tragedy were being enacted again. The very earth on which we stand seems to tremble, the rocks of the everlasting hills break from their places and roll to the valley beneath; while the mantle of darkness veils the sun's fair face as he refuses to look upon a scene so cruel. So vivid was the rich delineation, that listening love could hear the expressed agony of the Saviour when the last dark billow rolled over his soul and he said, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

But the picture I would paint is that of Christ in the temple. A wicked, motley group of men approach Him, and in the midst of them is a poor, defenseless woman. One of the wicked group points the finger of scorn at the wounded soul and says, "Master, this woman is guilty." Another voice exclaims, "Yes, Master, I know she is guilty"; and another, speaking with authority, says, "Master, she ought to be stoned according to the law." The calm, clear voice of the Saviour is heard above the clamoring throng as he replies, "You that are without sin may throw the first stone"; and turning from them, he writes a sentence upon the ground, while the wicked wretches hang their heads and sulk like demons away. What a picture! The world's Redeemer in tenderest compassion looking into the face of a broken-hearted woman! Were I an artist I would paint the picture of that helpless victim in Satan's snare. My brush would paint her with colorless cheeks; eyes with the luster of hope and beauty faded; a sunken breast, beneath which you could almost hear the throbs of her broken heart. The Master speaks, and the very fountain of His sympathetic nature floods her benighted soul with light and liberty, when He says, "Go and

sin no more." The artists who have painted the "baptismal scene" and "the ascending Christ" placed above His brow a halo of glory; but could I paint the picture just described I would place above His brow a halo of exceeding glory as He breaks the fetters of woman's bondage and proclaims her free.

From the time woman bathed the feet of the Compassionate One with her tears and wiped them with the tresses of her hair, her march has been onward and upward.

THE CAUSE OF THE GRACCHI

BY

ARTHUR J. CRAVEN

An excerpt from the oration delivered by Mr. Craven at the Inter-State Contest at Indianapolis, May, 1882, receiving second place.

Ideas, not swords have filled the past with ruins. Rome was not destroyed by barbarians. True, they captured and pillaged and destroyed a city whose name was Rome, but the fair mistress of the world, the pride of her children, had long been dead; and when the lands of the North stretched out their strong arms to seize a bride, they embraced a corpse.

Ideas, not swords! And among the ideas that scourge mankind none is more potent than that of man's inequality-asserting that men are not of the same blood, that we are not free and equal, that I shall be king and you shall be slave. It sounds the tocsin of war on the world's battlefields. It is the great Goliath of history, striding through the centuries, overturning kingdoms, obliterating empires, challenging republics; but no youthful David with sling and stone has yet stepped out from the ranks of the people who can slay and behead this giant of tyranny. As Americans we boast that the Declaration of Independence was his

death-warrant, and that our political fabric towers high above his grave. But whence comes this cry of monopoly and the warnings against centralization?

Agrarian reformation derives its importance not merely from its tragical interest in history, but from the fact that it is strangely applicable to present politics. History, with all its ceaseless repetitions, has resurrected from the buried past no problem of such continual importance as the use, rent, and ownership of land.

It was this importance of land ownership which filled the mind of Tiberius Gracchus. On his journey to Spain as an emissary of the Roman government, he clearly saw the dark cloud of imperialism drifting over the desolated fields of Italy. The small land owners had been driven out. Their homes and mortgaged farms had been seized by the centralizing hand of the rich. Honest toil had lost its incentives. Free labor could not compete with the drudgery of slaves. Slave gangs of stammering barbarians looked sadly from the fields upon the crowds of free laborers flocking to the city. One way, and one way only, led to distinction and glory, and that lay over the bloody corpses of battlefields or through the passions of the forum. Rome was the center of the world. Her returning armies came back with standards of victory. Long processions of triumph, glittering with the spoils of conquest, were marching beneath her arches. Philosophers and teachers endowed her with knowledge. Her streets were thronged with strangers. But the surrounding fields yielded scanty harvests to the labor of slaves, and over the proud hills and lofty domes of the city

hung a cloud of famine which sunshine nor breeze could never dispel.

The very causes, which contributed so largely to the renown of the republic, were hurrying it forward to a speedy decline. Increase of conquest made an increase of captives. The slavery of the captive destroyed the liberty of the freeman. And as farther and farther the tread of the Roman legions advanced through surrounding nations, when far in the East the boundaries were marked by the line of Roman spears, when their standards were raised beyond the Alps, and Roman sails fluttered in every harbor, the broad Mediterranean was freighted with living cargoes, and Rome became the slave-market of the world. In this journey to Spain, Tiberius resolved upon the agrarian reform, which determined his career. On the summits of the mountains fringing the northern border he paused and looked back upon Italy. Below were the plains which lately bloomed with the happy homes of peasantry. Away in the distance rose the outlines of Rome. There was his home of royalty his father the consul; his mother, Cornelia, the daughter of Hannibal's conqueror. There he was the petted favorite in the most distinguished circles of aristocracy. There he had married the daughter of Appius. There, indeed, lay the path of glory; but it was paved with the oppression of the weak, and wet with the tears of the poor. And there on the mountains he closed his eyes upon visions of wealth, and formed his plan for the relief of his country—a plan as stainless and pure as the snow which crowned the mountainpeaks above him.

In the crowded forum behold the sad tragedy of