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The Election

Without attempting here to account for the victory of the Republican party at the polls, but reminding our readers that Mr. McKinley's popular plurality of seven hundred thousand in a total vote of about fifteen millions-that is, less than five per cent. of the total vote-does not indicate so overwhelming a public sentiment in favor of the Republican party and the Republican principles as would otherwise seem to be indicated by the overwhelming majority in the Electoral College, we here merely attempt to report the vote in some detail and to indicate the significance of local and sectional changes of feeling and opinion as shown by an analysis of the vote in the different parts of the country.

In the results reported in these columns last week the latest returns make no change whatever. Mr. Bryan's electoral vote is 155-the smallest received by any Democratic candidate since 1880, when General Hancock received the same number of votes in a smaller electoral college. It is, however, a larger vote by 10 than President Harrison received in 1892. Mr. McKinley's electoral vote is 292-the largest number ever received by any candidate for President, and the largest proportion of the electoral college supporting any candidate since 1872, when President Grant received 286 votes against 42 for his opponent. On the popular vote the latest reports confirm last week's estimates. some of the Southern States the local press has not yet published complete returns, but enough have been received to show that President McKinley's popular plurality is at least seven hundred thousand votes or about one hundred thousand more than four years ago. This plurality is one of the largest ever polled, though it is a trifle less than that received by President Grant in 1872, when the total vote was only half as large. Comparing the results this year with those four years ago, the East-particularly in the cities-shows Democratic gains, the South remains the same, and the West-particularly in the rural districts-shows Republican gains.

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issue of imperialism seem to have wo the Democratic party many votes at th expense of the Republican. In that se tion, however, the majorities against M Bryan in Maine and Vermont were abou four thousand less than the majoritie against the Democratic State candidate two months ago, and in Massachusett the majority against Mr. Bryan wa sixteen thousand less than that agains the Democratic candidate for Governor the same election. Congressman McCal the anti-imperialist Republican, ran thre thousand votes ahead of Mr. McKinley in his Congressional district. This vote seem to have registered the high-water mar of anti-imperialist enthusiasm. In Con necticut, owing chiefly to local issues, Mi Bryan ran fourteen thousand votes behind the Democratic candidate for Governor and in New York, owing chiefly to the silver issue, he ran nearly sixty thousand behind. In Pennsylvania the Republican plurality of three hundred thousand four years ago was repeated-and, unfortu nately, Mr. Quay is able to claim a majority in the newly elected Legislature.

In the Southern States the changes from four years ago were generally too trivial to record. In Maryland the Republican majority was reduced, and in Kentucky it was reversed, but in both States the Democrats failed to hold their own as compared with 1899. The Middle-of-the-Road Populist vote was insignificant except in Texas, and even there it was small. In the Middle West the Republicans sustained some losses in cities, where they had made their astounding gains in 1896, but in all States except Illinois more than offset these losses by gains in the rural districts where the Silver Republican movement had been strong four years ago. West of the Missouri the Republicans made enormous gains everywhere, though they did not, except on the Pacific coast, recover the strength they had prior to the rise of the Populist party. Here, as in the far East, there was a strongly marked return of voters to their old allegiance.

The most notable fact in the agricultural States was that, in Kansas and also in Nebraska, Mr. Bryan ran several thousand votes behind the Populist candidates for Governor. Whether this was due to Populist and Silver Republican

resentment of the rejection of Mr. Towne at Kansas City, or whether it was due to opposition to Mr. Bryan's position respecting the Philippines, is not clear. From the Rocky Mountains west, however, it is clear that the Republican party made enormous gains on the issue of expansion. In Utah a majority of five to one for Mr. Bryan in 1896 is replaced by a ma jority for Mr. McKinley, and in California, which was a doubtful State even before the silver question arose, the Republican majority is nearly forty thousand. Democrats do not dispute the cause of their loss in the Far West. Of the minor parties, the Prohibitionists claim to have doubled or trebled their vote of 1896, and the Social Democrats are pointing with pride to the fact that Mr. Debs polled five thousand votes in Chicago, and more votes than Mr. Bryan in Haverhill, Mass. The aggregate vote of the smaller parties cannot be accurately estimated until the official returns are published.

On these facts The Outlook sees no reason to change its general interpretation of the election as given editorially last week.

Silence and Solitude

"Besides that mental solitude to which you may retreat," wrote St. Francis of Sales," even amidst the largest companies, ... you ought also to love local and real solitude; not that I expect you to go into the desert, . . . but to be for some time alone in your chamber or garden, or in some other place where, undisturbed, you may withdraw your spirit into itself, and recreate your soul with pious meditations, holy thoughts, or by a little spiritual reading. After the example of the great Bishop of Nazianzum who, speaking of himself, says, 'I walked all alone, about sunset, and passed the time upon the seashore; for I am accustomed to use this recreation to refresh myself, and to shake off a little my ordinary cares;' . . . after the example also of St. Ambrose, of whom St. Augustine relates that often, going into his chamber (for he never denied entrance to any one), he found him reading, and that, after staying a while, for fear of interrupting him, he departed again without saying a word, thinking that the little time that remained to this great pas

tor for recruiting his spirit, after the hurry of so many affairs as he had upon his hands, ought not to be taken from him. So when the Apostles one day told our Lord how they had preached, and how much they had done, He said to them, 'Come ye apart into a desert place, and rest a while.""

In these words the great Bishop puts the whole duty of solitude; the duty of securing it for ourselves and the duty of preserving it for others. The great arena of the world in which men act, strive, seek, speak, and work is the place in which we give expression in many forms to our inward power. In that turbulent field, filled with cries of every sort, and the tumult and noise of a thousand occupations, we do our work and turn the inward force into resolute and efficient character. There the idea becomes a deed, the aspiration is transformed into an achievement, the hope into reality; and the undeveloped man becomes a trained, intelligent, and harmonious power among men.

But the springs of a man's life are not in this great turbulent field; they rise in secret and solitary places far from the tumult and dust of the arena. In society a man puts forth his strength; in solitude he re-creates his soul. He works for and with God in the crowded thoroughfares; but he meets God face to face in deserts and lonely places. The great spirits, who not only act for men but who feed their deepest life, are nourished in solitude; they must have silence and isolation; for it is in silence and solitude that the deepest truths come to the soul. It was while he plowed the fields of Ayrshire that the music of the Scotch fields became articulate in the heart of Burns. Wordsworth's vision and inspiration came to him as he paced his little garden or roamed across the hills from Grasmere to Rydal Mount, or meditated on Loughrigg Terrace. Tennyson's exquisite lyrics were born between blossoming hedgerows or in the silence of fragrant days in Surrey and the Isle of Wight. The greatest of teachers sought healing from wounds inflicted by an uncomprehending world in the quietness of desert places. No man can grow in spirit and ripen in soul without the aid of silence and solitude.

But while we seek these conditions for ourselves, we often deny them to others.

We exhaust and deplete the most promising teachers by our demands on their time and strength. Popularity is fatal to all save the resolute, because it takes from a man the conditions which are essential to growth. The young artist to whom nature has given the touch of genius must fight for his life against the tide that beats against his peace and time and would sweep both away with relentless eagerness. The young writer who has the vision and the faculty will have the springs of freshness and originality in his soul drained dry unless he bolts the door between himself and a popularity which is as dangerous to his growth as an artist as it is generous in intention. The young preacher whose word has the music or the truth which men love as they love nothing else is swept into a sea of activities which absorb and exhaust him unless he resolutely guards his time and his solitude as sacred to his soul and his work. He serves his people best who gains and keeps that freshness of the spirit which makes him sight to the blind, ears to the deaf, and life and light to those who sit in dark places. Many congregations take too little thought for the growth of their ministers, and limit the power which ought to have steadily expanded, and blight the promise which ought to have been fulfilled in increasing spirituality and ripeness of mind. The right to grow is sacred; no one ought to take it from a man even if he is willing to lose it. Silence and solitude ought to be sacredly preserved for all those who are to teach, to lead, and to inspire.

Service and Thanks

It is natural to expect some expression of appreciation from those upon whom we confer benefits. Men expect to be thanked when they have rendered service, and that expectation is based, not only on the usages of courtesy, but on the human instinct. The ungrateful man and the unappreciative man are visited with something like contempt in public opinion; they are more objectionable than men who commit offenses of a much more serious character. But this natural desire for the appreciation of benefits may become a danger to those who are in the way of

rendering service to others; for service ought to have no root in the hope of recog nition, any more than sound work ough to be done for the sake of recompense Recompense is just, and ought to be ex pected; but a man must put skill, honesty and thoroughness into his work for the sake of his own integrity; in like manne a man ought to serve his fellows, not for what they are going to give him in return. but because service is his business in this world.

From one point of view it is a matter

of entire indifference whether we are thanked or not. It is no concern of ours whether a great service which we have rendered to a fellow-being draws from him an expression of gratitude; the manner in which our service is met is important to him, not to us; we are concerned with the doing of the deed; he is concerned with his attitude toward our act. It is significant that almost nothing is said in the Gospels about the services which men rendered to Christ; everything is said, on the other hand, of the services which Christ rendered to men.

But this way of estimating service never occurred to Christ. It never occurs to the heroic and the self-sacrificing; they are concerned to give the utmost without reference to what is to be returned to them. It is enough for them to find a fellow-being in a situation which appeals for help; that of itself evokes their activity. Work, if it is to be sustained and powerful, must be the result of an inward conviction, or of a spiritual impulse; it must not depend for its energy on the stimulus which comes from any kind of recognition or gratitude. A man is to serve his country, no matter how badly his country treats him; Benedict Arnold's tragic end is a dramatic example of the corruption which enters into a man's nature when he bases his service, not on duty, but on recognition. A man is to serve his community to the utmost of his ability, and with entire sincerity of devotion, without reference to local recognition. The great servants of society-the teachers, prophets, poets, and leaders-have never looked for pay; rewards were some times given them and sometimes denied them, but they poured out all that was most original and forceful in their natures under the impulse of conviction or the

What is Religion?

passion for service. Applause is good if philosophically conceivable that a man it comes, but a man can do his work with- may be good and do good without any out applause. What he cannot do is to perception of the infinite. The agnosmeasure the work by the applause, and to tic vigorously maintains that this is not give and do only so much as he is paid only possible, but sometimes he goes so for giving and doing. far as to maintain that any and every supposed perception of the infinite has interfered with man's being good and doing good. It is because the Evangelical believes that religion consists in a perception of the infinite, and that the perception of the infinite as manifested in the life and character of Jesus Christ is the one most able to influence men to the highest and noblest life, that he condemns the rationalistic philosophy which defines religion as being good and doing good, and which so eliminates, or appears to eliminate, that historic manifestation of the infinite which has in it the secret of moral and spiritual regeneration. It is because he believes that the secret of religion is such a perception of God, such an acquaintance with God, such fellowship with God, as Christianity gives, that he lay stress on what to his disputant appear the meaningless dogmas of inspiration, revelation, incarnation, and atonement.

It is very curious that there should be such widely different answers to this simple and fundamental question. For clearness of understanding of religious debate it is above all things important that the disputants understand what they are disputing about. And religious disputes are perplexing partly because the word religion is used by the disputants with such widely different meaning.

Thus, Theodore Parker defines religion as "being good and doing good." "I told her," he says in one of his letters, "there was, to my thinking, but one religion that was being good and doing good." Mr. Chadwick, in his recent admirable biography of Theodore Parker, quotes this sentence, giving the italics as we give them, and supplements it by saying: "A complete disclosure of his thought would, however, have revealed that, to his thinking, a man could not be good without loving God, at least unconsciously." But even with this supplemental explanation Theodore Parker's definition of religion is to the Evan gelical believer no true definition; it does not even indicate the most important element in religion. Religion the Evangelical defines as "the life of God in the soul of man." Being good and doing good result from that life as physical energy and pleasure result from health of the body; but the health is more than the energy and the pleasure which it produces. Flowers are a product of spring, and harvests of summer; but flowers are not spring and harvests are not summer.

If this sixteenth-century definition of religion be deemed too mystical, let us take Max Müller's, which is distinctly philosophical: "Religion consists in the perception of the infinite under such manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man." It is perfectly clear that this is not the same as being good and doing good. It is

We turn to another definition furnished by Theodore Parker, this time of Christianity: "Jesus of Nazareth . . . demanded, not a belief, but a life-a life of love to God and love to man." Of course the Evangelical believes this; but he does not believe that it was for this that Jesus Christ came to the world. He came to give men life and to give it more abundantly. And the Evangelical believes that the first thing for man to do is to receive that gift of life; he will then spontaneously, naturally, inevitably, live that life of love which he has so received. Any theology which represents Christ as coming primarily to make a demand on men of any kind whatsoever he opposes as fatally defective. To be Christ's disciple is not merely, according to Evangelical thinking, doing what Christ commands; it is also receiving what Christ has to give. "Those," says Mr. James Martineau, "are the most genuine disciples who stand with him [Christ] at the same spring; who are ready for the same trust; and can disengage themselves from tradition, pretense, and fear, at the bidding of the same source of inspiration.”

Christianity: Is it Dogma or Life?

I.—Dogma

[One view of the vitally important question put in the title above is presented in the following article, sent to us by a professor in one of our Southern universities. It seems to us an extremely able argument in favor of a contention from which we entirely and radically dissent; our own view of the question will be found in the second of the two articles.—THE ÉDITORS.]

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OUR article on "The Gospel Motive" in your current number lies before me. Its main contention seems to be couched in these words: "How, then, can this preacher reach them [the inhabitants of Vanity Fair] with his message? As Paul and Christ and the prophets reached the people in their time." "The Christian minister is not a teacher of philosophy; he is not an executioner of divine judgments; he is not a herald of impending retribution. He is an apostle sent forth to tell the world a fact, and on that fact to inspire it with a hope." Of course the "fact" is the life, passion, death, resurrection, of Jesus Christ. You then proceed to enforce eloquently your idea that this "incomparable life" furnishes an "ideal" that must win the hearts of men when properly presented and illustrated. You further say that "this was the message of Paul to Rome and to Corinth," and you imply that it was the main if not the exclusive content of early Apostolic preaching.

Your position is plausible and attractive; we could easily wish it were correct; but the fact seems to be that it is historically indefensible. That the "life" of Jesus as a model or as an inspiration cut any considerable figure in the preaching of New Testament times seems quite incredible. If you call your own chosen example, St. Paul, to witness, it is notorious that his Epistles (so called) are strangely, even astonishingly, lacking in references to this "life" of Jesus. In fact, these " Epistles" disclose the most meager knowledge, if any knowledge at all, of the earthly career of the Christ; they make practically no use of anything in that career but the Crucifixion and, in far less measure, the Resurrection; and these are cited, not at all in the spirit you represent, not as models or inspirations, but solely as dogmas--it is the dogmatic significance, and that alone, with which Paul has to deal. To the Galatians he depicted

Christ, but Christ crucified; among the Corinthians it was only Christ and him crucified that he would know; to the Romans in his great Treatise he is absolutely silent concerning the life, and mentions even the crucifixion only casually in passing; in fact, from xv., 3, he would seem to know nothing of that life save as fore-mirrored in Hebrew scriptures; with that life as history he seems to have had the very smallest concern. In Corinthians he tells us that, even though he may have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth he knows him so no longer. But why dwell on a matter so incontestable? Beyond the dogmas of Death and Resurrection, Christ is for Paul an Idea, and only an Idea. No, we had forgotten: Paul does mention one other very interesting historical fact of this "life;" namely, that the Son was "born of woman." Let this have its due weight.

Like may be said of the other "Epis tles." They contain only the vaguest allusions to anything in the earthly career of the Christ; speaking broadly, they have no concern with that career save in its dogmatic significance; they touch it only at points of doctrinal moment. The "Epistle" of James is eminently practical, yet it knows nothing whatever of this "life;" if we leave out two or three lines, thinks Spitta, of Christian interpolation, we shall have a pure Jewish original whose author had never heard of Jesus! Consider next the Apocalypse of John-practically ignorant wholly of the earthly Jesus, whose life furnishes not the least motif in this imposing drama. The same, or nearly the same, may be said of Hebrews. Apart from certain doctrinal moments, this "life"] does not exist for the author.

When we come to Acts, the case is not essentially altered. The preaching there recorded has the least possible to do with the history of Jesus save only in its most prominent dogmatic aspects. To our knowledge not one of the Apostles

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