"They [the peasants] kneel as they were taught to kneel "The fluttering of the fallen leaves Dimples the leaden pool awhile; Youth's tale of troubles with a smile." Or as in the following from another person: "Goodnight! The hawk is in its nest, "The woodbine, somewhere out of sight, The sister stars that once were seven, Mourn for their missing mate in heaven." In all these passages the thought is clear, complete and chastened. The language is limpid and musical. The poet's meaning sings itself, without being open to a doubt. There is no straining after effect, and yet there are no lapses into bald slovenly prose." In the same number of the National Review, Mr. Maurice Low writes from an English standpoint on "American Affairs." He says that if this were in 1908 instead of 1906, and if conditions then were what they are now, the two presidential candidates would be Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bryan. He recalls that before the National Republican Convention of 1900, Theodore Roosevelt declared that he did not want and would not accept the Vice-Presidential nomination; and he meant it with all his might; he was absolutely sincere. But when the time came he was powerless in the grasp of events, and the nomination was forced upon him in spite of himself. (This brings to mind the exceedingly able argument by Dr. D. D. Thompson, editor of the Northwestern Christian Advocate, in a recent number of Collier's Weekly, in which Dr. Thompson shows that Mr. Roosevelt is now serving his first Presidential term and not his second, having only filled out McKinley's term as Acting President, and not as President.) Mr. Low expresses great admiration for the intellectual capacity and high character of Secretary Taft and Secretary Root, both statesmen in the truest and best sense of the word, either of whom would make an admirable President and maintain the high traditions of that great office. Yet he says, "It is no reflection on them to say that neither of them has gripped the popular imagination as Mr. Roosevelt has; neither commands more than a small fraction of his personal following. Root and Taft may be more profound and logical, and yet to the country at large both are little more than names, while Roosevelt is a strong and fascinating personality, the most vivid, scintillating and prismatic personality in the history of American politics." He says: "Roosevelt, like Loyola or Wesley, and other men of that stamp, from the days of Peter the Hermit, is a propagandist, who loves to exhort, and necessarily must preach against existing evils." The agitation against the criminal rich, who are the worst promoters of anarchy—against law breaking trusts and monopolies; the prosecution of corporation officials, the control of railways, the proper inspection of Chicago packing houses; all these movements for the protection of the many from the criminal greed of the few, are spoken of as evidence of a moral awakening, a new ethical spirit in the American people. Mr. Low says: "Senator Beveridge, who has already had a brilliant career, and of whom even more brilliant things are predicted, recently said: 'What you are seeing is a national movement for the moral regeneration of business,' and the view he takes is this: After the Civil War the nation plunged into money-getting. Its whole energy was wrapped up in that pursuit. Broadly speaking, the question of how the money was got was a minor matter; the important thing was for the nation to grow rich. The nation did grow rich; it succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the past. Now the time has come when the nation can set itself to the consideration of how money should be made, and it is vastly to the country's credit that it is grappling with that problem in a stern and remorseless manner." A GLIMPSE of the rapid progress of world-affairs in many nations is given in the editorial comments of The Westminster Review (London) for September. Referring to the Czar of Russia's autocratic dissolution of the Duma, the legislature which he had created, the Westminster says: "Strangely enough, at the very time that the Duma is dissolved, the Shah of Persia, troubled by internal dissensions, and largely influenced by the example of Russia, has at length conceded the popular demand by establishing a National Council, comprising representatives of all classes from princes to tradesmen. Should this new departure prove successful, as we hope it may, Persia in her turn will afford her great neighbor an object lesson that may well have the happiest influence upon Russia's future destiny. It would appear that not only Persia but-wonder of wonders!-China also is to have a Parliament. A Reuter's telegram, dated Peking, August 21, tells us that "The Commissioners who recently returned from their tour abroad recommend a gradual change to Constitutional Government, taking ten or fifteen years to educate the people to adapt themselves to the new régime." In an article on "The Proper Sphere for Sport," is the following: "The history of civilization shows that a great access of wealth and ease leads to an abnormal growth of amusements, which become a serious object in life, instead of being a recreation to fit men for their work. Let us see to it that we do not come down from our high estate as Rome did in days gone by!" An article on "The Beauty of Life" sets forth the views of William Morris, who was not only an artist and a poet, but a prophet with a message for his times. His gospel related to the joy and beauty of life, and the dignity and happiness of labor when properly surrounded. He was especially troubled at the sordid ugliness of modern towns, and their lack of trees and open spaces. Of this he wrote: "Until our streets are decent and orderly and our town gardens break the bricks and mortar every here and there, and are open to all people; until our meadows, even near our towns, become fair and sweet, and are unspoiled by patches of hideousness; until we have clear sky over our heads and green grass beneath our feet; until the great drama of the seasons can touch our workmen with other feelings than the misery of winter and the weariness of summer; till all this happens our museums and art schools will be but amusements of the rich; and they will soon cease to be of any use to them also, unless they make up their minds that they will do their best to give us back the fairness of the earth. When art comes to its own, it will make our streets as beautiful as the woods, as elevating as the mountain sides; it will be a pleasure and a rest, and not a weight upon the spirits to come from the open country into a town; every man's house will be fair and decent, soothing to his mind and helpful to his work; all the works of man that we live amongst and handle will be in harmony with nature, will be reasonable and beautiful; yet all will be simple and inspiriting, not childish nor enervating; for as nothing of beauty and splendor that man's mind and hand may compass shall be wanted from our public buildings, so in no private dwelling will there be any signs of waste, pomp, or insolence, and every man will have his share of the best." The author of the article says: "When the refinement of art, music, and culture generally are lacking in a community, and thought is concentrated on what are regarded as the 'practical' affairs of life, the tastes of the lower classes will inevitably run towards low sports and vulgar pleasures. Even the few who keep themselves from such live incomplete and colorless lives. In the 'hurrying blindness of civilization,' the higher graces and pleasures of life are regarded as of no account, or as luxuries that may be sought after when the bodily needs and appetites have been satisfied; but it is just these things that raise mankind above the level of the animal. When we have food, clothing, and shelter we have only got the animals' share of life, and our working population are thought to have all they have a right to ask for when these are secured to them; but the higher needs of the soul are of even a more essential and practical nature than the requirements of the body, for they go to mold the character and make life worth living. Anything that tends to divert the mind from the sordid necessities of life is good for a man or a community; everything that brightens existence, even in its outward aspect, as color, light, music, art, harmonious movement, or the fall of sparkling water, is elevating in its tendency. When the urban councilors of Xrefuse to make the fountain play because of the expense to the rates, they are not acting in the interests of the inhabitants. I venture to say that the constant sight of the splashing water, and the murmuring sound of its fall, would be of as much benefit to the people as the Free Library, for the support of which a penny rate is levied; for the brightness of the fountain everyone would share and appreciate; whereas only a minority of the population use the library, and of these probably but a small percentage derive genuine profit from their reading." BOOK NOTICES RELIGION, THEOLOGY, AND BIBLICAL LITERATURE The Song of Ages. By REGINALD J. CAMPBELL. strong and Son. Price, cloth, net, $1.25. 12mo, pp. 308. New York: A. C. Arm Another volume of seventeen sermons from the minister of the City Temple, London, not all uniformly equal to his best, but full of the same quality and the same urgency, the same directness. In the title-sermon on the "Song of Moses and the Lamb" (Rev. 15. 3), Mr. Campbell says: "Sir Thomas More, going to the scaffold in the days of Henry VIII for his faith, sang the Song of Moses and the Lamb. He had no bitter complaint to offer; there was no self-pity in his mind; he went bravely and quietly to the scaffold without fear. It was all one to him-earth today, heaven tomorrow, both with God. When he died, as while he lived, he sang the great Song. John Bunyan in Bedford Gaol-compare him with some of the servants of the Most High with whom you and I have to do at the present hour, full of complaining and self-pity and whining. Nothing of this in Bunyan; he rejoices that he is counted worthy to be crucified with Christ. Whether in prison or out of it, he sang the great Song. Not long ago, I heard that song sung at a grave side. It was the funeral of a Salvation Army lassie, at which I officiated. To my surprise, when the burial service was over, except the benediction, the little company of friends surrounded the coffin and broke forth in rapturous songs of joy and gladness. She had wished it so, and it was fitting, for her beautiful life of sacrifice and unselfish service was itself a song of triumph; and her friends were only doing now over her ashes what she was doing before the Throne-singing the Song of Moses and the Lamb." John G. Paton, the veteran missionary of the South Sea Islands, tells of the influence his father's daily habits had on the life of the home. The father was a poor man, a stocking weaver, in one of the poor districts of Scotland; but he was a man of prayer. There was one little room into which he retired daily, and sometimes several times a day: and the great missionary says: "We children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct, for the thing was too sacred to be talked about, that prayers were being poured out there for us as though by the high priest within the veil of the Holy of Holies. We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes of the trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we children learned to slip out and in, past that door on tiptoe, and not to disturb the holy converse. The outside world might not know, but we knew whence came that happy life, that new-born smile that was always dawning in my father's face. It was a reflection from the divine presence in the consciousness of which he lived. Never in temple or cathedral or mountain or glen can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and open work. Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of my memory or blotted from my understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes and shut itself up again in that sanctuary, and hearing still the echo of those cries to God, would hurl back at doubt with the victorious appeal: 'He walked with God; why may not I?" Quoting these words of John G. Paton, Mr. Campbell says: "Now I want you, young and old, who could not have written that passage, to weigh well this fact, that the experience of this old Scottish weaver, which cast such a spell on the life of his son, is as much a fact of the universe as the rain that is falling outside, and it needs to be accounted for and given its due place. It is the most precious thing in the whole range of possible human experience that a man might walk with God, that the light eternal might shine in his heart, that the soul might live. Truly this is life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent. There is no other life that is life indeed." Here is a sample of the godly good-sense of the minister of the City Temple: "Yesterday I spent part of my time in answering a letter sent to me by a young man who attends here; it was put somewhat in this wise: 'How can I know of a certainty that I belong to the Lord Christ?' The writer wrote like a true man, as I doubt not he would speak like a true man. 'I have small sympathy,' he said, 'with rhapsodies and lip-religion, but I do wish to discover the right way and walk in that. I have often prayed that the experiences of which I read as taking place in Wales and at the Albert Hall, and in the lives of the Augustines and Bunyans and Spurgeons of history, might have been mine; but God has never spoken to me that way, and I feel somehow perhaps that there may be something wrong with me, and I know it not; how can I know I belong to the Lord Christ?' Through him I speak to all such as he. Conversion is a turning from sin and a turning toward God. Get firmly hold of that fact. Feelings are an endowment which may or may not accompany it; but the man whose heart is right with holiness and truth, whose face is turned that way, is of the seed of Abraham and the friend of God, however little he may feel himself worthy of the call." That great old hero, John G. Paton, is quoted again and again. Once, when he was laboring all alone among the savages of the New Hebrides to bring them to the knowledge of Christ, an overwhelming sense of failure and a great despondency came upon him. He tells of this experience thus: "In discouragement, almost in despair, one night, after long praying, I fell into a deep sleep in my cabin, and God granted me a heavenly dream, or vision, which greatly comforted me, explain it how you will. Sweetest music, praising God, arrested me, and came nearer and nearer. I gazed toward it approaching, and seemed to behold hosts of shining beings bursting into view. The brilliancy came pouring all from one center, and that was ablaze with insufferable brightness. Blinded with excess of light, my eyes seemed yet to behold in fair outline the form of the glorified Jesus, but as I lifted them to gaze on his face the joy deepened into pain; my hand rose instinctively to shade my eyes. I cried out with ecstasy. The music passed farther and farther away, and I started up, hearing a voice saying in marvelous power and sweetness, 'Who art thou, |