"Eunuchus," 2, 2, 44: "You say that I have been kicked out; look you, there are ups and downs in all things."

Such was this great man, to quote his own words, "no dreaming pedant with his elbow on his desk," but a man of action. He would have been eminent in any walk of life. Clergyman and student as he was, he taught the ablest lawyers of England that there was more in English law than had been dreamed of in their philosophy. As a mathematician he won the praise of Newton; as a preacher and sermonizer he held a conspicuous place. John Evelyn, no mean judge, says of one of his sermons, "This was one of the most learned and convincing discourses I had ever heard;” and in Tristram Shandy Sterne makes Corporal Trim listen to a discourse of his on Popery, and represents him as profoundly impressed by it. As a critic Bentley stands alone among English scholars. Probably no man who ever lived had such a power of penetrating through serious corruptions of the text and divining the true readings which lay beneath them. Great scholars there had been before him; Poggio and Politian, Casaubon and Salmasius, the Scaligers and the Vossiuses; but he was the first to really go beneath the surface and lay the foundation upon which classical scholarship must rest, a sound and accurate text. "Princeps criticorum" is the title which both his own countrymen and the great German scholars have loved to apply to him, and never was distinction more justly merited. Moreover, he was one who loved truth for truth's sake; who feared no danger and shrunk from no contest in its behalf. He was by nature militant; the epitaph which Professor Boch wrote for Ferdinand Lassalle, the German socialist leader, might have been written for him, "Hier ruht ein Denker und Fechter"-"Here lies a thinker and fighter."

H. W.

Hayley.

ART. IV.—THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE CITY.

CITIES are the storm centers of modern civilization. They always have been, and are to-day more than ever, the strategic points, the home of dominating forces. The invading army plans first to capture the cities of the enemy. The fall of Babylon meant the end of the empire of Nebuchadnezzar's son. Rome made the imperial power that was called by her name. The capture of Paris was the humiliation of France. Vicksburg was the key to the Mississippi. The destruction of Montojo's fleet and the capture of Manila placed an entire archipelago under the stars and stripes. London controls the commerce and commercial quotations of the world. York elects not only its own mayor, but also the governor of the Empire State. The vote of the cities determines the destiny of political parties and aspiring candidates. The system which cannot capture and hold cities cannot dominate the world.

New

The expansion of urban population is one of the terrors as well as the marvels of the present half-century. In 1790 one thirtieth of the population of the United States lived in cities of 8,000 inhabitants and over. At present the 443 cities of the size indicated furnish nearly one third of the population of the United States. Dr. Strong in his New Era declares that if the relative growth of city and country population continues as now until 1920 the cities of the United States will contain 10,000,000 more people than the country. Nor is this marvelous growth of cities. peculiar to the United States. Many German cities are increasing in population faster than those of this country. From 1870 to 1890 Berlin grew more rapidly than New York; Hamburg than Boston; Leipsic than Baltimore; Munich than St. Louis; and Breslau than Cincinnati. One third of the Netherlands now live in cities containing more than 12,000 inhabitants, while in England and Scotland the

change from rural to urban conditions has been all but revolutionary.

This phenomenal growth of urban population would not be alarming if the character of the massed forces were normal. But the fact is that in the cities we find, in largest proportion, the elements which constitute a menace to civilization. Mr. H. M. Boise in his work on Prisoners and Paupers says that in 1850 there was in the United States one criminal to every 3,500 inhabitants, while in 1890 there was one to every 786. The secret of this increase is to be found in the rapid growth of our urban population where the saloons, which are responsible for seventy-five per cent of all crime, are grouped; for, while 345 cities contain but twenty-seven per cent of the population, they furnish ninety per cent of the criminals of the entire country It is in the city that the rum power has the strongest hold and does its deadliest work. The 443 cities which furnish a little less than one third of the population of the entire country contain a very large proportion of all the saloons. The latest statistics at hand reveal the fact that Chicago has one saloon for every 284 people; New York, one for every 200; Cleveland, one for every 192; Cincinnati, one for every 124. These saloons are the fountain-heads of pauperism, the secret sources of ignorance, the promoters of all forms of impurity, the enemies of all good government and honest citizenship. Closely associated with the saloon are found the billiard and pool room, the Sunday theater, the gambling den, and every other monster evil which preys upon society and ruins souls.

In the cities alone is found what is called the slum population. This element is not, at the present time, as marked and degrading in American cities as in those of the Old World, nor yet in small as in large ones. But the submerged portion of our population is forever on the increase with the growth of great cities. It is estimated that the slum population of Chicago is not far from 170,000, while that of New York at the present time is somewhat in excess of 365,000. And it must be remembered that the slum district

is the natural home of those elements that are antagonistic to Christian civilization. In 1894 the Commissioner of Labor gave an elaborate report concerning the slum districts in several cities where careful investigation had been made. The report shows that in the sections in question the saloon was twice as numerous, the percentage of crime three times, and that of illiteracy four times as great as in the same cities taken as a whole.

It is in the city that the tenement house problem is found, the sweat-shop evil, and almost the whole foreign population which is antagonistic to our civilization and an enemy to American institutions and the Church. It is in the city that we have the severest clash between capital and labor. Here the extremes of poverty are massed and wealth congested, here the tides of worldiness run highest, and here are found the vast hordes who live by luring others to ruin. It is also here that the conditions and environments exist which tend constantly to brutalize humanity. The division between classes and classes, the lack of neighborliness, the long hours that must be spent in business, the frigidity of the social and even the religious atmosphere, the awful pressure to which everybody is exposed, the misery and nervous strain consequent on competition, make the city a great sea that swallows up countless thousands coming to it from Christian homes and home churches in smaller places.

The problem of religious life in the city is one of overwhelming importance. It cannot be solved until the Church' of Jesus Christ arouses herself, studies the situation, changes front, and does vastly more than she is doing to-day. Taking it for granted that the Methodist Episcopal Church represents more than an average of the evangelizing forces of the country, and we are scarcely "holding the fort" in the cities. We are indebted to The Christian City for the following statistics: In Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, Methodism lost, from 1897 to 1899, 1,450 members, and that too while the population of these cities is increasing at a tremendous rate.

During the same years there was a net loss of 1,251 members in 79 cities, located east of the western line of New York and Pennsylvania. In 149 cities of the United States, containing each over 20,000 inhabitants, there has been a net gain in membership during the past year of only 1,103, which is at the ratio of one fourth of one per cent. The actual gain is only one member for every 412 communicants. Of the 149 cities named above 76 report a gain and 73 a loss of membership. During 1899, 78 cities located east of the western line of Pennsylvania and New York reported a net loss of 1,897. These same cities made a net gain of 646 full members during 1898. Failure to command the situation in our cities has thus resulted in the losses which are everywhere deplored. Methodism has not kept pace with the growth of urban population under most favorable conditions. The percentage of increase in the cities during the last ten years has been considerably below that of the Church taken as a whole. And it must be borne in mind that thousands upon thousands of our membership have removed from their old homes in town and country to swell the numbers of our hosts in the cities. The cities have received everything and given nothing, and yet the tide of population sweeps on in advance of us. In all of our large cities we see, year after year, churches retiring from the down-town districts, leaving these densely populated centers to the control of these forces that make for unrighteousness, which have been more and more fully massed in them. One city can be named in which there is a district containing over 350,000 people from which every Protestant church except one, in which services are conducted in the English language, has been removed. In every great city there are vast districts in which very little is being done to capture the storm centers. Where the battle should be the hottest we find the least activity. If we cannot do more in the future than has been done in the past and is being done at the present time, the beginning of the end is at hand. We are persuaded that more can and will be done to win the battle of the ages for Christ and humanity.