own beliefs and unbeliefs in this land of freedom. In many respects they become gradually assimilated to our American life; in many respects they are assimilating our lives to theirs. The social and religious revolutions through which they and their fathers have passed leave many of them in a condition of impatience of all restraint, antagonism to all authority, and skepticism toward all past faiths.

We certainly will not offend them by simply referring in this manner to what many of them are constantly demanding for themselves. They tell us they are not Christians in our American sense; they disclaim the inspiration and authority of the Bible; they set aside the Divine character and claims of our Lord and Savior; they declaim against our Christian Sabbath; they proclaim themselves rationalists and humanitarians; they denounce the Church as a center of priestcraft and superstition, and they declare the great evangelical doctrines of Christianity to be theological fictions; they transform liberty into libertinism, and freedom of opinion into liberalism of thought and speculation. We do not mean thus to characterize the whole foreign element of our country; we know that it is only applicable to a part, but we also know that these dangerous elements are abundantly prevalent, and are rapidly permeating American society with the leaven of their antiChristian modes of life and the poison of a transplanted skepticism and infidelity.

3. Another characteristic of our cities we know not better how to characterize than as an antagonism growing up among the poor and laboring classes toward fancied or real wrongs and neglects on the part of Christians to these classes. Somehow multitudes of people in the humbler places of life believe themselves to be suffering great wrongs from society; that in many of the habits and customs, and forms of social life great injustice is done to them. In the light of the great doctrines of human equality and universal freedom, they can not understand the vast disparity in the circumstances which surround them and those of others. Reasonably or unreasonably, multitudes of these aggrieved ones entertain the idea that the Church, and Christianity as it is illustrated by the Church, is on the side of wealth, and rank, and power, and against the poor and laboring classes, or at least indifferent to them. In Europe and Great | Britain large classes are asking the significant questions-what does the Church do for us? what benefit have we from Christianity? how are our circumstances improved, our burdens lightened, our lot in life made better by your Christianity?

The same threatening circumstances are rapidly developing in our own country. Multitudes here look upon the Church first as caring nothing for them, then as hostile to them, then as mere organizations in the hands and under the control of the aristocracy and wealth of the land. The protests of the Church against some of the customs, even against some of the socalled pleasures of the poorer classes, thousands interpret to mean hostility to them, and thousands assume at once this attitude of enmity toward the Church. "The Church is against us," they say; "Christianity is in our way;" "she is on the side of the rich and powerful;" "she does nothing for us;" "she intrenches herself in elegant churches, in formal services, but has no place for us, and no help for us." No fact of our times is more sad and significant than the seeming loosing of the hold of the Church on the toiling, and suffering, and needy

masses.

4. But we proceed to notice another characteristic of modern society. It is the spirit of earnest inquiry developing an age of widely diffused intelligence. All are thinkers and all are thinking. The breath of science penetrates all classes of society; education is rapidly becoming the inheritance of all. We need not occupy time in describing this intellectual activity of the age, but shall study it briefly in its relations to the subject before us.

A formidable amount of uneasiness, indifference, and skepticism must be traced for its source to the increased knowledge and all-pervading science of modern times. Not that increasing knowledge leads of itself to unbelief, or that the discoveries of science weaken the evidence of religion, but that the progress of knowledge and the discoveries of science, like all other good things in this world, have their responsibilities and dangers, and are subject to misuse and abuse. It is the natural tendency of advancing intelligence to make the world less credulous than it was, more disposed to examine what is proposed for belief, to demand a degree of evidence which it did not demand in less enlightened times, and to apply an unsparing criticism to what was once accepted as undoubted truth.

Mere authority, or assertion, or tradition avails but little in our times. The age is sharp, keen, searching. The reign of superstition is at an end; an era of fact, of investigation, of demonstration has dawned upon the world. Christianity is allowed to be no exception to the right of inquiry, of close and searching criticism, and like all other things addressed to the belief of men, must come with full, and clear,

and satisfactory evidence of her truth and divine claims. Hence, more than at any other period of her history, these evidences and claims of Christianity are now subjected to a rigid and searching investigation. While this searching investigation is going forward, thousands of minds are standing in an attitude of perplexity, anxiety, doubt, and thousands more in down right skepticism.

We propose now to consider some principles and the best methods involved in the judicious adaptation of Christian activity to these necessities.

For practical purposes these characteristics may be considered as presenting themselves under two phases-moral and intellectual. Under the former we may embrace all the forms of impiety, recklessness, worldliness, and indifference; under the latter the tendency to skepticism so sadly manifesting itself in philosophy, science, criticism, and literature.

The former must be met by manifestations of the moral power of Christianity; the latter, by the reassertion and enlargement of the evidence of Christianity, and reaffirmations and more exact statements of evangelical Christian doctrines.

To overcome the former-the skepticism of the heart that lies at the foundation of the impiety and recklessness, the indifference, worldliness, and estrangement of the multitudesChristianity must make herself felt more powerfully among the masses as a divine religion; as "good news" from God to the people; as not only "glory to God in the highest,” but also as "peace on earth, good-will toward men." The Gospel must be so preached and so lived, and the Church so organized and so worked as to make it always and every-where apparent that the religion of Jesus is the religion of humanity; a religion not only for man's best welfare in eternity, but also a religion to promote his highest happiness and welfare on earth. Jesus must more than ever be known as "the friend of publicans and sinners,” as the Savior of the guilty, the burdened, and the sorrowful..

It must be demonstrated that Christianity in its promises and threatenings, its restraints and its commands, its hopes, its fears, is the friend and not the enemy of man-is for man and not against him; that it is infinitely more a revelation of the Divine love toward man than of the Divine anger; that Jesus comes to bless, not to curse, to offer life, not to bring death, to save, not to destroy, and that it is not till every resource of love and good-will is exhausted that the terrible wrath of God falls upon the obstinately and immovably impenitent.

Nothing is more lamentable than the common mistake of multitudes that the Gospel-the claims and requirements of God, the limitations of Christianity are against them and not for them; that the demands of religion lie on the opposite side from man's interests and are hostile to him. Such a thought is a reflection on the wisdom, goodness, and justice of God. God hates sin, forbids it, and will punish it; but he hates it because it is the opposite of his own holy nature, and is antagonistic to every thing good and blessed in his creatures.

What God prohibits he prohibits for the good of man; what he commands he commands for the purpose of exalting his creatures in every true interest and every real good. When the Bible forbids intemperance, profanity, injustice, and Sabbath-breaking, the Bible stands forth as man's best friend. When God commands us to love him and to love our neighbors, to cease to do evil and learn to do well, he points out to us the only road to our true happiness and our best interests, both for time and eternity.

The world must be convinced of this terrible mistake, not only by presenting the true theory of the Gospel, but also by making Christianity, 'in its true spirit and purposes, live before mankind. The Church must exhibit more of the spirit of Christ in her life and action; she must annihilate all caste, all exclusiveness-every thing that separates her from the people; she must show herself with the people and for the people; her doors must be ever open to them, her altars ever free and inviting, her message ever glad tidings unto all men. Christians must be Christ-like, as if so many Christs going about doing good,

The Church must get outside of brick and stone walls, or make the openings through these walls so large that all can freely enter-outside the mere pretension of gentility and the trappings of millinery, and come in contact with the wicked, reckless, thoughtless, indifferent masses. She must solve somehow, the great practical problem of being in the world and yet not being of the world. She must be the bush in the midst of the flames, yet unconsumed. “I pray not," said Jesus, "that thou wouldest take them out of the world, but that thou wouldest keep them from the evil." She must meet the materialism, the worldliness of the age, by throwing into society the living exemplification of an earnest spirituality.

The Church, clergy, and laity must "march right into this wilderness of week-day sin, and fight its way to the very strongholds of Satan.” The truths of the Gospel must be carried to those who will not come to them. Under the

her generally in the way-the immovable barrier to every advancement of the race. Nearly every earnest spirit of European history has had to cry out against this terrible incubus, pressing down every aspiration of humanity, and impeding every movement toward the lib

There must be no "eclipse of faith" in the Church, however dark may be the eclipse in the world. She must prove her faith in the unseen, eternal, and divine, by her more earnest spiritual life; by using the world, but not abusing it; by visiting the fatherless and the widow in their affliction, and keeping herself unspotted from the world.

This is a high standard of Christian life and activity, but it is the only standard consistent with the grandeur of the Gospel; any thing less than this seems a contradiction to the Gospel and gives the lie to our profession. It is only Christianity realized and in earnest, the only Christianity which can impress the realistic and earnest age in which we live. We hail, therefore, every movement that looks like bringing Christianity practically and earnestly forward into the necessities of human society. In this practical, humanitarian age, the Church must show herself of practical value, of essential and indispensable need to society, or society will place but a small estimate upon her. She must be the leader and director of the progressive and reformative movements of the age, especially of every movement to ameliorate and improve the condition of men and nations, or these movements will go on without her, and she will be left standing in the background of society, an obsolete and effete thing of the past. What is true, and right, and wise, and Christian in all these movements, she must assist; what is unwise and unchristian, she must expose and correct. She must be felt every-where and in all things that affect society as a great moral power, and a power always on the side of man's best interests, on the side of wisdom and goodness.

Christianity has had to bear the burden of the unhappy history of a Church which, through many centuries, occupied a position of hostility to every discovery, every advancement, every reformation. Discoveries in knowledge had to be fought out against her authority and influence, and reformation had to be carried forward

The secret of half the infidelity of Europe and Great Britain to-day, is the mistake of even earnest, thinking men attributing to Christianity the wrongs and oppressions of Romanism, and mistaking the aristocracy, and exclusiveness, and immobility, and millinery of the Church of England for the religion of Jesus Christ. The Church of the nineteenth century, the only Church that will have power, and influence, and success, the only Church that will win the hearts of the people, and rise above the contempt of earnest, thinking men, is the Church that will embody in her life the spirit and life of Christ, whose doors are open to all for whom Christ died, whose felt mission is to all whom Christ redeemed, and that is in sympathy with every thing that pertains to the happiness, the welfare, the elevation of all whom Christ loves, the Church that is with the people and for the people-the Church of humanity, as Christ is the Redeemer of humanity.

The Christianity for the present and the future, for the city and for the country, is a Christianity that carries with it the demonstration of its own divine origin and power in the holy, earnest, and spiritual lives of those who profess to believe it. The most powerful and convincing argument for the nineteenth century will be the argument presented by a Church whose life is the visible exemplification of the doctrines and principles of the Gospel; a Church that lives and works after the manner of Christ; a Church that exhibits an activity and earnestness commensurate with the sublime truths which she teaches, with the momentous issues which she presents, and the immortal destinies of men which she professes to believe.

Let us have a Christianity full of Christ, full of the Holy Ghost, fresh, and strong, and fearless, in all its supernatural and heavenly characteristics, with no concessions, no compromises from the high and divine standard set up by Christ and his apostles, and a Church full of faith, whose life realizes the doctrines she believes, and whose zeal sends her forth to all men, the rich and the poor, the high and the low, as the embassador of Christ, bearing in one hand the revelation of the righteous indignation of God against sin, and in the other the

message of his love and mercy, and the indifference, the skepticism, and the worldliness of our day will pass away before her as the mists before the rising sun.

IN

THE CITIZEN AND HIS PARTY.

FIRST PAPER.

a country governed by political parties the relations of citizens to political organizations have a very high importance. The theory and ethics of party construction, fealty and action, are outside of law, and, so far as our literature goes, almost outside of morals. The law ignores parties in the interest of perfect electoral freedom; the Church ignores them in the interest of spiritual independence.

But there has grown up among us a science of parties and a system of party ethics, though neither exists in writing. These two bodies of principles, inter-related and organized, form our unwritten American constitution, and they govern us in a more intimate sense than the State and National bodies of laws. If the people govern they do so at second-hand, through parties. These parties are as thoroughly organized as the National Government, and one or other of them holds the power to set up and pull down persons and laws. Such an institution deserves careful and frequent attention. If we jealously watch the constitution, we ought also to mark the progress of party science and the growth of a system of party ethics. I propose to trace a few of the outlines of this science, and some of its relations to morals.

I.

A democratic government may be maintained through a system of voting in three ways: By unanimity, by maximum, or by majority. That is, you may ordain that nothing shall be done except by the voice of all, or that the highest number who are agreed shall rule, or that a majority of those taking part in political action shall govern.

It is generally believed that the democratic idea of government requires political expression. There is room for doubt whether this is strictly true. A government might be democratic through a system of unanimity like that of the jury-room, or through one of maxima, such as prevails in most elections of officers. The first would reduce the freedom of choice much below its present value, and the second would considerably increase it.

Let us suppose that a President could only be chosen by the voices of all. This rule would

develop a kind of tyranny of public opinion, demanding that voters should repress "their prejudices" and support the popular idol. Parties would be regarded as enemies of the State, and despised as "third parties" now are.

It strikes us as absurd to require every one to vote for the same person; but perhaps it is not theoretically different in kind from requiring every one to vote for one of two persons, or requiring a majority to vote for one person. There may be something inherent in human nature which is symbolized by a battle-field; at all events men love antithesis, antagonism, and this favors the two-sided system of politics. The main fact, however, is that an election by unanimity would be democratic. The President would be formally reated by the whole people.

On a system of maxima each voter would record his preference, and the person receiving most votes would be elected. This system gives the highest degree of freedom. There is no restriction upon choice except such as is unavoidable. The limitations on preference are reduced to their minima. This form of democratic expression has been used with satisfactory results as a substitute for the primary system. In the progress of democratic government it is not unlikely to become the favorite system. But, historically, democracy works by majorities. A government by the people is theoretically a government by a majority of the people. Its formula is, 50 + 1 = 100. The object of parties is to divide the people into two unequal parts, called majority and minority.

At first view it would seem that ours is a government of maxima; the election of persons is usually effected by the highest number of votes. The votes might be so distributed that ten per cent. or less might elect. And, so far as officers with executive or judicial functions are concerned, elections are for the most part by maxima. Legislative officers are chosen in the same way, but they act by majorities. A bill can become law only by the votes of a majority of the members. This provision reacts upon the whole system of elections, and practically converts a system of maxima into one of majorities. The first thing is to make laws; if you can secure the passage of such laws as you desire only by gaining a majority in the legislative body, parties must be formed to divide the voters into two divisions. There is then a resistless impulse to use the same parties for the election of executive and judicial officers. The majority system in legislation has nearly the same effect as a constitutional enactment of elections by majorities. Our cumbrous system of presidential elections does permit a minority