and reformers and religious founders, much less persons of lesser light and power, in working the historical development. As a consequence, religious history has no real worth. Throughout his entire book there is no glance into the depths of the human spirit as a spirit that hungers for light and life and love, for the spiritual and eternal. Religion is handled only as a series of transformed dreams and glorified, or hideous, or childish superstitions of infantile and savage imaginations. What shall we say of a writer on religion who apparently knows nothing of the great personalities of history; to whom Moses, Zoroaster, Gautama, Confucius, Lao-tse, Mohammed are as though they had not been; who into the meaning and mission of such men shows not the faintest flash of insight and not even a transient sympathy with their aims and achievements? These great religious spirits, with their light and force, as it were, direct from heaven-God's lightning, as Carlyle thinks of themare not friendly to his scheme; so he passes them by.

Thus, taken all in all, Spencer's theories upon religion, it seems to us, have little enough to recommend them. An explanation of religion as only an abnormal and morbid function of human nature is not even good evolutionism. Self-condemned would seem to be a theory which represents as diseased and morbid all those experiences which all peoples have agreed to call the highest and worthiest known to the soul, as "the true honor and Sabbath of their lives." As ex-President W. F. Warren has said: "It is as if a naturalist were to insist that winter's death is the normal condition of nature, and that a'l the verdure and flowerings of June are unwholesome cutaneous eruptions of the plant; a kind of heat rash. So long as philosophy retains the ability to distinguish between normal and abnormal evolutions, or continues to demand for every effect an adequate cause, Mr. Spencer's attempted reduction of the love of the living God to the fear of death will never be accorded a high place in the list of exploded philosophies of religion."

Ger. H. Trever

ART. VI.-COMMERCIALISM AND THE MINISTERIAL LIFE. A DISTINGUISHED minister of another denomination recently told in the leading paper of his denomination how, walking one summer night some time ago in a New England city with a Christian business man toward the latter's beautiful home, as they came from a conference in which they had heard considerations pressed upon a young minister almost entirely along the line of material advantage in urging him to accept a call to a large church, which he had declined on the ground that he felt he held an appointment from God, this Christian business man said: "I am not a little surprised; I supposed such views were given up long ago. My father, who all his life was the pastor of a church in a small New Hampshire town, held them. He lived among his people as a shepherd of the flock, and where he had lived and worked for Christ he died. He never would listen to a call to leave. I supposed all that had changed." As he said this his voice grew tender, and memories of his boyhood days in that humble parsonage filled once more the life now absorbed in business and burdened with many cares; the deep things of God spoke again to his soul; religion, as absolute loyalty to Christ, a blessed unselfishness, a completeness of devotion to the cause that he loved, was once more a reality. The significance of this is twofold: the belief that prevails-to which this Christian layman gave expression-that material advantages are now generally supposed to be a large factor in determining fields of labor, and that to the lay mind there is a higher motive and a stronger appeal. Concerning the latter there can be but one opinion. The words and the example of Jesus establish this beyond question.

As to the prevalence of the commercial spirit among ministers there may be divergent views. That there was danger of such a material attitude toward Christian service was early evident in the Church. Peter showed his anxiety about what he was going to make out of his relations to Jesus when he spoke to the Master concerning compensation. His idea seems to have been that discipleship was a matter of contract, or at least of equivalents.

How wisely and comprehensively Christ pointed out to him that there are some relationships in life which are not based on commercial values, that the introduction into these sacred relationships of questions pertaining to right-hand positions in the kingdom of heaven as pay for sacrifices, or services, is foreign to his conception of the supreme privilege of service and the beauty and blessedness of it! This statement of Jesus appears to have satisfied the big-hearted, impulsive Peter (it may be doubted, however, whether Judas was fully convinced), and he does not seem to have bothered himself thereafter concerning his salary. But there are other Peters who are constantly thinking of salary and rewards; whose decisions as to duty are influenced invariably by what there is in it for them; who always see in a larger salary a "providential indication." It is as a frank-spoken Scotch minister said: "Stipend has a verra strong influence on metapheesics." But these are the exceptions. The ministry of Jesus Christ is not yet wholly given over to commercialism. The great majority of the ministers of all denominations are impelled by worthier motives. Some recently published reminiscences of Mr. Gladstone's later years recall a remarkable conversation between the aged statesman and Bishop Wilberforce. They were speaking of the Church, and of the fidelity and unselfishness of her servants. "It has been my lot," said Mr. Gladstone, "to dispose of some fifty preferments in the Church-higher preferments, I mean, such as bishoprics and deaneries. Not one of the men I have appointed has ever asked me for anything. That is the literal and absolute fact, and I don't know that anything could be said more honorable to the Church of England as a body." This statement made by that wise observer concerning the English Church is undoubtedly true of the other denominations as well. The public press, however, seems to think otherwise. A typical story which appeared recently in a Western paper will illustrate the attitude of the press to this question. It was of a clergyman who while catechizing a Sunday school referred to the pastor of a church as its shepherd, and to the members as sheep, and asked, "What does the shepherd do for the sheep?" A small boy-it is always "a small boy"answered, "Shear them." Perhaps that was the flying thought

of a child, but more likely it was the sober judgment of the editor who manufactured the yarn. There can be no doubt that the press is of the opinion that ministers are swayed by the motives that move other men and influenced by the same considerations that determine the actions of many men in other professions. This opinion is not borne out by facts. The majority of ministers are not actuated by mercenary motives; their zeal is not the energy of salaried men; their tears are not poured out to the music of clinking gold and silver; they are under the constraint of love, not money. Many a faithful servant of Jesus Christ can truthfully say what Joseph Parker affirms in his autobiography: "I can truly say, in the fear of God, that I have never been tempted by any pecuniary offers of opportunity. When I went to Banbury I never asked what the salary was. When I went to Manchester I did not make a single inquiry about money. After being fifty years in the ministry I can truly say that I am not fifty shillings the richer for any preaching outside my own pulpit." To then the ministry is a vocation and not a position. It is as Balzac, in The Country Parson, makes the curé of Montegnac say in reply to the question as to what led him to become an ecclesiastic: "I cannot understand how anyone can take holy orders for any save the one indefinable and all-powerful reason, a vocation. I know that not a few have become laborers in the great vineyard with hearts worn out in the service of the passions, men who have lived without hope or whose hopes have been destroyed, men whose lives were blighted when they laid the wife or the woman they loved in the grave, men grown weary of life in a world where, in these times, nothing, not even sentiments, are stable and secure, where doubt makes sport of the sweetest certainties and belief is called superstition. I am not supposing that any man can give himself to God for what he may gain. There are some who appear to see in the clergy a means of regenerating our country, but, according to my dim lights, the patriot-priest is a contradiction in terms. The priest should belong to God alone."

But it is undeniably true that there is a very marked tendency at the present time to put a commercial value on ministerial labor. Commercialism is undoubtedly increasing even within the sacred

precincts of the ministerial office. For this growing disposition to regard the ministry as a legitimate field for "so much pay, so much work" there are numerous causes. The age is a commercial age. The doings of millionaires and plutocrats are exploited by a sensational press. The rights of "labor" are everywhere taught, and the demands of labor are published to the four winds of heaven. Legislatures are besought to create by statute a shorter day, and yield. A minimum price is fixed by the same bodies for municipal employees. In some sections the wages of laboring men are constantly being increased. In others strikes are almost daily occurrences. There is perpetual agitation. In one way or another the question of pay is kept before the public in such a manner as to waken queries in even ministerial minds, and sometimes to create unrest. The press, as I have said, takes it for granted that the commercial aspect is one that appeals most strongly to all ministers, except possibly the fanatics or the ultra-pious. For instance, after the death of Dr. John Hall-whose income was a matter of wide speculation, much romancing, and more untruth— a cynical weekly paper published in New York printed an editorial which read as follows:

To all Protestant pastors, notice. There is at this time in New York city an aggregate sum, equal in amount to, say, $100,000 per annum, awaiting those preachers of the Gospel who are able to earn it. In other words, the Protestant pulpits in New York now vacant are good for $100,000 every year to the men who are able to get positions in them. . . . In other days the Lord called men to preach the Gospel; in these, perhaps, it is Mammon. From whomever the call may come, the fact stands that one hundred thousand dollars' worth of pulpits in New York are now awaiting occupancy.

Yes, that is the modern phraseology. It is common to talk about earning" what the early Methodist preachers would have designated as "support;" indeed, that, or "quarterage," is still the word found in the Discipline and heard in Quarterly Conference. "One hundred thousand dollars' worth of pulpits"-why, that is the language of the exchange, and it is this kind of talk that has created new standards among our ministers. There are other phrases used, not alone in the public prints, but by congregations as well, which minister to this idea of commercialism. The world thinks it pays a high compliment to a minister when it character