founders when they declare that the uprising of the fourth estate to take control of things by force of numbers will make an end of class struggles and class prejudices, it needs for us socialists to set alongside this fine sentiment of harmony the practical illustration of giving to those who, out of whatever circle, have come to our help, a hearty and enthusiastic welcome. That, after what has passed, there should be suspicion and grudges, shrinking back and undisguised ill-will, is not unnatural; these manifestations, while bringing their twinge of pain, will be understood, and allowance for them will be made; but it were better, more consonant with our ultimate purpose of harmonizing the world, and would promise more assuredly for that end, to harmonize ourselves, to cement the brotherhood by a cordial greeting to all

comers.

The ill-feeling alluded to, or rather the lack of a good understanding, often enough to be seen in our country where class prejudices are less pronounced than in the old world, is most shown by socialists of foreign birth who in their native habitat acquired a bitterness of feeling hardly yet generated here. Over there it is really asking a good deal of a working-man to have any heart-to-heart intercourse with a welldressed stranger. If one approaches him, he is displeased at the outset by what seems to him the condescension, the patronage of the thing. If you are to speak with any acceptance to a throng of workers in London or Paris, you not only need to command the dialect of your hearers, you must have their

bronzed faces and hardened hands, have on the garb they wear, be one of them. It is said to be practically impossible for one of the English gentry, though socialist decided as Marx, personally to reach the workers to any purpose in any one of the great industrial centers. If they are socialists, they are unable to see how he can be one.

Here, then, is a little world of our own that is first to be made new before attempting to carry the greater world. The task ought not to be beyond our capabilities. It must distress a socialist lecturer to see his brother toilers refuse to hear him when he speaks in a church; but he will keep on speaking in churches and out of churches, in the determined effort to break down a bar that should never have been put up. The wise leader of another movement, to whose broad humanism this movement of ours may trace the origin not of its form, to be sure, but of its best ideas was careful not to restrict his fellowship to any one class, and encouraged the doing of his work by whatsoever person, in whosesoever name, saying, "He who is not against us is for us." *

Socialism is in its theoretical stage; we must know it is not yet, like an architect's plan and specifications, a fixed and definite scheme of things to be worked

*Mark 9:40. The words of contrary sound (Matt. 12:30; Luke 11:23) are utterly out of connection where they stand, seem to be thrust in, to have come out of a later time of strife and divisions, at all events are not to be taken as canceling this saying which has clear and pointed application in the context.

out in accordance with preconceived determinations, but a developing system of thought of which the horizon before us advances as we advance. To what the fathers saw, their sons see something to add, and from that earlier vision something to retrench. In these widely-extending fields no one any more can pretend to speak the final word.

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth."

To be sure, this movement differs from previous social changes in being in some measure a voluntary movement, a conscious reaching out for something which, if not clearly defined, has yet some perceptible outline. The advent of the existing order was not so. Nobody consciously sought to bring it in; it was not a cause evoking enthusiasm. It grew up under the blind compulsion of economic law, and of other forces hardly less blind, — political, moral, religious, - of all of which it was the resultant, and not one of which ever had it consciously in view. The volitional element in the new movement is indeed as yet only partial, present in only a comparatively few minds, and with them to slight purpose save as concerns the immediate future. We dream and ponder, as men have always dreamt and pondered, and some vague expectation floats at times, perhaps, as a vision before us; or, failing the sight, the plaintive voice of one

like ourselves weary of waiting is heard across the ages, breaking over us like a wave from far-off shores and rolling on to other shores no less remote, waking always the same reflections.

"One saint to another I heard say, 'How long?'
I listened, but naught more I heard of the song;
The shadows are gliding through city and plain;
How long shall the night with its shadows remain?

"How long ere shall shine in this glimmer of things
The light of which prophet in prophecy sings;
And the gates of that city be open whose sun
No more to the west in its circuit shall run?"

Such longings pertain to us; they give a religious glow to our thoughts, but have hardly any other use. What we have to deal with is the world of to-day and the world of to-morrow in the rather restricted meaning of "to-morrow." We ourselves need not expect to see the fulfilment of our dream, the creation of an earthly Paradise, the ushering in of any millennium. We can hold up our ideal, give it to others, spread it far and wide, trusting that as it goes it will gain in wisdom and in beauty, and knowing that when it has gone far enough, won over a working majority, it will realize itself in a world which, incomplete as it may yet remain, will be infinitely brghter and fairer than the world as it now is.