For himself he says that the longer he lives the less he feels the need of any garments of religious faith or any shelter of truth for his supposed soul. He has become quite accustomed to living under Professor Clifford's "empty heaven" and upon his "soulless earth." "The cosmic chill," however, seems to be much on his mind, his teeth chatter occasionally with an involuntary shiver, and the description of his sensations reminds us of the experience of a man who is freezing to death, his sensations of cold passing into numbness and insensibility, succeeded presently by delirium, in which the victim has comfortable dreams the while the congealing blood is settling purple under his finger-nails.

On the whole the apostle of the great void thinks it probable that future generations will be so robust that they will be able to endure the extreme exposure and the bitterly inclement weather which mere naturalism gives us. Severe as life in the open is, he believes we will, in time, get used to roughing it. At any rate, whether we can stand it or not, live or die, there is nothing else for us, he says. His words are, "We must face it, and still find life sweet under its influence." Nevertheless, sometimes the naturalist shows signs of feeling an intelligent sympathy with those who are reluctant to leave the shelter of their homestead and the shadow of its rooftree; who, as he puts it, "cleave to the shelter of the old traditions." He writes wistfully, "Probably the bravest among us do not abandon them without a pang. The old church has a friendly and sheltering look after all, and the white monuments in the rear of it where our kindred sleep-how eloquent is the silent appeal they make! No wonder a pang smites the spirit of the unbeliever as he looks on those headstones graven with records of the immortal faith of those whose bodies rest beneath, for among them is one which bears the name of his own sainted father concerning whom he himself writes: "As an old man he died in the faith he had early professed. It was sufficient unto him while he lived, and at the last it did not fail him. Father always spoke of his approaching end with perfect assurance and composure. He looked upon it as some journey he was about to make, some change of scene that was to come to him, and which need give him none but happy anticipations. . . . He no more doubted these things than he did his own existence." An eloquent appeal, indeed, must such a godly old man's monument make to his disbelieving

and denying son, whose pride in being more knowing than his father was suggests that scientific knowledge is not wisdom, and reminds us of Tennyson's line,

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Fortunately the naturalist's book contains some happy, perhaps hopeful, inconsistencies. If he is saved, it will be by the warmer, better, and nobler side of his inconsistencies, a bright gleam of which is seen in the following: "I cannot tell what the simple apparition of earth and sky means to me. I think at rare intervals one sees that they have an immense spiritual meaning, altogether unspeakable, and that they are the great helps after all." How a man, who looks into the face of Nature and says, "There is no God," can gather spiritual meaning out of a spiritless universe, or get help by gazing into the heartless, heedless, untenanted heavens, is as incomprehensible by us as it is inexplicable by him; but if he shall be saved at the expense of his intellectual consistency or by sloughing off his atheistic notions, there will be joy in heaven.

In our naturalist, as in Darwin and Spencer, we see the limitations of thought produced by a strictly scientific education or habit of mind and the atrophy which ensues from a disuse of the higher spiritual faculties. By believing in the exclusive light of the scientific method in the Court of Reason, George J. Romanes also passed into agnosticism and even for a time into positive materialism. It was then that he published his Candid Examination of Theism, the processes and conclusions of which brought him only sadness of spirit and distress of mind. The reader of that wall-eyed argument sees its author visibly shivering in "the cosmic chill" as he lays down his misguided pen and turns with a shudder from the horribleness of his own conclusions, confessing his horror in the following

statement:

Forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who affirm that the twilight doctrine of the “new faith " is a desirable substitute for the waning splendor of "the old," I am not ashamed to confess that with this virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness; and, although from henceforth the precept to "work while it is day" will doubtless but gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that "the night cometh when no man can work," yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it, at such times I shall

ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible. For whether it be due to my intelligence not being sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the age, or whether it be due to the memory of those sacred associations which to me at least were the sweetest that life has given, I cannot but feel that for me, and for others who think as I do, there is a dreadful truth in those words of Hamilton, that philosophy having become a meditation not merely of death, but of annihilation, the precept know thyself has become transformed into the terrific oracle to Edipus:

"Mayest thou ne'er know the truth of what thou art!"

In this confession of Romanes, as in our naturalist's discussions of religion, is matter enough to make us fly back from dallying with skepticism when we see on the brink of what an awful abyss it sports, a gulf the only adequate description of which is furnished by Holy Scripture in its phrase, "the bottomless pit." Surely, if there were little positive evidence to make a man believe, he might well let himself be driven back to faith as an alternative to the unspeakable and intolerable horror of existence as unfaith pictures it; and in so doing he would be entitled to rank as a wise man, since in a universe the contents and fortunes of which the naturalist must at least admit to be debatable, he who jumps to the worst of all possible conclusions or accepts the most painful and degrading of alternatives is a suicidal fool.

What worse could a man do than propagate such a doctrine as this: "In the light of modern astronomy one finds himself looking in vain for the God of his fathers. In his place we have an infinite and eternal Power whose expression is the visible universe, and to whom man is no more and no less than any other creature. The naturalist's great void is no more interested in us infinitesimal human insects crawling about on this earth-globule than in a swarm of aphides pasturing on a roseleaf. It is impossible not to note the condemnation pronounced upon such teachings by their own legitimate and probable, if not inevitable, moral effects on character and conduct. Surely they empty life of noble incentives. The doctrine of the worthlessness of man is calculated to make men worthless. If man is but a beast, what reason can there be why he should not be ex'horted to live like one? Why vex and strain himself with vain and absurd efforts to climb out of bestiality? Surely he cannot break the bounds to his nature. Strive as he may, the ape and the tiger will not die in him. Why should they? What is he but own brother to the tiger and the ape?

Since the naturalist's doctrine has despoiled and desecrated

existence and disgraced man of all his dignity, he ought to be neither displeased nor surprised if in his lifetime his fellow-men shall say among themselves, when he passes by, "There goes the man who thinks himself a beast; nor can he expect his open graveside to be dignified with any sacred and lofty words, inasmuch as the only ritual warranted by his creed would be, "Behold, he is buried with the burial of an ass."

He does us a service who makes us feel the horror of the dreadful doctrine so coolly and stoically propounded by mere naturalism. The effect of the shock of such theories should be to settle us on our foundations. Like the oak in the tempest, let us grip the ground with all our roots and work them down to a deeper hold. Let us make men see the sharpness and narrowness of their dilemma. This is no case of in mediis tutissimus ibis. Men delude themselves who think that some midway position is tenable-that in the corps legislatif of belief they can sit with the right center or the left center. There is no center; nothing but the extreme right of warm evangelical Christianity on the one side, and on the other the extreme left of agnosticism, "the great void" and "the cosmic chill," the blackness of darkness and the abomination of desolation for evermore. So Romanes said at last, "It is Christianity or nothing," and fled back for shelter and peace to the warmth of the Church's fireside and the comforting glow of the dear old faith. Great, indeed, is the responsibility resting on those who are set to tend the Church's altars; for the world is warmed by its altar-fires, and if they die down, "the cosmic chill" creeps in and numbs all hope and cheer, all courage, aspiration, and noble endeavor. Tennyson, when he feels the winds of eternity filling his sails, sings, with the good cheer of Christian faith,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

When I have crossed the bar.

He is a child of God and an heir of immortality. The naturalist, faithless and forlorn, drifts on his uncharted and unpiloted way at the mercy of unreturning currents which set toward the frozen pole, with no music more comforting and no fellowship more fraternal than the crunch of icebergs in a bitter ocean gouging and grinding each other in an arctic night. He is the hapless, helpless, and accursed victim of a hideous and scandalous universe. His only gospel is "the great void" and "the cosmic chill."

THE ARENA.

JOHN WESLEY'S WORK REVIVED IN ENGLAND.

JOHN WESLEY'S work was many-sided. He was not only the stirring evangelist and Christian organizer, educator, and propagandist of good literature, but was profoundly interested in civic and political questions, and was a social reformer, a painstaking philanthropist, and a propagator of religious music. Methodism has not distinguished herself in maintaining the leadership in all these particulars, while it has always been a revival Church, and has walked in the van in regard to some social questions, such as slavery and intemperance.

English Methodism of to-day, however, is, in a most surprising manner, taking a very advanced position in all the lines above suggested. This has arisen largely from the Church's attempts to meet the new conditions of life and reach the unchurched multitudes in the great centers of population. The great Wesleyan city missions which have arisen during the past sixteen years are the movements that occupy the best thought and prayer of the Methodists of England. Their aggressive, many-sided work has won the admiration of all denominations. Some of these institutions possess in a remarkable degree all the characteristics we shall speak of, and still others are as worthy to illustrate the work. The gratifying thing is that there are so many of these enterprises that we are embarrassed as to which ones to choose.

Evangelism. The best known characteristic of the Methodist movement in the eighteenth century was its intense evangelism. The greatest human factor in this result was lay workers, a great number of whom were raised up and thrust into the field. Wesley's "helpers" became his preachers. To-day the Joyful News Mission, under the direction of Rev. Thomas Champness and his wife, is a resurrection of Wesley's idea. Mr. Champness has been a missionary in Africa, and returned home to England more than thirty years ago with broken health. His physical condition compelled him to go to country circuits. To meet the religious destitution of the country districts he found that more religious workers were absolutely necessary. But the country was too poor to pay for additional helpers. To bridge the difficulty Mr. Champness conceived the thought of taking some of the brightest young men and women of the country parishes and training them as lay helpers. For many years this thought burned in his breast, but for lack of means he was unable to bring it into realization. When the means came it was from an unexpected quarter. Mr. Champness had become the editor and publisher of a halfpenny paper, The Joyful News. To his surprise and delight the paper was a success from the very first issue. Like John