changing the complexion of the election; and woman suffrage in effect would flood the polls with a vast additional mass of corruption and illiteracy, while it would furnish very few opposing votes. Woman suffrage would aid reform, as the millstone about his neck would aid the swimmer.

Another question worthy of serious thought suggests itself: What would be the bearing of woman suffrage upon the political strength of the Roman Catholic Church in this country? An amendment to a bill before the Italian Parliament to the effect that the privilege of voting be extended to women possessing the requisite qualifications, was overwhelmingly defeated. This result was secured, in part, by the opinion of the premier, Signor Crispi, that the measure would contribute largely to the strength of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. "To give women a vote," was his language, "would imperil the free institution of Italy, for where one man is swayed in his political views by the parish priest,. more than ten women are under that ghostly despotism."

The ratio is not so large in this country, but I am probably safe in saying, that where one man is under the control of a Roman Catholic priest there are two, perhaps three, women. If it be true that the Archbishop of New York controls, as he is said to have boasted, one hundred thousand votes now, what would be his political power with the ballot in the hands of women? He would be a taller figure in this republic, and wield more influence over its affairs, than the President of these States. Would it be wise to triple the political strength of a politico-religious hierarchy which is so successfully intriguing for power and place, waiting and working for the hour when the will of a foreign potentate shall be supreme in the New World? Can woman suffrage offer anything as an offset to this peril?

But a more serious peril, growing out of woman suffrage, lies in the vast and growing illiteracy among our people. The census of 1880 reports more than two million men, over

twenty-one years of age,-well-nigh one-half white-too ignorant to read the ballots they cast. To these voters, who know little more about our institutions, laws, and history, than about the Choctaw language, connected with probably as many more of the criminal and hoodlum classes, the interests of this country are measurably entrusted. The vast political power committed to these men is largely under the control of selfish, unprincipled politicians, and is a standing menace to the stability of our government. The question is on the lips of thousands of our wisest men and women, How long can our free institutions stand the strain? Volcanoes are rumbling beneath us to-day. The civil arm in many cases is powerless to protect property and life. The necessity of calling upon the military is becoming alarmingly and growingly frequent.

The census of 1880 reports three hundred thousand more illiterate women, over twenty-one years of age, than men. Should these women, who know nothing of our institutions, be entrusted with the responsibility of the ballot? Shall we add two and a half million to the present army of illiterate voters, making an aggregate of four and a half million who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic? To entrust these sacred legacies and memories of the past, and the awful interests involved in this experiment of self-government in the New World to such keeping, would be not only unwise, but to the last extent criminal. Every human interest requires us to curtail, rather than extend, the privilege of suffrage.

A restricted suffrage for women is suggested. This would diminish the evils somewhat, but the thing is impracticable. We have given unrestricted suffrage to men. The die is cast. The gift cannot be taken back; and now to discriminate against women would be invidious and unsatisfactory. It is doubtful whether it would even lessen the shrieks against man's inhumanity to woman. A better way

would be to discriminate against immigration, and better still, vastly to increase philanthropic efforts to elevate and christianize the stranger who seeks a home upon these shores.

While I can conceive of no benefit accruing to women, or to the public in general from the ballot, my unshaken conviction is that almost every human interest would suffer from it. Woman has no call to the ballot-box, but she has a sphere of her own, of amazing responsibility and importance. She is the divinely appointed guardian of the home, where human interests mainly centre, and where human influence reaches farthest and lives longest. She should more fully realize that her position as wife and mother, and angel of the home, is the holiest, most responsible, and queenlike assigned to mortals; and dismiss all ambition for anything. higher, as there is nothing else here so high for mortals. The name mother, how it thrills along over human heartstrings as does no other, the dearest name in human vocabularies! Let woman dismiss all feeling of inferiority, and make herself man's equal, not by making herself a man, but by making herself man's superior in loveliness and duty.

But woman's duties are not limited to her home. She is the angel of sympathy and helpfulness wherever hearts are aching or tears are falling. Her gentle facile hands, her sweet ministries, and sympathizing heart are God's chief instrumentalities to relieve suffering and bear the burdens of the unfortunate and despairing. Her field is as wide as human suffering and want, wide enough to excuse her from all participation in the coarse rivalries of men for distinction and place.

ARTICLE VIII.

CRITICAL NOTES.

I.

DO WE KNOW ANYTHING BY CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE

NEW BIRTH?

THE Rev. Dr. G. F. Magoun, Ex-President of Iowa College, in an article in the Christian Mirror, of Dec. 17, 1892, which he has done me the honor to devote to certain essays of mine, has questioned the assertion that we know some things about Christian doctrine by our immediate consciousness. The word "consciousness" is employed here in the strict philosophical sense, as the knowledge which the mind has of its own action. The exact drift of his criticism, owing to some misprints, is not clear; but enough is evident to show that he rejects the idea. It is an important idea in certain connections, for if we do know some things in Christian doctrine by true consciousness, then we have as absolute a knowledge of them as of any fact in the world, as we have of that basal fact, our own existence. Dr. Magoun's question naturally leads one to examine again his position, to see if indeed it be true; and I have thought that possibly others beside myself might be interested in the examination.

There are two sides of the new birth, the divine and the human, which have sometimes been distinguished as "regeneration" and "conversion." God sends forth his Holy Spirit and regenerates; and man obeys, accepts, chooses, according as one may prefer this term or that. Our old divines sometimes contend that regeneration and conversion are not to be distinguished whether chronologically or logically; but a better philosophy of the will has led most theologians of the present day to make this, or some similar, distinction between the divine and the human activity.

Beginning with the simple human activity, conversion is essentially an act of the will. I shall call it a choice. Now, choice is an activity, the essential activity of the soul, that activity in which personality resides. If consciousness is the knowledge which the mind has of its own activity, it must embrace the choices of the mind, and must therefore embrace the supreme choice of all others, the choice of Jesus Christ as Lord and as Saviour. And, if I may reduce the Christian choice still further toward its ultimate elements, and define it as a choice of duty, however that duty may come to be apprehended, as a choice fundamental, determinative of all other choices which the

man may make, and irreversible, I may still add that such a choice is and must be embraced within the scope of that consciousness which is the knowledge which a mind has of its own activities.

But this choice is not an isolated phenomenon in a man's life, something which he once makes, and which has no farther reality for him except as it is an object of the memory. It is reaffirmed in innumerable subordinate choices, as when he does a particular benevolent act because "it is his duty," that is because he has already once chosen to do his duty whenever he shall perceive it. If you question the reality of that great fundamental choice at any moment, the man whose choice is questioned, must then and there reaffirm it, or he denies it and nullifies it, a thing, which, according to Christian doctrine, the Christian never does. As a Christian man, I know now, not that I have made this fundamental choice, but that I make it, for as soon as my thought dwells upon the matter at all, I do remake it. And hence the Christian always knows the existence within him of the supreme choice of duty by immediate consciousness, if his thought is directed to the topic at all.

To return, now, to the original moment of the fundamental choice. At this moment there lay before the mind alternatives, for choice always is between alternatives. On the one side was duty, which was finally chosen. On the other was whatever had been the ruling motive in the unregenerate heart, which may have been this or that, but which, merely for illustration's sake, I will denominate pleasure. Pleasure and duty were weighed, and pleasure perceived as inconsistent with, and even hostile to, duty. Whenever any such deliberation is performed by the human mind there always springs up an affirmation of obligation. Duty is seen to have claims upon the man. There is a sense of responsibility which may be expressed in the phrase "I ought," in respect to duty, and "I ought not," in respect to pleasure. This is a matter of immediate consciousness. Put in other terms, the man knows by immediate consciousness that he is a sinner. He knows, that is, by immediate consciousness, what are the prevailing tendencies of his being, and what their character.

But, now, as he deliberates, he is conscious of something new, a new attractiveness in duty. It is as if a new brilliancy had been thrown upon it. He is not conscious by immediate consciousness that this new light proceeds from this external source or from that, any more than one is conscious, when a brilliant illumination is cast upon a dark wall by night, from what one of several kinds of luminaries, or of individual lights, it may have come; but he is not conscious that this radiance proceeds from himself, and, as he is conscious, in the immediate consciousness which he actually has, what sort of a reflection upon duty is cast from his own sinful mind, he may be said to know by the next step from consciousness, if not by immediate consciousness, that that radiance was not lent to duty by his own mind.

In subsequent years, as was said of the fundamental choice itself, he does not merely remember all this; but, since the remade choice is made in the presence of temptations and lapses, the fact of sin and of its essential nature is a fact, again, of present and immediate consciousness.