human hope entirely from the hereafter and the elsewhere, and plant them in a future, near or remote, upon this earth. The absence of religion from socialism is not sufficiently explained by the opposition of the Christian church, naturally a conservative power, to hasty projects of social reform. However much the Christian church has erred in the past through the extreme conservatism of the religious sentiment and other causes, it has been a profoundly social rather than individualistic force. Undoubtedly its ideal for human life has been greatly modified, and every trace of the asceticism of the church of the Middle Ages will disappear: altogether undesirable is the monastic conception of existence in the eyes of the man of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the ideal of socialism must appear materialistic even to men engrossed in the furthering of a civilization that tends strongly toward the comfort of the flesh and profusion of luxury. There are deeper wants in human nature than those of which socialism makes so much account, moral and spiritual appetites which it scarcely notices. With all its faults and follies on its head, the Christian church is yet more true to the undying aspirations of the human soul than the socialistic scheme. The Socialism of to-day, as a whole, is destitute of moral enthusiasm, and its apostles show little religious conviction that they must rise "to do the task He set to each, who shapes us to His ends and not our own."

The words "Kingdom of God" still express a commanding truth for social reformers. In constant progress toward the ideal they denote, purified by wider knowledge and deeper insight, stand the hope and the salvation of mankind. Complete attainment

and full satisfaction are impossible, but devotion to the cause of humanity is ever a duty and shall come to be more and more a joy. Continuous social reform in the name of the Most High God of the actual universe is the religious commandment for our age. All the moral earnestness, all the self-forgetting devotion, all the self-sacrificing enthusiasm for humanity that we can draw from any source, we need them in the strenuous and unremitting task! Each generation must do its part. No generation, present or to come, may rationally think for a moment that the labor is finished and the duty done. Every generation will find a sure support in the inexhaustible inspirations of a religion of humanity.

OF

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WAY TO UTOPIA.

UTOPIA was first made known by "Sir Thomas Moore Knight sometyme Lord Chauncelor of England, a man of singular vertue and of a cleare unspotted conscience,. (as wittnesseth Erasmus) more pure and white then the whitest snow, and of such an angelicall witt, as England, he sayth, never had the like before, nor never shall againe, universally, as well in the lawes of our Realme, as in all other sciences right well studied." His report of that blissful country has been pronounced the only work of literary genius of the age in England, and it has not lost its charm in three hundred and seventy-seven years. Ralph Robinson, who most happily translated it from the original Latin into the English of Edward VI., was justified in entitling the book "a frutefull, pleasaunt and wittie worke of the best state of a publique weale, and of the new yle, called Utopia."

Concerning the wit of the "Utopia," there can be no question, in the later as in the earlier sense of the word. More was a man of infinite humor, joined to an unaffected piety. He could ascend with a smile the shaking scaffold, from which the smallest time-serving would have saved him, saying, "I pray you, I pray you, Mr. Lievetenaunt, see mee safe upp, and for my cominge downe lett mee shift for my selfe." "After his prayers sayed, hee turned to the

executioner, and with a cheerful Countenaunce spake unto him, 'Pluck upp thie spirittes, man, and be not affrayed to doe thine office, my neck is very short. Take heede, therefore, thou scute not awrie for savinge thine honestie."" The humor which did not forsake him before the headsman's axe plays incessantly over the pages of his narrative of the travels of Raphaell Hythlodaye. The mariner thus surnamed ("skilled in non-sense") had "sailed indeede, not as the mariner Palinure, but as the experte and prudent prince Ulisses; yea, rather as the auncient and sage philosopher Plato." He had toiled over leagues of tropical desert, until his eyes beheld the very pleasant land "Nusquama," or "Utopia," which, being interpreted, is "Nowhere." Amaurote ("the dimly seen ") is its chief city, by which flows the Anyder ("waterless "river). The Utopians have for allies the Nephelogetes ("cloud-dwellers "), and for enemies the Alaopolitans ("citizens of Blind Man's Town").

Sir Thomas was not a professional reformer of the type the world has come to know well, who, with all his virtues, has had the gift of humor denied him by the immortal gods, and whose stubborn skull is more impenetrable by a jest than the traditional Scotchman's. An ornament of the New Learning of his day, cultured, accomplished, traveled, a statesman, philosopher, scholar, man of faith, and soul of honor, Sir Thomas More was not built on the narrow scale of most of the idealists who would reconstruct society. He has expressed himself in every degree of seriousness and playfulness in his famous book. Nobly indignant when he describes the conspiracy of the rich against the poor in Henry Seventh's reign, he uses pleasant satire and easy banter again and again in his

exposition of the Utopian laws and customs. The "Utopia" is a masterpiece of wit, written by a man who knew the world, and sent forth this book, inspired by Colet and Erasmus, not as a sure prophecy of the form civilization must take in a thousand years or less, but as a quickener of human sympathy and a stimulus to thought and to faith in man.

More's fine fancy and playful humor have made his plea for human brotherhood immortal. His far-seeing eye anticipated more than one of the greatest conquests of the modern spirit. Free public education for both sexes; the liberty of every man to worship God according to his own conviction; peace between nations; humanity in penal laws; healthful dwellings; well-appointed hospitals; abundant recreation; shorter hours of labor for all classes, in these great matters, his Utopia has been a model to our most advanced civilization. Still we lag in the rear of the "philosophical city" in more than one point wherein Time may yet justify Sir Thomas' sagacity, his principles being as sound, apparently, as in the matters just named, and the difficulties no more insuperable. Not yet is the intellectual life as much an object of desire and attainment as in that thoughtful land. For, before the nine hours' work which is sufficient to procure comfort for all, "it is a solempne custome there to have lectures daylye in the morning, where to be presente they onely be constrained that be namely [especially] chosen and appoynted to learninge. Howbeit a greate multitude of every sort of people, both men and women, go to heare lectures, some one and some another, as everye mans nature is inclined." Thus do the Utopians show that though "when nede requireth," they are "liable to abide and suffer much