had bought his food weighed in the deceitful balances. Mayhap he too was wandering homeless from the land that had been his fathers' since the days of Joshua. His cry for justice may have been raised in vain, his reverence for religion shocked by the vileness of its priests. The problem of Micah arose from the awful realities of life; his burning denunciations from the living sufferings of the soul.

From the soul too comes his answer. Though the conditions of his time were very like the conditions before the Peasant Revolt in England or the Revolution in France, Micah is no Wat Tyler, calling on the people for an armed resistance; he is no Marat, burning, hunting, slaughtering his oppressors. There is not a suggestion of personal vengeance in his words. Vengeance will come, it is true, but it will be the vengeance of Jehovah; the oppressed will be delivered, but it will be the deliverance of a God-sent Messiah. And Micah, with supreme faith, tells of destruction to come, implores justice and repentance, but raises no hand to hasten the immutable plans of the Lord. Spiritual is his vengeance, and spiritual is his remedy,— no relief associations, no public schools. It is not the suffering that he seeks to alleviate, it is the disease that he would cure. So he calls upon the whole nation to put itself in such an attitude to God, to draw so near Him, to be so filled with His spirit, that sin shall be impossible, that suffering and desolation, the fruits of sin, shall be no more. "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

In his answer, Micah is like Amos. Practically, perhaps, he is Amos's inferior, but religiously he is above him. Their problems were the same, only the scene was different. Commercial dishonesty, greed for land, the corruption of justice,-both had to meet the same foes, both seek a remedy for the same ills. The remedy of Amos is more judicial. Individual righteousness plays a part, it is true, but the greater emphasis is on the free and uncorrupted administration of justice; while Micah, though demanding justice, puts this and all other demands in a more spiritual light. Hosea's solution seems a compromise between the solutions of Micah and Amos. His problem is a more general expression of the specific grievances against which. they inveigh. "Injustice and cruelty" is his cry, and the em

phasis is on the cruelty. So in his answer he demands justice with Amos, though in a more general way, and mercy with Micah, though in a more emotional and less spiritual way.

When we turn to compare Micah and Isaiah, we find at once a greater difference. Micah is the peasant, stung by personal wrong and suffering. Isaiah is the statesman, reading clearly and coolly the problems of his time, and as clearly and coolly thinking out their solution. He lived at the same time that Micah did, and, though he looked at life from a very different point of view, he read its social problems in the same words. It is in his solution that we see the statesman most plainly. He demands all that Micah demands, though, like the other prophets, in a more material way, but he demands more, and here is the point of departure. He demands the recognition of the value of the individual. You must not deny justice to the poor, he argues, not only because in so doing you are oppressing him, but because you are withholding from him his birthright as a man. I will make a man more precious than fine gold, even than the golden wedge of Ophir." It is this that connects Isaiah with the statesmen of modern times, and gives him a place with Cromwell, Lincoln, and Jefferson. Yet for all this, his answer is not so spiritually great as that of Micali. It is more practical-oh, by far!-and therefore greater in the affairs of the world; but if humanity could attain to the perfection of the ideal in Micah, would not the equality of man be the result? To deal justly": could we render each man absolute justice without acknowledging that, as a man, he has equal rights with his brothers? Could we love mercy and see one man set himself over another to crush and oppress him? Could we walk humbly with our God, without realizing that "one is our master, even Christ"?

Thus in comparing the four social prophets of Jewish history, we see that Amos is more judicial, Hosea more emotional, Isaiah more philosophical, and Micah most spiritual.

But why limit our problem to Jerusalem, our answers to prophetic times? Is it not the essential characteristic of a prophet that he speak for all times, even though he know it not? The problems of our day and of Micah's are the same. Micah's answer, as the words of a true prophet, is alive to-day. His is an answer for the nineteenth century Anno Domini, as it was for the eighth before Christ. But it is not the answer of

the nineteenth century. An age the most mechanical, the most progressive the world has yet seen, we solve our problems by institutions, by education. We formulate cunningly devised theories and try them on certain communities of unfortunates. We establish numberless societies. We expend millions of dollars. We devote thousands of lives. And are the poor any better off now than they were in the days of Micah? Belike, yes. But are they better off in proportion to our increased possibilities for helping them, to our advanced education and enlightenment? Has Micah's answer no help for us to-day ? Shall it be scoffed at as visionary, ideal, the crude production of a crude age?

It seems to me, that at the close of his "Progress and Poverty" Mr. George is feeling for some such spiritual solution, that, down in his heart, he turns to such alone with living hope. And there are words more authoritative than any answer of Mr. George's, words that, no matter when spoken, will always be the final decision for all problems of life; and these seem to me to correspond in spirit with the words of Micah. When Jesus, asked by John the Baptist whether He were indeed the Christ, enumerates the signs by which His divine commission may be known, He does not say, "The poor become rich," "The poor have equal portion of the good things of the earth." He answers simply, in words adapted from one of the old prophets themselves, "To the poor the gospel is preached."

Let us not give up our philanthropic enterprises. Let us not slacken our practical zeal. But when we study ways and means, surely we should turn to that book whereby all life should be governed, and, finding there the same problems, study there the answer which, primitive though it be, came from a more simple and simple-hearted age; came from, what we often are not, a man that was one of the people, crushed with them, wronged with them; came from one who, though all life seemed against him, never lost that triumphant faith that could give him patience in the midst of poverty and distress to await the appointed day of the Lord. Give, work, think; but teach the poor, the wretched, the influential, the fortunate, "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God."

MARGARET WILSON MCCUTCHEN.

JEREMIAH

A man uncrowned by what we call success,

Bereft of life's twin blessings, home and friends, He gained in losing all things save the best.

We lose in gaining our ignoble ends.

RUTH ALLEN BENEDICT.

TO A SKEPTIC

Not live again! Look in a lovely face

And see the soul's own marvels written there; The earnest brow, the loving depths of blue, The lips that scorn destruction and despair.

Kneel at the bedside of a dying friend,

Clasp his brave hand and look into his eyes. More beautiful than birth, or life, or love—

The smile that slumbers on a face that dies.

Watch from your hill the children of the vale,
Those who on frozen fields are left to die,
Trampled by the armies of the great.

They shiver at the stillness of the sky.

And must they take no part, or one so mean
In the great drama of the universe?
Why bear the torture of a tiny scene,
If not for greater dramas to rehearse?

Look at the earth-bed of a vanished lake,
Where once the moon flashed silver on its breast.
Those waters on a thousand shores may break,

A thousand times within the snow-clouds rest.

Shall man who checks the flood and rides the seas
Appear but once in consciousness and power?
Then should he bow indeed to woodland springs
And worship every raindrop in the shower.

No, not the earth with all its richest store
Can be the great inheritance of man.
A life to live was Nature's,-God gave more,
A day that opened where the night began.
ETHEL HALE FREEMAN.

It was the evening of the Harvard-Yale foot-ball game, and the Union Station was swarming with wearers of the crimson or the blue, all pushing their way toward the suburban trains which were slowly puffing out of the station. A crowd of foot-ball enthusiasts is usually a good-natured one, and there was little jostling or pushing, though no one could make any headway except as the whole mass moved by intermittent jerks, which generally threw one off his own feet on to his neighbor's. Suddenly, however, the crowd felt itself uncomfortably condensed by an unexpected impetus from the rear, and those who could manage to turn their heads at all had the pleasure of seeing Dexter Curtis, Jr., dashing madly through the crowd with the reckless enthusiasm of his foot-ball days. His hat was on the back of his head and his face was very red, but there was a look in his eye that caused the boldest newsboys to duck out of his path and made the crowd separate as best it could to let him by. The sacrifice of his own cherished dignity and the discomfort of the rest of humanity were small items to Curtis at the present moment, the point at issue being to get Miss Channing on the Millfield train in time, as he had promised.

The young lady in question was running distractedly in his wake, holding on her hat with one hand, and making futile snatches at her trailing skirt with the other, in which she carried a Harvard banner and a huge bunch of red chrysanthemums. "Do you think we can do it ?" they heard her gasp as she ran by.

"Yes, come on if you can,-the train is always a minute late!" shouted Curtis.

But when they reached the outer tracks there was the Millfield train already steaming out of the station, while the gateman stood before the closed gates as stolidly as though he had not committed an unpardonable crime in sending the train out on time. He even had the assurance to grin broadly at the disheveled couple who rushed up to him, breathless and exhausted. "Sorry, can't let you through," he said. "Train's too far out."