it ought to be done. It is a part of the truest religion and nobility to be above contempt, even for the contemptible. And, by way of contrast to the English prophet, our American prophet Emerson seems to have attained this victory. But Carlyle's self-sufficient pride and pessimism, reprehensibly as they are sometimes manifested toward mankind at large, even more reprehensibly manifested toward contemporary great men. To me, are who love him well, the contemplation of this side of his character is positively painful. I cannot escape the feeling of a degeneration on his part to the meanness of envy itself. He overvalues his own work in the world and undervalues about everybody's else. He can hardly be just even to Emerson or to Mill, who were so ready to befriend him. To him Gladstone is "one of the contemptiblest men I ever looked on." The author of the immortal "Intimations of Immortality," Wordsworth, he pronounces "a genuine but a small diluted man." O'Connell is a "lying scoundrel," "chief quack of the then world." Of Emerson, too, so diligent for the publication of his friend's works in America, Carlyle has this to say after Emerson's second visit to him: "Very exotic; of smaller dimensions, too, and differed much from me as a gymnosophist sitting idle on a flowery bank may do from the wearied worker and wrestler passing that way, with many of his bones broken. Good of him I could get none, except from his friendly looks and elevated exotic polite ways; and he would not let me sit silent for a minute." The last observation is rather comic, since Carlyle was quite notorious for his disposition to do most of the talking. We would, if we could, charge his harsh and uncharitable reflections on contemporaries to the infirmities of old age; but, unfortunately, they are too common in his journal and letters of an earlier period. This aspect of the man puts him in marked contrast to the serene and star-eyed Emerson, and makes him less discriminating and just in his judgments of both men and things. Yet behind these off traits, which truthfulness requires to be painted in, there lies the more permanent and deeper nature that is centred in tenderness and sympathy. Not of the amiable species surely, perhaps hateful and hatable; yet so loving and lovable, too. Bearish as old Sam Johnson to "society at large, and in domestic life" "gey ill to live wi,'" as his mother said, he was yet generous with others, while scant with himself. His attitude toward all the members of his family showed forth liberality and undiminishing strength of affection. While his inveterate hatred of every species of cant provoked the fiercest criti cisms of philanthropic and charitable sentimentalism, he was as ready as any one to help the poor and distressed: often even the street beggar got from him a kind word and a sixpence. His charity was not bestowed through middlemen, and for publication: it was direct and sometimes anonymous. The real Carlyle had, after all, fine affections, and a sensibility to suffering that extended not only to poor humanity, but to the animal kingdom. "If we knew how he came to be what he is, poor fellow, we should not be hard with him." "All battle is misunderstanding: did the parties know one another, the battle would cease." Such observations of his reflect his permanent private self more than the harsh judgments recorded against him. He is kinder than his published creed. After making all deductions, I still hold that Thomas Carlyle is the great prophet of English letters; a right sincere, deep-seeing, valiant prophet of righteousness in Israel. He is this first and foremost, this with the heart and soul, and all the intensity of the Hebrew prophets of old. He is Isaiah, sublime in the imagery of the power and glory of God, and bold and trumpetlike in his calls upon men to believe and do justice upon the earth. He is Jeremiah, fierce in lamentations over the evils of his time. He is John the Baptist, laying the axe to the root, warning men to flee from the wrath to come. He is these three in one. No velvet-carpet prophet is he. With a few suitable changes we might apply to him that fine oratorical outburst, in the nature of eulogy, which Jesus indulged in when he exclaimed: "What went ye out in the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken with the wind? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously ap parelled, and live delicately, are in king's courts. But what went ye out to see? A prophet? Yes, and I say unto you much more than a prophet. Verily, I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater prophet than John the Baptist." So might we, with a little changing, speak of Thomas Carlyle in relation to the English people. In the world of letters, along with the part of wit and critic of wide knowledge and, on the whole, catholic range of thought, he plays the contradictory part of Hebrew |