ministers say now, what a minister said to me sixty years ago with emphasis, viz: "A moral man, not a church member, is worse than an outbreaking sinner." The Master said: "He that is not against us is on our part." Is he that practices "righteousness and temperance," against the Master and his disciples, or their work? "Keep the commandments," Jesus said. "All these have I kept from my youth up," replied the young man of many possessions. "One thing thou lackest, if thou wouldst be perfect," our Saviour said, "sell all thou hast and give to the poor."

We should each and all of us be preachers of righteousness and "doers of the will of the Father." Said Lyman Abbott at the great gathering of Congregational divines in Des Moines, Iowa, in this autumn of 1904: "The problem of the Christian ministry is not how to get men into the church, but how to get God into men." What is it to 'get God into men?" The word "God" is an abbreviation of the word "good." He that gets good into men gets God into them. It is my belief that we have reached the breaking up of supernaturalism, as ice in the rivers breaks up in the spring, and of the incoming of naturalism-the purely scientific conception of all truth, religious, philosophic and scientific, through the inductive process of reasoning. The old has become obsolete; confessions of faith, articles of belief and church catechisms and creeds; while the Sermon of Jesus on the Mount is now, at last, as at first, the only creed of Christendom. As long as this creed, (the maturely ripened fruit of ethical philosophy, both Greek and Oriental) retains its place as truth unquestioned and unquestionable, Christianity is unassailable. Abbott further said: "Religion is the life of God in the souls of men, and the church is not the only meeting house." And he added: "Whether we like it or not, the conception of a personal God sitting in the center of the universe is absolutely disappearing."

Is this last sentence heresy? What says the Word? "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him." (1 John xiv:16), and, too, David: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or, whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there; if I take the wings of morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day," etc., (Psalm cxxxix). Reformation is imminent. All things will be systematized,, society a unit and the church "many in one." The manifest tendency of society is toward symmetry, harmony, love, beauty, peace universal, God "all and in all."

YE 11TH LESSON.

The Whole Duty of Man.

He that lives to work is a true man. Now it matters not what be your occupation the end, if you be a man is to work-to work for the work's sake. The hog thinks only of something to eat; the man of something to do. It isn't the form of the body that makes the man. It is the form of the mind. And there is but one work we are given by the God of nature to do. It is to bring up offspring. And this office is common to all sentient beings, from monad to man. Now the brute ministers to its offspring in a physical sense solely. Man has reached the top of Jacob's ladder, where this ministration is set aside. It is the least thing to be thought of and every thought given money making (which means stomach feeding) is the thought

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of the brute. It is not the thought of the man emancipated from the brute condition.

But must not men devote time and effort to procuring food, clothing and shelter in our latitude? Very little, merely enough for recreation. The work is done by machinery. Who has now the only benefit of machinery? A few. Who should have the full and entire benefit of it? All. This it is to assure "the equal rights of all and special privilege to none." We must ignore tradition and have regard for our equal rights.

Let no man grasp less or more than his just share. What shall we do for our children? The same as for our neighbors' children. What is that? It is to set a good example before them. This is the whole duty of man. But we can do no better than we know how to do, and we know only what we inherit. We know what the rest know and we do what the rest do. And the very truth is that we are savages. And, too, it may be a hundred years hence that our posterity, seeing the contrast between their plane of enlightenment and ours today, will say truly: "Our fathers were removed little above the brute. The best we can say of them is that they were merely in mind and character thoughtless boys."

"Thoughtless" is the one word that defines our common state. We have libraries, but who read the books? That is not to be called a book that does not make one the better and the better informed by the reading of it. How many of such books do our great libraries contain? A few only. These few comprise the wealth of the world. There is no wealth outside the domain of divine thought. He or she that reads merely for mental excitement and not to gain instruction is no better than a drunkard or a tobacco fiend. And the greater part of the people-especially women-that take books from the library, read for no other end than that for which the drunkard drinks-i. e. excitement a terrible vice! The books that sell are the books most praised, and that because there is money in them. The libraries are crammed with the books most in demand. The public library that ministers merely to mental excitement is worse than the saloon, as the mind is more worthy of protection than the body-though the body is the "temple of the living God."

But what of our children and the children of our neighbors? What may we give them? The less in the way of monetary wealth the better. What then? Aspiration. What is put in our child's pocket is a curse. The right thing placed in his head is the "little lump of leaven that a woman put in three measures of meal." But no man or woman can place this in the mind of a child that is not himself exemplary-the kind of man or woman he or she would have the child be. That is the reason why the world progresses so slowlythere are so few exemplary fathers and mothers.

One rises in meeting and says "pray for my boy." O, Father! O, Mother! your boy is yours. You make him what he is. You deserve all the praise if he becomes a good man; all the blame if bad. There are exceptions to this rule, as to goodness. Your son or daughter may have become disgusted with your foolish ways and learned better ways than were yours. But no boy with a truly good father and a truly good mother ever becomes a bad man. Why not? Because ideas are omnipotent, the lump of leaven which the good parents impart to their children. When once this leaven is placed in the mind of the child, he is saved and can never be lost. He becomes an altruist, a teacher and helper of others, a savior of men.

YE 12TH LESSON.

The White and the Colored Races.

There are many cogent reasons why we, of the Caucasian race, may appropriately say, "we are ashamed that we are white men." Every other race not demoralized by association with the white race, with

few exceptions, is in temperance and morality our superior. The natives of Central and Southern Africa were brought to the lowest depths of degradation, centuries ago, by the white slave-hunters and the rum they distributed. The white man has ever been the "scourage of God" to the other races of the earth's inhabitants and there is no cause for wonder that the Chinese call us "white devils." For us to send missionaries abroad is mockery until we change our own ways. There is not an ancient race, civilized thousands of years before our Tutonic ancestors ceased, as savages, to wear, for clothes, the skins of wild beasts, that may not appropriately send missionaries to our shores, notably the Hindus, Chinese and Japanese. We are rapidly bringing our planet to an uninhabitable condition by our wastefulness and the extinction of the white race is fore-doomed by our immorality. The race is insane, poisoned by narcotics and nicotine and inebriated with alcohol, and the high priests of our decayed religion advising the "restriction of offspring" and physicians the "use of chloroform" for the taking of the lives of new-born infants, whose parents have been plunged into the lowest depths of poverty that millionaires may revel in luxury.

The Americans, the English, the Germans, the French, the Russians, the Austrians, and every other white nation, but the Spanish (who are gathering the rotton fruits of their wrong-doing) are shutting their eyes, stopping their ears and refusing to learn the lesson that Spanish history imparts. And there is behind all this waste (by the building, manning, arming and equipping of steel-clad warships by the thousands, costing millions each, wrung from the hard hands of toil, and by the support of standing armies), only the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many-"only this and nothing more." Let the people put a stop to such madness.

As a race, it is true, we have made wonderful progress in the years, since the days of the Vikings, in all but one direction, and that is the vital one. We are no better religiously than were our forefathers who worshipped Thor and Odin. We sacrifice millions of human victims on the altar of our Moloch of Greed, where one was sacrificed to Odin and Thor in that ancient day. What is behind war today, egging it on? Only one thing: Greed. There has never been a war waged in a thousand years by white men that the church has not sanctioned, the Quaker church (English, German and Russian) the exception. "Peace on earth" has not been the voice of the church. Christianity is faultless; but the church and Christianity are not by any means identical, as they once were. When was that? It was "when the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul, and they had all things common."

Now missionaries from India, China and Japan may appropriately come to us with out own "New Testament" in their hands and they may say to us truly: "You white people do not live up to the teachings of Christ as nearly as we do. His teachings correspond in every essential respect with the teachings of Buddha and Confucius, (philosophically speaking.) The fruits of our religion (of the teachings of our sages) are 'love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,' as of your religion according to your St. Paul. On the contrary, Christian nations manifest no love, no gentleness, no goodness toward what you are pleased to term 'heathen nations,' and as to temperance and peace, you flood the world with alcoholic liquors and heap on our shores tobacco and opium and compel us (Chinese) by means of war to accept the latter. And when patriots arise to gain their God-given rights of freedom and independence, you chain them to the mouths of your cannon and blow them into quivering fragments of flesh. The precepts of your Christ and His Apostles are good, but ye are 'white devils.'

So long as we disobey the teachings of our Asiatic Master, Jesus and His Asiatic Apostles, as we do today and ever have done in all

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the history of the white race in Europe and America, we should be ashamed that we are white men and not dark skinned Hindus and yellow Chinese and Japanese, and Arabs, disciples of Buddha, Confucius and Mohammed, who are in practice more nearly Christians than we. The white is, in loving kindness, the "inferior race," below all the "colored" races, not excepting the African, while love is the essential factor of civilization as it is of the Christian religion and of the nature of God himself.

YE 13TH LESSON.

The Goal of Reform.

What now is the end of social reform? It is to rid the world of the extremes of wealth and poverty. It is, however, no matter how rich any man may be, provided all others are well to do, and provided, also, he have no power to oppress. But great wealth in private hands is a power for good or for evil. One has no good reason to say that the very rich have necessarily become so because of any wrong doing on their individual parts. The change has come through general causes-chiefly inventions. Invention broke up home production. It made corporations essential, and as production and wealth have increased, the corporations have become more and more united-resulting in trusts. This tendency will go forward until all men will be included in one universal trust for the common good-and all minor corporations and unions will become obsolete, being outgrown and superceded. It needs but one thought to intrude-that of the common welfare, the paramount end of social organization. Indeed, that has been the "American idea" ever since the declaration of independence was penned. That, in one word, is democracy. It is the paramount end for which the American constitution was created-"to promote the general welfare."

It must be observed that the English constitution is founded on an opposite principle to that of the American constitution. The English constitution stands the bulwark of hereditary wrongs—not rights -lords and monarchy-the maintenance of class interests-land monopoly and titled nobility. A gigantic effort is being made by incorporate trusts and millionaires today to bring America back to the English ground again-to undo the work done by the fathers and repeal the declaration of 1776.

What then should be the aim of the social reformer? He is properly a flagman, stationed on the crossing to give warning to the wayfarer of the approaching train. His shibboleth is "clear the track.” A pismire might as consistently think to withstand a fast moving locomotive engine as greedy capitalists to think to withstand the progress of mankind. In spite of the corruption of the press, of the pulpit and of the bar; in spite of lobbyists, of trusts, and the courts, pliant tools of corporate wealth, and in spite of legislators and congressmen, attorneys of the millionaires, and in spite of governors and presidents, their abject slaves, the present order will soon give way and a new order take its place. But the end of effort for something still better will never come. The molusk is protected so perfectly and means of its subsistence so abundant that it rests in security; but such a condition of rest is stagnation. When man shall cease to strive for something better than has been his allotted portion-when all things needful to his comfort and safety are his without effort-coming to him automatically-all his enemies having laid down their arms and the struggle for the "survival of the fittest" has ended, will he return again to the primitively savage state.

Without competition there will be degeneration; without struggle there will be stagnation--and in a little while-death.

We want, of course, "co-operation,” but not "all things common" in the sense of assurance of subsistence guaranteed without earnest effort. Let heroes and workers ever be honored; let greatness ever be recognized and sought after. With a higher aim will men cease to grasp gold. What led John Brown to the gallows, Emmet to the scaffold, and Christ to the cross? The gallows, the scaffold, and the cross-were those the ends sought after by those gods? I would rather be the least of those three than a greedy millionaire, with his yachts and golf parks-with no end in life but self-gratification and self-aggrandizement.

"Jesus died to make men holy;

We will die to make men free."

These lines point to a higher motive than gold. May the time never come when man shall have no good to aim after.

The unification of the races of mankind is not distant. The world must become one family-and railroads, telegraphs, telephones and all improvements be seen alike in all lands. Man will become a citizen of the world. I look to see Africa, within another century, a great and glorious aggregation of free republics like North America. What will become of the negro? He will survive and take on civilization. He must for a time take the place of the ignorant and thoughtless everywhere. What is the cause of the labor troubles in America? Principally the saloon. Ardent spirits is the demoralizer of labor. But King Alcohol will be dethroned, and the workingmen, white and black, will rise to their true place in the natural order. But never while they spend more for beer and whisky and tobacco than for bread. So long as the worker is a slave of the bottle and of the nicotine drug, will he be a wage-slave.

It seems most amazing to the thoughtful that men will poison their bodies with alcohol and tobacco. And all will see this after awhile, and no self-respecting man will degrade himself by the use of either.

How rapidly do the people learn in spite of a press largely controlled by the trusts, and the money god supreme. They are taught by passing events. Soon will the movement to free the lands, the tools of production and the money supply from the control of monopoly become overwhelming. It is a question only of the advance of ideas. Then will result universal plenty, universal freedom, and universal happiness of the people.

YE 14TH LESSON.

Individuality and Environment.

In what is efficiency found? Above all in individuality. Clubs, societies, political parties, churches, states-the people in unisondo a work subordinate to that done by the individual. But we can count on our fingers the individuals that have made the world of thought what it is as the sun has made the world of life what it is. Great inventions, discoveries, works of art and literature are made by individuals. By co-operation of the many what has been done by individual genius is conserved, or preserved. But the individual is the greater factor; yet he is greatly the creature of environment; and social relations are of supreme importance to him. "Republics produce great men," is an old saying. It is the same with all living things. The growth of grain depends on soil and cultivation. So of fruit trees, flowering plants, etc. Social organization reacts on the individual. To serve the individual is the purpose of all organization. The individual, I insist, does not exist for the state, but the state for