ancestors, and many of their devout descendants, bent their whole energy toward eternal welfare as distinguished from anything temporal. Yet in their principal town Franklin, a man of the plain people, exposed to no influences but those of his own day and country, was coolly preferring the study of earthly accomplishment to any question which concerned matters beyond human life.

Another extract from his "Autobiography" carries his religious history a little further:

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My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the Dissenting way. But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's Lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; but, each of them having afterwards wrong'd me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith's conduct towards me (who was another free-thinker), and my own towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this doctrine, tho' it might be true, was not very useful.”

"Not very useful: " the good sense of Franklin tested religion itself by its effects on every-day conduct.

Later still in his "Autobiography" he tells how he was impressed by the ministrations of the only Presbyterian minister in Philadelphia, to whose services he paid the willing tribute of annual subscription:

"He used to visit me sometimes as a friend, and admonish me to attend his administrations, and I was now and then prevailed on to do so, once for five Sundays successively. Had he been in my opinion a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued, notwithstanding the occasion I had for the Sunday's leisure in my course of study; but his discourses were chiefly either polemic arguments, or explications of the peculiar doctrines of our sect, and were all to me very dry, un

interesting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforc'd, their aim seeming rather to make us Presbyterians than good citizens."

The spiritual life thus begun, if spiritual it may be called, developed as might have been expected. Years afterward, it excited painful apprehension in the mind of the great George Whitefield, to whom in 1764 Franklin wrote thus:

"Your frequently repeated wishes for my eternal, as well as my temporal happiness, are very obliging, and I can only thank you for them and offer you mine in return. I have myself no doubt, that I shall enjoy as much of both as is proper for me. That Being, who gave me existence, and through almost threescore years has been continually showering his favours upon me; whose very chastisements have been blessings to me; can I doubt that he loves me? And, if he loves me, can I doubt that he will go on to take care of me, not only here but hereafter? This to some may seem presumption; to me it appears the best grounded hope; hope of the future built on experience of the past."

The personal relations with Whitefield attested by this letter had begun in 1739, when the revivalist first came to Philadelphia. Here

"he was at first permitted to preach in some of our churches; but the clergy, taking a dislike to him, soon refused him their pulpits, and he was obliged to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was matter of speculation to me, who was one of the number, to observe the extraordinary influence of his oratory on his hearers, and how much they admired and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them they were naturally half beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manner of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seem'd as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street."

Franklin, who was employed as printer on many of Whitefield's sermons, soon came to have a high opinion of the Methodist's personal honesty. Of his prudence, the shrewd Yankee had more doubt; but at least once Whitefield's preach

ing, with its "wonderful power over the hearts and the purses of his hearers," carried him away. The revivalist wished to establish in Georgia a charitable orphanage, which Franklin thought impracticable.

"I therefore refused to contribute," writes Franklin. "I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the coppers. Another stroke of his oratory made me asham'd of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I empty'd my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all."

Generally, however, Franklin kept his head better. The cool scientific temper with which on another occasion he attended to one of Whitefield's impassioned public discourses is more characteristic:

"He preach'd one evening from the top of the Court-house steps, which are in the middle of Market-street, and on the west side of Second-street, which crosses it at right angles. Both streets were filled with hearers to a considerable distance. Being among the hindmost in Market-street, I had the curiosity to learn how far he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the street towards the river; and I found that his voice was distinct till I came near Front-street, when some noise in that street obscur'd it. Imagining then a semicircle, of which my distance should be the radius, and that it were filled with auditors, to each of whom I allowed two square feet, I computed that he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconcil'd me to the newspaper accounts of his having preached to twenty-five thousand people in the fields, and to ancient histories of generals haranguing whole armies, of which I had sometimes doubted."

Far more in this vein is Franklin's friendly record of their personal relations :

"The following instance will show something of the terms on which we stood. Upon one of his arrivals from England at Boston, he wrote to me that he should come soon to Philadelphia, but knew not where he could lodge when there, as he understood his old friend and host, Mr. Benezet, was removed to Germantown. My answer was, ' You

know my house; if you can make shift with its scanty accommodations, you will be most heartily welcome.' He reply'd, that if I made that kind offer for Christ's sake, I should not miss of a reward. And I returned, 'Don't let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake. One of our common acquaintances jocosely remark'd that, knowing it to be the custom of the saints, when they received any favour, to shift the burden of the obligation from off their own shoulders, and place it in heaven, I had contriv'd to fix it on earth."

To Franklin, indeed, things on earth were of paramount importance. He never denied the existence of God, but he deemed God a beneficent spirit, abundantly able to take care of himself and to take care of us too; so long then, as men behave decently, they may confidently leave to God the affairs of heaven and of hell, if perchance there be one. Franklin's God, in short, was much more like that Supreme Being to whom Voltaire in his last days erected a classical temple in the grounds of Ferney, than like the orthodox God of New England, Him whom in the midst of Franklin's lifetime Jonathan Edwards so fervently described as holding sinners for a moment above eternal fires into which His angry hand should presently drop them. Of earthly morality, meanwhile, so far as it commended itself to good sense, Franklin was shrewdly careful. No passage in his " Autobiography" is more familiar than the list of virtues which he drew up and endeavoured in turn to practise. The order in which he chose to arrange them is as follows: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality (under which his little expository motto is very characteristic: "Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself"), Industry, Sincerity (under which he directs us to "Use no hurtful deceit "), Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquillity, Chastity, and finally one which he added later as peculiarly needful to him, — Humility. The injunction placed under this last is perhaps the most characteristic of all: "Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

Now though all this is sound practical morality of a kind which should at once advance a man's earthly prosperity and

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incidentally benefit society, it is about as far from the passionate morality which should save souls as it is from vice itself. The most familiar saying of Poor Richard, "Honesty is the best policy," is typical of this. Very likely honesty will bring you to heaven, but for the moment that question is immaterial; if you are honest in this world, you will get on here better than if you are not. A profound truth this, by the way, particularly for English-speaking people. Compared with races of Latin or Greek origin, ours is not intellectually alert. Now if you act honestly and tell the truth, you play your part in exact accordance with life as you see it. On the other hand, begin to cheat, to act dishonestly, or to lie, and you have set up such contradiction of fact as you must constantly support by fresh and various misrepresentation. To alert-minded people a frequent demand for mendacious ingenuity often seems stimulating. To people of our sluggish race it is rather bewildering; Englishspeaking people are the least successful liars in the world. Very good: we are of English tradition; the part of good sense, then, is to lie as little as possible, to "use no hurtful deceit," to be honest. "Honesty is the best policy." So far as conduct goes, worldly wisdom brings us nearly into accord with the dogmatic morality of Christianity. In other words, such common sense as Franklin's ultimately makes human beings behave in a manner so far from superficially damnable that you might be at pains to distinguish them from God's own elect.

The deliberate good sense with which Franklin treated matters of religion and morality, he displayed equally in his scientific writings; and, a little later, in the public documents and correspondence which made him as eminent in diplomacy and statecraft as he had earlier been in science and in local affairs. His examination before the House of Commons in 1766 shows him as a public man at his best. A letter to a London newspaper, written the year before, shows another