regarded the control of the Federal courts. At the outset of the career of the blacks in free Jamaica, those who had been well treated and trained as slaves made the best colored citizens. It was so in our own South.

The education of the freed blacks in Jamaica was supported mainly, at the outset, by the imperial government. In like manner, the education of the freed blacks in our own South, in the early stages of their freedom, was stimulated largely by Northern funds.

The local government of Jamaica entirely ignored the freed men after their emancipation, and made no effort to train them as citizens. The planters stood proudly aloof and declined to recognize the changed and improved conditions of the blacks, and treated manner which engendered keen antagonism. The legislation was primarily in the interest of the whites, and had practically no reference to that of the great body of the people. The whites organized and maintained an exclusive body, dealing with public matters for their own exclusive advantage, wilfully disregarding the rights of the blacks. Such conduct of affairs culminated in the Eyer rebellion in 1865. It is needless to draw further parallel. It was from the date of that rebellion that the progress of the freed men began. An imperial dictator was sent out, instructed to care for the people in mass, without discrimination; a new fiscal system was created; positive reforms were effected in all departments; an efficient police were installed; a better judiciary was established; prison methods were reformed; better sanitary laws were enacted; public works were organized; education was cared for, and taxes were considerably remitted. The arrival of the dictator was the signal for the political retirement of the planters, who never emerged therefrom. The Crown government had

recon

structed the colony. The whites chafed under the rigorous, impartial rule; the blacks were contented and satisfied, and

are to-day the strongest adherents to that government. In the absence of formulated convictions, the intuitions serve well the great body of the colored race, and they cling to Crown-colonial government with unshaken tenacity.

In looking over a society so novel in its political and social aspects, it was natural to seek for the causes which had produced such results.

First in order and importance appeared the long-continued, intelligent, patient, religious, missionary work, which has been carried on for generations. While that work had much to encounter, it nevertheless made a lasting and substantial impression and laid an assured foundation for the work of the secular law. The fact of such work, and its influence upon the civilization of the island, was universally recognized by the thoughtful and well-informed.

Another potent factor was the just, impartial administration of the laws. It was more and more evident that the normal solution of all race problems is simpler than is generally supposed; it is found in justice, intelligently, impartially administered. The wisdom, as well as fairness, of intrusting a considerable share of the administration of law to the blacks themselves, was amply vindicated. A colored man policing the city is even upon his honor, and stimulated by his pride, to more vigilantly protect the community against his own race; while colored people more willingly obey the law which they themselves are set to uphold. No suspicion of partiality, or racial hostility to law officers, can live in such a situation. The effect of such conditions extends far beyond the immediate contacts of the people with the authorities, even to a general mental and moral stimulus. It is an object-lesson of opportunity; an incitement to effort; a positive factor in the development of character.

It was interesting to inquire what subtle influence, like an atmosphere, vitalized this just administration of law, and

made possible these varied, racial opportunities, and aided in their realization, in achievement and in character. It was obviously found in that clear, crystalline, political air, which comes across the ocean from the British shores; it seemed that the moral imperium in imperio was found in that imperial hand reaching far out over distant waters from still more distant lands, at once pressing upon and yet upholding, every man, woman and child on the island with absolute impartiality.

As already intimated, Jamaica is a Crown colony, as the very designation implies governed in the last analysis by Great Britain. The chief executive is the Governor-General, appointed at London. There is a privy council, consisting of the senior military officer on the island, not below the rank of lieutenantcolonel; the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, and other persons, not exceeding eight in number, nominated by the Crown; at present there are only four nominated members.

The present Legislative Council is comprised of the Governor (President), five ex officio members; the senior military officer in command of his Majesty's regular troops in Jamaica, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, the Director of Public Works, and the CollectorGeneral, ten members nominated by the Crown, and fourteen members elected by the people; one for each parish. The Council lasts five years, and sits when summoned by the Governor, usually for three months in the early part of the year. The King may disallow any law within two years of its passing. On the whole, English law prevails.

Contrast such a government with that in our own Southern States, where practically no outside interference is permissible, and where the colored race are substantially at the mercy of local interests, prejudices and antipathies, restricted in force and direction only by local law. Until the withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South, there was

a very modified similar restraining force. Whatever the necessity, politically, for such withdrawal, undoubtedly it set back many years the development of the colored people, and set in motion and encouraged a current of hostile influences against which it is, and for a long time will be, hard for a disfavored race to make headway. We went to Jamaica with decided prejudice against the English colonial system-we left it with regret that we had not some similar administration in parts of our own land, and with many queries whether our Federal government would not have to come more and more in play in the respective States as an indispensable counterpoise to otherwise uncontrollable local interests, wrongs and antipathies. And yet how far foreign colonial policies may be adopted safely by us, the future will determine. It is certain that we are neither adapted nor equipped as Great Britain is for such enterprises. The genius of our institutions, and the distinct mandates of our Charter and Constitution, as understood by plain people, and all our traditions, stand in strong contrast with the unwritten flexible Constitution of Great Britain, readily adjusting itself to the changing, growing needs of its peoples and of its civilization, with its centuries of monarchical government and traditions of empire.

The equitable spirit, and scientific, executive expertness of the British Colonial system was finely illustrated in the personnel of the Jamaican officials and in the quality of their work. We begin too often at the top and work down; the British Colonials begin at the bottom and work up. The selection of officials in the British Colonial service is the result of the most rigid eclecticism. A study of the lives of the most successful of the Colonial Governors showed that they began as clerks in the Home Office and were advanced step by step, as filness was developed and as exigencies required. The spirit of the policy adopted and in force in that service is of conciliation,

rather than of arbitrary rule. It many times occurred to me that if Great Britain had stood in our shoes in the Philippines, probably few, if any, lives would have been lost, and many millions of dollars Iwould have been saved and civilization would have advanced much faster and farther. Aguinaldo and other leading Filipinos would have been honorably and usefully employed; the native resources of the Island would have been utilized at once to the utmost practicable extent, and encouragement given at an early day of participation in domestic government under a mutually satisfactory protectorate. The Filipinos would not have been told in plain words that they were incapable of self-government; that no matter what their capabilities or ambitions, they were to be good and do as they were told, and that at some indefinite distant time they might be allowed such measure of political control as was thought by the governing powers to be suitable for them to have and to exercise. But we have learned much; perhaps who knows?

England, dealing with race problems so many centuries, is far ahead of us in toleration and amelioration of racial differences. I recall some years ago, a black man, with his wife and a sister, entering the dining-room of the Charing Cross Hotel, London, where over three hundred guests were seated; his complexion was coal-black, and his features were faultless; in Charles Lamb's words: "God's image carved in ebony"; and and his French was admirable. Not a sound was heard, not a muscle moved or an eyelid raised in protest. Remarking the fact, two years ago, to a traveled friend and counselor, at a leading hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, I said that if that should occur in this house, it would be telephoned over the city, telegraphed

over the state, the Associated Press would carry the fact all over the land, and this house would be closed. The time will come-it will take time-when New York and Charleston will be as free as London.

It was consoling, at Jamaica, to reflect how compensatory are the divine decrees; that if a large proportion of the human race are to suffer from the limitations of color, at least they are given the fairest regions of the earth for their inheritance. Professor Haddon, of Cambridge, says that Java, Ceylon and Jamaica, are the most beautiful islands in the world. They are the homes of the colored

races.

After some travel in various lands, I had not supposed that nature had such reserves of fertility and beauty as abound in Jamaica, where the climate, for the most part, sustains and does not destroy, delights and does not distress; where the birds, in varied plumage, waken the mornings, continuously, with their sweet songs; where the flowers bloom perpetually; where fruits and vegetables yield their abundance, comparatively without effort; where the eye is charmed with an infinitely diversified reach of mountain and of shore; and where, especially at sunset and by moonlight, the skies rejoice in colors such as no brush can depict and no words describe.

As I read history, reflect upon the inspired utterances, observe the trend of opinion and the tendency of affairs, I cannot but think, hope and believe, that He who has ordained justice, who loves mercy, and delights in equality of opportunity, will yet bring about all over the earth an equal chance for these dusky men and women, and an equal development of these children of the night.

FRANK JEWETT MATHER.
Summit, N. J.

TH

HIS country has had the honor of producing the latest ecclesiastical heretic. The newspapers both here and in England have been ringing with his name, and the little town of Batavia has won distinction as the scene of his trial and condemnation. As a spectator of that scene, I felt inclined to rub my eyes and to ask whether, indeed, I belonged to a generation which has witnessed the opening of the twentieth century, and talks much of scientific and philosophical progress. To men trained in the new learning of our time, there comes a shock of surprise when they realize that many of their contemporaries, some of them thoughtful and, in a way, scholarly men still hark back to Thomas Aquinas and medieval imaginings as if the Reformation and modern science had never been. Yet that such is the fact, recent events have too abundantly proved.

Who is the man that is threatened with professional ruin and excommunication from the Church because of his theological convictions and honesty in proclaiming them? All who knew the Rev. Algernon S. Crapsey, Rector of St. Andrew's Church (Protestant Episcopal) Rochester, New York, are unanimous in their judgment of him as a singularly devoted minister of religion, high-minded philanthropist, public-spirited citizen, and withal, a man gifted with immense powers of imagination and creative thought. For about thirty years he has labored in one parish, consisting for the most part of sturdy working folk, and this parish, strong, vigorous, and flourishing has been the sheer creation of his genius. In all great social and moral questions he has consistently lifted up his voice on behalf of the humane and progressive side. Other men give their time, their talents

It

or their money to their flocks; he has given himself. And in order to enhance the gift, he did not put away his books when he left college. His has been a studious and meditative as well as active career. Among the many convictions, which his investigations and questionings brought him, one so took possession of him that he determined to cry aloud and spare not. What is that conviction? is that the spirit of Avarice and the spirit of Superstition are poisoning the life of the Church, and that they must be exorcised by a return to the spirit of Christ's teaching, if the Church is to have any raison d'être in the modern world. From his pulpit he, with prophetic fire, urged upon his hearers to mark the signs of the times, to behold the three great spirits at work creating the world that is and the world that is to be: the spirit of scientific investigation, that will know nothing but the truth; the spirit of democratic revolution which will trust no one but the people; the spirit of social evolution, which will call no man common or unclean. These and similar propositions Dr. Crapsey expounds and justifies in his small but now famous book, Religion and Politics. That volume, when published a year ago, appeared to strike the ecclesiastical world of Western New York like a bombshell. Instead of trying to rise to the height of Dr. Crapsey's great argument some of his brother-ministers, after microscopic examination of his work, succeeded in finding a few sentences that appeared to contradict the generally received or traditional theology of the Church, and a mingled shout and groan of horror compelled the Bishop to take action. The culprit's trial took place not in Rochester where the alleged offense was committed, for fear of an uproar

among the people, but in Batavia, a town hard to find and when found, far from fascinating.

Now what was the indictment against the defendant? The charges were many and of varying gravity, but the two positions which gave most serious offense were his refusal to regard the Virgin birth as historical or essential to the Christian faith and his assertion that the Resurrection of Christ was spiritual and rested on His appearances to and manifestations in the souls of men, not in the empty grave or the stories of His eating and drinking with His disciples. He was found guilty of denying the Incarnation and the Resurrection, though he asserts that he maintains both and questions only the common interpretation of the mode or manner in which these facts have emerged in the field of history. How, then, does the case stand as between the condemned clergyman and his judges? As to the Virgin birth, even conservative and orthodox scholars admit that it stands on a different level, so far as evidence goes, from the Resurrection.

All

sincere readers of the New Testament know that whether it be a fact or no, the evidence for it is very slight. St. Paul knows nothing of it, for he speaks of the death, burial and resurrection of the Savior as constituting his Gospel. St. Peter and St. John never mention it. The only documents which speak of it are the Gospels of St. Matthew and of St. Luke. But the First Gospel is, in the opinion of New Testament critics of all schools, anonymous and we know nothing of the source from which the opening chapters are derived. Hence for this stupendous fact we have only one witness -St. Luke; and even in his Gospel, as originally written, the story had no place, for assuming the Lucan authorship of the Acts, here is his description of the "former treatise" (that is, the Gospel): concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach until the day in which he was taken up" (Acts, 1:1, 2). The allusions to the Virgin birth in the second

century writers are no witness to any independent tradition: they fall back on these difficult and enigmatic passages in the First and Third Gospels. Can anyone who is not hopelessly wedded to a blind traditionalism assert, in view of these undoubted facts, that the Virgin birth is a fact of essential Christianity so that its denial means that the denier ipso facto ceases to be a Christian? Clearly all right-minded persons will vote Dr. Crapsey "Not guilty" on, this head of the indictment.

Now let us turn to the question of the Resurrection. Dr. Crapsey feels the perplexities which the Resurrection narratives excite in every candid mind. He would agree with Professor Gardiner who writes thus: "The mass of testimony as to the physical appearances of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion is formless and full of inconsistencies." (Historic View of the New Testament, p. 166.) And he knows that Schmiedel in the Encyclopædia Biblica has drawn up a formidable list of discrepancies between the various narratives. For these and other reasons he cannot accept a physical resurrection and if this be an error he errs in company with such Anglican theologians as Dr. Rushdall Hastings and Dr. H. H. Henson. But while denying a material, he affirms a spiritual resurrection. So great was Jesus that death, while working its will on His body, could not imprison His spirit. He could not be holden of the grave. And the fact that He triumphed over death was written deep in the hearts of His followers: on that fact the Church and Christianity were built. "His life," says this so-called heretic, "was the manifestation of the Eternal. It was as indestructible as air; sin could not touch it; death could not hurt it. Sin and death were destroyed by its presence."

In other words, Dr. Crapsey does not rest his belief in the Resurrection on alleged facts known to us only through tradition and therefore open to historical criticism, but on the accumulated spirit