lacks the human personality which in God's order, both for the recipient and bestower, should be present in every ministration. And, as a rule, the best gift is the one that has most of personality in it. All true strength radiates outward from the center. A weak heart or a weak mind needs a strong one. Encouragement, advice, knowledge, a place to work in, a nobler work to do, are better gifts than food and clothing; for they produce these and confer the power that continues to produce them. The best form of beneficence that the world has discovered is helping others to help themselves.

[October 13.]

out the valleys and buried the bright nuggets deep in the rocks for you to gather; the claim of a Father who has placed you among brethren who are like yourself, equal in moral dignity to yourself, if not in powers or possessions, to whom also He has given rights, and whose burdened backs and wearied hands you cannot, as a man and a brother, cause to toil and ache, to heap up your treasures or feed your pride. Christianity, respecting and defending every right of man because he is man, with one hand holds the shield of a protecting goddess over the rights of property, and with the other uplifts the sword of justice against the robber and the oppressor. The right of property is simply the right of a steward to discharge his trust without interference. But "it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."

The laborer has the right to the fruit of his labor; and the whole fruit of it, after he has satisfied the like rights of others. This is his right, if there be any ethical foundation of society or any moral nature in man. But there is another aspect of this problem of the rights of the laborer. All that he is and all the natural agents which he employs are bestowments of a higher Power. While no man may interfere with his use of his powers and the fruits of his toil expended upon the materials and forces of nature, there is a claim that underlies all-the claim of the Creator. Christ has presented this neglected aspect of the problem in His parable of the talents. Behind this fortification of rights in which the producer of wealth intrenches himself and protects himself from all invasion of rights, is that citadel of duty which gives security to them all. It is into this that the defender of his rights must at last retire when pressed by his enemies. He says: "I have duties to perform to my family, to my friends. If you take away my rights, I cannot perform my duties. I am bound to realize manhood, and my rights must be accorded that I may perform my duties." This is the Christian solution of the origin of rights. It says to the laborer: This is your land, for you have cleared its swamps and blasted out its rocks and made it golden with a harvest; this is your grain, for you have dropped the dry seeds into the moist earth at spring-time and have harvested and winnowed and garnered it; this is your gold, for you have burrowed into the mountains for it and washed away the sand from it until it glitters in your hand; but remember, there is upon it all a claim that you must recognize the claim of Him who fashioned the mountains and hollowed

The increase of wealth is attended with great perils, yet Christianity favors and aids that increase. All the sages and philosophers of antiquity dreaded the day when the simplicity of poverty should give place to the luxury of wealth. They had good reason for this fear, for no pagan nation has ever grown rich without the deterioration of its people. A prophetic psalm of ancient Israel expresses a wish which no pagan sage had dared to utter, but only in view of a condition that renders riches safe. "God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us, that Thy ways may be known upon the earth, Thy saving health among all nations. Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us."

[October 20.]

Christianity is happily not dependent upon the agency of the secular school for its extension. It is probably well for the development of our national life that the schools are beyond ecclesiastical control. The distinctively clerical influence is conservative, rather than progressive, regarding moral well-being, rather than intellectual advancement. Such, at least, is the testimony of history. And yet it is possible for the secularization of the school to go too far. The state is assuming a wholly new position in excluding religious influences from the school-room. Why not let them enjoy the same freedom that other influences do? Political sectarianism would doubtless be as obnoxious to partisans as religious sectarianism can be to any, yet we

hear the claim constantly pressed that political science shall be taught in our schools. To exclude on the ground of religion a book or an influence or an exercise from a school seems to me beyond the scope of the state's proper authority. It is persecution of religion because it is religion.

The Christian men of this nation will be very weak indeed if they do not insist that the Christian Scriptures and Christian teachers be everywhere accorded the privilege of exposition and utterance. Christian duty binds every disciple of Christ to let the light within him shine upon all around him, most of all upon those whose unshaped lives are submitted to his molding hand. No Christian can desire that our public schools shall be converted into propagandas of a sectarian or dogmatic type. But it may be fairly asked that the influence of Jesus might have its place among the shaping forces; that the young might be taught the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men; that veracity, reverence, justice, and charity might be inculcated; that the conceit of the young might be tempered with some respect for the wisdom and goodness of the world's great men, including those mentioned in the Bible; that the arithmetical consciousness which intensifies the selfishnesss of our age might be touched with some consideration for the rights of others; that the perception of present interests might be accompanied with some realization of permanent and spiritual needs; that rights and duties might be explained in the light of a personal authority that would give them force in a child's mind; that the religious sentiments might find exercise in some simple and elementary but purely voluntary form of worship that would at least preserve the rudimentary instincts with which men are naturally endowed. Religion within such limits may have place in our public schools without violating any principle of our American conception of the state. The rights of the small number of imported atheists, agnostics, and positivists who would oppose such a plan need not be seriously affected. Their off spring might be marked with a designating badge and kept carefully away from all such influence. Upon such a program Christians of every name might easily unite; and how, in such an atmosphere, would prejudice and sectarianism soften and dissolve, a general fellowship in high objects of faith drawing the coming generations together in the sense

of a common brotherhood, leaving free for each the ever diminishing differences of personal opinion, while preserving "the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace!"

[October 27.]

We have now examined the relation of Christianity to the leading problems of society. We have found everywhere Christ's conception of man throwing light upon these problems. If the laborer has rights, it is because he is endowed with personality. If the distribution of wealth is possible upon other grounds than the rule of the strongest, it is because these personal rights radiate outward from the man and project themselves in the sphere of poverty. If marriage and the family are to be preserved to society, it is through the recognition of personal rights in the domestic circle. If education is to receive its perfection in the complete unfolding of human powers, the spiritual and moral nature of man must be regarded. If legislation is to embody justice and realize liberty, it must postulate the doctrine of personal freedom and of rights and duties as the ground of freedom. Finally, if crime is to be repressed and extirpated, the moral regeneration of men must be accepted as possible and the universal reign of mechanical necessity must be denied.

The relation of Christianity to these problems is briefly this: it carries the master-key that unlocks every one of them; that masterkey is Christ's conception of man. I bring the question to this issue: let what Christ has taught of man's nature and destiny be denied ; let the mind picture society as an organism whose constituents are impersonal automata, mechanical products of matter and its forces, infinitely complex, but still governed by the law of physical fatality; let the fact of personality be rejected and the reality of inherent rights be contradicted; and I affirm that, when men universally believe this, social order will have no existence, the physically weaker will go down in the struggle for life under the remorseless competition of the stronger, and the human race will be plunged into a general pandemonium. Every disruption of social order that has lately startled the fears of men has originated from some phase of this chain of assumptions. On the other hand, let all that Christ has taught be admitted ; let it be assumed that each personal being is endowed with inherent rights and immortal life; let it be conceded that the human brother

will be necessary to include in this generalized study of nature, parts of many other sciences. Geology, geography, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, all afford general facts of great value to the student who seeks to make his physiographic studies present him with a broad view as to the nature and history of our sphere.

In order to find an easy way into this wide field, it is best to begin our task by bringing clearly to mind by means of simple familiar instances the effect of the conditions which surround our plants and animals of all grades, effects which we commonly sum up under the term climatal conditions. If the reader will but remember the difference which diverse seasons bring to his ordinary life, he will have before him one of the most conspicuous features as to the effect of varying climates. In the middle latitudes of the earth the change from winter to summer carries men through the widest range of climates within a period of a single year. In the snow-bound, ice-locked period of winter, the greater part of the organic life disappears from the scene. The annual plants survive only in seeds which await the coming of the spring-time to enter again on the living state. The permanent plants are sapless, locked in a state of sleep. The insects survive in their eggs or in underground stations. Of the hundred species of birds more or less familiar in the summer season perhaps half a dozen remain in the fields, the rest have followed the warmth to more southern climes.

If he watch the coming spring he will perceive with the increase of the heat this life start again into activity. The seeds germinate, the eggs of the insects pour forth their tide of life, the birds sweep up from the tropics, and with the change of temperature which does not usually amount to more than 30° F., the whole aspect of the world about us undergoes a marvelous change. This alteration is sensible to us not only in the outer nature but in our spirit as well. We are not the same in the different seasons of the year; the whole conduct of our life is affected by slight changes of climate; in part, directly by the excess of warmth or cold, in part, remotely by the change in the face of nature and in the occupations of the mind which different seasons bring about.*

* Very few persons find the measure of profit and pleasure which should come to them from close attention to these ever varying conditions of the climates in which

All set gain from the study of nature must. come not through the contemplation of general facts but through the study of details. It is true that many persons have in their youth a certain delight in the face of nature. They feel intellectually and spiritually moved by the contemplation of a sunset or by the beauty which belongs to the vernal fields. This impression, however, is but vague, and if we trust to it alone we shall find that as. the cares of life increase, the joy in nature diminishes. It is a sad fact that while most persons are keenly aware to the beauties of nature in their youth, they gradually go apart from such pleasure, and by middle age view the world in a commonplace way, finding but small delight in all the marvelous work of nature. To keep this original interest in the world about us active, it is necessary to devote a portion of our time to close sympatheticobservation on the successions which arevisible in the seasonal processes of life. I would have the student very early in his observation of nature select some group of organic beings with which he would make himself most familiar and which he will follow from year to year with ever increasing pleasure. There are three groups in the biological field, any one of which will serve to give the thread on which the observer is to string the jewels which he will gather in his study of the yearly round of life. These are the birds, the insects, and the plants.

Of these three assemblages of life, the flowering plants are the most suitable companions. for our seasonal studies. They may grow anywhere; even on the window seats of city windows, they will go through their marvelous course from seed to flower and again to seed almost as well as in their native fields. However town-bound, the student can generally find his way to the country or at least to neighborhoods sufficiently rural to show him these plants in their natural conditions.. they dwell. Men and women naturally become absorbed in household cares or in the varied affairs of social or business life. They neglect this majestic march of theof life. The student who would become in the best senseseasons and thus lose what should be the greatest charm a naturalist, who would feel the work of nature about him, should begin at the outset of his striving for this. larger life, to go forward each year with the great procession of beings which lead from the darkness of winter

through the morning of spring, and noonday of hot sum

mer to the even of autumn, and back again to the winter of sleep. The student of the seasons is always in the tide of life, in a great river which bears him on and gives him not only a purity of spirit but the sight of ever widening fields.-N. S. S.