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Rockefeller his hunger being appeased with healthful food and his body made comfortable with sufficient clothing-the quality not considered. Since each must of necessity consume his essential share and can consume no more, he has no right of control or ownership of any more-unless to hold it in trust for other's use. Nothing belongs absolutely to any man beyond what nature actually requires for the sustenance of his life. All beyond is not his; for others must consume it or it be left to perish of natural decay. It is not his because he has no manner of use for it, and he must look on and see others use it or see it perish unused. To all belong all the essentials of life and to each his essential share. It should flow to him automatically-it of course, being presumed that he has done his part toward producing it. If not, it is the fault of society and not of the individual.

And this is the heart of the whole labor contention the responsibility of society for the conduct of the individual. The environment is at fault if the individual fail-as if the football player do not come up to the standard requirements of his profession, his training is regarded as deficient-his natural qualifications being normal. In civil life, as in the army, all depends on drill. Men are made what they are by the company they have kept by the influence of companionship and by the teaching they have directly received-from society at large and in school, college, etc. All depends on schooling-on the thoughts we have acquired or the trade that we have learned. If we have drunkards in our midst it is the fault of society for permitting the poison to be sold and distributed among the people as well as for their "bringing up."

What should be done, then? Square our social and political economy with nature. That is all. Give to each the acknowledged right to what he must have. What is already in existence of essential products is and can only be common. What is not in existence and that must be produced, it is the equal and bounden duty of each to equally help to produce it. But whose business is it to see to it that each keep step with the rest and do his duty in this battle for existence? It is the business of society, as in the army the result of system.

There can be no great men without a constituency to appreciate and second the efforts of the great-no Shakespeare where there are none to applaud and no theaters-as among the American or Australian aborigines. Even the wise men of Salamanaca would have prevented the western voyage of Columbus but for the better thought of Isabella the Queen. The Maid of Orleans was burned as a witch by her devout and learned English captors. No man can be independent of his surroundings; and conditions make men what they are. All our tramps of today would have been industrious citizens a generation earlier. There were no tramps in America prior to 1878. "Specie resumption" was the egg from which they were all hatched.

YE 112TH LESSON.

The Rising Tide of Christianity.

A stream can rise no higher than its fountain-head, and man can go no farther than the boundary line of human nature. All human movements spring up naturally. There are two seemingly counter movements, one we call "mutual aid," the other "self-help," or as modern scientists term them, "altruism and egoism."

The sentiment of mutual aid belongs to some lower animal orders as well as to man, as with bees and ants. And in some orders of mammalia below man it is, to a limited degree, manifest, and in some kinds of birds and even in reptiles and fishes.

The sentiment of self-help, amounting to utter selfishness without regard or pity for the fate of others, has arisen out of the struggle

for existence. It gave rise to carnivora. Animals began to eat each other rather than perish of hunger. So men became cannibals and even civilized men today destroy myriads of birds, beasts and fishes to obtain food. Yet there are human beings that do not choose to eat flesh. The people of India, four hundred millions, are vegetarians and abhor the taking of life.

Patriotism has grown out of the natural sentiment of mutual aid and is the most positive expression of that sentiment. "It is sweet to die for one's country" is an old Roman maxim. See the thousands so dying today, Japanese and Russians; the Japanese especially are voluntarily offering up their lives in obedience to that sentiment. That same sentiment, too, is rapidly expanding until now thousands are ready to proclaim, as did a noted patriot of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, "The world is my country." It is coming, the United States of the World! Already we have The Hague tribunal, the nestegg of a world-congress to which all international disputes will be referred for settlement, putting a period to wars. Indeed, this destructive and sanguinary Eastern war may prove to be the last to be ever recorded in history.

The easiest and cheapest way of doing is the way that will be followed. Nations cannot much longer afford to go to war at so great cost of life and property when arbitration is so cheap and no lives lost or property squandered. Steel-clad ships of war are more frail, comparatively, under present conditions, than old-time wooden ones were under old-time conditions. And how wasteful of life and money! It is almost a murderous act now to invite, in time of war, enlistments in the navy, nor will the nations dare much longer to incur such useless expense as the building of ships of war and loading them down with great guns that cost more than will support a family a year to fire one but once. Such waste is intolerable, nor will it much longer be tolerated.

How has the sentiment of mutual aid gained on that of self-help since my first remembrance sixty odd years ago! It abolished chattel slavery; it has bound the workers together in a great trades union; it has built up innumerable fraternities, created free schools everywhere and drawn out millions from the private purses of individuals to endow colleges and establish free libraries, erected by state aid all kinds of eleemosynary and reformatory institutions. In a word, the world of society is becoming Christ-like with amazing rapidity "going about doing good," and yet we hear it said by thoughtless pessimists that "Christianity is dying out!" What a lie! The second coming of the Master seems to be right at the door.

Why is it so? There is a cause for every effect, and no effect is without its cause. The cause in the present case is that labor-saving inventions and the advance of science have so increased production and made distribution so effective that plenty, and more than plenty, a super-abundance, is assured for all-an abundance which if not speedily consumed must inevitably perish. There is no longer a motive for selfishness. The cause of its existence eliminated, the monster must die. What rich men are thinking of now is how to get rid of their surplus wealth so as to do the most good therewith. Society will help them do so and they will be glad of the help. Why do hogs push and crowd each other in the pen full of corn more than can be eaten by them? They do so because they are by nature hogs. But man endowed with reason will drop the beastial instinct under twentieth century conditions. So I believe.

YE 113TH LESSON.

Ethics and Theology.

Another word for "ethics" is (as defined in these lessons) "morality." Whoever has read the New Testament knows that it is a book of morals. And theology, as embodied or defined in creeds, that have

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divided "believers" (I may not say "Christians") into hundreds of once warring sects, is not found in the Sermon on the Mount nor in any teachings or discourses of the "Carpenter's Son." Ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time would have his writings as free from theology that divides as is the Sermon on the Mount. He is free to say, if there is any other religion than the religion of love and well-doing, the author ignores it in his thought. "Belief" and religion are not one nor akin. "Credo" is the war club of Bigotry-the deadly weapon of ecclesiastical tyranny; and its victims sent untimely to their deaths have been millions. The character of Jesus cannot be too highly estimated, if only the "weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith," be held fast. Do not slight his example and his life of self-sacrifice for formalism and creedism-but hold fast, rather, the duties he has enjoined on all-devotion to the common welfare, and not long prayers on the street corners or elsewhere, except in our secret chambers.

But difference in esteem for his life and character is not what has divided Christendom into sects-not that at all. What then? Not anything that today is worthy to be considered-only hair-splitting metaphysics that monks and schoolmen of the dark ages indulged intheir time being of no value. The absurdity of their contentions is now seen. Aestheticaly, the ideal Jesus is perfect. If one picture to himself a perfect character-is it not to be wholly devoted to the common welfare and would not his thoughts immediately revert to Jesus as the highest example of this devotedness? What is man's duty to himself? Is it not to have no thought of self, except as an offering for the common weal? "But this," does the reader say, "is too lofty a requirement for men to live up to." Jesus did fulfill it. And whether he be man, Son of God, or very God, he commanded, "Be ye perfect! Jesus is the ideal standard by which to measure human duty-all men being required to rise to the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

Why does the author say of Jesus, "Aesthetically perfect?" He says so because it is true and will not be questioned even by metaphysicians. It is admitted by all that the ideal of perfection of character was presented in that of Jesus. So may we study him as do artists, the Apollo Belvidere, and other divine remains of Grecian art, architecture, poetry, oratory, history, philosophy, etc. I insist that no estimate of his character was ever too high, because to live a life of self-abnegation and devotion to other's good as he did is to live as "God manifest in the flesh." Now it requires no argumentation to convince mankind that such a life is the true life, and that all ought to live it.

Naked cannibals on an island in the Pacific believe that they are the only enlightened people on earth. Our fathers, with fire and faggot, and wholesale massacre, tried to enforce the belief, on the unbelieving, that they alone possessed the truth. What now do we think of the burning of Servetus and Bruno, and Huss, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of the hanging of Quakers on Boston Common? We think it was all wrong. And still we cry "heretic"-and the "Orthodox" will shut out the Unitarian-not permit him to co-operate with them in Christian work, nor to join their ministerial associations in the cities-an echo of the old burning proclivity of the "I-thank-Godthat-I-am-better-than-thou" order of reactionists.

All narrowness is, in this age, an anachronism. It is out of the order of time. It is of the past. It must not be truly said of the church, "the blind leading the blind," both falling into the ditch. The church must become a school-a college-a stoa-devoted to the science of righteousness-"selling all and giving to the poor," "going about doing good," "casting out the devils" of hoggishness, making "all things common," the ideals of its philosophy, as Jesus and the early church set the example. Let the church unfurl the original

Christian standard and all men will gladly march beneath its folds. Let "Bear ye one another's burdens" be inscribed on it in glowing letters.

YE 114TH LESSON.

Association and Division.

Association is love; division is hate. Association is Christian; division is anti-Christian. The grounds of association among Christians are fundamental; of division, indifferent. Indeed, the reasons for union of all the religions of enlightened peoples, European and Asiatic, are unanswerable when candidly and dispassionately considered; for standing apart and antagonizing each other the reasons are illogical and unsound. All division is wrong. All mankind should be one people; all religions one religion; all nations one nation-the United States of the World. Egotism is all that holds men apart. "I am better than thou" is the shibboleth of each. It is idiocy.

No man naturally is better than another man and no religion is better than another religion. They are all good. Christianity as Christian nations display it and practice it today is no better than Mohammedanism, no better than Confucianism, no better than Buddhism. And they are all the same fundamentally-Mohammedanism branched off from Orthodox and Catholic Christianity in the sixth century of the Christian era-a reform in respect to the drinking of wine and a protest against demigodism. “God is one," said Mohammed. It is a good religion and not so intolerant as the Orthodoxy of Russia. There is no good reason for Mohammedans and Christians standing · apart. In respect to temperance, the Mohammedan is ahead of his Christian brother. And his plurality of wives may not be any more to be lamented than Whitechapels and abandoned daughters, as in all Christendom we see. And as to China and Japan in so far as their learned are concerned, they would as well send missionaries to us as we to them. But of the unlettered or ignorant multitude, the religion of that class is no better in one country than in another. It is only superstition anywhere. What the world wants is the schoolmaster and the temperance reformer. We need Mohammedan missionaries here to lead us to give up wine and all strong drink-not perhaps so much in America as in Russia. But we are termed a "Christian people" and the amount of alcoholic beverages consumed here in the United States per capita is as great, if not greater, than in Russia, though we, as church members, have given up the evil habit.

There is no reason for Christian sects standing apart. But they will never unite except by individuals associating.-the pews taking the lead. "Chief priests and elders" will never lead off-never get out of the ruts. It must be done by the people and not by starting a new "society" which will be another sect, another division. Let the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. drop the Y. M. and the Y. W. and leave only C. A. ("Christian Association"). Every church will become a part of the C. A. as soon as the bars put up in the dark ages are let down.

If the church were what it ought to be and will be, all men and all women would be as anxious to "join the church" as young men and young women are to "go to college"-yea, more anxious; for the good the church should now and will one day impart is superior to that imparted in college-more vital to the common welfare. If the church imparted that good today, the people would be as anxious to get at it as veterans and their widows are to obtain pensions. The people are not fools. They know a good thing in sight. The reason they shy past the church is it isn't up to date.

We are on the eve of a great reformation. Our boys and our girls

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must have placed about them better environments than exist at present, both in the home and at large. Schools have greatly improved since I was a boy. The churches have improved. But it is a mistake to say that homes have improved. They have not. They have moved away from nature. The schools will become better still. So will the church. And as soon as woman has equal rights with man politically she will go back to her place in the home. Her "club" will be a domestic institution. Her children and the mother and father and grandmother and grandfather will be its members. It will be literary, aesthetic and ethical.

YE 115TH LESSON.

Devotion to Duty.

Let the people take into their own hands the initiative in all things essential to the moral, religious, social and political well-being of society. We have reached the period when one may say, and so express what every patriotic person ought to say, viz: "I am willing to unite with any church or association of persons who have the common welfare at heart, to work in my own way, untrammeled, for the moral training of the rising generation and the general good.' When the venerable Bishop Tuttle, presiding at the Episcopal Conference at Omaha, January 20, 1905, said: "I hope the discussion of scholastic and theological questions may not impair our devotion to duty to Christ. Do not discuss these questions here. Allow your neighbor to think his way and you think yours," his were significant remarks.

What is devotion to duty to Christ? Assuredly, it is to be devoted to the work the Master had in hand. What was that work? It was to "do away with sin." "No drunkard shall inherit the Kingdom of God." If those who prepare Sunday-school lessons would confine their attention to showing the grand position taken by Jesus and his immediate followers and the compilers of the New Testament generally against the vices of the age in which they lived and taught the same that poison our social fountain today, instead of their wasting precious time over scholastic and theological questions, the Sunday-school would occupy the place it ought. Let a list of sins condemned in the sacred writings be prepared and the evils and dangers of a life of "seeking after pleasure"-the dreadful consequences of such a life in this world and the world to come-be shown from the Bible and by citations from the writings of old-time poets and philosophers and of modern thinkers, awakening in the minds of the young a horror of evil-doing and an ambition to stand high in the world as moral and useful men and women-then would the Sunday-school become a great and useful factor in the education of the people. At present it is only an echo of mediaeval, scholastic and monastic drivel, the so-called "lessons" printed and scattered broadcast being the dregs of ignorance, prepared by shallow-brained egotists, as a rule.

It is time the people took the matter of saving boys and girls "from sin" into their own hands, the old priestly methods having ceased to be satisfactory, the clergy being more bent on collecting their salaries or resigning their charges if offered better pay elsewhere, than on the work of the Master, which was to "purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works," to "take away the sin of the world." The commercial spirit is rampant everywhere-a devil to be cast out. A reformation more needful and important than that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is imminent. It is right at our doors, I trust. It will not be theological. It will be moral-"salvation from sin" its shibboleth, as it was of Christ, and, too, of his apostles of the first century. The coming religion is that of well-doing-the crying "Lord! Lord!" being relegated to the past.