They well understand that most of that training, particularly in the lower grades, should be done by the native teachers and in schools that are supported by the natives themselves. The vocation of the Christian missionary is to train those teachers and the men and women who are to be the leaders of thought in other spheres of life. To this end, we must have an increasing number of colleges, normal schools, medical colleges, and theological seminaries. We are doing big things for the equipment of our home institutions; why should we not do big things for the equipment of the institutions in Asia and Africa? Here is the imperative opportunity of Christian men; and opportunity spells obligation.

THE QUICKENING OF THE PUBLIC CONSCIENCE

JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN, LL. D.

PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y.

The generation that has grown up since the Civil War has enjoyed unparalleled prosperity. No fundamental political problem, no great moral issue, has weakened the avidity of their material pursuits or disturbed the serenity of their sensuous enjoyment. Following the animal instincts of human nature, which, according to the evolutionist, are the most primitive and ineradicable, they have seen in material possessions the supreme object of life. I doubt whether if at any other time since the birth of Christ money has been held in such high esteem or sought with such keen intensity. Young and old alike have been infected with this contagion of Mammonism. Even our pulpits have not escaped commercialism. And the young men in our colleges and universities who formerly found the realization of their ideals in great poets, orators, philosophers, and scientists have been looking up with admiration to the Croesuses and Midases of our country with earnest longings to emulate their successes in the piling up of colossal fortunes. Money has been worshipped as a summum bonum, and the apostles and heroes and exemplars of the age have been the men who had gathered most of it.

This is a mania to which every generation and every individual is exposed. Its roots lie in the physical and animal nature of man with its sensuous needs and acquisitive propensities. But all religions and philosophies, as well as the reflection of ordinary man, teach that it is an utter illusion. Man lives not by bread alone. And the healthiest symptom which I have discerned in the movement of recent years is the perception, recognition, and acceptance of this truth on the part of the people. Only yesterday, as I have said, the objects of our real worship were our millionaires and billionaires. To-day we have torn down the altars of Mammonism and erected an altar to manhood. It seems as though the very excess to which our generation had gone in its honor and worship of money had brought its own Nemesis.

The attempt of human beings to live as though money were the only thing worth living for has produced a failure and catastrophe before our own eyes. A few years ago American parents rehearsed to their children the stories of the poor boys who became rich and famous. But now they have ceased to worship Croesus or Midas, and are probing the methods by which he acquired his fortune. That is to say, they are

subjecting wealth and men of wealth to moral standards. The supremacy of righteousness and character has once more asserted itself.

The sentiments and attitudes of people towards wealth as such have changed. We are no longer praying that our children may have big fortunes. We recognize that a little with the fear of the Lord is better than great riches. Nor is this moral awakening confined to the churches. It is perhaps quite as strong and vigorous outside the churches as within them. Some men may express their thought in religious language, and others in secular. But I think I make no mistake when I say that in the last few years Mammonism has been dethroned in this country; and while parents still desire for their children a sufficiency of bread, they nevertheless clearly recognize that higher still is intelligence, and above both, integrity of character and righteousness of life.

What I have been saying comes briefly to this: As individuals we had lost sight of the real end of life in the physical means and instrumentalities which subserved its lowest functions. But, like opium eaters, we have awakened from our hallucinations and once more we see life steadily, and see it whole; reason and conscience are the throne; money and the things it buys the mere footstool.

I find a similar awakening in the realm of politics. I read in the Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, himself a great moral leader and champion of all good causes, that though he had been active in many political campaigns, he knew none "in which the best impulses of human nature were so forceful and effective and aroused the masses to so high a pitch of almost religious fervor as in that of 1860." The reason, undoubtedly, is, that in those other campaigns no moral principles or political policies have been at stake which in intrinsic character or in far-reaching effect could for a moment be compared with the question of human freedom or slavery or the question of the maintenance of an indestructible Union of indestructible States. In the absence of such fundamental principles political parties tended to become an end in themselves. And the last generation of the 19th century was distinguished by partisanship of the bitterest type. Men now listening to me will recall how outrageously the Mugwumps were assailed and ridiculed when they appeared as supporters of Mr. Cleveland. It was taken for granted that a man would remain in the political camp in which he had been born and bred. To leave it was to desert a holy place. And the conception of leaders corresponded to this conception of party. The great man was no longer the advocate of a great cause or the inspirer of a free people, but the manager of the party organization, the master mechanic of the party

machinery, the boss of the party clan or tribe. The jurisdiction of the chief boss extended at least over the state. He had his satellites and henchmen in every county and city. And although governors and legislators were elected by the votes of the people, it was the boss who nominated them and the boss who, after election, controlled them in the exercise of their legislative or executive functions. Behind the Constitution, which had been framed to protect the rights of the people and establish their government, the boss, with due observance of constitutional and legal forms, reigned an unrestrained despot.

I do not think I have given an exaggerated description of the political life in our own state during the last two or three decades. Yet how changed is the picture to-day! The bosses are gone. Or if they maintain a torpid, lingering existence, they have lost their powers, and their demise is universally expected. And, not less wonderful, party politics has ceased to be the end of patriotism. Whether we look at our own state or at the Union, we can say with truth and with pride, that public policies are shaped and public administration controlled, not with reference to party victories at the polls, but with an eye single to the welfare of the people as a whole. This does not mean that we believe our President and governors infallible or that we are not opposed to some of their policies and administrative acts. It does mean, however, that for the first time in a generation party fetters have been so completely broken that the heads of some of our states and of our nation can devote themselves to the solution of problems of public welfare without regard to the exigencies of party and even in defiance of the magisterial commands of bosses.

I have no idea that parties are to disappear. But whenever patriotism degenerates into loyalty to party, it is high time for parties to be smashed. Parties exist for the sake of advocating some principle or carrying out some policy which shall promote the public welfare. They are mere means to an end. When the means usurps the end, when party successes at the polls are put first and the public welfare second, the party should be sternly ostracised. I rejoice that in these recent years we all are free without challenge of party or party bosses to work for principles and policies which make for the public welfare.

What I have said on this second head comes to this: For a long time political parties and bosses have intercepted the outgoings of patriotism by standing between patriotism and the commonwealth. To-day it is clear that the commonwealth and not the party is the end of patriotism, and patriotism has free scope to go out towards its own high object. If political parties are to regain vigorous life as I expect to see them

regain it it will be by recognizing themselves as instruments for the public good and not in themselves of any value as mere agencies to win elections.

This fundamental political awakening which I have described has for its platform the new or world-old principle of justice and the "square deal." It insists that all men shall be equal before the law. It claims equality of opportunity. It is at war with vested rights and favored classes. It protests against government as a partnership of the strong for the exploitation of the weak. It recognizes that evils, political as well as individual, have their root and abiding source in human nature. But it holds that the political ills from which we suffer may be remedied by laws impartially just and administration absolutely honest. It reveres the majesty of the law and pays homage to our courts of justice and the incorruptibility of their judges. But it is deeply persuaded that, in the executive and legislative branches of our government, power and wealth have had undue influence, often unconscious and unintentional rather than deliberate, but an influence nevertheless which works substantial hardship to large classes of our people. And it welcomes every measure of redress which, like recent federal legislation, tends to protect the people against monopolistic corporations which have it in their power to practise oppression. Justice is the fundamental characteristic of the state. The realization of justice may be said to be the end of all legislation and all administration. And justice is the platform of the new political movement I have described - justice in all things, to all parties, and in all circumstances. The time is coming when not only trusts but also the tariff and all other objects of legislation will be re-examined in the light of justice and fair play to all classes of citizens.

The new politics demands new leaders. Bosses are out of date. The need of to-day is not of mechanicians to run a machine, but of statesmen to voice the aspirations of a free and enlightened people and administrators to execute them with absolute honesty and devotion to public duty as soon as they have been enacted into law. It is an old saying that occasion breeds the men. This truth I find illustrated before our own eyes. If the public service of our day calls for men of clarity of vision, of sanity of judgment, of integrity of purpose, men of this type are not lacking. We have them in Folk at the capitol in Missouri, in Bryan on his Nebraskan farm, in Hughes at the executive mansion in Albany, and, most illustrious of all, in Roosevelt at the White House in Washington. In all the years in which I have watched public affairs, I have never known a time or a country in which the demands of the age and the expectations of the public challenged so potently all that