parent to leave his child uneducated, or to put it to sordid or excessive toil during the years of growth, has only been encroached upon in quite recent times (p. 231).

We are reminded that the main purpose of marriage was, according to the old idea, the continuance of the family. Now,

with its awful duties, even as laughter above a deathbed would be; the conception of marriage as indissoluble; the recoil from libertinage of thought or of moral tone as from shame and death, are all parts of a system that could only be maintained

while the New Testament was believed in as something more than the best possible moral code-as the actual word of God. Instead of this we have got a new family life, which is infinitely genial, charming, and natural; which gives free vent to the feelings, and cares liberally for culture and advancement in life. Only the sense of obligation, of duty to God, of living forward into eternity, has disappeared (pp. 275, 276).

the primitive marriage of suitability, the marriage which aimed first at constituting the conditions for a new family, and which only regarded inclination in the second place, is being superseded everywhere by marriages that are supposed to be based upon love, and only not disallowed by the judgment (p. 240). The feeling is apt to be less tender to the children, who were not The general result of the great the first thought in marriage, but only an inevitable incident, so to speak, than is the changes upon which he dwells of the case in countries where the perpetuation of retreat of the higher before the lower a family, the constitution of a home, have races, of State Socialism, of the rejec been the first thought. . . . It will be very tion of theology, of the transformation marvellous if the present cordial relations of family life must be, our author of parents and children in France survive argues, a decline of individual energy, marriages of inclination, and their correla- of force of character, of productive life, tive, the law making marriage dissoluble in the European nations. The decline (pp. 246, 247). In proportion as the family has already begun, and has but to go bonds are weakened, as the tie uniting husband and wife is more and more capricious, as the relations of the children to the parent become more and more temporary, will the religion of household life gradually disappear (p. 255).

on.

cisms there seems to be no possible To many of Mr. Pearson's critianswer but assent. But we learn from an early paragraph how determined he is to prove his case. "Perhaps one of the best instances of the Mr. Pearson approves, as I have said, decadence of English energy is in the of the changes which he notes. He imperfect welcome accorded to medeclares himself positively to be in chanical invention" (p. 101). The sympathy with the humanity which has reader's curiosity is stimulated by this demanded the changes. Yet he un-statement, with its singular phrase shrinkingly points out what the world imperfect welcome." After a referloses by them, and the decay which ence to the famous English inventors, they are bringing on society. Here is it is admitted" that England still conone of the most serious passages in the tributes the larger half of the world's inventive fertility;" but then, “England no longer gets or deserves the credit for it." What, we ask, can this

book:

The Puritan condition of family life is dead, and cannot be revived. The results of that iron drill were obtained at a cost which none who passed through it can forget, or would submit to again, or could endure to see inflicted upon their children. The mother who almost doubted if it were not sin to love the babe that smiled up in her face; the children who spoke with bated breath and were trained to orderly composure on Sundays; the belief of young and old that they lived in a world whose amusements and thoughts were irreverent and grotesque by the side of life

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mean? It means that

Many of the best patents, such as the steam-plough, the sewing-machine, and the electric telegraph had to cross back to England from America before they could obtain recognition. Even Nasmyth's steam hammer was employed in Creuzot before the foundries of his own country adopted it. The English inventor is still more than the equal of his rivals; more fertile in expedients than the German, and more patient

than the American. Where he fails is when he carries his work to market (p. 102).

It is surely not unreasonable to surmise that there are limitations in the nature of the universe which must circumscribe the achievements of speculative research. Every astronomer knows that there was only one secret of the universe to be discovered, and that when Newton told it to the world the supreme triumph of astronomy was achieved. Whether Darwin, or some one else, shall have disclosed the other great mystery of the generation of life, it is none the less certain that all future triumphs will be insignificant by the side of the first luminous hypothesis (p. 291).

If our manufacturers are really so much slower than their predecessors in taking advantage of new inventions, their backwardness is not very apparent to the ordinary observer; and we are hardly led to expect the less striking instances of the decadence of Euglish energy to be very conclusive. But as regards literature, there is no gainsaying the indictment that all the higher branches of it are showing at this moment a lack of original and vigorous genius. In poetry, including the drama, in prose fiction, in philosophy, But he is confident that in theology, we have nothing of the nothing of primary importance remains highest quality appearing or promising to be found out: to appear. But are we not rather in a hurry in despairing? Browning and Tennyson have only just left us. Her bert Spencer still lives, in a green and not unproductive old age; and if there is a growing impression, even amongst

those who have been inclined to look to

him for guidance, that he has not solved all the problems of existence, he cannot fail to rank amongst the master minds of philosophy. Mr. Pearson argues, indeed, that the materials of poetry have been exhausted :

It appears possible to imagine a not very distant time when the student will recoil from every new variation in worse verse of the old themes, as a lover of music closes his ear against familiar melodies ground out on a barrel-organ, and when men gifted with the power to feel and write will be paralyzed, if they attempt earnest work, by the recollection that almost this exact thing has been done before, and has passed into household words or speech (p. 301).

But is it not also possible to imagine that the same thing might have been said towards the close of the last century? Science itself is not too dominant or sacred to have its future questioned by our critical advocatus diaboli. Amongst competent students in general a sanguine expectation prevails as to the further interesting discoveries to which those of recent years may be leading. But Mr. Pearson refuses to be drawn into any kind of hope:

In this last sentence I hardly think the author can have made his meaning in

telligible.

Then, again, not only is science ceasing to be a prophet, but in virtue of her very triumphs, precisely because her thoughts are passing into the life-blood of the world, is she losing visible influence as a liberal

education. It is coming to be matter of

history that she has taught us to substitute divine will; that she has relegated the law for caprice in our conceptions of the belief in secondary causes, and the belief in arbitrary interpositions of the First Cause, to the lumber-room of fable; that she has given us a broader and intenser view of nature, while she has left us the fairyland of the world's childhood for an appreciable treasure. Other harvests have now been gathered in. The prophet and leader is rapidly becoming a handmaid. Her possibilities can be pretty accurately summed up or forecast in a cyclopædia; and having delivered herself of her one imperishable protest against popular theology, she has no other great moral truth to declare (pp.

291, 292).

Thus does our able and determined author write Ichabod over all the achievements of the higher civilization of the world. He sees all these achievements, noting especially the social changes in which our generation is chiefly interested, and behold, they are very good. We could not wish them to have been otherwise; manifest destiny decreed that they should not be otherwise. But these good and necessary changes are bringing on with appalling

rapidity an equilibrium of stagnation: all the causes of disorder and immothe paths of glory lead but to the grave. rality, as well as the hopes and interIn the passage just quoted the read-ests which have hitherto kept morality er will be aware of that angry tone alive? Our author can hardly think towards religious beliefs to which I have so, for he observes in one place that the referred as indicating more of personal non-religious man of the future "will feeling than the author otherwise al- clutch with a fierce avidity at power or lows to appear. But in this rejecting wealth, or at the pleasures which are of theology, if science and morality purchased by the provision of power have triumphed, the world is admitted and wealth" (p. 276). to have lost vital force:

It is conceivable that our later world may find itself deprived of all that it valued on earth, of the pageantry of subject provinces and the reality of commerce, while it has neither a disinterred literature to amuse it [as in the Renaissance], nor a vitalized religion to give it spiritual strength (p. 131). It seems reasonable to assume that the world will be left without deep convictions or enthusiasm, without the regenerating influence of the ardor for political reform and the fervor of pious faith, which have quickened men for centuries past, as nothing else has quickened them, with a passion purifying the soul (pp. 336, 337).

Perhaps the chief value of this remorseless book is that it brings us face to face with a world to which a God is unknown. The author allows everything to secular morality that its admirers can claim for it, but assumes it to have denied God; and then he exclaims, See how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable all the uses of your world have become! I have mentioned that in one part of the book he develops the thesis that, in the worship of the State, a new religion may grow up to take the place of the older reverences and obligations. But he does not afterwards make much of this. The truth is, that reverence for the State is not possible, unless there is a divine power behind and above it. clearly that the State is only themselves, they will not worship it. It is the same with Humanity. It was Quetelet, if I remember right, who, when it was proposed to him that he should worship Humanity, replied,

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If men see

Our author evidently does not know how to adjust his attitude towards religious faith; he can neither live with it nor without it; he spurns its creed as grotesque; he finds its austerity intolerable; but yet to be without the sense of obligation, of duty to God, of living forward into eternity," is to have lost spiritual strength, a supreme quickening and purifying fervor. Worship Humanity? No, thank you; In one passage that I have quoted he I know the creature too well." We can speaks with vehemence of the rule of reverence Humanity, the Church, the the Church as making men whited sep-State, parents, the family, if we regard ulchres, and of the happiness of having them as ordained of God, but not in this superseded by the freedom to live themselves without God. The old riotously within limits" given by the secular authority. But in other places he assumes that the law and opinion of the secular authority will force upon men increased outward decorum :

It can scarcely be doubted that civilization is at present the winning force, and that while its admirable police will impose a stricter morality everywhere, the scientific spirit which it fosters will dissipate the larger part of traditional religion (p. 273). Will men, in the etiolated condition to which they are to be reduced, have lost desire and vanity and perverseness, and

reverence for the family was bound up, as Mr. Pearson mentions, with the worship of the family gods. Patriotism has always had in view more or less consciously the country's gods. When there is a reverence for Humanity, deeper and humbler than philanthropy, it is really evoked, not by the concrete mass of men and women, but by an ideal, by a Divine Nature and Providence manifesting itself in mankind and its history. But to men to whom the visible is all and the grave an end, how is any thing or person or

-

And

institution to acquire sacredness? And the God of the State also? Yea, of without sacredness we have such a the State also, if so be that God is one. world, perhaps, as that which Mr. Pear- Often has the religious authority shown son describes a world on which death itself less careful of justice, sometimes and corruption have set their mark. even of humanity, than the State. According to the argument of this we are thus warned that the Church, book," belief in a living God is doomed. whose office it is to learn as well as to Before acquiescing in this assumption, teach, has no commission to be the there are a good many of us that will exclusive or the infallible teacher of know the reason why. It was not in mankind. The living God has not this century or the last that "Chris- resigned his own prerogative as the tianity began to appear grotesque and universal teacher into the keeping of incredible." Porcius Festus, in A.D. any earthly authority. When the 60, represented a world of men to Church puts itself in the place of God, whom the original Christianity had just it is sure to go wrong and to be humilthat appearance. We are perfectly iated. But because the Church, howaware that we are passing through a ever wanting in faithfulness, cannot time of great spiritual perplexity, a help bearing witness to the Christ of time when the heavens are shaken the New Testament and to the Father even more than the earth. We do not revealed in him, it has the power-a shut our eyes to the crumbling of the power unknown to the State as a mere foundations upon which our fathers expression of the will of the majority allowed their faith to rest-the two, or of the strongest - of awakening and mainly, of the authority of the Bible and feeding the noblest and most vital and the authority of the Church. And we fruitful instincts of human nature may surely add to these, as failing to the trust, the hope, the love, the selfgive us dictation which we can accept surrender, which are the true life of the without reserve, the authority of rea- world. son; for the human reason is convicted of a perfectly bewildering incapacity. Que defect after another which Divine Providence (for to us it is nothing less sacred), working through historical criticism, discloses in the structure and contents of our sacred books, makes it evident that we cannot continue to build our faith upon the Bible. If per-pursuit of what is just and humane will plexed inquirers are referred to the Church, and they ask, Where is it? no one can tell them where it is, or through what organ its voice is to be heard no one but the Romanist, who has the satisfaction of seeing his Church dis-subversive tendencies of Democracy tinctly enough in the person of the pope. And here is Mr. Pearson telling us-though he is not the first to make the discovery that the morality of the State, its interpretation of human duty has proved itself superior to the morality of the Church. That is, no doubt, a trying and awakening discovery to those who have loved and honored the Church, but there is nothing in it that need utterly discomfit us. Is God the God of the Church only is he not

--

If we who retain our belief in the God of our fathers try to run before time, and to imagine what is to be, our first feeling will be that it is only with extreme diffidence that we can form any expectations. It has become a proverb, that it is always the unexpected that happens. But that the

injure the higher interest of mankind, and accelerate the decline of the civilized world, we shall emphatically refuse to believe. Timid members of society have long been threatening us with the

and Liberalism, and for some time they made Socialism a name of horror to the respectable classes; but the changes that have been promoted by the feeling for justice and humanity have up to this moment amply commended themselves to the moderately well-informed and intelligent, and the most conservative are now almost ashamed to continue the old predictions of revolution and ruin. No one openly expresses a wish that we should go back and undo

the democratic changes of recent times. | therefore be able to keep the peace We may concede to Mr. Pearson that in these days the world-movements are so large and sweeping that we can but slightly control or modify them. We can only go on in faith, careful and resolute that the steps we have consciously to take shall be in the right direction. And we may deny that, so far as we can see, the future threatens to make our faith foolish any more than the past has done.

between them all. Nothing but grave danger and the palpable interest of all would make such control possible; and most of us will be unable to foresee any necessities strong enough to drive the European countries into federation. But this may take its place amongst the schemes on which the imagination may exercise itself. It is somewhat surprising, by the way, that Mr. Pearson has not given a prominent place to Austra lia, or even to North America, in his forecast.

The characteristic sentiment of our time, especially amongst the most religious Christians, includes an extreme shrinking from war. It is highly inportant that on this question we should

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It is true that at this time, by what we do and what we refrain from doing, we may be said to be nursing the prolific inferior races into power. That means, according to Mr. Pearson, that our trade will be wrested from us and our emigration reserves closed to our surplus population. We may prefer to clear our minds of cant," and endwell upon the immense increase of the deavor to discriminate between the volume of the world's trade which the kind of action which Christianity binds expansion of the inferior races seems upon sincere, uncompromising Christo promise, and on the probability tians, and that which is the indulgence that openings may present themselves of sentimental weakness. It is clearly which we cannot count upon foresee- wrong to bring on war, with its inev ing. And I have intimated that, ac- itable evils, to gratify selfish vanity, or cording to all historical precedent, there greed, or ambition. But for high obwill be no great developments in the jects which appear to be committed to less civilized parts of the world without our keeping, it is right for Christians to exciting and destructive wars. Mr. go to war, and wrong to be deterred by Pearson predicts conditions which can- its costliness or its horrors. For such not fail to issue in war, but does not objects, the more Christian we are, the predict war. Thus he puts the Euro- more willingly ought we to prepare pean nations in a position of unstable ourselves for war, and the more resoequilibrium as regards mutual conflict, lutely to go into it when it is forced and assumes that they will not topple upon us. It is an essentially Christian over. Each nation is to have a uni- estimate, that the shortening by a few versal conscription and a strong mili- years of millions on millions of human tary executive; but the population is lives-lives which are so often of little to go on within each country feeding spiritual worth!—is an inconsiderable itself in animal comfort, shut out from loss, compared with the loss of anything all excitements, and in respect of the high and noble from amongst the spirnobler interests and aspirations becom- itual possessions of the world. It has ing more and more anæmic. This is been an instinctive conviction of almost surely in a high degree improbable. all good men, that national existence is Collisions of a shattering kind would an object for the sake of which any hardly be avoidable. But it is open to number of lives may rightly be given us, if we like to speculate on Mr. Pear- and taken, any quantity of sorrow ipson's lines, to imagine the States of flicted on families. Wounds, deaths, Europe forming a federation, in the griefs - these are not to deter Chrisface of the new Asia and Africa, in tians from doing their utmost to prewhich there should be real coercive serve a trust which God has committed control exercised by the whole body to them. Contact with war, even over single members, and which should through descriptions, may do something