enacting in the valley of the Nile. The eyes of Christendom rest upon the heroic soldier, and no less heroic Christian, General Gordon, whose personal presence and influence were thought almost, if not quite, sufficient to quell the serious dis turbances in the Egyptian Soodan. When appointed by the Khedive governor of Soodan, in addition to the province of the equator and the littoral of the Red Sea, with absolute financial authority, he wrote, under date of February 17, 1877: "It will be my fault if slavery does not cease, and if these vast regions are not open to the world. So there is an end of slavery, if God wills; for the whole secret of the matter is in the government of the Soodan, and if the man who holds that government is against it, it must cease."

The Khedive wrote to Gordon subsequently, saying: "Use all the powers I have given you; take every step you think necessary; punish, change, dismiss all officials as you please." Gordon's firman was read to a crowd at Khartoum, the capital of his government. Missionaries and merchants, priests and ulemas, consuls, cadis, and fellaheen, all crowded to see him. "But," said an eye-witness, "it is, above all, the poor country people who look upon him as their saviour."

His hopes were not realized. Islam, cupidity, and ingrained habit thwarted his benign purpose. He checked, but did not end, the slave-trade. During three weeks of April, 1880, five convoys of slaves arrived in Egypt from Kordofan, Sennaar, and Darfur. On the 20th more than 900 slaves openly entered Siout-300 miles from Cairo.

Prior to this, on the 8th of August, 1879, Ismael, Khedive of Egypt, was deposed and replaced by his son Mohammed Tewfik. Events followed each other with startling rapidity. In 1882, the British subdued the revolt of Arabi Pasha. Another revolt broke out simultaneously in the remote provinces of the Soodan, where the inhabitants grievously suffered from the confiscations, oppressive taxes, cruelty, and still more from the corrupt officials and farmers of taxes of the Egyptians. The rebels are Negroes, with an occasional infusion of Arab blood. These dark races are fanatical Moslems, brave and hardy, and were the best soldiers in the Egyptian army. Mohammed Achmet, born in Dongola, west of the Nile, a boatbuilder by trade, proclaimed himself to be El Mahdi, the

7-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. I.

expected successor of the Great Prophet, and the deliverer of the people. The superstitious and oppressed flocked to his standard. So did the Baggara Arabs, the former slave-hunters of the White Nile. Victor in successive encounters with the Egyptians, he marched upon Sennaar, after his triumph near Kordofan, and for several months was sole master of the Soodan.

The Soodanese have shown themselves to be no contemptible antagonists. At Abu Harras, on the right bank of the Blue Nile, where Mohammed Taha, who styled himself the vizier of the Mahdi, was defeated by Geigler Pasha,

the leader of the insurgents came out to meet them [the Egyptians] surrounded by hundreds of praying dervishes, and followed by his warriors and all the women and children. The fanatics allowed themselves to be decimated without faltering, until the scherif, whose seemingly charmed life inspired the soldiers with superstitious fear, was at last struck by a bullet. Then they scattered, pursued by the savage soldiery, who spared none.

Sennaar was recovered, but in Kordofan El Mahdi was victorious. When El Obeid surrendered to him, Iskander Bey, the commandant, and the larger portion of the garrison, accepted service under his banner. Three hundred and thirty-eight thousand warriors now followed his standard. From Kordofan he advanced with 300,000 Soodanese, to meet the Egyptian army, under Hicks Pasha, and inflicted an annihilating defeat. All the camels, stores, and munitions, with thirty-six Nordenfeldt, Krupp, and mountain guns, fell into his hands. Colonel Coetlogen, who was almost the only surviving European in the Soodan, and next in command, collected the scattered remnants of the Egyptian forces at Khartoum and other important posts. Sennaar now declared for El Mahdi. The Bedouins of the coast joined the rebellion, and the whole Soodan became involved, with the exception of the fortified trading-posts. The movement threatened to extend to the Arabs of Asia, and to break the power of the Sultan of Turkey. Thence it might pass into India, inflame the passions of the Moslems there, and cause a repetition of all the horrors of the Sepoy mutiny. Great Britain was obliged to take Egyptian affairs into her own hands. British interests in the Delta and in the Suez Canal were violently menaced. The interposition of Turkey could not be admitted, nor could the Egyptians be left to "stew in

their own juice," as it was phrased. The Khedive was compelled to submit to the humiliating measures proposed by Great Britain; and to secure the alliance of the King of Abyssinia by consenting to the cession of the port of Massowah, and the abandonment of a great part of the Soodan, drawing the new frontier on a line from Suakin through Berber to Khartoum. In the winter of 1883-84, Osman Digna, the leader of the slave-dealing coast Arabs, acting independently, and yet in relation to El Mahdi, inflicted crushing defeats on the Egyptians on the east coast. Suakin was the only remaining post that I could offer effective resistance. Belief in the irresistible destiny of El Mahdi paralyzed the courage of the troops, and convinced both foreign and native officers of the futility of any further attempts on their part to check his progress. The brilliant exploits of the British troops in the same region have since humbled the pride of Osman Digna, and done much toward the probable ultimate success of the British expedition, by way of the Nile, against El Mahdi.

Britain has a providential commission to execute there. Her sublime mission is to abolish slavery, establish beneficent commercial relations, and introduce that Christianity which will take up the work of ethnically-unifying Islam, and cause the unity in diversity of the human race to be apparent under conditions of truth, justice, and love.

The African race has attained its present civilization through the white race, notably from the Arabs. In order to raise itself to a higher civilization, it has need of a new initiation. To the white race, consequently, belongs the initiative in the development of the common civilization.*

The grand purposes of the Almighty march on to their ultimate accomplishment. Christian civilization is bent upon the redemption of the "Dark Continent." Faith working by love is the golden line to be stretched across that boiling caldron of warring races-a line around which the different divisions shall crystallize-in distinction and yet in unity, in difference and yet at peace.

* M. d'Eichthal, "Bulletin de la Societé Ethnologique de Paris, 1847."

EDITORIAL MISCELLANY.

CURRENT TOPICS.

READING THE HYMNS.

SEVERAL Weeks since two successive numbers of "The Independent" contained each a contributed article devoted to the reading of hymns, as a part of the exercises of public worship. First, Professor Townsend, of the Boston School of Theology, recognizing the especially infelicitous style in which this part of the service is often rendered, proceeded to point out, somewhat "professionally," how it should be done. Some of his suggestions are unquestionably good; but our observation of readings in poetry, and especially of hymns, by professional elocutionists, has not increased our confidence in the prospect of any considerable relief from this confessed evil by any of the ordinary rules of the rhetoricians. As with artistic music, so with artistic readings, both are but ill adapted to the requirements of public worship. The second paper is by Professor Harris, of Andover Seminary, who proposes to obviate the whole difficulty by entirely omitting that part of the service, which may remind one of the quack doctor's method for curing his patient-let him die, and that will make an end of the disease. The reasons urged for this are in the form of facts, which in nearly every case belong to the category of false facts. "It retards the progress of the service," he tells us; which, however, cannot be the case, if it is itself a part of the service, as it should be, and (as it is capable of being made) an important and especially interesting part. This assumption, that reading the hymn is not properly a legitimate part of the service, runs through all the plea for its disuse, and the whole objection falls if that assumption is set aside.

It is conceded that our non-liturgical worship is liable to suffer from want of attention to the aesthetical element, which is so intimately related to public worship; and but for which Church music of any kind would be out of place. The public reading of the Scriptures needs no defense; and though the lesson may be an entirely familiar one, its reading is not for that reason any the less acceptable or profitable. The sermon itself may present nothing really new, but be simply made up of "the old, old story," so often told in our hearing, and with which we have been familiar from our childhood. One might, at less expense of time and labor, read quite as good sermons at home-if wisely selected, much better ones than the average of pulpit discourses-and yet we do not plead for no sermon from the pulpit. The services of the house of God are not to be tried by the rules of either the concert or the lecture; they have other and higher purposes, and their exercises are to be directed by other rules. And these, properly understood and reduced to practice, will much more

than simply justify the reading from the pulpit of the hymns that are to be used by the choir or the congregation, as the case may be. In passing, it may be observed that the hymns, as to their sense and meaning, can be heard in the church only as they are read; for, unless helped by the book, the worshipers in most cases will be as ignorant of the words of the hymn ostensibly being sung as they would be if the language used were Italian or Choctaw. And as between private reading, whether at home or in the pew, and the public presentation, either said or sung, the preference must be conceded to the latter, if at all well rendered. So in the lack of intelligible articulation in the singing, the reading of the hymns is all that the congregation can have of these "aids to devotion."

6.

In non-liturgical worship, the hymns chiefly supply the place of the ritual; the "hymnal" holds the place of the prayer-book or the breviary. Every argument that can be offered in favor of "common prayer" applies with larger emphasis to congregational singing; and yet, in the peculiar condition of musical education among us, that style of worship has become very nearly impossible. We have been educated beyond the inartistic melodies of the past age, when quantity of voice compensated for any deficiency of correct musical rendering; but yet we remain, scarcely less than were our fathers, without musical training as to both performance and appreciation; and our choirs, away in the organ-lofts, seem to regard it as no part of their business to cause the silent occupants of the pews to recognize any thing but the mingling of sweet, but inarticulated, sounds. The rationale of placing the music at the farthest possible remove from the congregation, and in the most complete isolation, is among the unexplained mysteries which fail to excite surprise simply because we have become familiar with them. Sympathy, at such long range, is not easily awakened, and to average church-goers, that part of the service is something as to which they feel themselves to be spectators rather than participants. In nearly all American churches fashionable music is, by the mass of attendants, endured rather than enjoyed; and those who have come with a sincere desire to worship and be edified, must wait in exemplary patience for the "performance" to end, and something appreciable to take its place. So far as instruction and stirring up the mind to spiritual thoughts and aspirations is the object to be sought for in public worship, about the only available good to be derived from the hymns must come from their being heard from the pulpit rather than from the organ-loft.

The old-style method of "lining the hymns," now quite antiquated, was not without its advantages. Words and sentences uttered by the living voice are vastly more effective than when simply presented to the thought through the eye; and then the retention of the words and forms of speech in the memory, that they might be sung a little later, tended to command closer attention and to fix them permanently in the memory. And there is but little room to doubt that church-going people of fifty years ago, among whom the hymns were lined," were much more familiar with the contents of their hymn-books than are their children