be passed on General Wilkinson's attack on La Colle Mill.

.. Neither one of these affairs was a stand-up fight; in each a greatly superior force, led by an utterly incapable General, retreated after a slight skirmish with an enemy whose rout would have been a matter of certainty had the engagement been permitted to grow serious.'

"On page 23 he says: "The small British army marched at will through Virginia and Maryland, burned Washington, and finally retreated from before Baltimore and reembarked to take part in the expedition against New Orleans.' On page 36 he says, in referring to the cause of the war: 'None of her (British) acts were more offensive than Napoleon's Milan decree.... What we undoubtedly should have done was to have adopted the measure actually proposed in Congress, and declared war on both France and England. . . We had warred for the right, not because it was the right, but because it agreed with our self-interest to do so.' Page 37: 'Nominally, neither of these questions was settled by, or even alluded to, in the treaty of peace.' Page 38: 'When the United States declared war, Great Britain was straining every nerve and muscle in a death struggle with the most formidable military despotism of modern times, and was obliged to entrust the defense of her Canadian colonies to a mere handful of regulars, aided by local fencibles.' Page 39: The number of combatants was so small that in Europe they would have been regarded as mere outpost skirmishers, and they wholly failed to attract any attention abroad in that period of colossal armies.'

999

British precedent to back him up. There is a significant substitution in one line in all British editions of Bryant's 'Song of Marion's Men,' that poem which has been declaimed by so many American schoolboys. When the poem reached England it was seen that the line: "The British soldier trembles when Marion's name is told,' would never do. So the words, 'British soldier' were changed to 'foreign hireling.' The idea of a British soldier trembling at anything was obviously absurd to Englishmen.

Do the statements of Roosevelt in his history of the War of 1812 condemn him as unpatriotic? we are asked. If our histories must be revised in the interests not of truth but of international prejudice or comity, Mr. Arthur Maurice suggests in the New York Herald that we shall also have to set to work on the fiction. The gibes of the British novelists at America and Americans and of American novelists at Britain and the British present a matter only half-humorous:

"Of course, nowadays, no one except the overexcitable defec-, tive ever takes that seriously. On our side perhaps we feel too secure in our material affluence, in that sense of possession

"NEXT?"

-Nelson Harding in the Brooklyn Eagle.

"To confine attention to the novelist, here, at random, are a few works of British fiction offered as fit subjects for slight expurgation or revision: Dickens's 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' Thackeray's "The Newcomes,' Du Maurier's "Trilby,' and Kipling's short story, 'An Error in the Fourth Dimension,' and Doyle's short story, 'His Last Bow.' The first two were once taken very seriously. When Dickens first came to the United States American feelings had been severely rasped by Mrs. Trollope's 'The Domestic Manners of the Americans,' and also by an indiscreet speech delivered by Capt. Marryat, the genial chronicler of the exploits of Mr. Midshipman Easy. Dickens, wildly acclaimed, pelted with hospitality, and yet continually irritated by intrusions which were no less boorish because they were well meant, went home and wrote 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' with its scathing pictures of New York and of the town he called Eden. Hot resentment against not only Dickens but against everything English flamed up and Poe is believed to have written a counterblast which was either lost or supprest after reflection.

which Kipling probably meant if he made that remark about our having all the gold in the world,' and which Bunin pictured in the remarkable story, "The Gentleman from San Francisco.' But when the Republic was younger it seems to have been made up largely of 'patriots' who were oversensitive and overquick to take offense. The English, too, were touchy, and Commissioner Hirshfield, tho perhaps he does not know it, has

"Nearly as unfortunate and as disturbing to international harmony was a certain reference in the second chapter of Thackeray's The Newcomes.' Thackeray was picturing lightly a certain time in the eighteenth century. 'When Washington was leading the American rebels with a courage worthy of a better cause.' That was the offensive line, the line that caused many Americans in 1855 to flare up. Speciously and lamely Thackeray, with an American tour in prospect, attempted to explain the sting away, arguing that the line was not meant to express his sentiments, but such sentiments as properly belonged to a wig-wearing Briton of the year 1777, or thereabout. It was a weak evasion at best. Of course he meant it, and as a British Tory he should have meant it. . . .

"But for wildly eccentric alleged 'Americanese' the palm must be conceded to Kipling's 'An Error in the Fourth Dimension.' Here is Wilton Sargent, the product of everything that America has to give in the matter of education and culture. Yet under the stress of excitement, 'speech, gesture and step, so carefully drilled into him, had gone away with the borrowed mask of indifference. It was a lawful son of the youngest people, whose predecessors were the red Indian. His voice had arisen to the high, throaty crow of his breed when they labor under excitement. . He spun around and faced me excitedly. "It's as plain as mud. Those ducks are laying their pipes to skin me."

T

HE YOUTH OF THE SIX

CONTINENTS are betting their lives on a simplified faith, in which human brotherhood will hold its appointed high place. Their motive will be not to destroy what has been sanctified by the past, but to perpetuate the force which "has been sanctified for nineteen hundred years by One who came that men might have life and have it more abundantly." They want to get off the desert islands of denominationalism, to walk in the larger spaces of brotherhood, in which it will not matter whether a man's color is brown, black or white. They want to be caught up in "thrilling projects" which will make of religion as vital an influence in smoothing the lives of men as lubricating oil is in the never-ceasing machinery of a mill. "Apart from the reasonableness of it, pulling together with other people is hugely satisfying, and it is more than merely gregarious." It is a student of the Union Theological Seminary in New York, a student who has spent his life in living, as well as in moiling in a library, who writes. He has spent four years in the Far, Middle, and Near East, part of which time was in the Red Cross service in Palestine. In the undenominational seminary where he has been studying two and a half years one discusses, he writes in The Century Magazine, "St. Paul's ideas of marriage with Gbe Wolo, Harvard graduate and jet-black son of a Liberian chieftain; the sacraments with George Michaelides, brilliant Greek (Holy Orthodox) from the International College at Smyrna; the difference between divinity and deity with the son of a rabbi; the thirty-nine articles with a Cambridge student who fought on Gallipoli; lynching with a hard-boiled Baptist from Texas; the obsolescence of denominationalism with Y. Y. Tsu of Peking." With this experience back of him and in the making about him, Allan A. Hunter believes that the spirit of youth to-day is urgent for cooperation, for the sort of cooperation which brings from every man a share of the best he has, in which every man plays his part in the great game for God.

a

It has been said that no common religious factor can be discovered which will unite the youth of to-day. But, asks Mr. Hunter in his article on "What I Should Like to Preach," "have we not got it here—a common factor in the strivings of all idealistic young people? I believe that not only can we join here, but that we can go together on an even wider basis, holding in common a reverence for the divine fire in human life. No doubt it interests only those who care for friends intensely, but most of us who care with all our heart and all our strength agree that personality must somehow continue." One of the obstacles to this consummation is war-"war that is bred of overweening nationalism, of the stupid swank of battle-gray dreadnoughts or goose-stepping regiments, that overrides the rights of conquered and conquerors alike, that respects nobody." But how can war be stopt? "By building up a new patriotism, for one thing. Those of us who have the dawn of a brighter day in our eyes are beginning to realize that we must develop within us a deeper love for our country-the love of motherland that considers it treason to disrespect other countries. And that means we must toil terrifically in behalf of an organized world court and an international police force to back the decisions of that court." Another obstacle is class domination. "What right under the blue sky has any employer or any corporation to accept in exchange for a pittance twelve hours of machine-like drudgery from human beings seven days in the week. . . . God help us if we can not see that labor is not a commodity!" Again,

"Divisiveness in industry is of the devil. Equally of the devil is race arrogance. Wells is right: race prejudice 'justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty, and abomination than any other sort of error in the world.' If the Turks had not nursed it, there would have been no atrocities. If the British had wiped it out of their minds six years ago, there would not be the 'Indian situation' to-day. If we Americans took our democracy seriously, the people of India would not be reading with such horror what a friend in Bengal described as a bestseller, 'The Martyred Race,' an account of the lynchings and other mistreatment of negroes in the United States. The race snobbishness that shouts, 'We nordics are the people!' is riding for a fall, and the sooner we get off that high horse, the better for us."

The last obstacle, and the one which will have to be striven against most desperately, is sex irresponsibility, for the mind of this "questioning" generation, thinks Mr. Hunter, "is being colored far more than older people realize by an influential group of writers who are challenging the ideal of chastity as it has never before been challenged." Vast numbers of young people in America are frankly adopting the too tolerant attitude of the clever young newspaper woman who says: "The longer I live, the less I blame anybody for anything." As regards sex laxity, "it is not merely that they do not hate the sinner (and for this freedom from priggishness let us be thankful), but it is that they tolerate or even condone the sin. Many of them have no convictions at all." All this is confusing to the student leaders of the Orient, who are tempted "to throw over the morality of their own civilizations and seize with both hands the license of the new." And if the young people of the West fail to make their stand at the Verdun of the home and the rigorous necessity for monogamy, "we shall risk being overrun by barbarism." We must work out a new chivalry, suggests the writer, a chivalry based on self-restraining respect of men for women and women for men. Even more important, perhaps, is "a new chivalry toward the race, a eugenics conscience." But this does not look to birth control, for what we need, says Mr. Hunter, "is not so much birth reduction as birth release; birth release among families of character, a new consecration of motherhood to the future, a new dedication of fatherhood to the race." Otherwise,

"If we devote ourselves to cutting down the population without remembering the obligation of increasing life in homes rich with wholesomeness, we are cavalierly playing with forces that may destroy the best human heritage of the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, as well as our own Anglo-Saxon world. For is it not in the home, in the tenderness and care of parents, that youth first finds God Himself?

"Not every young idealist in the world will join with us in meeting the issues thus, of course. But I believe that numbers of us, perhaps in every country, who do not care to remain behind in the stuffy dugouts, can agree to go forward and fight shoulder to shoulder on this firing-line against the foes of free development and for the forces of frankness and trust that make men one."

In the great push developing the Church will not be hopeless or helpless, thinks the writer. He is "sure that notwithstanding its undeniable squeamishness, its cramping denominationalism, the Church can not help but be inspired to a new endeavor by its avowed Redeemer."

"One who walked in the open sunshine of the Galilean hills in the candor of God. One who met men eating and drinking, quick with redemption, exuberant with laughing humor, gesturing with immense great jollity as he made fun of the pious sticklers who strain at a gnat only to swallow a camel.

"It is in Jesus that the spirit of youth unites and always will unite, for his was a radiant respect for the personality of every man. And we who want a more generous world must share his chivalry. We must be fair to the other fellow's point of view, recognizing that he will have a vision through spectacles different from our own, not forgetting that before our own special creed is the universal creed of the sportsman who looks the other man in the eye and fearlessly declares, 'May the highest ideal triumph, whether yours or mine, my friend!""

THE HEARTH AN ALTAR TO GOD

T

RANSLATING AN ANCIENT ROMAN CUSTOM into Christian terms, an Espiscopalian layman and his wife, of Westchester County, New York, have dedicated their new home to God and brought under its roof to live with them their daughter and son-in-law and two little grandsons. The Roman custom was to erect altars to the Lares and Penates and to light the fire with sacred embers from the perpetual fire in the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. The modern imitation was to inscribe dedicatory lines above the hearth in the living-room. To the four clergymen and a hundred other guests gathered for the housewarming in early spring, writes the Rev. Paul Gordon Favour in The Churchman (Episcopal), "it was an unusual and profoundly impressive symbol of the religious foundation of the Christian home." When all were assembled, after looking over the house, they were welcomed in the living-room by the son-in-law. Then, after all had sung "Auld Lang Syne," the master of the house standing before the fireplace, where logs had already been placed, said that it seemed fitting to "dedicate this new home upon the broadest religious ideals and in the most universal faith." Here he drew aside a drapery which concealed a timber built into the fireplace and immediately above the hearth on which, carved in letters of gold, were these words: "In Recognition of the Blessings of Almighty God This Home Is Dedicated to Faith, Hope and Love." As he recalls them, writes Mr. Favour, the concluding words were these:

.

"If there is to be good citizenship, we must live in faith, hope and love. We stand here to witness to this truth to these grandsons (referring to the two little boys who stood near) so that when they come to manhood their citizenship will be grounded upon these fundamental virtues.' As the speaker finished he touched a match to the wood and the company then sang 'Fling out the banner, let it float, seaward and skyward.' The little grandsons passed around with baskets of twigs and, in ready compliance with a suggestion made in the address, each guest took one and threw it on the blaze, indicating his or her contribution of good-will and hearty wishes for the future happiness of the members of the home.

"Then the paternal grandfather of the little boys, a distinguished educator in the State of New York, concluded the dedication with a very few words which revealed his deep emotion which the thought of the sacredness of the American home stirred in the guests as well. He said in substance this:

"I am gratified with the inscription. The words "faith, hope and love" mean about all there is of good in the world. The object of the home is to educate in good citizenship. We need this now more than ever in the America of to-day. There can be no good citizenship without good homes and there can be no good homes without faith, hope and love. I am glad to join in faith, glad to join in hope, and glad to join in love in wishing

.

often did not live to regret their error. Now, however, the world has constituted itself a court of inquiry into the practical utility of doctrinal standards, and in the main, we are told, that inquiry has given every evidence of sincerity, and the benefits have been commensurate with that sincerity. Still, isn't it necessary to have something tangible on which one may pin his faith?

At a time when the question takes front rank among those being discust in college debating societies and in magazines of wide circulation the contribution of Zion's Herald (Boston, Methodist) to the discussion is interesting and important as presenting what is presumed to be the view of a large section, to say the least, of Protestantism's largest denomination. Zion's Herald asks pertinently: "Will the logic of this inquiry regarding doctrines carry us to the point where no doctrine remains, or is there a stopping-place somewhere along the way where a determined Christianity will be required to say to the spirit of criticism, Thus far, shalt thou go, and no farther'? Searchers after that tolerance "so emblematic of the truth"

The

must remind themselves of the grave danger of suffering shallowness of conviction while developing breadth of conviction. Church, it is argued, is wide enough, broad enough, tolerant enough; but is it deep enough? Zion's Herald believes that it will not longer be possible to accuse the Church of theological and doctrinal bigotry. "Those days are happily gone, and will never return. But the Church to-day is laying itself liable to the even more fatal criticism of believing so much that it believes nothing at all." This "is not a plea for traditionalism as against liberalism. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around," and we are told:

"The only way the liberalism of the present hour can be sustained and given balance is to rescue the spirit of inquiry from the domination of those whose emotions are not amenable to reason and whose gushing utterances on theology and doctrine are mere opinions. The liberalizing influence now at work within the Church will continue, but it must continue in the hands of those whose devotion to Christ has not been infected with the mental jazz of quack theologians who know considerably more of political utopias than of gospel redemption.

"There are not a few reformers who are offering the Church the kingdoms of this world if only the Church will fall down and worship some kind of shadowy, ill-defined humanity. Those reformers sputter a great deal about fatherhood and brotherhood, but their vaguely conceived humanity is nothing more than the corpse of Auguste Comte's 'humanity' buried by an exasperated intelligence a hundred years ago.

"What we need is not less preaching about humanity but more preaching about God and Jesus Christ. If the Church is to have no firmer foundation than the ethical and moral idealism of modern humanitarian cults, then confusion and disaster await us in the future. Let the Church beware lest in its eagerness to save the world it be devoured by the world.

"The Church of to-day needs a Pentecostal revival of power, and that revival will never come unless the Church believes something and believes that something tremendously. We do not want any more static, ecclesiastically fixt doctrine from which there can be no deviation. We do not want any more doctrinal bigotry that is always threatening dissenters with trials for heresy. We do not want any more pharisaic search for exactness and strict conformity to doctrinal precepts. What we do want is a doctrine as functional as life itself, a doctrine that will progressively serve each new day in which we live, but none the less a doctrine to which we cling with the tenacity and faith of our fathers."

Ministers must not cause their congregations to believe that they have abandoned doctrine altogether, and communicants must not let the unchurched believe that they have surrendered all faith in every part of the historic doctrines of the Church and that the only thing that separates them is the perfunctory habit of church-going. For, declares Zion's Herald:

"There is a place for doctrine in the Christian Church. When there is no longer a place for doctrine, the Church will cease to exist. A doctrineless Church may continue as a sort of community club-house and neighborhood festal board, but it will never be the power of God unto salvation. The average community is well equipped with bowling-alleys and swimmingpools and club-house facilities. What every community needs, more than it needs anything else, is a prophet's pulpit where the eternal verities of God's imperishable truth are preached with inspiration and conviction. The truth that God is our Father; that Jesus Christ, in some mystical yet soul-satisfying way, is our Saviour; that sin is a blinding, cursing reality with more than subjective dimensions; that the power of God in a man's life is the only force sufficient to overcome sin and conquer through righteousness; that the Cross is not without meaning in the hurrying, practical life of the twentieth century; that the Spirit of God in the world constitutes the supreme agency in behalf of character, and as such has a claim to the devotions of men prior to the claims of applied psychology and ethical cultism; that God's kingdom will come on earth only when we do unto others as we would be done by; and that a crowning immortality will bring to a rich fruition the aspirations of God's children for the more abundant life-these, and similar truths, will ever remain the chief corner-stone of the living Church. To remove that corner-stone is to invite disaster for the Church and endless chaos for the world.".

T

THE HORSE SENSE IN UNION

HEY UNITED TO BUILD A STABLE for their horses, and then the Presbyterians and Methodists of a Saskatchewan district separated to go to their respective churches. Residents of the district, we are told, naturally began to say that if the two sets of churchmen could have a common shed for their horses, they might display horse sense enough to have also a common building for their worship. The point finally struck home in Canada at large. By an overwhelming majority the Presbyterian General Assembly of Canada, in which the strongest opposition to the plan had developed, recently decided to merge with the Methodists and Congregationalists, and the new establishment, to be known as the United Church, awaits now only the necessary ratification by Parliament. The three denominations combined have nearly 800,000 members, the exact figures, as we find them quoted in the press, being: Methodist, 406,933; Presbyterian, 357,211, and Congregational, 32,149. Like the union church recently built in an Illinois village, this consolidation, says the Chicago Journal, “is a sign of the times. There was a time when people thought souls were lost or saved by refusing or accepting small points of doctrine." But "the modern Church is much less concerned about doctrines than about service, and the great service to be rendered by united effort is plain to all."

Naturally a merger of this kind can not be effected without opposition, and the Providence Journal informs us that many Presbyterians resent the action of the General Assembly, and that one of the speakers in the debate at Port Arthur went so far as to declare that it will disrupt not only the Church but 90 per cent. of the congregations. In fact, steps have already been taken to maintain the old Presbyterian Church organization. An address issued by the irreconcilables after the Assembly had voted for union says: "Eminent counsel are of the opinion that this action of the Assembly is beyond its power, unconstitutional and illegal. In any event, the Presbyterian Church is to continue in Canada. We count on all who value civil and religious freedom to stand fast in this hour of crisis." An opposing group centered in Winnipeg is reported to have announced that it will endeavor to get an injunction to prevent the merging of the property, and one prominent Presbyterian is quoted as saying that the proposed legislation "is of the most extraordinary character and is evidently the work of corporation lawyers adept in the gentle art of freezing out minority shareholders.”

On the other hand, the Rev. Dr. G. C. Pidgeon, a Presbyterian, is quoted as saying in the final debate, "It is a crime against the interests of the Kingdom of God to waste men and money by perpetuating denominationalism. It is vital that the three negotiating churches should go solidly into union. This the enabling bill is intended to secure, and this is one of the chief criticisms against it." He added that fifty-two out of fifty-six Presbyteries had declared in favor of the proposal. However, it appears as if church union in Canada has not yet gotten through the shoals, observes the Buffalo Express. "The controversy may be considered unfortunate by members of the sects directly concerned, but it is at least proof that there still are people who take their religion seriously."

Of course, the difficulties are not yet ended, observes The Christian Guardian, a Toronto Methodist weekly. The working out of the scheme will call for the heroic exercise of all the Christian qualities of patience and self-forgetfulness. “We may find ourselves many times in the midst of serious embarrassments as the months and the years go on. But the day will bring its own strength and wisdom, as it will bring its own problem and difficulty, and a Christian way out may always be found. Divine grace and strength will match themselves with human faith and courage, and we will go forward to the greater tasks and the finer service."