unprogressive ministers and members of the orthodox churches of the country, and their allies, the keepers of Chicago saloons, gambling dens, bad houses, and low theatres, all of which places will fatten if they can only get the Fair closed so that they can have the hundreds of thousands of visitors in the city left unemployed on Sunday for them to prey upon.

Does it not seem as if it ought to make our orthodox friends hesitate in their ardor to get the Fair closed, to find that they have such allies as these?

What are the reasons for closing the Fair on Sunday, given by those who desire to have it closed?

One is this: that, if the Fair is open, it will attract many persons who would otherwise go to the churches.

In reply, I would say that, however much this consideration might weigh against opening the Fair all day, it does not weigh at all against the plan which I suggest, of opening it at noon; for this gives the churches the first chance, having left the forenoon free for them. Moreover, there is another thing to be thought of that is quite as important. Do those who urge on this ground that the Fair ought to be closed realize that Chicago does not contain churches enough to hold half the people who will be there next summer? What are you going to do with the other half? and what, outside of church hours, are you going to do with both halves? These multitudes cannot go to church all day. When church is over, then what? Are you going to turn them into the streets, idle, aimless, a prey to the temptations of the great city? Why not open the Fair, the most moral place that can be found, and the one place that can compete successfully with the saloons and with the numberless other places of temptation?

Another reason given for closing the Fair on Sunday is that opening it will cause so many persons to work. But the plan which I propose reduces the amount of work to be done to the very minimum. It is doubtful if any other plan can be devised to carry the multitudes of people who will be in Chicago through the Sunday with so little work. These people must be cared for on Sunday in some way. They cannot stay shut up in their hotels and boarding-houses all day. And, even if they could, they would require

more waiting on than if they went to the Fair. But they cannot be shut up, and will not be. If the Fair is closed, they will be out patronizing the livery stables, riding on excursion boats on the lake, going on railroad excursions into the country, going to see base-ball games, going to down-town circuses, patronizing all kinds of entertainments that will be gotten up to amuse them and to relieve them of their money,- these besides saloons and worse places. And thus the amount of Sunday work that will be done by others to interest and amuse them and take them through the Sunday will far exceed that which would have been necessary to open the Fair to them, with all its additional interest and safety and good. Thus we can see that those people who say, Shut the Fair on Sunday and coop up the multitudes in the city, so as to save the doing of work, are simply straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Another reason urged for closing the Fair is so that Chicago may have a quiet Sunday. This is a strange reason indeed. Is it the way to give Chicago a quiet Sunday

to have two or three hundred thousand

strangers idle on her streets, and her saloons and theatres and every possible kind of entertainment running at full head? No: if men want to turn Chicago on Sunday into such a pandemonium of crowded streets, loafing, drunkenness, brawls, and vice as it has never known, then let them insist on the Fair being closed. But, if they have any interest in a quiet and orderly as well as a moral Sunday, let them open the Fair. J. T. SUNDERLAND.

A PERSONAL INTEREST SOCIETY.

What we need, particularly in all our great cities, is a Personal Interest Society, every member of which shall hold himself responsible for the well-being of one poor family. We need a society every member of which shall hold himself obligated to keep his eye on one particular home, to see that its floor is swept, its windows cleaned, its furniture tidy; to see that its provider is at work, and, if out of employment, to interest himself in securing it for him, and, if earning more than needed for the support of the family, to encourage him into placing the surplus, no matter how small, in some

safe bank; to see that the mother faithfully discharge her household duties, practise economy and forethought, make good and frequent use of soap and scrubbingbrush and needle, and, if she has leisure, to employ her hand in something profitable that may lighten her husband's burden; to see that the children are kept off the streets, and are sent to school in decent attire and cleanly state, that, if both the parents are obliged to work away from home, the little ones are not left to themselves without proper supervision, that they are placed, when young, in some day nursery, and properly apprenticed when reaching the age of self-support.

It

What society can be easier organized! is not dependent on numbers. Even one inan or one woman can constitute such a society,-one poor family at least would be under philanthropic guardianship. A society of five or ten members would mean a blessing to five or ten families.

Easy is the charity of the pocket. The charity of the heart is often heart-rending. It is easy to give money for distribution among the poor. Harder it is to be one's own distributor. Hardest of all to be distributor with only love and sympathy and personal interest as distributing coin. It calls for courage, for character, for selfdenial, to venture down into the slums for the purpose of drawing human lives out of the seething caldron of misery, out of the pest-house of human corruption and decay, from under the shadow of moral and physical death. On such missions one must be prepared to encounter the touch of filth, the stench of offensive odors and the sound of offensive language, the breath of disease, the sight of hideous vermin, of horrible scenes of suffering. The rags that one beholds on such pilgrimages are very apt to mar one's enjoyment of his silks and broadclothes, and the moans and groans that one hears during such an afternoon visit are sure to rise above the evening's concert or opera. The piteous appeals for bread and work and warmth that one hears on such a tour are sure to take the taste out of the delicacies of the evening meal and the sweets of the evening enjoyment. One will find it difficult in the evening to laugh over the comedian's sallies of wit on the stage, with such cries as these ringing in the ears:

"Give me bread, sir, or I'll go mad." "Protect me from this brute, madame, or he'll kill me."

"Stitching, stitching, from five in the morning till deep into the night, yet fingers stiff from cold and faces pinched from hunger."

"I have had no work these two or three months, sir. The landlord tells me he'll throw me out of the house to-morrow. The grocer refuses to loan any longer. There is not a crust nor a cent in the house. There is but one of two roads open to me, either crime-in order to find behind prison-walls food and shelter and work-or suicide."

"I was driven to wrong, madame, driven to it. My drunken father beat me. My mother refused to keep me unless I brought her home some earnings. I could find no work, I was cold and hungry, and afraid to go home, and so,-yes, I was driven to wrong, madame, driven to it."

"This is the third child this year, sir, that goes to the Potter's Field, all of whom might have been saved, had they had a healthy home and proper nourishment, and medical attendance. My poor husband has gone before them, and I shall soon follow after."

It calls for heroic courage to enter the miserable districts of the poor, to face and fight and conquer such human misery, to descend into the dark and dismal cellars, or mount to dingy garrets, on rickety stairs, in the hall-ways reeking with filth and stifling with poisonous odors and gases, that remove every doubt of the truth of the words an undertaker landlord of a wretched tenement block is said to have addressed to a philanthropic lady: "It's not the rents I look to, it's the deaths I get out of the houses."

A single one is number enough to organize and to constitute a Personal Interest Society. He or she can be president, secretary, board, and the whole membership.

of personal service to the poor. Prick the smallest toe with the smallest needle, and you prick the brain at the same time. Give the frozen foot warmth, and you give comfort to the head. The health of the whole depends upon the health of the part. The disease of the part infects the whole. The rottenness in the alleys is sure to send its poison into the avenues. The want and misery in a hovel, if unalleviated, are sure to have their revenge on the palace. Starving and vicious mobs have lowered the proudest lords to the dust, have laid ancient palaces into ruin, have made the colossal Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square to tremble, have erased the Bastile from the face of the earth, have torn down the Vendome column, have struck off the heads of king and queen, have paraded the streets with the heads of hundreds of dreaded men near the throne upon their pikes. Have but a clear conception of the truth that between discontent, demand for bread and work, corrupt tastes, improvident habits, and Mob Rule, Rein of Terror, Regicide, is a long road, and that wise and timely interest, persoual guardianship, can not only ward off such catastrophes from the upper classes, but also the moral ruin from the lower classes, and you will not need a second appeal for the formation of or for your affiliation with such a society."

Not all of the people in the slums are hopeless and desperate cases, nor are all the upper classes heartless. The English ladies of wealth, who have joined the ranks of the "Slum Sisters" of the Salvation Army, and have taken up their abode and work in the most dangerous parts of the East London slum districts; the number of rich, collegebred young women of New York who have taken up their abode and work in the "submerged tenth" of their city; the number of wealthy men's daughters all over the world, who have renounced the benefits of wealth and the fascinations of pleasure to toil as "Sisters of Mercy" among the poor and suffering and fallen, have demonstrated that the wealthy have hearts, that the poor can be helped from sinking into the sloth of vice and crime, and that many of those that are being swallowed up in the abyss of sin and shame can be rescued, and redeemed to purity and usefulness.

It is kindly interest by the upper classes

in their hard lot the poor want, and it is that which does them a world of good. It is the sense of being utterly forsaken by God and man that weighs heaviest on them, and that presses them down to disgrace and to despair. A word of sympathy sinks into their parched hearts like the fructifying shower into the arid earth. A word of comfort, of encouragement, of forgiveness, a compassionate look, a gentle touch of the hand, effects wonderful changes in them. "No one ever spoke to me that way," sobbed a frail woman to a lady who sought to rescue her from her miserable life. "No one ever spoke to me that way since I can remember. If some one had, I would not have been now where and what I am." "Are you God's wife?" asked a little halfstarved and half-frozen girl, caught by a missionary lady in the act of stealing her handkerchief, and taken by her to the mission school, where she was warmed and clothed and fed and kindly censured for trying to steal. "Are you God's wife? If you are, I'll try to be God's child." And, after occasional freaks and irregularities at first, she grew to be an exemplary young woman, and became a teacher in that school. "I've kept the room and the children clean these three days, and I haven't tasted a drop of liquor, expecting you every minute, and knowing that you would be angry if you saw dirt and smelled liquor," were the words with which a slowly reforming mother addressed a lady who interested herself in her and her family. "I don't want a receipt, sir," said a father who had turned over his weekly saving to a gentleman whose personal interest in him had changed him from a drunken sot to a providing father. "I don't want a receipt, sir. Only keep it tight till you'll have enough to get me out of this drunkards' row." "It's poor writing and spelling," said a hard laborer one evening to a kindly person who had interested himself in him, and had induced him to attend a night-school. "It's poor writing, but my mother could have read it; and if I could write to her now, and tell her whom I brought into the grave that I'd reform, I'd do it, even if they wanted my life for postage."

Such, and a hundred other similar instances, are the results of personal interest in the poor by the more fortunate classes.

There is unfortunately too little of it, due to a want of a proper medium to bring the two into closer relationship. The one clamors for the touch of a brother's hand, for the sound of the music of a sister's voice. The other, however, is not nigh to hear and answer the call. If hear and answer you would, be one of a Personal Interest Society. Pick out one of society's deserted orphan families. Be its guardian. Assume the responsibility of its well-being and welldoing. Be its counsellor and redeemer, its encourager and sympathizer. Let its tear be your tear, its joy your joy, its success your success, and you will find that

"No radiant pearl which crested fortune

LESSENING THE BURDEN. During these hot months it is especially profitable to consider everything that will give us relief from burden-bearing.

There are many agencies at hand, as many various treatments as there are doctors of differing philosophies. Yet few of the doctors seem to have got at a better result in themselves than did that sturdy preacher Paul, who wrote back to the church at Corinth, "Five times received I forty stripes save one, thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, in perils of robbers, in perils of the sea, in perils in the wilderness, in hunger and thirst, in watchings often, in cold and nakedness," yet, though "troubled on every side, I was not distressed."

Now, the power that led to this grand courage in Paul was no philosophy at all, but a simple, very earnest, yet childlike religious faith. And so, while it is perfectly true that we can make our lives a good deal easier and brighter by seeking the many pleasures that lie upon our path, by cheerfully accepting the fatality of circumstances, by devotedly and unremittingly giving ourselves up to some set work, we can never

discover the sublime satisfaction, the restfulness, the comfort which Paul must have found unless we can share the sincerity of his religious faith. It is possible for us to be placidly resigned without any appeal to religion, with no thought of God or trust in him, with no expectation of the immortal life, with no sense of our own childlikeness in the universe or loving up-looking to the Father's face, it is possible still to be resigned, to bear the weight of our place in life, whatever it may be, without much complaint, and because we must. How many bear with life in that way? But there is no joy in it. The burden of life is not really lessened at all: it is only stoically endured. Very different is the relief religion gives.

Religious faith does not try to distract our attention, and so make us forget our cares, to absorb us in something else, so that we shall not think of them; but it goes in at once behind the scenes, as it were, and discloses to us the purpose of burdenbearing. Instead of administering an anæsthetic and dulling our appreciation, it comes to us as a tonic, and quickens our interest in the very pains we suffer, so that we study to understand more of the motives of our lives, and why we are, and to what end. Religion satisfies these inquiries by telling us of the inner life, the growth and moulding of the spirit, showing that this painful burden is felt by us only because there is born within us a new divine life, struggling against the old, -the eternal Spirit pained, because cramped within the narrow framework of its clay-built lodging-house. If we had no higher hope, there would be no feeling of despair. The very sense of burden is the key that unlocks the doorway of the diviner life. Through our darkness we see light. Then the struggle becomes heroic. We no longer want to lose the burden nay, we cling to it till it gives us entrance to the realms above. Religion thus gives us a clew to the necessity of suffering, and deprives the burden of its bitterest sting. Then religion points to the results. It is not by your present restraint, the narrow lot of your immediate opportunity, that you must fix your judgment. In the eyes of God a thousand years are as one day. This life is but the budding time. The opening flower, the full blossom, the ripening fruit,

-all these are only to be looked for in the spirit's immortality, toward which the upward impulse of this life is lifting us.

But you may say: "It is true religion teaches us these fine thoughts about our purpose and our destiny, and we accept them all; but belief in them is not powerful enough to practically lessen the actual daily load we have to bear. We cannot be always reasoning with ourselves. Indeed, we are often most unreasonable." Well, religion meets us here, too. The instinct of religion is brotherhood and childhood, a divine family relationship. Religion, therefore, gives us not only thoughts and belief, but ties, affections, communion: we are knit together not only by reason, but by emotion. The religious man, driven under the relentless wheel of monotonous, burdensome, ceaseless, vexatious cares and duties, carries with him his instinct of brotherhood, his instinct of sonship. He is not alone: this brother below him needs his help; this brother above him is pulling him up. He feels their presence, their relationship, the invisible communion, and the pain about his shoulders is lessened, his burden shared. The religious woman, though called to bear the heaviest trials of life, "shut in," an invalid, suffering, lonely, through the instinct of religion, lifts her weary heart in silent prayer, looking to the invisible but trusted Father, and the trembling tears sink back before a thankful smile.

So, in every experience of life, religion, by its sense of communion, its ties of fellowship, without argument or logic, lessens our burden by making it not ours alone, but a part of the universal burden.

What other means can render us such efficient service? What but religion can so help us in this the most practical affair of life, the lessening our daily burden?

We may sweeten our days with pleasures, drive off care by laughter, fascinate our senses with art, soothe our discontent by travel, absorb our intelligence in work; but, after every possible relief has been afforded by all other means, then must we seek the simple trust of the religious soul before the burden will be really and permanently les

sened, before we shall be able to say with Paul, "Troubled on every side, but not

PAUL'S VISION.

Editors of the Unitarian:

In your issue for last month appears an article by Mr. Solon Lauer, headed "The Epilepsy of Saint Paul."

In that the writer affects to be facetious

and serious by turns, and the latter turn reveals the fact that there is such a thing as a "scientific mind," for the writer of that article says: "I do say that to the scientific mind, bent on trusting nothing but facts, good, clean, believable, wholesome reason,' this psychic evidence is the only sort that has any real weight.

Now, Mr. Lauer will readily admit that all these "psychic evidences" are personal feelings, experienced only by the individual's self in particular,-in other words, subjective experiences. To the individual's self these experiences may be very intense and very real at the time: whereas they may have no real existence outside the particular person passing through this experience. For example, Paul saw this vision, as he believed. John saw a vision, as he believed. Luther saw a vision, as he believed. Swedenborg and multitudes of others have also believed that they saw visions. No doubt at all that these men intended truthfully to report what their mental reporting machine communicated to them. But did that machine report the exact facts as they were outside of the reporter?

The long course of human sane experience declares that they did not report objective facts.

Let me exemplify by an experience which I can vouch for. Years ago a young man was engaged as a clerk in a commercial house in San Francisco. He had studied a little in theology. Being of a fervent nature, an appeal from the pastor whose church he attended drew him into private study for self-preparation for ministerial work. That young man worked hard in business from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. He arose at 4 A.M., and did not usually retire till 11 or 12 (midnight). The hours out of business he closely applied to Greek and other preparations for the work he had chosen. Sundays he attended church and prayer-meeting services, and taught two classes in different Sunday-schools. One of these was some three or four miles away, on the edge of the city; yet the inelasticity of avail self of the street-cars which ran to his religious views would not permit him to "Lone Mountain," where his mission school lay. A number of times was this young man so mentally and physically prostrated by this overwork that he had to go to rest, absenting self from the Sunday evening

prayer-meeting.

Time wore along. The day came when a certain theological institution was to be opened, and this young man had promised