wealth will consist, as in England, of a Cabinet, composed of members of the Parliament possessing the confidence of a working majority of the representatives of the people, under the presidency of a Governor-General, appointed in England to represent the Sovereign, with powers almost identical with those still retained by the English Crown in Great Britain itself. The Federal Legislature will consist of two chambers: a Senate, to which each of the States will send six members, and a Representative Chamber the members of which will be elected on the basis of population, with the novel proviso that the Representative Chamber shall never contain more than double the numbers of the Senate. The object of this would seem to be to give something, yet not everything, of final control to the majority of the people, by providing that, if in any case it is found impossible to obtain an agreement between the chambers, the measure in dispute shall be submitted to the final decision of a joint sitting of both, in which the votes of an absolute majority of those present shall prevail. The Senators will be elected by the votes of the people of the States and not by the State Legislatures, and will hold office for six years, two of their number retiring every second year. The control of taxation and finance are, however, vested chiefly in the Representative Chamber, which alone can initiate such measures, the Senate having the power to reject but not to amend any such bill. The Federal Judiciary are to be appointed by the Executive with the approval of the Parliament, and the judges will hold office during good behavior-that is, until voluntary resignation or superannuation, or unless removed from office for some offense by the vote of a majority of both chambers of Parliament. The power of dealing with all matters reserved for Federal control, and also of finally settling all questions involving the interpretation of the Constitution, is given to the Federal Supreme Court. It is not easy to overestimate the importance to England of this latest federation of her colonies. For a good many years Australia has been assuming more and more the position of England's most valuable commercial dependency; the last twelve months have shown that her people may soon become as valuable to the mother country in other ways. Already the South Sea continent, young as it is, does a larger trade with Great Britain than any other country except our own and India, and she even surpasses India by many millions in the goods she exports. The war in South Africa, and the more recent disturbance in China, have called forth a ready and enthusiastic support from the people of Australia, too, such as no part of the empire except New Zealand has offered. It is no wonder that, in view of facts like these, England is prepared to welcome to a wider and more consolidated political life the new Federation which begins its existence with the twentieth. century, with an enthusiasm which she has never before displayed on any similar occasion. The Age of Faith The suggestive title of Dr. Bradford's suggestive book, a brief notice of which will be found in another column, raises a profound question which Dr. Bradford himself presents in two antithetical sentences in his introduction: "This is an age of faith. . . . The days of authority are gone." To some, perhaps to many, these two sentences will seem a contradiction. To us they appear a true interpretation of the enigma of our time. It is certainly true that the days of authority are gone or rapidly going. The notion that the Church can authoritatively determine what is truth, that to refuse acceptance of its teaching is a crime, and that contradiction of its teaching is punishable by law, is no longer entertained in any branch of the Christian Church. The only remnant of it which we recall in recent times is furnished by the somewhat extraordinary appeal of the Philippine friars just before the Spanish war to the Spanish Government for civil protection against the heretics. The notion that the Church can authoritatively determine what is true, and that to refuse acceptance of its teaching is an offense ecclesiastically punishable, still lingers in some Protestant Churches; but the difficulty of enforcing even by ecclesiastical penalties the authority of the Church grows every year greater, and heresy trials grow increasingly unpopular. The authority of the Bible still continues to be maintained as final and conclusive in many circles, but it cannot be doubted that the new criticism, which is really a new method of interpretation, has gone far to undermine the old authority of the Bible as an infallible text-book, and that when this new method of interpretation has become generally accepted, the author ity of the Bible in the old sense of that term will also be gone. Dr. Köstlin, who is probably the best living expounder of the Lutheranism of Luther, declares that it was the essence of Luther's teaching that there is and can be no external standard, no final authority outside of man himself. We have no doubt that Dr. Köstlin correctly interprets the great reformer. The issue is clear and simple. Is man to look within himself or without himself for the final arbiter? The Roman Catholic Church bids him look without himself and find that final arbiter in a living Church. Protestantism has sometimes bade him look without himself and find that arbiter in a book. But the Reformation, as interpreted by Martin Luther, bade him look within; and more and more the tendency of the age is to measure all affirmations of the church, all its dogmas and doctrines, and all affirmations of the Bible, all its tenets and teachings, by their conformity to what the Friends have well called the inner light. This looking to the inner light, this trust and confidence and reliance upon it, we call faith. Never before has there been so much looking within, so much question of this Inner Light, so much seeking for its answer to problems both of thought and of duty, as there is to-day. This is also Dr. Bradford's definition of faith: "Will ingness to act on intuitions, or convictions of what is true and right, not because they have been proven, but because the whole man asserts that they ought to be true." This is antithetical to acting on authority external to man, whether that authority be found in the decree of a church or the teaching of a book. In the age from which we are emerging, men based both their belief and their action on authority. They believed in an They believed in an invisible world transcending the world of sense, in an immortal life transcending the life of the present, because they were told either by the church or the book that such a world and such a life exist. As the age of authority disappears, the belief founded on authority disappears also. This disappearance looks like a decay of faith. It is really a decay of authority. The decadence throws men back upon the inner light, compels them to question that which is written within the consciousness of man, and read there the divine answer to their questioning. If they do this, their faith is developed; if they do not, their belief in the invisible and transcendent world disappears with the authority on which that belief was based. There are others whose so-called faith was not based upon any recognized external authority. It was simply sympathetic. They were surrounded by men and women who believed, or thought they believed, in the invisible and the eternal. They caught the contagion of this belief, and shared or thought they shared it. They acquiesced in the opinions which surrounded them, as we are all apt to acquiesce in the opinions which surround us, unless something comes to compel an original inquiry into the grounds of our belief. But this traditional belief no longer surrounds them. With the disappearance of authority the beliefs founded on authority have disappeared also, and those whose faith was simply a sympathetic faith, who had no inner light, who had only a reflected light borrowed from others who had themselves in turn borrowed it from original sources, find this reflection growing dim, and themselves in twilight or in darkness. These also are thrown back upon themselves, are compelled to look within and see what is the divine writing in their own souls, to listen for the voice that speaks in the inner consciousness. If there is no such light, if there is no such voice, then they grow skeptical. Faith, says Dr. Bradford, is "willingness to act on intuitions." Those who have no intuitions have no basis on which to act. Faith is " willingness to act on convictions of what is true and right, not because they have been proven, but because the whole man asserts that they ought to be true." He who believes with Professor Huxley that "the assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime," and who also regards nothing as evidênce which is not attested by the senses, will have respecting the world which transcends the sensuous no convictions of what is true and right. In such men faith will seem to fail because the reflected light borrowed from others has failed. The convictions founded on authority have disappeared because the days of authority are gone. But this is not really a decadence of faith. It is only a discovery by those whose beliefs were founded on authority that they never had faith. Thus the age is a trial age. We are learning what faith is, we are learning who have faith, we are learning the various measures and limitations of it. Never was an age in which man had so much faith in his fellow-men as now. The skepticism that formerly attacked Christianity has disappeared. In its place has come the ethical culture which endeavors to carry out the ethical principles of Jesus Christ. There never was so much philanthropy, and philanthropy was never so truly spiritual. There never was so much realization of the universal presence of God, of a divine Some One behind all phenomena producing them, behind all life controlling it; and yet also there never was a time in which so many doubted, not only the dogmas of the Church, not only the teachings of the Bible, but the whole supersensuous sphere, the whole transcendent world. They doubt because the days of authority are gone, and the inner light, which the authority itself atrophied and sometimes paralyzed, has to be developed from the beginning; and the beginning is faith in man and in moral law. We should call this, therefore, less the age of faith than an age of the new birth of faith-its fresh beginning. Yet types there are which indicate to what this age is conducting humanity. The religious type of the future will be that hinted at by such teachers as James Martineau and Phillips Brooks, men whose inner perception of the truth enables them to perceive the truth both in the Church and in the Bible, but they perceive it to be truth because it harmonizes with the truth in themselves. Out of the faith in science which seeks the Infinite and Eternal Energy behind all phenomena, out of the faith in literature and history which seeks to know the Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness, out of the faith in man which perceives dormant in man a divinity yet to be developed, out of the faith in the moral law to which all are subject because it is the law of our own being, will yet issue a clearer, simpler, profounder faith in God and an undying life than any which was or could be based on authority, whether of prophets long dead or of a church still living. Christmas Prophecy and Fulfillment It has happened many times in the history of the world that the coming of Christmas, with its immortal message of peace and good will from heaven to earth, has seemed, in the light of contemporary events, almost a mockery. Again and again, in the nineteen centuries which have passed since that song was heard above the plains of Bethlehem, its echoes on Christmas Eve have been drowned by the mad tumult of passionate strife or by the tragic uproar of battle. At the end of the nineteenth century it is heard again, when the whole world is stirred by what appear to be on the surface deep and antagonistic passions; when a sense of restlessness seems to pervade all society, and, in spite of widespread prosperity and material well-being, men seem unable to rest in the fruits of their labors. The first Christmas song, however, was a prophecy and a promise; nothing could have been further from its fulfillment than the condition of the world at the time when it was heard by the shepherds. The distance between heaven and earth is great enough to-day, but it was greater when Christ was born in Bethlehem. Those who look only at the daily reports of the world's doings in the morning newspapers will find much to overshadow and darken Christmas memories and Christmas hopes; but those who turn from their newspapers to their histories, and compare the condition of the world to-day with its condition nineteen hundred years ago, will find much to encourage and inspire. Slowly but surely humanity does climb the steep ascent of heaven. Painfully, and with almost tragic toil, the race moves upward making no progress portions. Its magnitude will be apparent without the shedding of its blood, gaining to any intelligent person who reads the no ground without deep and bitter sac- two volumes of essays and familiarizes rifices; and yet, in the anguish of its long himself with the contents of the two march, slowly but surely disciplining it- anthologies; but the work behind it can self in self-denial, self-control, and care be divined only by those who have some for others. It is safe to say that no pre- intimate acquaintance with the technical vious age has felt more keenly the sor- preparation which criticism of such breadth rows of humanity; nor in any previous and thoroughness involves, and of the age have individuals entered so deeply minute knowledge of a great literary moveinto the experiences of the race. More ment which the preparation of the antholomen and women are sharing the burden gies implies. In the field of American of painful knowledge of human suffering criticism and literary scholarship there and degradation which Christ bore than has been no more stimulating achieveever before; more men and women are ment; not excepting the long and loving painfully striving in numberless unre- work of Professor Child upon the English corded ways, as well as in many which ballads, or of Professor Lounsberry upon are obvious, to share their own better Chaucer. The quality of integrity which fortunes and to lift a little the load which lies like an immovable foundation at the rests on the disinherited. There is more basis of Mr. Stedman's nature and career peace and good will in the heart of hu- is disclosed in many ways in this longmanity to-day than there has ever been sustained and patiently executed work. before; and the roar of guns in South The artistic conscience is usually identiAfrica and the foreign battalions mar- fied with extreme care in execution; the shaled in China must not make us deaf to writer who suffers nothing to go from his this music which once came from heaven, pen until he has put the last touch of but which finds every year wider reso- possible perfection upon it is very rightly nance in the hearts of men. credited with that kind of conscience which is only another name for the artistic instinct. Mr. Stedman's conscience is shown, not only in the care with which the work has been done, in the accuracy of his phrasing, the brilliancy of his style, the precision of his criticism, but still more in the minute and conscientious scrutiny to which a vast number of facts have been subjected, and the methodical and exhaustive searching of the field which was preliminary to putting the work in its final form. A Noble Work In 1875 Mr. Stedman published "The Victorian Poets:" ten years later he published "The Poets of America;" five years ago "The Victorian Anthology" appeared; and now comes "The American Anthology," bearing the imprint of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The two volumes of critical essays cover the poetic activity of the English-speaking race for the century on both sides of the Atlantic. The two anthologies place in the hands of Mr. Stedman's reader ample illustrations of the material with which he has dealt in his criticisms and upon which he has based his judgments. The four books together, coming at the very end of the century and revealing the genius of the English-speaking race during that century through the most sensitive of the arts, constitute a searching and vital interpretation of the mind of the nineteenth century, so far as the men and women who use our language are concerned. One may not agree with Mr. Stedman's estimate of American poetry in his introduction, but one cannot fail to be impressed by his extraordinary acquaintance with it and by the scrupulous care with which he has searched for the best. That he has omitted some pieces which another editor would have included may be taken for granted; no man's selection, however competent and final, would ever entirely parallel that of another man whose knowledge was as thorough and whose judgment as good; but any examination of the anthology will bring into clear light its comprehensiveness and its catholicity. Mr. Stedman was quite right in making The work has been one of heroic pro- it a full report of poetic activity in this country rather than a final depository of those pieces of verse which have been and are to be accepted as the classics of American poetry. He has included much that is ephemeral, some that does not rise into the realm of poetry; but he has included nothing which is not good in intention finished in time to put into the hands of those who wish to know what lies in the heart of the nineteenth century the key to the genius, the ideals, and the ultimate aims of our race. and which has not some claim to the Temperance Text-Books attention of the student who wishes to study in its entirety the product of the American imagination in verse forms. If there are many figures in this House of Fame which are there simply by Mr. Stedman's invitation, they have crowded out those guests who will ultimately find their permanent home under that splendid roof. not In the very middle of the nineteenth century, when the first World's Fair was opened in London and all England was singing the praises of material progress, Tennyson published" In Memoriam," and thus furnished conclusive evidence of the fact that the springs of English genius were still flowing and that the fountains of English spiritual life had not been exhausted. At the close of a century which has marked a phenomenal develop ment of the material resources of America and a phenomenal putting forth of the energy and power of the American character in practical ways, this anthology of American Poetry has immense value as a spiritual document. It is a record of the inner life of this great working nation, and it shows that the essential idealism in which the foundations of society and government were laid on this continent still sings its ancient song in the hearts of the people; for, whatever may be the limitations of American poetry, no one can fail to catch the note of aspiration struck by almost every poet, great and small, since verse was first written in the New World. Purity of feeling, love of nature, devotion to the ideals of freedom, tenderness for children, respect for women, interpretation of life in the light of idealism, are the motifs which are woven into the very substance of American verse and which recur from page to page throughout this volume. From this point of view, aside from its technical excellence, which long ago secured ample recognition, Mr. Stedman's work as critic and collector and editor of the poetry of his race is of the very highest importance. It has been It is not the practice of The Outlook to publish replies to book reviews, unless there is some statement of fact to be corrected, for the reason that book reviews are expressions of judgment; and, in the nature of things, such judgments are always open to question by the entire constituency of a journal. To publish criticisms of criticisms, save as they correct facts, would, for obvious reasons, be impossible; but, as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is an influential and representative body, and as The Outlook has spoken very frankly and very fully on the question of temperance text-books in the schools, we depart from our usual policy and print in full the long resolution criticising The Outlook's position, which is, in fact, a criticism of a book review. The position of The Outlook on this matter has been stated many times, and with great fullness. It is because The Outlook is an earnest advocate of temperance as a principle of life to be applied in all relations, and because it regards temperance as fundamental in all wise and true Christian living, that it dissents from the method, the manner, and sometimes the statements in the so-called temperance text-books. The Outlook is convinced that no cause, and especially no reform, can be served by anything less than the most careful and accurate fidelity to the truth. On this ground it has based its criticism of the indorsed temperance textbooks. We hold that it is illegitimate to teach children that certain conclusions are facts when those conclusions are questioned by scientific experts, and the assumed fact is only a doubtful hypothesis. When the child comes later to find that what he has been taught as a statement of fact is in reality a matter still undecided, the influence upon him, entirely aside from the moral question, is likely to be most disastrous. We hold that it is illegitimate to use the public school for the purpose of teaching what some regard |