have their own schools, and, if possible, destroy all systems of education, public or private, that are not under the control of the Church of Rome.

It ought to be more widely noticed than it has been thus far in the United States, that in the great province of Quebec, which is notoriously Roman Catholic in both the religion and the politics of the vastly preponderating majority of its inhabitants, Protestant schools have a hard struggle to live. The Rev. John Burton, M. A., B. D., of Toronto, one of the members of the committee who prepared the Scripture Readings for Ontario, says in a recent powerful lecture on "The French Canadian Imperium in Imperio":

“In Quebec the schools are bitterly sectarian, for the Papal in this relation is the most remorseless of the sects. The Protestant minority, with rights guaranteed on paper, are practically deprived of public school privileges; by the parish divisions made by the hierarchy, and ratified by the provincial government, the dissentient schools are either made impossible or handicapped effectually. In Ontario we have the separate school for Roman Catholics, which not only breaks up the public school system, but establishes schools where children are taught to view their Protestant neighbors as heretics, and as given over to uncovenanted mercies. The immense estates of the Papal corporations in Quebec, being untaxed, impose ruinously unjust burdens upon the remaining property holders, who are largely Protestant."

It is significant that this honored member of the revision Committee on Scripture Readings, himself long an editor, as well as a preacher, publishes the opinion that the troubles the Dominion has with Roman Catholics may, perhaps, find their only practicable solution in the annexation of the Canadian Provinces to the American Republic.

"Our Lower Canadian Protestant friends have been given over, nolens volens, to the absolute control of the Quebec hierarchy. Unless some changes, such as I have indicated, are made, the only other solution will be dare I utter the word? -Annexation. For, the race and religious cry having been raised, the demands made by the Roman Curia upon our government will soon be intolerable. Then will come more serious divisions, and divisions mean- - unless the great republic shall fail absorption piece by piece into the company of the United States. This is not pessimism, but a simple statement of what men unwarped by any political creed know to be inevitable. Of its desirability, or otherwise, I have nothing to say."

While the Roman Catholic people follow their priests in politics as well as in religion, and the priests follow the Pope in both, it is not too much to say that what the Jesuitical hierarchy has done in Quebec to ruin the Protestant school system, it would do, if it had the power, in the United States.

QUESTIONS TO SPECIALISTS.

REPLY BY EX-PRESIDENT GEO. F. MAGOUN, OF IOWA COLLEGE.

26. What are the prospects of the proposed courts of conciliation in Iowa ? A STATE organization was perfected at Cedar Rapids about the middle of November, to promote the formation of courts of conciliation in Iowa. Besides the usual officers, there is a committee for the diffusion of information, and one for preparing a law establishing such courts. There is a corresponding secretary in each of our ninety-nine counties, who is ex-officio president of a county organization, if there be one. If the legislative judiciary committee had agreed upon a bill, action would have been early taken to enact it. A difference of opinion as to the provisions of such a law has delayed action, and, therefore, postponed the enactment of a law to the next session. It is thought by a prominent advocate of conciliation that this delay is valuable, more time being given for the wise preparation of a law. Perhaps, also, the whole matter needs to come forward by gradual growth, as in Denmark and the Danish West Indies. It may, too, be found that some variation from the Scandinavian system will be necessary in Iowa. Two bills have been prepared, one of which, imitating a law of Copenhagen, takes a judge of a court of superior and appellate jurisdiction for presiding officer. It provides that the district judge shall hold the court of conciliation the first day of each term of his court, and have the assistance of a local conciliator in each township in his judicial district. Elsewhere in Denmark and in the Danish West Indies, and also in Norway, citizens of high standing, not lawyers, are selected to preside — in the provincial towns of Denmark the municipalities electing one for the town and one for the country, in Norway one for each community or township. The system is said to work best in Norway. The United States Minister to Denmark expressed the opinion that the judge of a coercive court would carry into it some prejudice against parties whose disputes the "Court of Reconciliation had failed to settle. I believe that everywhere it is required that the latter tribunal be resorted to first. The other bill now under consideration in Iowa avoids this objection, providing for the appointment of men of integrity and capacity as conciliators, outside the courts. Both bills, I believe, exclude lawyers from advocating causes before the proposed new

courts.

It is thought that farming communities would find such methods of avoiding expensive and irritating litigation specially serviceable, and that labor troubles, of which we are likely to have in Iowa our share in due time, could be largely composed or averted by them. In a commonwealth more

free from illiteracy than any other in the Union, intelligent, disinterested, impartial men, of weight in their own communities, and willing to serve so pacific and beneficial an object, could never fail to be found.

This pause in the progress of the movement is being improved for disseminating information and promoting discussion. All will be ready for formal action in our next legislature in 1889. It may not be possible at first to apply the new system to all cases of dispute that a civil action can be based upon; and it certainly would not be wise to attempt incorporating it as a constitutional amendment in the organic law of Iowa till it is perfected in principle-details of operation, of course, being left to statutory provisions.

I need not say that I watch this civilizing and Christianizing experiment with the deepest interest, as I do that of arbitration on international questions the excellences of which it seems to possess, while avoiding some objections, to which the latter scheme is yet open.

REPLIES BY MR. COOK.

27. What ought to be the attitude of reputable people toward Sunday newspapers?

Let reputable people refuse to receive into their houses Sunday journals, and cause it to be known that advertisements in these papers do not reach the better class of homes, and a financial chill may be thrown into the lawless, mercenary heart of an irresponsible Sunday press. Why should one trade be allowed to manufacture and distribute its wares Sunday, and other trades kept from work on that day? Sunday's newspaper is printed on Saturday night, it is triumphantly said. But when is Monday's prepared? When are Sunday papers sent out to the four winds? Under my window at Saratoga, last summer, the New York Sunday dailies were hawked about, before ten o'clock on Sunday morning. But, in order to make this exploit possible, special locomotives were driven screaming up the Hudson, and pony expresses tortured, and dealers and newsboys stirred to a frenzy of activity. This process, carried out to the thirty-two points of the compass from every great city, in a population of fifty millions, is a very considerable infraction of citizens' rights. Editors and printers, as well as railway men, deserve one day in seven for rest. I asked a Chicago reporter on a great daily, which publishes a Sunday edition, heavy with rubbish, whether he had one day of rest in seven. His answer was: "Not one in seventy-seven." Sunday is worth more than Sunday journalism. What Sunday journals displace is worth more than what they supply. They displace rest. They displace the mood of religious thoughtfulness and worship, without which no civilization can be maintained at a high level. On the whole, Sunday journals, in average times of peace, must be pronounced to be works neither of necessity nor of mercy. They should be reformed or abolished. Sunday journals, unreformed, may ultimately make the Satanic press the chief Sabbath instructor of the nation. Our liberties are not safe under a permanence of such tutelage. There are a few reputable Sunday sheets, I

admit the fact; but they do not give character to the mass of them. Usually the Sunday newspaper has more matter in it than any issue on a week day, and more objectionable matter. The loafer's journal is peculiarly loaferish, and the Satanic press peculiarly Satanic on Sunday. The most influential dailies of the world do not issue Sunday editions. Horace Greeley, who may be safely supposed to have known something of journalism, called the Sunday newspaper a social demon. Civilization would stand higher than it now does with us if all Sunday journals were discontinued, as both industrial and moral nuisances.

28. Would not constitutional prohibition so fail of execution in great and corrupt cities as to be inferior in practical effect to high license?

Constitutional prohibition, once enacted, represents the will of the whole people. It is a measure unincumbered with any partisan issue. High license is usually complicated with partisan contests. Constitutional prohibition, having secured the great majority of votes in a state, would have high moral authority even in corrupt cities. My positions, therefore, are: (1.) Constitutional prohibition would be partially executed in cities. (2.) It would be increasingly executed.

(3.) It might be executed reasonably well by the aid of law and order leagues.

(4.) If the municipal state police assists the local police, it might be made as effective as statutory prohibition ever was.

(5.) Being the measure of the whole people and not subject to sudden change, constitutional prohibition would discourage new investments of property in the liquor trade and weaken the distillery interest much more than high license could do; for the latter would be a merely party measure and subject to change at the next alteration of party majorities. Under constitutional prohibition a legislature could vote only one way. Combinations of the whiskey rings to corrupt a legislature would, therefore, be discouraged.

(6.) Let municipal reform succeed, and the rules of civil-service reform be applied to cities, and even in corrupt great towns the will of the people may yet be carried out.

(7.) Constitutional prohibition, like statutory, would drive liquor selling into obscure and disreputable quarters in cities. On the contrary, high license gilds the saloon. It converts the gin-hole into the gin-palace. It greatly adds to the respectability of the liquor trade. It thus builds up the power that threatens the home and good government.

(8.) All license miseducates the people by making the state a partner in unrighteous gains. It notoriously intrenches the whiskey trade behind the cupidity of taxpayers. All license of the liquor traffic means state permission to a man, for a consideration, to poison his neighbors, and manufacture drunkards, paupers, criminals, taxes, ruined homes, and lost souls.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

THE late meeting of the Baptist Union began on the twenty-third day of April. The report has been extensively published in the American newspapers that the Progressives and the Conservatives at this meeting came to an amicable adjustment of their differences, and that Mr. Spurgeon would now return to the Union, from which he had withdrawn. So far as Mr. Spurgeon himself is concerned, this report is premature. In the May number of "The Sword and the Trowel," Mr. Spurgeon makes a statement in regard to the meeting, and expresses his dissatisfaction with it. His statement is kind and conciliating; and closes with the following words :

"I have had to wait before I could write decidedly; but I am not convinced that we have a real peace before us, or that we can ever arrive at a successful blending of two parties which so greatly differ from each other.

"As one outside of the Union I have no right to have anything further to do with its creeds or its declarations. I was not from the first at all hopeful that anything could be done, and therefore I retired. I wish I had been let alone, for then I could have gone on with my own work in peace. Now I must, in the kindliest feeling, make this my course. All has been done that can be done, and yet, without violence to conscience, we cannot unite; let us not attempt it any more, but each one go his own way in quiet, each striving honestly for that which he believes to be the revealed truth of God. I could have wished that instead of saving the Union, or even purifying it, the more prominent thought had been to conform everything to the Word of the Lord."

Mr. Spurgeon has published his creed or statement of doctrine, which we insert below. He doubtless wished, but did not expect, that the Progressive party would accept this creed. It avoids those ambiguous phrases which the Progressive party are so much inclined to use. Error resorts to evasions. It has resorted to them in ancient times as well as in modern, in the Old World as well as in the New. Our readers will be refreshed by the honest manner in which Mr. Spurgeon has stated his Articles of Faith.

"(1) The Divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures. "(2) The right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and the need of the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to a true and spiritual understanding of them.

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(3) The unity of the Godhead and the Trinity of the persons thereinnamely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

(4) The true and proper Godhead of our Lord Jesus and his real and perfect manhood.

"(5) The utter depravity of human nature in consequence of the Fall, which Fall is no fable nor metaphor, but a literal and sadly practical fact.