the interest of grasping, soulless railroad corporations. Money and influence are skillfully and unscrupulously used to secure desired legislation. There has probably not been a territorial Legislature held in twenty years where legislation has not been procured more favorable to the railroad corporation than to the people represented in those Legislatures. All railroads will combine in seeking general or special railroad legislation, while only the people of a limited area will unite in opposing oppres sive railroad legislation in that area.

The same is, doubtless, true as to State Legislatures and the election of State senators and representatives; and is it not equally and eminently true of Congressional elections, both to the Senate and the House? The scandals of the Credit Mobilier will not soon be forgotten. They smirched honored names. The aid rendered by Congress in loans to the Pacific railroads has been requited by systematic and persistent endeavor on the part of those corporations to evade payment of interest on those loans. Laws have been passed and processes instituted to secure the payment of those loans, which, up to this time, have been too successfully eluded.

The large quantities of public lands granted to great railroad monopolies have still further tended to reduce the resources of the people and lavish them upon grasping, bloated corporations. The vast amount of patronage and control these railroads have, by their nearly half a million dependent employees, largely augments their power to corrupt elections and to bribe lawmakers. A hundred and twenty thousand offices are said to be at the disposal of the President of the United States, and this has been cited as imperiling the purity of elections. Yet the families of 419,000 railroad employees in the United States are dependent upon the nod and beck of railroad magnates.

These railroads have the power to oppress the producers of the country by demanding and receiving extortionate rates for transporting passengers and freight upon local routes, and upon routes where competition does not prevent such extortion, and for short distances. Repeated instances have been cited, where all the transported article could possibly bear has been charged for freights. The oppression of employees, by compelling overwork and by scanty wages, is a liability which will require vigilant attention.

A more serious question remains to be considered, namely, the flagrant Sabbath desecration practiced by all the railroads, and the injury this must cause to public morals and to civil order and safety. Before preparing this article inquiries were addressed to leading officials of all the principal railroad companies, as follows, namely: "1. What number of employees are there on your roads? 2. What proportion of your business is done on the Sabbath day? 3. What proportion of your employees work on the Sabbath day?" Of the Pennsylvania Central Railway Company, this additional question was asked, namely: "What damage and what loss of life resulted to your roads during your railway strike a few years ago?" This question has not been answered. The following answers have been received, namely:

From J. H. Rutter, Esq., President New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company:

We employ about 15,000 men. Probably not one half of our usual daily business is done on the Sabbath day. We run through passenger trains and through freight trains on Sunday; but not as many on Sundays as on week days. Your third question I cannot answer, except approximately. I should say not one half of the employees work on the Sabbath day-very likely, not

one third.

From Charles Paine, Esq., General Superintendent of the New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad Company, this answer has been given:

I do not find any statistics which would enable me to answer the questions you propose, or I would take pleasure in giving you the desired information.

S. R. Callaway, Esq., General Manager of the Union Pacific Railway, responds:

Upon the Union Pacific Railway and its controlled lines, about 20,000 men are employed. I cannot tell you what proportion work on the Sabbath day. But we endeavor to limit Sunday work as much as possible upon a line of its length.

These are substantially all the answers received from a dozen or fifteen letters. The officials were obviously disinclined, if they were able, to give the information sought. This is proba bly all the light obtainable from these sources. But it is noto

rious that much passenger and freight work is done on the Sabbath day by all the railroads.

The effect is injurious in several ways. 1. To all the people living upon or near railroads, where the steam whistle and the rushing train flagrantly defy the Sabbath law, and accustom aged and young alike to become familiar with open defiance of divine and human law, general laxity of morals must ensue. 2. The injury to railroad employees is more direct and deadly. Thousands of railroad employees know no Sabbath from one year's end to another. On all the railroads in North America there are 600,000 employees. If we take President Rutter's average-one third-we have 200,000 men who are required to violate God's law and the civil law as well, and to live without the Sabbath. Can words measure the inevitable demoralization which must ensue? Most properly and commendably the railroad employees are required to be sober men. Should they not also be prevented from becoming morally irresponsible? Is it surprising that men compelled habitually to be immoral should become communists and nihilists, and on occasion should raise the red flag, and should waste and destroy? If railroad corporations thus sow to the wind, the whirlwind of disaster will not be far behind. Can corporations more than individuals violate moral law with impunity?

It may be said that to stop railroad travel on Sunday would work a hardship to travelers. To forbid secular business and work on the Sabbath, as the civil law does, to the non-traveling public, may be inconvenient to all those who do not care for the Sabbath, but should Sabbath laws be therefore abrogated and the civil Sabbath be abolished?

It is urged that it is wasteful of perishable freights to delay them by stopping Sunday trains. Then, let them be started on Monday rather than on Saturday or Sunday. It is also urged that live freight should be hurried through in kindness to the animals transported, and that to delay cattle trains, by non-Sunday travel, would be cruelty to animals. In some of the States the law requires railroads not to keep the cattle in cars beyond thirty-six hours. It would be humane to require all cattle trains to lie over for feeding and rest on the Sabbath. That to enforce non-Sunday travel and freighting on railroads would cost something, is admitted; but the present moral gain

and, in the long run, the future material gain would far outmeasure the loss.

The interest of the railroads imperatively demands the suspension of this Sunday violation. Public morals, public safety and order demand that this flagrant Sabbath desecration should cease. It should be done, peacefully and without compulsion, as a measure of supreme importance to the railroad corporations and to the public welfare. If it be not done voluntarily, and by the voice of a healthy public sentiment, it will come after loss and riot and waste of life and great public disaster; but it were far better to have it come by peaceful and moral means than by reaction after wide-spread ruin.

If slavery had been peacefully abolished, even though it had cost many thousand millions to pay for the slaves, the far greater loss of life and property wasted by war would have been avoided. Railroads, publicists, legislators, and voters will do well to heed the teachings of history, which enforce religious morality as the foundation of civil order and civil liberty.

ART. V.-RECENT CHECKS TO MODERN UNBELIEF.* PART II.-CRITICAL.

Ir is generally and confidently acknowledged by the highest authorities of the school of modern critical unbelief that there are certain books in the New Testament which are unquestionably genuine. Such men as Baur and Strauss, Renan and the author of "Supernatural Religion," for example, agree in accepting Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, and the Apocalypse as books incontestably genuine and authentic. That is, these representative leaders of modern learned unbelief agree with catholic Christians in holding fast by the unquestionable genuineness of about one fourth of the New Testament, and that, a fourth containing over and over again all the essential facts and doctrines of, the Gospel. In regard to the remaining books of the New Testament, the position originally taken up by Baur and his more immediate followers was, that

*"Some Recent Checks and Reverses Sustained by Modern Unbelief." By Rev. Alexander Mair, D.D. "The Monthly Interpreter " (Edinburgh), Feb., 1885.

they were composed far on in the second century, and mainly between A. D. 130 and 170.

It is a well-known fact that of late years many previously unknown manuscripts of valuable ancient books have been discovered throughout the libraries and convents of the south and east. It is most important and strengthening to our faith to know that these discoveries tend decidedly to confirm the catholic view in regard to the date of the New Testament books, namely, that they were all written within the apostolic age. We will now adduce a few illustrations of this statement. We begin with the so-called "Epistle of Barnabas," which was written about A. D. 120. Until 1859 it was known only in an imperfect form, the first four and a half chapters being extant in Latin but not in the original Greek. At the close of the fourth chapter it contains these words, "as it is written, Many are called, few chosen." The expression here quoted is found nowhere in ancient sacred literature except Matt. xxii, 14.* Hence the conclusion was naturally drawn that this was a quotation from Matthew, and that the quotation was made as if it was acknowledged Scripture. But the unbelieving school, in effect, replied, "No. This is only the Latin translation. The quotation was very likely inserted by the translator, who was some biased Christian. If we only had the original Greek, we should find that it is not there." Well, two original Greek copies have now been discovered, one by Tischendorf at Mount Sinai in 1859, and another more lately at Constantinople by Bryennios, now Metropolitan of Nicomedia. And what is the result? The old Latin version is absolutely correct; for the quotation is found in the original Greek almost exactly as in Matthew. The conclusion from this is obvious; the Gospel of Matthew was already written and apparently acknowledged as Scripture. It is noteworthy that the author of "Supernatural Religion" still endeavors to wriggle out of the iron grasp of the necessary inference. In a way which must fill many readers with amazement, if not with something worse, he still struggles to show that it is not a quotation from Matthew at all, but from 2 (4) Esdras viii, 3: "There be many created, but few shall be saved." Surely comment is unneces-· *It is also found, of course, in the Textus Receptus in Matt. xx, 16; but there it is probably not genuine. [Westcott and Hert insert it in the margin.]