which was born in the eighteenth century and developed in the nineteenth, so extended that, at no very distant date, in all countries possessing a representative government popular education will be taken from the control of the Church and put under the control of the State, and an educational opportunity will be furnished by the State to all its children.

We expect to see what is called Modernism in the Roman Catholic Church and New Theology in the Protestant Churches spread in ever-widening circles, supplanting everywhere the religion of wrath and fear by the religion of love and hope. We see in the acceptance given to the philosophical writings of Eucken and Bergson, both by philosophers and by the laity, a reaction against the materialism of a certain group of scientists and the fatalism of a certain group of theologians. And we expect to see a growing recognition of the truth that man is a spiritual being endowed with a real freedom of the will, and as a result a great impulse given to moral and social progress in 1913-an impulse which may well be called a revival of religion, though it will be quite unlike the revivals of religion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

We expect to see the Protestant churches getting together, not by agreeing upon a common creed, but by uniting in a common service, inspired by a common purpose and by loyalty to their common Master. We do not expect to see the Vatican abandon its claim to temporal sovereignty and become reconciled to the separation of Church and State in Italy, and so to the Italian Government, though we sincerely wish that we might hope for so beneficent an event. But we do expect to see Protestants and Roman Catholics, especially in the United States, co-operating in every good work for the public well-being, rivals and competitors only in the unselfishness and the efficiency of their service.

We expect to see the Church increasingly work to bring about the answer to its daily prayer, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth. We expect to see it, in its missionary work both at home and abroad, decreasingly animated by the spirit of denominational propaganda, and increasingly animated by the spirit of unselfish service to promote human happiness and develop divineness of char

acter.

It is said that the wish is father to the thought." Perhaps it is. Perhaps our expectations here expressed are the children of

our desire. But, none the less, we think that the history of the nineteenth century and the signs of life in the present give the reverent student of his time a right to enter upon the year 1913 with high endeavor and exultant hope.

"NATIONAL ASSETS"

Under the title above quoted Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, at the recent meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, read a paper which deserves more than passing attention. The National Assets to which he referred are not mines, railways, water powers, great forests, and fertile fields, but the individual men who, in either civil or military life, have influenced American thought and action. Mr. Smith has been struck with the tendency in this country to pay tributes of respect and admiration to our dead statesmen and heroes, while our living public servants are often overwhelmed with a perfect cataract of criticism and abuse. To the first class belong Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, and other heroes of our wars; as illustrations of the second class Mr. Smith refers to Dewey, Hobson, Sampson, Schley, and to the prominent candidates in almost any election campaign.

We believe that Mr. Smith has hit upon what may be called the besetting sin of American journalism, if not of the American people. It is small comfort to recall that the same vice of partisan mud-slinging is found in English political life as well as on this side of the Atlantic. John Bright, Cobden, and Gladstone-devoted patriots, self-sacrificing laborers in the cause of human progresswere denounced by some of their contemporaries with billingsgate that would make the most hardened Tammany politician blush. Nor is this vicious habit of personal abuse to be found only in recent American life, although, as Mr. Smith points out, it has been exploited, cultivated, and made more widespread by that distinctively American invention, the yellow journal. Washington, who is now commonly supposed to have been from the very first the idol of his fellow-countrymen, was accused by his political opponents of graft and embezzlement, and suffered so from personal political abuse that he greeted with joy the day when he left the Presidency; Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, endured the same wrongs; and we are only just beginning to

learn from the historical and personal records of the reconstruction period that Andrew Johnson suffered from this kind of injustice.

In the address to which we have referred Mr. Smith intimates his belief that the chief cause of this unjust treatment of great contemporary Americans is to be found in the selfish and abandoned commercialism of a certain type of newsmonger who "discovered that while one can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, there swarmed a very large mass who could be tempted with carrion. There followed the still further discovery that this last procedure could be made to pay commercially-in some instances to pay enormously."

This sort of treatment of our public men is inherently unjust and therefore repellent to every man who believes in the principle of common justice. Mr. Smith calls attention to two particular directions in which it injects special evil into American life. First, consider what must be the effect upon the mind of the immigrants coming to our shore, the great majority of them to-day being from those countries in which reading, writing, and the processes of careful and balanced thought have been dwarfed or destroyed by bad systems of education. What will they think when they are told by the only journals to which they have access that every office-holder is corrupt, that every rich man is an oppressor, and that the United States exists merely to maintain a despotism more sordid and brutal than that from which they have fled the despotism of money?

Second, and more important still, what do the young men graduating from our schools and colleges by the thousands think of this treatment of the men who achieve positions of prominence and influence in American life? What incentive is there to the young man to enter public life when one of the rewards-sometimes the only reward—is the ridicule and contempt heaped upon him?”

Is there any remedy for this state of things? Mr. Smith's reply to this question is so convincing that we give it to our readers in his own language:

The remedy lies with ourselves. With you, and with me, and with every soul who boasts a ten-commandment conscience. Let me recall them for you.

"Love thy God." Certainly, we say, with the greatest of pleasure.

"Thou shalt not steal." Of course not: no gentleman ever does.

“Thou shalt do no murder." By no manner of means. . . . How dare you insult me?

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Here follows a dead silence! That is, thou shalt not steal his good name, nor murder his career, nor brand him as a criminal or a fool-these ten commandments, remember, being ten rods bound together by a ribbon of justice, mercy, and peace; to keep one means to keep all.

The sum of the ten is, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"-the law of the square deal.

We keep its letter and its spirit best when we honor the names and uphold the hands of the men who are our true National Assets.

LETTERS TO UNKNOWN
FRIENDS

Some of my Unknown Friends apparently think that I have too little regard for the importance of a creed as the basis of a church organization. I confess frankly to a, prejudice on this subject, growing out of two chapters in my life-experience. Perhaps the narration of these two chapters may serve partially to explain my attitude respecting creeds to some of my Unknown Friends, and perhaps to justify that attitude to others among them.

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The first church to which I was invited was the First Congregational Church of Terre Haute, Indiana. I went there knowing nothing of the church; the church knew nothing of me except through a letter of recommendation from a common friend. went to supply the pulpit during the temporary absence of its pastor for a year of vacation, and, on his resignation before that year had expired, I was chosen as his successor. I found there a Congregational church, the strongest Protestant church, financially and socially, in the growing city, with practically no Congregational churches in the vicinity. There was one small Congregational church ten or twelve miles to the west; the nearest Congregational church to the east was in Indianapolis, and that was not a strong one. The history of this Congregational church in Terre Haute, Indiana, interested me. I am writing this reminiscence without any attempt to refresh my recollection by referring to letters or documents, and in some details it may be incorrect. As I recall the history, it was something like this:

Dr. Jewett had been educated under an Independent Presbyterian minister in Baltimore, Maryland, and twenty-five years before I went to Terre Haute had started for the West to find a missionary field, for he was

full of a missionary enthusiasm. This was, if my recollection serves me aright, about the year 1835. He landed in Terre Haute, Indiana, on a Friday night, made the acquaintance of a Terre Haute citizen in the hotel, and went with him on a hunting expedition upon the prairie on Saturday. There was only one church in the town, an Old School Presbyterian church of the Southern type, extremely Calvinistic, extremely narrow, and with a very small congregation. The only other preaching place was the Court-House. When any itinerant minister happened that way, the Court-House bell was rung and he preached to such congregation as might chance to gather.

Dr. Jewett's Terre Haute acquaintance was attracted toward him and invited him to preach on the Sunday following their hunting expedition. He accepted the invitation; the bell was rung, a congregation came together, and heard a sermon such as they had perhaps never heard before, for Dr. Jewett was a natural orator, as his subsequent history proved. The people gathered about him at the close of the service, and urged him to remain another week and preach the following Sunday. They answered his objections by saying that he might travel far before he would find a better missionary field than Terre Haute. He yielded to their persuasions, preached the following Sunday, and at the close of the sermon called on all those who were willing to unite in forming a Christian church to meet upon the next day for that purpose.

Something like a score answered the invitation-a few men, more women-who had come from different localities and had been brought up in different churches, and whose traditional creeds were widely different. They agreed to form a Christian church. This was not, however, the only support which this church in its cradle was to have. There were business men in the town who desired its prosperity, and who argued, very wisely, that they could not expect immigrants to settle in the town, which had already reached a considerable size, if there were no growing church in it. So they were willing, for real estate and business reasons, to contribute to the cause.

Thus the First Congregational Church of Terre Haute, Indiana, was born by the spontaneous coming together of Christians of different traditional creeds, different temperaments, different religious habits. For ten years this church went on without any

creed of any description. It grew apace. It became the church of the town. It raised the necessary funds to put up a church building adequate for its purpose. Then, partly because it felt the need of fellowship, partly because other Congregational churches had been formed in the vicinity and wished its fellowship, it adopted a simple Congregational creed and became a Congregational church. But when I went there, fifteen years after this creed had been adopted, I did not find that this creed was the real basis of church fellowship. That basis was a common purpose to promote Christian life in the community.

And yet this church had not only the largest and best church edifice in the city, and the widest moral influence; it had sustained for twenty-five years a preacher of rare pulpit power, one who was regarded by many as the rival in eloquence of Henry Ward Beecher, who was then settled over a Presbyterian church in Indianapolis. It had gathered a church membership of some two hundred, and a successful Sunday-school of perhaps two-thirds that number. And under the joint ministry of Henry Ward Beecher and Dr. Jewett revivals had been conducted with remarkable success in western Indiana, affecting not merely the churches of those two pastors, not merely the two cities of Terre Haute and Indianapolis, but also all the region round about.

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But the bond which united the membership of this church was not a common creed, it was a common purpose to do the Master's work in the spirit of the Master. One illustration of this fact may serve to make the spirit of the church clear to my readers. member of the congregation, brought up as a Quaker, and therefore not believing in the church ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, desired to unite with the church because he desired to confess his faith in Christ. He objected, however, to baptism. I told him that I would submit to the church the question whether they would admit him without baptism. I promised to urge his admission, and I thought it would be granted, though not without objection; but I asked him if he had any objection to baptism if his views on the subject were frankly stated, and he said no. I stated his views to the church; he was unanimously admitted to the church, and received baptism, it being explained at the time to the congregation that he received it as a concession to others, not because it

was in accordance with his views of the teaching of the New Testament.

I was pastor of this church throughout the Civil War, which in that portion of the West was a far greater trial to Christian fellowship than in most Eastern communities. We were not far from the border line; we were surrounded by men who sympathized with the South and hoped for its victory; we were on more than one occasion threatened with raids by Southern cavalry. A considerable proportion of the congregation had come either from Southern or from border States. They were loyal to the Government, but were either in favor of or indifferent to slavery. In fact, I can recall only one family in the church that could have been called anti-slavery according to the New England standards. I went there fresh from the inspiration of Henry Ward Beecher's preaching, and carried into the pulpit the lessons which I had learned from him and the spirit with which he had imbued me, though without the eloquence which he possessed. Nevertheless, this church remained united, with only three or four secessions from it, throughout the war, bound together, not by the creed which was in its archives, but by the Christian purpose which had brought its members together and kept them in a brotherhood for ten years without any creed whatever.

In 1887. on the death of Henry Ward Beecher, I was called at first to supply the pulpit and then to become the pastor of Plymouth Church, to which he by his preaching had given an international reputation. I found here a church of somewhat more than fifteen hundred resident members; my recollection is that there were over two thousand on the roll; a church which under Mr. Beecher had a congregation that crowded it to the doors, and in which not only every seat but all standing room was generally occupied ; a church which had enjoyed two or three remarkable revivals, and in which it was rare that a communion season passed without some additions to its membership through conversion; a church which sustained two missionary chapels, with their Sunday-schools and Sunday services, besides its own Sundayschool; a church whose influence for justice and liberty was second to none in the country, and whose membership was in numbers excelled by only one or two. And yet this church had, since 1870, ceased to require the assent of members to its simple creed, which

remained in the records of the church for historical rather than for doctrinal purposes, and had substituted therefor the following simple covenant :

Do you now avouch the Lord Jehovah to be your God, Jesus Christ to be your Saviour, the Holy Spirit to be your Sanctifier? Renouncing the dominion of this world over you, do you consecrate your whole soul and body to the service of God? Do you receive His word as the rule of your life, and, by His grace assisting you, wil! you persevere in this consecration unto the end?

In the membership of this church were men who theologically believed with John Calvin, or at least in modern Calvinism, and men who believed in the theology of John Wesley men who believed in infant baptism and men who believed only in adult baptism; men who believed in eternal punishment, men who believed in universal restoration, and men who had no definite belief on the subject; men who believed in the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and men who declined to have any opinion on the metaphysical relations of Jesus Christ to the Eternal; men who accepted the verbal inspiration of the Bible and men who regarded the Bible with reverence, but with discriminating reverence, as a revelation of the Father, but a revelation in and through the experience of his children. But all of them agreed in a very sincere desire to learn the truth of life from Jesus Christ and to do Christ's work in the Christ spirit. This church had been through fiery trials. It had seen its pastor denounced as

a heretic, denounced even as a criminal. It had seen the denomination to which it belonged agitated by theological debates which at one time threatened its integrity. It had been

the occasion of the greatest Congregational Council ever held in the history of the Congregational body. And yet I venture to say that a more united church was not to be found anywhere throughout the American Republic. It was united, not by its creed, that is, not by a common opinion, but by its covenant, that is, by a common purpose.

I draw no moral from these two incidents in my own experience. I tell the story, and leave the story to carry its own moral. My Unknown Friends, however, will not perhaps be surprised to know that these experiences have had their effect upon me and have strengthened my conviction that the true bond of unity of a church is not a common opinion but a common purpose and a common spirit. LYMAN ABBOTT.

T was once said in Wall Street that no man could borrow a million dollars in New York City if John Pierpont Morgan decided that he should not have the money. This statement is probably an exaggeration, thinks the New York "World," but it illustrates a condition of things beyond denial. The sole purpose of all these combinations is to control credit through the control of money, and whoever is master of credit is master of the commerce and industry of a nation."

Accordingly, last week Mr. Morgan, as supposedly the most powerful person in the world of finance, was the most prominent witness before the Congressional Committee at Washington which is investigating the question, "Is there a Money Trust?"

Mr. Morgan talked frankly, says the correspondent of the New York "American," who adds:

He answered all questions put to him and seemed to hunger for more. He made epigrams. He laughed. At times, when

replies that Mr. Morgan did not in the least intend to be funny aroused the audience to mirth, his red face would grow purple. Then he would swing around on his pivoted chair and observe "ha, ha," as solemnly as if he were mentioning a vast sum of money.

Sometimes he went through the motions of laughter without uttering a sound, his mouth opening and closing rhythmically under the great gray mustache that sweeps his heavy jowl.. Driven hard by Samuel Untermyer, who was without awe in the presence of the big game he was stalking, Mr. Morgan was at times cynical, again jocose, anon enthusiastic. But never for a minute did he forget that he was there to talk for the institutions he has helped to build up, and manifestly to resent any imputation that any of them are founded upon the sands of speculation.

Incidentally he gave the listening Congressmen and spectators more light on the point of view of big business than had ever before been shed upon their bewildered minds.

Mr. Morgan was accompanied by his legal counsel, who were described by the New York World" as follows:

Mr. Morgan went to Washington accompanied by Joseph H. Choate, former Ambassador to Great Britain and the leader of the New York bar; by John C. Spooner, former United States Senator from Wisconsin and now a distinguished New York lawyer; by Francis Lynde Stetson, one of the ablest corporation lawyers in the country; by R. V. Lindabury, the general counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company; by De Lancey Nicoll, who was the attor

ney for the Tobacco Trust in the recent dissolution proceedings; by William F. Sheehan, who was a candidate for United States Senator in New York and is one of the best-known corporation lawyers in the city.

Commenting on this, the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 66 • Press says:

J. Pierpont Morgan is perhaps as unpopular in the public eye as any money baron in the history of America, and this despite the fact that he has ever been a willing and unostentatious contributor to charity as well as a powerful factor in the development of art in this country. The reason for his unpopularity is plain. Give him all credit for the good he has done and there still remain many indictments against him for steadfast refusal to do a greater good. Lest he involuntarily or accidentally contribute information of value to the whole country, he protects himself with a squad of legal sentries.

As to the combination of personality and testimony, the Washington Times" speaks as follows:

History closed one chapter and opened another in our American story when John Pierpont Morgan appeared before the House Committee to talk about money this week. There was a quality of drama in the episode; it was free from climax, but none the less vivid for that freedom. Somehow it was a thing that could have happened only in America, and Mr. Morgan emerges from it as even a larger figure than he was before.

By the tally of the years he is an old man ; by the proof he has just given he is still the master of his thoughts, and his thoughts encompass many things. He has lived a large and a mighty life; he has seen from the inside the making of great history; he has grown as his country has grown, and the spread of his name and his power have kept pace with the march of ours.

He has done some almost supreme things for art. His gifts to charity have been of the splendid kind. He has built racing yachts and endowed polite learning.

There have been times when his word was a rule of law to three continents. The terms of wealth in which he thinks are beyond the grasp of common minds. . .

His schemes have been ambitious beyond the dreams of wealth, too big at times to please a people resentful of intrenched authority.

The Chicago" Evening Post" says:

After his testimony of yesterday the country will, we believe, have a finer feeling toward Mr. Morgan. He talked like a statesman. There was in his testimony no touch of the stock gambler, no suggestion of that ratlike cunning that has marred similar interviews with men who probably have greater fortunes than he. It was all done so quietly, too. In its perfect matter-offactness, its taking it all for granted, it outweighed the explosives of Tom Lawson or the