CIHM Microfiche Series (Monographs) ICMH Collection de microfiches (monographies) Canadian Inatituta for Historical IMieroraproduetions / Inatitut Canadian da microraproductiona iiiatoriquaa ©1994 •t Tht Imtituta hM anMiipMrf to obMin tlM bwt orifliMl eopvMaitaMtforfHmiiif. FMMrai of Ms m*v wMdi of OM MM^M in tns wpvoMistio'it ^ wMoh fusy iifiHfiOMillv diMifi VM mmmI flwthod of iMiiiiiif, tra 0Colo«f«d M«tn/ Couvartimdt D Cowr i □ Cotwra rwtend md/or Iwi i m iwl/ Comartura rwtMirit tt/o« p il l i C Ml to □ CoMT titia mMfif/ LatHradtt □ Coloiirad map!/ Cartas lioflrapliiquas an aoiilaMr Cotonrad ink (i.a. othar than Mua or Mack)/ Enera da eoMiaiir (i.a. autra qua Waua o« noira) 0Colo«rad platM and/or ilhmratiom/ nanchat at/ou ilhntratiom an coulaur Boond with ethar matarial/ avac d'autrat doaumanti n r~n Ti#itbindin|may alont intarior marfin/ La laUura tarria pant < diilonion la ioni da la dal'( n during fattoration may i within thataxt. 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[""n C olo u radpatas/ and/or laminatad/ at/ou paNleuMas stainadorfoxad/ dieolorta i . tadiatias ou plqu*as 0Showthrou|h/ Transparanaa □ Quality of print varias/ Qualiti inigala da I'imprassion □ Continuous pagin ati on/ Fsfination continua □ Indudas indaxias)/ Comprand un (das) indax TitIa on haadar tahan from:/ La titra da I'an-tMa proviant: pafaofissua/ da titra da la livraiaon r~~j Caption of issua/ D Titra da dtpart da la livraison Giniriqua (piriodiquas) da la livraison P«9« 5%. SX 2IX XX 24X 2tX D 32X TiM eopy fllmcd bw has bmn raproducad thark* to tha o**Mro*ity of: National Library of Canada L'axamplaira film* fut raproduit grioa A la g«n4rosit* da: Bibliotli^ua nationaia du Canada Tha imagas appaaring har* ara tha baat quality poasibia conaidaring tfia condition and lagibility of tha original eopy and in iiaaping with ttia filming contract tpaclf Ication*. Original coplaa in printad papar covara ara filmad baglnning with tha front eovar and anding on tha last paga with a printad or iiluatratad impraa- •ion, or tha bacic cover whan approprlata. AH othor original capias ara filmad baglnning on ttia first paga with a printad or illustratad Impras- slon, and anding on tha last paga with a printad or illustratad imp' -Mion. Tha last racordad frama on aaeh mlcrofieha shall contain tha symbol ^^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol ▼ (moaning "END"), wMchavar appHaa. Maps, platas, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too lerge to be entirely included In one exposure ere filmed beginning in the upper left hand comer, left to right end top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Lee Imeges suhmntes ont 4t« reprodultee evec le phis grand soin, compta tenu de la condition ot do la nattet* de I'exemplaire film*, et en conformity avac las conditions du contrat de fllmage. Lee exemplelree origineux dont le couverture en papier est imprim«e som f iimte en commenpant par la premier plat at en termipant soit par la demMre pege qui comporte uite emprelnta d'impression ou d'iNustration, soit par la second plat, salon le cas. Tous las autras exempleires origineux sont flim4s en commen9ant par la premiere pege qui comporte une empreinte d'impression ou dIHustration et en terminant par ia dernMre pege qui comporte une telle empreinte. Un dee symbolee suivants apperattra sur ia darnlAre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: la symbde -^> signif le "A 8UIVRE", ie symbols ▼ signifle "FIN". Les cartes, planches, tableeux, etc., peuvent *tre filmAe i dee taux de rMuctlon diff«rents. Lorsque ie document est trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un soul ciich*, II est film* i partir de I'angle supMeur gauche, de gauche i droite, et da haut an baa. en prenent ie nomtire d'images nteessaire. Les diagrammes suh/ants Wustrent la mAthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 « w aK)co»r moumoN tm chait (ANSI and BO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 ■am |23 iM |£ ■ 2.2 U ISb ■■■1 Sf ll£ 1 12.0 /APPLIED IM/C3E Inc 16M Eost Moin Stratt Rochmtw, Nm York 14609 USA (715) 482 - 0300 - Phont (716) 288 - S989 - Fox A 9ariiim'0 Ifim^ttfnQn BY t aj.LOW,D.D, rfCUMONnllCMlMM 0M»il.CM4i 1^^ p^^^^^^ tt • • « TORONTO WKUAMBMOCS no6 • 1 BiELfOTHECA )) ■ntwMl Mcofdinff to Aot ol Um PwliMMHt o( OMMdft, la tk* yMTM* theoMMl nlM hmidnd Md rix, hy O. J. Uw. D.D., •» th« DiVartaMit o( Acriealtwa. TO SIR SANDFORD FLEMING K.C.M.O., CI., LUD., r.K.S.C CW W Ctm OP TM« ownrsnrrv or qvim't coixbob, camaoa THIS VOLUMl IS. BY MRlilSSlON. INSCRIBED. AS A TRIBUTE ALIKE TO HIS VERSATILITY AS A SCHOLAR. HIS EXCELLENCE AS A MAN, AND HIS PATRIOTISM AS A BRITISH SUBJECT. PREFATORY NOTE The ^'Fabson's PoufDEBiKos '' appeared at various times (as the dates will show) in The Week, of Toronto, a periodical now unhappily deceased. They were mainly prompted by occurrences of the time, and were possibly then more opportune than now. Nevertheless, many questions are still suh judice to-day: for ex- ample, legislation as to the observance of the Lord's Day. My convictions on this matter remain as they were ten years ago, when I wrote Pondering xiv., " Concerning Gallic." The twelve causeries entitled "In My Study" were monthly contributions to the short-lived Commonwealth, of Ottawa. BnxiHos' Bbidob, MMoh aeth. 1906. G. J. LOW. CONTENTS I. A Panon'i Ponderings ■ . . . II. Concerning the Revised Version • III. OonoeminR Supporting Your Supportets IV. Concerning What is a Luxury V. Concerning the Wise Men from the East VI. " Concerning Theosophy " - VII. Concerning the Higher Criticism - VIII. Concerning Preachers - . . . IX. Concerning the " Historic Episcopate " X. Concerning the WUl of the People XI. Concerning Professor Drummond - XII. Concerning Theology and the Faith Xin. Concerning Dual Languages - . . XIV. Concerning Oallio MSS 7 SBcnoK II. In My Study (12 chapters) 17 22 27 34 44 66 66 71 82 89 97 106 113 119 A Parson's Ponderings CHAPTER I. A PABSOira PONDBBINOa. What shall I preach about next Sunday? This is a question which, I suppose, occupies, most parsons' thoughts early every week. At any rate it does mine just now, as I sit in my study, facing my library. It's no great library, to be sure; a poor parson cannot indulge in that luxury. Luxury, do I call it? Is it not rather a necessity in these days, when the last important work on any debated subject is as necessary to the scholar as the last style of reaper and binder is to the farmer who wants to keep up with the times? Yet a luxury it must remain to the man of slender means. It is rather provoking to have a brother parson, whose purse is longer than one's own, or some learned dignitary, remark to one : " Have you read Dr. Tonans' grand new apologetic work, 7 8 A Parson's Ponderings which completely overthroTPs Professor Mole- cule's attack on Chriutianityl If not, you ought to get it ; it will only cost you five doUars." Alas! what is a man to do, when he has just been reminded by his wife that Sophie's shoes are worn out, and Johnnie must have a new jacket ? Of course Dr. Tonans' book must wait One can, however, buy Professor Molecule's new work, for that wiU only cost fifteen or twenty cents in the cheap popular form. So one can get the latest thought of the day on one side of Ae question at any rate. Now, what IS the reason that I can get Professor Molecule's work so cheap, while Dr. Tonans' is 80 dear? Is it in accordance with the law of supply and demand? If so, there must be a tremendous demand for Molecule, and a woeful lack of demand for Tonans'. Or is it that " the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of li^t " ? A parson— who has to furnish his people with at least two discourses every week, who is supposed in these two discourses to give their thoughts a direction for good for the ensuing six days, who must (if he is worth anything) be au courani with the varied and turbulent thought of the day— ought to have no meairre library. A Parson's Ponderings 9 Of course, a parson of the type which Gold- smith has immortalized in the parish priest of •• Sw6rt Aabam, loveliert village of the plain," with his primitive, patriarchal life, his worldly calmness, and unsophisticated piety, " And paaaing rioh with tatty pounds a year," might well be contented with « Pale/s Evi- dences," and a few more old-fashioned tomes on his shelves. But "Sweet Auburn" is a thing of the past J it is a « Deserted ViUage," indeed, now days. And the idyllic pastor is as much out of date as the rustic schoolmaster. Fancy Sweet Auburn's pastor suddenly trans- planted to an ordinary Canadian village or small town; he would be utterly bewildered. Instead of being in the midst of a quiet homogeneous people— bucolic and stolid, happy and hum- drum—among whom he wafl a king, with only the squire and the schoolmaster as intellectual equals— he would find himself tackling a con- gregation composed of all sorts and conditions of men, of varied nationalities and mental gifts. And then this congregation would be only one of several rival congregations of various names, each striving to get the inside track of the others. Poor man I What would he do? 10 A Parson's Ponderings pitable hearth open to every tramp or con- fidMice man that oomealongi Fancy bim being bothered with book-agents, and with his pariA- loners inquiring^ « What do you think of the Jesuits' Estate Act?" "Are you an advocate of anti-poverly and equal rights!" "What are you going to do about prohibition?" "What 18 your opinion of evolution?" « What do you Jink of ' Eobert Elsmere/ and ' John Ward. Preacher'?" What would the poor man di when he found one part of his flock fascinated by the big drum of the Salvation Army, and an- other part systematicaUy absenting themselves from church and studying Professor Molecule *jj ®' ^ *^ ^^^^ **® "^^^^ fi^d himself addressing a very mixed assembly. There would be, perhaps, a few, a very few, as simple- hearted and unlettered as his old parishioners- some much better informed than himself on mimy points- aid the children, even of the poor and uneducated, attending high schools, and able to solve algebraical problems and analyze sen- tences in a way that would have posed his old friend, the rustic schoolmaster. In one respect only would he find his posi- tion unchanged J he would stiU have to think himself " Paasiug rich with forty pounds a year," A Parson's Ponderings ii or its modem eqniyalent in purchasing power. Poor man I gentleman, Chrirtian, scholar of the antique type I He would find the tale of hricka demanded indefinitely increased, while his stock of straw was no laiger than heretofore. But I have been digressing. The question is, What shall I preach about next Sunday ? What are the particular spiritual needs of my con- gregation just now, the needs which most re- quire to be ministered unto? When I survey them in my mind's eye, and think of the heterogeneous assembly, of the various tempera- ments, the various grades of education and age, the various conditions of religious and irre- ligious life, I can really think of no style or sub- ject adapted to all. So the question, What shall I preach about? involves another question which must be first settled, viz.. To whom should I preach? There is dear old Mrs. Green, for instance, with her eighty years of age, and yet still hale and hearty; she is sure to be in her place in church. She is one of the last remnants of Sweet Auburn's emigrants. She and her de- ceased husband were the founders of this church some fifty years and more ago. She was always accustomed to a severe, decorous, yet meagre, ritual. She loves the church in which she was IS A Parson's Ponderings bwii, in whieh she has alwAys lived, uid in which she will die, and nothing oould induce her to forsake it for pastnres new; but her sonl is vexed within her to think it is not exacUy, in all respects, like the church of her youth. She loves "Tate ft Brady," and even yet cannot quite reeoflcile herself to "them hymns," an^ T*°r. "»»»"«» on." She loves sermons which depict in glowing colora the everlastinir peace and joy which await the elect, of whi^ Bhe feek herself on^-and so she is, and de- servedly, too, dear old soul I And if the homi- letic picture has some dark shades in the back- grormd of the suflFerings of those who are not of the elect, why they serve only to bring into relief the central figure. It seems ahnost like sacnl^ to ruffle her phwid faith or cross her mental grain in the least degree. And yet the style of sermon that would be sweet food for her soul would, I fear, be ac- counted but chaff by her grandson, who wiU be sitting by her side next Sunday, and who has just graduated at the university, and has arrived home full of honors in philosophy and natural Bciences, and who knows that Professor Bobert- son Smith and Dr. Marcus Dods and many others, once accounted frightful heretics, are now had in honor. A Parson's Ponderings is Then there is Dr. Black, and those like- minded with him — and they are not a few — who come to ohnroh occasionaUy, once in a while in the forenoon, and spend the rest of the day in studying agnostic literature. These Men tell US sometimes in person, sometimes through the press, that the utterances of the pulpit do not meet their spiritual needs, heoause they do not solve the di£Sculties which crop up contin- ually in the course of their secular reading. They complain of the " cowardice " of the pul- pit in approaching the " doubt " of the pew, and wmtemptuously hint that the pulpit avoids grappling with these subjects through either ignorance or fear. And yet, if one were to pre- pare a sermon specially for them the chances are they would not be there to hear it Then there are the Browns, who know nothing of modem doubts and modem litera- ture; whose intellectual attainments are meagre^ but whose emotions are very warm. Z^othing will satisfy these but a sermon after the style of Sam Jones or Dr. Talmage; full of anec- dote, horrible, humorous, solemn, grotesque, tragical and farcical, combined in one spicy compound. Then there is Mr. Blue, very Protestant, awfully Protestant, who has an unquenchable i U A Parson's Ponderings S^Zl • ,fP«'yJ.^ko «»«»ives that evwy ^^in the ^rvice, however .light, howevi ZTZ^v^~? ^ ^^"' ^^O' « he wee a new book-marker instead of an old fraved one, think, the "innovation" wa. pnt Ze ^ the Pope', order., and i. bound to proteet And then there i. young Scarlett, who ha. lately come from the city, where he wa. a wor- shipper at thb Church of St. Aloysiu., who i. never content unlesB he .ee. candle., i„cen«, ^jci&ce. and vertment.; he .it. re.tle«i and «^ZJ» »»f« any -ermon, unle«i the word ^(Aurch" or "celebration" occur, continually And then there are the Gh«y.-8teady, thor- ough-going, loyal, God-fearing, earnest; who do not come to find fault, but who listen to the wr- mon in order to ab«>rb what good they can find m It, whose religion is practical rather than polemical They are loved and respected by Shion«rf "^^ """^ "^"^ *^^°' ^'^''^ ""^ «^<*- Indeed a Canadian village parson's congr^ gataon 1. a very mixed one, and his course not always anooth. The missionary of a purely A Panon's Pondering! 15 nird <»ngwg«tioii is not 80 burdened. Such « •wngwgttion 18 the nearett tpproMh to that of Sweet Anburn. Not that our Otntdian farmers we so behind the tge; but the similarity of occupation, of political and rel^ous smtiment and of racial origin, •etttemcnit, breeds a homogeneousness in the eon^tion which mdces it veiy workable, and r. i '? ? I™' r*"']* *^' *^*'*«« "^^ ^'•libre AuW *^* ^^'^ ^'^ ®^' On the oUier hand, a city preacher can be a «-pe«ahst» No matter what his type of C^^;." '^^^ "* "'^~' «' "^^ of ^^t, there are plenty of people of all th^ ^nfvidnal will naturally graviite to IZm?!.. ''*^~ »»d preaching which -houldbeso. As long as men's faces and figures difl^ just so long will men's tastes and pre- dilections, and Ae church (to be a « church » enough for all sorts and conditions of men. Her cle^ must not all be trimmed to one pat- Srin/^ •T'S* *^*f ' " ^^^'' *^« ^^^^^ Peter, the indomitable Paul, the scholarly Luke, and 16 A PUfion's Ponderings praoUoal Jameti the loring^ ocmtemplatiTe John. We want ftpokgitts and revivaliiti, thoae who appeal to the head and thoae to the heart; thoae who walk the oloifter, and thoae who go throng the atreeta and lanea and hig^wayi and hedgea. We cannot all he perfect in every hranch; bat we want ezperti in all the branches. And the city ahonld fnmiih theae. But the parson of a small town has all the daasea one would meet in a large city, with only enough of each class to be a disturbing element for the others. He cannot pose as a '' special- ist " ; he must be a '' general practitioner," and a happy man is he if he can suit them all; for be has a far more di£Soult r6le to fill than the city pastor. But to return to the question : To whom shall I preadi next Sunday! I think — after taking everything into consideration — ^I shall preach to the Gbeys. Atiffvut, 1889. OHAPTEB IL OONOaRNINO THE BMFMBD VBESION. Kwwed Version; but I cwi't help it~I must relieve my mind. In preparing for • Sundays work, I read over the second lesson, John «., m the Revised Version ; and it made me " mad." That Revised Version always irritates me. It mnst make anybody mad— who is a lover of his New Testament, who has (and there are thou- Mnds of sndi) many passages ' by heart "—to hew those dear, old familiar sentences, wiA their sweet rhythm, altered and disfigured, for no earthly iMe that one can see. It jars one's nerves, it robs one's mind the wrong way, like some atrocious variation thrust into some be- loved old tune. That Revised Version is re- jponsible for many outbursts of my wrath. Here, for instence, is the nineteenth verse, so familiar to every churchgoer, for it is the open- ing passage of one of the Oospels for Eastertide. The old Bible reads : " The same day at even- ing, being the first day of the week, when * 17 18 A Parson's Ponderings i I the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews." The Revised Version thus puts it : " When, therefore, it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews." Now, in the name of common sense, what is the use of all this changing and shifting and ruffling up of words ? What is gained by it, textually, exegetically, homiletically, philologi- cally or ptherwise f It will be replied : " It is a more literal translation." Yes, to be sure ; as " literal " as if one translating from the French were to render " Comment voua portez-vousf" by " How yourself carry you 1" and leave it at that When I was a schoolboy in England, in translating from the classics, I had, of course, to do so " literally " first; but, that done, the mas- ter would always say: " Now, put that into good English." And if I left the sentence at last as some of the sentences are left in the Revised Version, I think I should have had what we used to call, in schoolboy slang, a " licking." Take, for instance, St Paul's quotation from the Old Testament, in 1 Cor. ii. 9, beginning, "Eye hath not seen"; and compare the old and new versions. I grant the passage is ' "acult to render into good grammatic English, but at Concerning the Revised Version 19 any rate the old version makes sense. The Revised Version turns it into a mere jumblo of words. What is the subject? What is the predicate ! To return to our chapter and verse, " When therefore it was evening," I object to that word therefore." It is « Kteral," to be sure: but it 18 more than "literal"; it is literalism of a debased mechanical character that defeats its own purposes. It is true that the little Greek word ovK means "therefore" sometimes, hut not always. It is a monosyllable which St. John very frequently uses; it often enhances the rhythm of his sentences. In argumentative dis- course it should no doubt be rendered " there- fore." But in narrative, especially in such vmd, picturesque, colloquial narrative as St. John's, it serves just the same purpose as our little monosyllables, "now," "so," "then," etc. It is a particle to indicate transition of ideas, change of subject, sequence of events— it is used in repetitions after a parenthesis, etc., just as we use those little words. But the Revisors make it always " therefore," with Chinese stiff- ness. Now I hate that word "therefore "stuck in everywhere. It is a long word ; it takes a long time to pronounce; it is a stiff, formal word; It 18 a formidable word; it bristles with I i i 20 A Parson's Ponderings logic; it suggests premises and conclusions and Euclid's propositions, and all that sort of thing. It is so different from our friendly little words «then,'y 80," "now," "yet," "and," or the Greek ovv and de. Let anyone read the two ver- sions, the old and the new, of the eighteenth chapter, and notice hew irritatir 'hat " there- fore " is reiterated in the latter, and he will surely say, as of old wine compared with new, " The old is hetter." (Luke v. 39.) By th^ way, I think I have caught the Ee- visors napping. Out of the twenty times the word ovv occurs in this eighteenth chapter, in three cases the Revisors have foi^tten their own stiff rule of always, translating " the same Greek by the same English word." In verse 3 they have left the old rendering "then"; in verses 12 and 16 they have changed "then" into *' so." In all the other seventeen instances that horrid " therefore " occurs. I do not know why these three places should have escaped the infliction of their rigid rule. Doubtless it was an oversight In some few places the Revised Version emendations are valuable from a doctrinal point of view; for instance, in the distinctions be- tween the Aorist and Perfect tenses ; as in Gal. iii. 27 : " For as many of you as were baptized Concerning the Eevised Version 2i into Christ did put on Christ" (e.g., then and there at vour baptism). But these places are very few, and by no means excuse the Revisers for the ruthless carving up of the old sentences, spoiling the rhythm and beauty of the style. I wonder at the bad style so often displayed m the ftevised Version, especially when the Eng ish literature of to-day abounds in such exceUent models. In word-architecture the present age seems to be a golden one. It is re- freshing to turn from the turgidity of some of the old learned authors to the limpid and yet vigorous writings of our own times. We have too, all "styles "of word-architecture. There is ^e pure stately Gothic, graceful and strong, of Professors Huxley, Goldwin Smith, Fred. Har- 'T' u'J"^ r ^^^'»ted » of Lord Macaulay, or the Flamboyant " of Archdeacon Farrar, or even the "Gargoyles" of Carlyle, to select from. But under what style are we to class the Ite^sed Version ? I should say, early English, June, 1891. II CHAPTER in. CONCERNING SUPPOBTINO YOUR SUPPORTERS. I HAVE just read my Week of to-day (September 18th), and its first page has set me a-thinking. It discusse4 the New Frauds Bill, and took high moral ground — ^very high indeed; it demanded that the Frauds Bill should begin higher. It would make it hot, not only for the man who gives presents to a minister, but even for " the man who, having sold or wishing to sell goods to a department, makes a contribution, volun- tary or solicited, to the electoral fund of the party to which the minister belongs." Now this would be indeed heroic treatment, and might eventually reverse the present order of things, driving out of existence "the imlimited collec- tion and use of money for election purposes " which is confessedly the bane of our political system. « I am not enough of a politician to discuss the ethics of this question from a political etand- point, but, as a parson, I would suggest that the Supporting Your Supporters 28 proposed legislation should begin even higher yet Instead of confining itself to ministers of state and their cUents, suppose it should reach even to ministers of religion and their flocks? The enforcement of the maxim, « Support your supporters," sometimes falls heavily on the clergy. Many a time is a poor pastor remon- stratea with by the members or officials of his congregation for not supporting his supporters- many a time does he get such a hint as this, "I T^nt to tell you, as a friend, that Mr. Tozer is offended with you; he talks of leaving your church and joining Mr. Smith's or Mr. Brown's church, because you don't deal at his store." JVow under such circumstances there are two courses open to the offending minister. On the one hand he may pursue his own independent way. In that case he will lose Mr. Tozer, and then he will soon hear the mutterings of dis- content at his alienating the members of his flock. On the other hand, he may submit and patronize Mr. Tozer henceforth; in that case he miMt grin and bear it " if he should perchance find himself the victim of stale groceries, or tough meat, or ill-fitting garments, aU purchased at the highest price, in order to retain the irood graces of Mr. Tozer. Now the question is: Supposing the parson lf;'S S4 A Parson's Ponderings adopts the latter oonne, is he a " boodler "i I confess I cannot draw the line between his con- duct and that of a contractor, let us say, who subscribes to the election fund. The difference seems to me to be one of d^ree and not of kind. To be sure, there is a vast difference between the amount of the contractor's cheque and the poor parson's little grocery bill, but the principle in each transaction is the same, I ween ; it is " sup- porting your supporters." Now, if I am correct in my premises, I must needs confess with a heavy heart that I hav^ more than once in my life been guilty (or the victim) of this species of "boodHng." The fact is the Old Adam in us all dies hard, and legislation, in order to exterminate him, must go very deep. How would it be for the Government to enact that, '^ Whosoever i^all join any congr^ation or church and subscribe to its funds in order to obtain the custom and patronage of the members of such churdi, or of the pastor thereof, shall be judged guilty of boodling " ; or, again, " If any pastor of a church shall patronize any shop or store, and so make bad purchases or bargains, simply in order to secure or retain the attendance in his church of the master or owner of such^shop or store, he shall be judged guilty of boodling " ? Supporting Your Supporters S5 AlasI if such laws were paasod I wonder how mxaj would escape of aU the preachers who have of late aroused the indignation of the land with their eloquence concerning wickedness in hieh pUwesI ^ In the small English town in which I was hronght up the tradesmen and artisans were mostly Nonconformists, and they had great grudge against the rector of the pamh. It was not because he was a Bitnalist; on lie contraiy, he was an Evangelical of the purest type— what we used to call a Simeonite-and a good, lov- aWe, Christian man, although an "tristocrat" * *l f'l.T?^''* was: "A prettj shepherd of the flock he IS I If he wants a new suit or a new pair of boots, he goes to E (the ^unty town) to get them r Well, E— was only sixteen miles oflF, and the tailors of our little to^m were not firstKjlass, but the good rector took h,8 own course; he belonged to the much- hated Established Church, and he was haughty enough to get his clothes and thims where he could get best value for his money There may be demoralizing elements in a state church, but there are other elements equally demoralizing, in the voluntary system, wiA all Its miserable rivalries and competition^ and struggles for existence. But the compact S6 A Parson's Ponderings of Olraioh and State is doomed, we are told. It is a " relio of medinvalism ** that must be abolished everywhere, as it is in Canada. Be it so. But the problem which has yet to be solved by 118 Canadians is : Kow that there is an entire separation between Chnrch and State, between religion and politics, to which of the two belongs the department of ethics and morals? If the l^slature means to control it, let it give the various religious denominations to understand that henceforth they mudt confine themselves to dogma' and speculation, and let the enact- ments of the state on such questions as the day of rest, prohibition, and so forth, be based on purely political and utilitarian grounds, and let all its acts against "supporting your sup- porters" reach even to the churches and the pastors thereof. September, 1901. OHAPTEB IV. OONCBRNim WHAT IS A LUXVaY. Thk article by Mr. Henry George, in the Arena wme time smoe, on " How to Destroy the Bum Power," is no doubt a startling one. But there are so many startling doctrines nowadays that we have to control our emotions on hearing them or our heads wiU be turned; and, really, on calm deliberation, some of Mr. George's utterances, at any rate, sound like good sense. For example: Legal restrictions on any branch of business must mtroduce into politics a special element, which will exert power in proportion to the pecumaiy interests involved. Under our system the power to get votes and to manage conven- tions IS the foundation of the power to make laws and to secure appointments. The eflFect of the tax on the manufacture of liquor is to concen- trate the business in the hands of larger capital- ists and stronger men and to make evasions a source of great profit. This is the genesis of the American whiskey ring which sprung into the most pernicious activity with the imposition 27 T 18 A Parson's Ponderings of the two dollar per gallon tax. To tax lienor is inevitably to call a *nim power' into politics." If there not oonaiderable truth in this indict- ment, that all this system of excise and high license, and taxing of liqnor in every cor- ner, tends to throw the whole traffic into the hands of capital, and that capital will naturally use its power to control votes, and so rule the commonwealth ? Certain it is that while temperance workers are using their utinost efforts to make the people of this continent dispense with alcohol in every form, English capitalists are pouring their millions into die country to buy up the breweries and dis- tilleries. That does not look as if capital was afraid of high excise and high license, or even of prohibition. On the other hand, while Mr. Qeoige argues that " free rum " would be tiie destruction of the " rum power," an agitation is being worked up at the same time for high license in addition to high excise. An advocate of this scheme for reducing intemperance thus argues in a daily paper: " It is universally recognized as a politi- cal axiom that the burden of taxation should, as much as possible, be laid upon the luxuries of life, so that the necessities of life may go free." What ii a Loziuy 29 Our Finance Minitter htM toted upon thit io- called « udom " of Itte, in stiU farther taxing alcoholic liquors and tobacco. He spoke, if I mistake not, to this effect: " I hope that those who indulge in these ' luxuries » wiU not object to be further taxed, when they consider that therein the poor man will have his tax removed from such * necessaries ' as tea and sugar." It occurs to one that many a " poor man " (and poor woman, too, for that matter) loves a bit of a smoke out of his (or her) old clay now and then. But let that pass. Now this " axiom " sounds very well indeed. It is an ancient one; in fact, somewhat mouldy. But 'though " universally acknowledged," it is a pnaciple that is hard to carry out in practice in this present age; for pray, who is to decide what is a luxury and what is not? It all de- pends on the special needs of the individual, on the size of his purse, on the cheapness or dear- ness of the article in question, and on the state of the society in which the individual moves, as to whether uny particular thing is a " luxury " or not to him. The Greenlander goes out in his canoe and harpoons a seal ; he brings It home and skins it; he and his household eat the carcass, and of the skin he makes himself a cloak. We can hardly say he is indulging in I •0 A Parson's Ponderings luxuries. Tet thtt sMue skin, property djeiMd, and made into a fashionable jacket, and put upon the Uok of "Miss Flora McFlimsey, of Madison Square^" becomes a veritable luxury; at least in the eyes of the poor " sweated ** seamstress, who must content herself with scraps of worsted. The Hottentot goes out hunting and slays a leopard, or some feline beast— whether he eats it or not is a question; at any rate he flays it, and wraps the gaudy skin around his waist Is that a luxury! Yet that same skin, imported from Africa, might form a most luxurious adjunct to the Persian carpet of the luxuriously furnished smoking-room of some member of New York's four hundred. The Chinaman, breeding his own silk-worms azid weaving their products into a garment for him- self, can "walk about in silk attire." Is he to be dubbed luxurious because he does not clothe himself in calico manufactured in Manchester out of the raw material grown in Alabama! So we see, after all, that circumstances alter cases, and what might be deemed a " luxury " under some conditions, becomes a " necessity of life " under others. But who, in this nineteenth century of light and progress, is to determine whether any particular thing is a luxury or not ? Is light a luxury ? It was once, when a window- tax was imposed. Is tea a luxury? It was What it a Lnzniy n thought 10 once when it wu hetrily t«ed; ^7 it i. not . «n«««ity of life," «; FroWdwioe would have ordained that the tea plant ahould grow in every dime. But a tax I^lnH'J^^T '*'* ^ ^ • **"'^«°' ^^» that it induce, nervousne-, .leeploMness, heart te,ubj. «d what not I. oo£Pee a l^nirvf Ton had better not tell the Arab «,. I, . L li^a- ^"^^"*»*^y> to Mi« Dora, fon? T^r^ S"^"*- i • telephone a luxury? h^h^ . ^^ '' paterfamilia. puts up one in to their chum«; but not when used by men o^ ^C/''*"*'^'*^^'^' yJ, if they o«rt ^ty cent, a pound, and beef is only five; ^t ,f you cannot get beef in your neighborhood GarfJ^ V. v?rS' " '^""**'°»*'' »» Movent Garden Market half^^wn apiece; but not in iten^vl'^ir*'^'"/^"^'^' That is what deceased, used to think so, for he taught his dis- 8S A Parson's Ponderings ciples that " the apostles never wore watches " ; nevertheless all who travel by rail, whether in the luxurious " Pullman " or plebeian " colon- ist," are thankful that all the officials have good timekeepers. Are pictures a luxury? While they are no " necessity of life,'* it would be hard if the artisan were to be taxed for stick- ing a colored print on his wall. Is a piano a luxury? Sometimes, far from being a luxury or even a necessily, it is a positive nuisance— to the listener, who would gladly " prohibit " it Still, I jdoubt if the greatest music-hater alive would wish to restore the old Puritan Blue Law which forbade the use of any instrument of music except a JeVs harp. The fact is, the whole trend of modem civili- zation is to turn "luxuries" into "neces- saries," and this arbitrary decreeing that such and such a thing is a luxury, per se, and must, therefore, be taxed, so as to make it intolerably dear, is out of harmony with the spirit of the age. We do not tax bananas and pineapples now. In the time of the Civil War the United States Government put a tax on matches, not because they were a " luxury," but because they were so indispensable and were consumed in such vast quantities that the Government was sure of a good revenue from that source. I would not like to assert openly, but I don't What is a Lx^xury 33 mind whispering to m^ readers, thai. I fear-I w^ t say beheve^that a similar n ^tive might po«ibly prompt the imposition oi' this hefvy tax on hquor with some of our legislators. Oi r»r'« "f.T*^"'* ^^"^^ ^ *^ Pecksniffian to be attributed to the Legislature at large. Of absolute "luxury," as those we have quoted do I only suggest that it may be barely po^ible ha ;rJ'"K'' '" ^-^'^ might beTased tcZLZ''^ ' '^^'^'*^^^ *^^* «»<^hol will be consumed m any case, and that in large quwitities; and so the revenue is assured. ^ prohibition we can understand if we grant its premies: that alcohol is universall^^Tin- vanably pernicious, for rich and poor, for sick and well, alike. "Free rum" wVcan under- 2 should' ^""' '"""'^ "^«- beneficiaTte poor should enjoy it as well as the rich- and where pernicious the rich should refrat'from It as much as the poor. But this heavily texSg nL ii""*?'" "^ ^^^y^' ^ 'Article S f naturally cheap, and so making it artificiallv dear on the ground of its being a « l^^^l like savinir* "ti.:« • ., *"*"i7> is decreeXTfho • k '' ^"^ ''^'*'^^ ^^^^h we decree that the rich may use, but the poor must Is it not high time that we were governed bv rules of sound sense, and not by "gi^h "f ^ I>tcmbtr, 1891. ^ ^ 8 CHAPTER V. GONCERNJNQ THE WISE MEN FROM THE EAST. The Festival of the Epiphany memorializes an incident which is related by only one. evan- gelist, and by him in few words. " There came wise mep from the East to Jerusalem" in search of the Christ-child. But, brief as the story is, it has ever captivated the heart of Christendom; for it recorded the first mani- festation of Christ to the Gentiles, it indicated the catholicity of His kingdom, it fore- shadowed the mighty influence which the Christ-child was to wield over all the human race. It is no wonder that this event, so briefly sketched by the evangelist, should have be- come a subject of curious, though devout, specu- lation in the early Church. " Who were these magi? Whence did they come? How many were there? What were their names and ranks?" And it is no wonder that Christian imagination, and Christian art, and Christian 34 The Wise Men from the East 35 poetry should have endeavored to supply an answer to the eager questionings of the Chris- tian heart, and that their answer took the shape It did. These magi were three in number, as their gifte-." gold and frankincense and ni:^h — mdicated. They were kings; for had not the prophet said: ' "Gentiles shall come to Thy light, and kings to the brightness of Thy nsi^?" They were representatives of all nations, for the Psahnist sang: « The Kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents, the Kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts." And so at last the pretty legend was evolved. There were three kings of Orient, one was fair, a descendant of Japheth; one was olive-brown, of the race of Shem; and one black a son of Ham. ' One was young, one middle-aged, and one old. Nay, we even know toeir names: Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, liave not the three stars of Orients belt been named after them? And now this allegorical legend, which not long ago was by many Protestants decried as superstitious » and " unwarranted by Scrii>. ture, is taking hold of all Christian minds as If It were history, thanks tb the romance of Ben Hur," which has had its legions of read- ers. And we are stiU further familiarized 86 A Parson's Ponderings with it by the spectacular r^resentation whieh was lately denounced by the divines of Hamil- ton, and yet witnessed by crowded houses there and elsewhere. And here I must make a con- fession. I myself have witnessed that spec- tacle. "Spectacle" is the only appropriate name for it. Drama it is not ; for there is no speaking. It cannot be called a series of " Tableaux vivants,", for many of the scenes were altogether ioo "vivants," especially the dances. It would be an indignity to call it a pantomime; so "spectacle" let it be. I say I witnessed that spectacle, not in Hamilton, but — ^no matter where. And I may add, I was not the only parson present — ^by a good many. I was disappointed, however. Not but that it was gorgeous beyond all expectation. But I went there (and I am sure my brother parsons all did, too) thinking I should see tableaux which would elucidate passages of Scripture more accurately than most of the pictures in our illustrated Bibles. But, ah mel instead of suggesting Scripture texts, those scenes far oftener recalled to my mind lines of Horace, such as, — " Jam Cytherea ohoros ducit venus imminente LunA, Junotceque Nymphia Oratiae deoentes," etc. (Ode I., 4.) The -VHse Men from the East 37 And sgain^ " Si' ^°°' ."""«'» twlMwrn Olympiciim <'oIl««M»Jii™t,"«o. (I., 1.) ' " " M I gand on those beiritohing marches and whatnot And then the chariot raee I " T«ii»niiii domiiHn evohit .d Deoe I" To be sure, after one of those fascinating or spmtstirrang scenes, the mind of the spectotor BntTf^'^^r'" »'.'»"'««'i^ o* that kind. iJut I fear the moral effect on the aver«». yonth as he looked on that pictnre ^d »ttt :% i^itr '"""^'^•^ " -^^ --»' p- Howerer, fliat spectacle opened with "The ^Cl ft "^^ ^'^" So, now tha^ Bomance and Art have reprodnced so graphi- ^y tte ancent legend (snch is the ^r^er- fi^ of hnman nature), it i, likely to be toosforfl. considered by the mnWt/de^ , nund that these interesang legends wcr. r^ddf j^ *^ '^'^'^ ii^nttio: s ae Middle Ages, by those who to^w nothing whatever of the ways of the East To th^ i "i I ! 38 A Parson's Ponderings • Oriental literature was a blank. But, as the revival of classical learning at the time of the Beformation caused much mental readjust- ment, so the introduction (we cannot say the revival) of Oriental literature into our modem seats of learning has made us readjust our ideas of the Eastern world. What did our fathers know of the Zend-avesta, or of the Rig-Vedas, or all those other mysterious volumes? Men of the new culture, however, are supposed to know all about them— like the modem Major-General of the " Pirates of Penzance." In olden times a parson might have become a D.D., although he were in blissful ignorance oi the Rig-Vedas and the Zend-avesta, and all the rest of them. Not so now, thanks to the labors of Professors Max Miiller, Monier Williams, Sayce and others. Every aspirant for honors in divinity must now know some- thing at least of the teachings of these Eastem sages, and be able to form some theory as to whether or not those teachings influenced the Jewp during the exile, or at any other period. So it strikes me that we modems, too, may give the reins to our imagination in filling up the outline given by Scripture as to these " wise men of the East"; and I think we can make an idyll, probably moM tme to facts, and quite The Wise Men from the East 39 M edifying as the mediieval legend of the Three Kings of Orient." So I am going to There were three wise men of the East (to be sure there were many more; but I am going to stick to the orthodox number; and there werf three prominently wise men). They flour- ished long before the birth of the Christ-child, wi If "^""^ ^^^ ^"y " incalculable! Wise men they were, and kings they wem-for what earthly potentate that ever lived exercised such power over the minds and souls of men as tZ ^r r^t** 'niUemiiums ago, and still wield, though so long dead ? These three were : Confucius, the wise man of China, who flour- ished about 600 years B.C. ; Zoroaster, the wise man of Pema, who flourished about 600 years iJ.C.; Buddha, the wise man of India, who flourished about 1000 years B.C. (I k4p to the old-fashioned spelling of the names of tL^e worthies, for really there are so many new ways that I am not altogether certain which is the very latest style; and the chances are that before long somebody else will take out an orth^aphical patent for a still newer mode.) Of these three — ^ 1. Confucius was the father of agnostic- ism, positivism and secularism; for though ^ A Parson's Ponderings he waa a great ritualist and performed his rites most punctiliously, yet his religious opinions were very ha*y, and "One world at a time" wpi his motto. 2. Zoroaster was the apostle of dualism. His system was a connecting link between Polydieism and Monotheism. He propounded tiie doctrine of two gods-^ne good Sid one bad— perpetually fighting each other, with a forecast that ultimately the good god would pre- vail. We may think that this doctrine has no wunterpart amongst us of the enlightened West, but 18 It so ? I fear too many Christians degrade their religion into a sort of dualism; they talk and think of tiie Evil One as if his ^wer were almost equal to that of the Most High. Indeed I fancy that a good part of Milton's « Paradise Lost," if we only changed the name of Satan into that of Abraham, would be accepted as fairly orthodox by the pious Parsee. "^ 3. Buddha was the father of pantheism, of whom. It seems to me, Spinoza and other modems are but feeble imitators. These three wise men of the East were all dead centuries before the birth of " The Light of the World." But though dead tiiey yet speak, and countless miUions hear and obey i -, The Wise Men from the East 41 They were, in a aeiu», « Light, of A«a "-not tt Sihh V'^ "^. "^* "•^^ i^arbingers :^ Wat laght? Theip wpitinm are fnll^ 1 ** my we«, each iHu^rw I ::»?:: P.»l (Act. »ii. 20)-^v« the God "whot own ways. (Acts xv. 16.) By the way what «hnl^^ u "*?. '^^** tenderness St Paul ^owed when he preached to the heathen 2^^> ^y ^e not go further and say that Tl •U good oonmeU md iiU iW work! T ' "ed-'f The God of Ab 7^ t^" ^ patHMoH ««er7iag the f„n li|ht for T fa ^,I«td.y,,i,the«Godofthf.piri;:?.'S Suppose, the.^ we imagine that the* ''wi» men that came from the Eaat to Jeruaal^ " & 4t A Parson's ^onderings were the repreeentatiTei, or hierophanta, or dele- gates, of these three syiteme— the leoularitt, the dualiit, the pantheist—eeeldiig more li^t, and drawn by the goidanoe of heaven to the manger of Bethlehem— the Lights of Asia wending their way to the Light of the World? The Mongolian asking^ " Is there another life be- yond the graver to learn from Him, "I am the Kesurrection and the Life"; the Iranian askings " Shall evil be overcome at last by good, and if so, how?" to be Unght, " For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that He might* destroy the works of the devil"; U»e Hindoo asking, "Where shall rest be found?" to h jar the words, "Come unto Me and I wiU give you rest!" So the Epiphany becomes a pledge and seal of that future time when the Incarnate, the Crucified, the Bisen Lord wiU fuJfil His word, "I will draw all men unto Jlfe." "So runs my dream"— but, alas I in these days we behold a strange phenomenon. We see quondam disciples of the Christ deserting Him, and going for light to the wise men of the East! We see ex-Christians beowning occult philosophers, Theosophists, Buddhists 1 Is this the irony of history? Ig this a rude awakening from our dream? Surely not Lotus The Wise Men from the East 48 take heart Mid enlarge our field of vi«i,. The pwnphlet. howler, kindly furnished me by my W-* nl""* Tif^"*" ^^ Theo«,phyf» L2, putting the TheoBophic doctrine in as concrete a form as I conceive to be possible. When I t^!^ *'*®"' °»y »^»™ subsided. ^^ Mr. FuUerton opens his case in these words: ^ Any man upon first hearing the word Theoeophy/ naturally supposes it a new form of reh^on, or a new interpretation of the Bible. ,W^^r°* *^n """'"'^ ^' ^'^^^^h^' «»d sects m even the smallest towns, and that these, as wdl as the fresh formations recorded in the daily press," etc. ai^^- ^ *^^'J ni''.*^.^ ^^^ '*^'y ^ The numerous divisions of Christians are the cause of still another effort to get some universal problem on which all can unite and so show forth the brotiierhood of man I The late Lord A. Cecil used to begin his preachings in the same strain. So does every « fresh formation." So schism bi^ds schisms; so we Christians put a stum- bling-block m the weak brother's way! I do not mean to say that there should be no differ- n it ij .'iill 4« A Parson's Ponderings emoes of opinioM or views among Ohrietiims: they are neoessaiy and desirable. But it is neither necessary nor desirable that each separate opinion should be embodied in a separate oijganization. Fancy, if every shade of political opinion in Canada had its own separate parliament and executive! Mr. Fullerton proceeds to expound in plain pnee ike two great central doctrines of Theosophy, which Sir Edwin Arnold has drawn out in such charming verse in his " Light of Asia, VIZ.) "Reincarnation" and "Karma" The first of these, reincarnation, is a new naiie for the old opinions of PyAagoras, Socrates and Plato, of the pre^xistence and transmigra- taon of every individual soul. Socrates (in the Phffido" of Plato) argues that the soul of every individual must have existed in some bodily shape or other before it possessed ite present organism, and that after death it will again tenant some other form, human or bestial, and so on, ad infiniium. Now this is just the Theosophic (or Buddhist) doctrine of re- mcamafion. I remember, as a boy, reading a most curious and interesting tale— I wish I could get hold of it again— called « The Trans- migrations of Indur." It ran something like this: Indur, a pious Brahman, while endeav- :1 'I it Concerning Theosophy" 47 **T*^*^."*^ "^"^ '"^'^ ^«>m the jawB of L™^i. /"^J "^^ ^^' <>^ death-wound from the ferocious creature. But before his f,^.-°"^»*?* ^** ^^ '^^ ^" ^t^'e "trans- ^^ he shaU always keep the memory ^L^^ '^J'u^ousness of his present huma^ incarnation." The request is granted, where- upon his soul contentedly departs from his body. On awakening to his new life he finds himself ma vast waste of waters, no land visible any- tZZl. ^" «P\^r «^-*; he spouts wate^r thm^h his nose; he feeds on minute creatures of the air and water, which he swallows by the Uck and tail; he is astonished at his own bulk. He 18 a whale. Notwithstanding, he enjoys hnnself hugely in his new "en^^nment" he He looks, with wrath upon a boafr-load of felW- souls, incarnated in shapes similar to that he wo^formerly He goes for them, but they dodge him, and he gets the prod of another har- ^t A^]^V^'^^^ ^'^ ^' ^^"^ »•" «o»l i« again dislodged, and he « migrates." The next 48 A Parson's Ponderings P time he tnnu up ag a tiger; thea a monkey, and 80 on. We boys used to read this story as one now «ads Grimm's "Fairy Tales" or Ahoe in Wonderland." But it appear, that, according to Theosophy, we were aU the time absorbing the most solemn truths. However, to be just, Mr. FuUerton says nothing about our reincarnation or preincama- tions as brutes or fishes. He talks about the evolution of the spirit in its various human form^ WeU, let it be granted (after the man- ner of Euclid's hypothesis) that my « Ego," or soul," has been through numberless trans- migrations or reincarnations since the begin- ning of humanity. What would I not give to be able to recall at wiU to my memory any par- ticular incarnation through all that time I I would not like to carry them all in my mind at once. But just suppose some " Mahatma " (or whatever Ihe title of the proper authority might be) could act as a sort of "telepathic central." If I could only ring her up and shout, " Hello I central; connect me with the reminiscence ot my EgoMntheStone Agel" How interest- ing to see myself-or feel myself, or remember myself—clad in a cave-bear's skin and armed with a stone tomahawk, prowling around after some wooUy rhinoceros I Then to recognize "Concerning Theosophy" 49 "^Jf " " *"'y Briton paddling a coracle- «d then, maybe, «i„ea™.W in &. IZZe' What a glonons panorama of the am» wonlH fte story of one snch spirit be? Tow thlt Madame ElavatAy is dead, and Ooi 01^ rehred. porhap. M«. Beaant will devote W wonld »ve such a practical and neofnl tnra to TheoMphjc teaching, and be of inestimaK Mr Fnllerton say, that reincarnation hJa no n»pect of countrsr or sex I wonder if my sonl ""ght ««.e day view the very mnmmy in which be there to inform mej it would be so toterest- ffindl*" -T *\'''^ Orlmighthavetr. J^n^ '""''« '"' • ^™«"" pile. O' tat^J ""^ " *""" Eliaabeth-;ho "Which is absnrd," as Endid wonld say B^des, ,f the sonl, fetween each tr«„mi^^: rZ tT"^'"^ '' '*<»Pe^ ™ tke wate« of lethe, what .s the ««, „f it aU ! What ma^ ^ me whether my spirit formerly lodgedh^^ ^ko^Troj^, Here Theosophy tS^" wtb her second central doctrine rf "Kama " I,' ll t ^ ',H|i: 60 A Parson's Ponderings which is to set this all ri^t So let us investi- gate " Karma.'' Mr. Fullerton thus descrihes it: ** The great doctrine of Earma is in itself exceedingly simple. It is the doctrine of per- fecty inflexible justice. It means, as first de- fined by Colonel Olcott, * the law of ethical causation' — 'wliatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' But it also expresses the balance sheet of merit and demerit in any indi- vidual character." "The Earmic law asserts itself over vast stretches of time and through numberless incarnations, not interpreting itself intelligibly in each specific incident of eadi life, but ensuring approximate justice in separate incarnations, and absolute justice in their totality." "There are . . . deeds of heroism or atrocity too momentous for full payment in one inpamation, and the settlement for such passes over and on till it suddenly appears during some distant birth, the long- pent force discharging itself at last, and, to our narrow vision, inexplicably. It is said that Buddha's favorite disciple was slain in his presence by robbers, and that he did not inter- pose. Questioned as to this, he replied that in a far remote date his disciple, then himself a robber, had committed a murder for which Karma had now overtaken him." "Concerning Theosophy" 51 But, dear me, it is horrible to think what "«ilte may follow, if Theosophy becoi^^a^- venal or even prevalent! Let us imairine a A burglar IS tned and convicted of havimr robbed and njurdered a Mr. John Smith. ^eTuie asks the prisoner why sentence should not te pronounced. The convict replies: "My ^rdi have simply to .ay, it is Karma. sLe ^n- fZr f" r^ "^ *^" ^**« J^^'^ Smith whom a happier reincarnation-inhabited the body of a South Sea islander; at the same time mf iigo was incarnated in a missionary. Tl islander slew that missionary and approprial dLr'^^^.'-f '^""P- SothL'lirL" cd^ m which ^e both met again under altered circumstances, is simply an act Karauc law." What criminal could not so plead justification for all hi, crimes? But^^ haps by that time there will be an "adept 'Mn the Supreme Court to test the truth or false- hood of such aU6j?ations. w^^^l be m the hands of personal enemies-or political opponents-for destro.yin^ each other^s characters. Fancy a Tory and a Liberal candi »l< III' ■ k 6i A Parson's Ponderings date on the platfonn of the future; the one asserting that he has it on the very best author- ity that the soul of the other once infested Ananias; and the other retorting that he has indisputable evidence that his opponent once had a life-lease of the body of Caligula. What libel suits the " adepts " of the future will have to settle I For my part, if my " spirit " is ever charged with the evil deeds it committed while dwelling in some cruel or vicious monster of the past, I hereby repudiate all responsibility. I will not be answerable for what it did while some other fallow had possession of it, and this, I fancy, will be the general verdict of the west- em mind. We of this continent are very practi- cal, very business-like ; we expect quick returns for our investments. " Every man for him- self " is the general creed; and the idea of a man being responsible for the acts of ten thou- sand individuals of the past ages will not, I think, take much hold of ue. On the other hand, jesting apart, we Chris- tians are bound in fairness to look at the other side of the question. If we see in the religious opinions of another what seems to us absurd or repulsive, it is only right that we, in turn, should take cognizance of those things in our religious opinions which seem repulsive or "Concerning. Theowphy" j, ■hnrd to ium. TO* all „.^ . •tioM «e M. 1 1„ „„^ *; *" '»"«1"» " lashed lu very Ih.L!;^.?'^?^* 'y"*"" We oppo«d to all «,Me ofTli" ' r *^ """« .me and very ugly, which ehe had piled up in her hold. Boubtlew they had served a good purpose in their day, hut they were felt to be useless lumber now. But before that there was another fearful ■torm; the Essays and Reviews squaU. How violent that was while it lasted I But, now that it is all over, how has it left the ship t It would not be true to say it had no e«Feot on her. The fact was, it drove here to shape her oourse more truly; and while not throwing overboard anything of value, she is in better trim to^y, thanks to that storm, to withstand the next one, which is now upon us, blowing from the same quarter. The clouds began to gather, and the heavens looked very dark when the Encyclopedia Bri^ annica came out with the articles by Prof. Rob- ertson Smith, and others, respecting the Pen- tateuch and various other books of the Bible. Oh I how the wind blew then I and ever since, indeed, has the gale been raging. The blasts of the Higher Criticism have grown stronger and stronger. They will not overwhelm the ship; there is no fear of that; but we wonder how The Higher CriUoittu •he will trim her «ijl, and rtow her «i«,„ • order to weather it **** *° The aaMulta on the Old Te«tam-«» viewB " «« J ^ -Muu m j«.88ajB and Re- P>om then, are mere troism, to^, . ""•**"« of the ohronoIoKioaldL«»..>.- Prof. Jowett aavs* "A ».«•«-• i ""*"*'""»««» jv. reflation «^it, tiL^^^'l:!T^ ■n«i-t. upon the «»« uL-"*),. ^ ?°" patible with imperfect knowledge of physi^, ill ^^ - eo A Parson's Ponderiogs chronology and history on the part of the writers. If so, it naturally follows that the further back we go in the history of human civilization the more imperfect and crude will be the knowledge in natural things of the writers of that age. Such a theory of inspiration might, of course, shock and distress those of the pious who have conceived of inspiration as extending to "every word, every syllable, every letter." But this pious opinion has never been the faith of the Catholic Church, as the Duke of Argyle and Mr. Gladstone both pointed out, in the Nineteenth CtiUury, in their several answers to Professor Huxley. Mr. (Jore, too, says: " The Church repudiated the Montanist concep- tion of inspiration, according to which the in- spired man spoke in ecstacy as the passive un- conscious instrument of the Spirit; and the metaphors which would describe the Holy Spirit as acting upon a man 'like a flute-player breathing into his flute,' or * a plectrum striking the lyre,' have always a suspicion of heresy attached to their use." ("Lux Mundi," essay VIU.) In the meantime the storm rages; the battle is waxing hot. Professcrs Briggs and Smith, of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, are " catdiing it " just now. I see by the last The Higher Criticism 61 fnongli. The students of Queen's University ceUent Thl • 1 °* addrrases are ex- ceuent Tliere is ■ healtliT, breesv l)ro.H mmded tone pervading then."^,, .r^'^fX" PriJT « *" «»<>• Three of them a« ^ Principal Grant, and one by no Im. . ^ ^destriietive," Such ^^r^nrwo':.!^:"^^ ^^disappointed; they would find inX ftrth inChrist, and ardent love of the Word of G«J. Dr. Grant's addresses plainly and Jd°T endorse the findings of RoberLi sSth of tl» Fart^"* ?f *""'«™ " of the citadel «r,.^ J ; ^. *'"''»" '«*'' ""rely to iwon- "tmot and strengthen its approaches. I ( if .'■ 62 A Parson's Ponderings Another very remarkable book, as being "abreast of the times," is "The Book of Isaiah," by Kev. George Adam Smith. It is a part of " The Expositors* Bible," and it is pub- lished by the Willard Tract Depository of Toronto. Surely this last-named fact gives it the imprimatur of evangelical orthodoxy; and yet the whole work is based on the Higher Criticism. Dr. Briggs only teaches (I mean in the matter of Isaiah) what this publication of the Tract Depository asserts throughout It is a most fascinating book; one is impressed not only with the erudition, but also with the deep spirituality of its author. Still I must own it is not without a pang one marks the entire absence of the old cherished ideas concerning many passages, and one is inclined to resent the reduction of these passages to meet merely the immediate circumstances of the prophet's time. But the best corrective and tonic for a disturbed faith is to read the whole book through; and also Rev. Brownlow Maitland's "Argument from Prophecy," which, though brief, is excel- lent, and argues from much the same standpoint What, then, is the result so far ? What is the outlook for the "Ark of Christ's Church" in the midst of this violent storm ? Better, I con- ceive, far better, than it was during the preval- * ; The Higher Criticism line of demarcation, between what VZvl held as de fide unH «,!,«* • w to be theotogy of ker «tponent, i, bwed more «,lid?^ .peak; u l;; ir"Go?^:r^i°' ", *" .pdro to the few in the time, rf S^S,^" 1, 2). The trouble with the .uth.„ .f i^^^ |md EeviewB » w„ that while engiued in^ ingtonew and re{ectin> ^^f "i^^*"" otherwise served T -™ • devilled," or these. ^ «^ ««»ng to tiy some of Here is pne about Dr. Wild of T^r.j o*- . Congregational Church, ffislowl fl i®*^* to reduce his salnrv K ^"« ^^ ^ant v.o.tion,i.e„.,po«i,r^^«-^«W f;- 66 A Parson's Ponderings not had the pleasure of ever hearing or seeing Br. Wild; but all Canada knows him as one of our most famous preachers. Many people, if they were visiting Toronto, would not think they had " done " the city, if they had not "done" Bond Street Congregational Church. Is the famous preacher, after all these years of brilliant work, to be served sot Here is another: The Bev. John Burton has been preaching his farewell sermon to the folk of the Northern Congregational Church. I read that he told them that the salvation referred to in the Scriptut^ was not a condition " beyond the regions of the dog-star," but a salvation here also; a salvation not only for the indi- vidual, but for society at large — ^that Christ was the great determinative element in Church, social and civil life— that so believing, he could no longer preach denominationalism, which he ri^rded as a curse and not a blessing. Bravo, Mr. Burton I That is just the kind of talk needed at present. There has been too much individualism, and too little collectivism in the ordinary conception of the " Kingdom of Heaven." Christianity Was founded, not only to secure a future state of happiness for a few chosen souls, but also by its influence pervad- ing the world, to render life here more worth Conceming Preachere 67 eulable^Lnt 'tW-^^^^ to an incaL ^7 the narrow, 2h tT'^^^'' "'^ ^^^ »»» saving also a C * V','*'^ ««"^>" «'> may -cluaivX ,hV:Xrof \'""'°'^^- This well castigated ^ I^fl' ^<>'WI'^es8,- has been little boov4he ^ ' Drummond, in his It is the ^ism whfer '' ^"«««-t^." if, indeed, X tZZT'L ^^''^'^ tive element " to coun^r^ J, ' determina- ri*i its strifes aT^X ^^ ^^^-^ egoism, w « not going to be In^T .i' . ^'' ' ^ '■opo ■»y High Ch„«ll:^r/!:? •*W''nte it u, ■?«i«I or coUeetive X^ *^' '^ ^ "' *«* the "dial, i, what ^^ „" "PPT^ *» «■« i-di- " I^.*io.u, or oX^'^1;„-';M-«««. of a Independency." 111.011:' , "PPosed to »ot he looked upon ^^^It ?^ ^''"" *»«W -We on,, certain .,:S'*„l-^*e, h 68 A Parson's Ponderings as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the leaven hid in meal, affecting more or less thoronghlj all the society with which she has to .do. Here is a third dainty dish among onr entries. The Bev. -, of the Ohurch, has been asked to resign — ^and why) His faithful flock all admit that he has been an excellent shepherd for years past But, then, he is getting old, and he " fails to draw!" Alas, has it come to this, that the great business of a pastor of a church is to " draw V* There is something sinister in the expression, " fails to draw." Draw whom ? and whence ? It may possibly mean that Mr. fails to draw the waifs and strays from the lanes and the gutters. But one cannot help thinking that these are not the ones whom the good dea- cons of the church — ^in view of the annual finan- cial statement — want specially to "draw." We all know pastors and flocks are naturally apt to rejoice over any sheep that have been drawn, not from the wilderness, but from other flocks. It is a hateful word, that " draw," in connection with " denominationalism." One can fancy King Ahab and his wife getting rid of the prophet Elijah because he "failed to draw," when he cried in his despondency, " I Concerning Preaohew Herod hJ\^, u- ?*?**•*» M Boon as Kinir how tmr^T*' . ^ °*^^* understand I can imderatand rival im)ce«. ««!i^ ?* P.Sw^r*^-"^*' '"'°°* °'«««'°« each aoiD. .«J „ i7 ™'"*>" « vanoM bnmdg of fl i ^ i : 70 A Parson's Ponderings I can understand how the competition among railroad managers should force them to out rates, and to print maps, each showing that its own particular line is the shortest possible line between the two points, A and B. I can under- stand the manager of a theatre letting a piece run for so many nights, and then substituting another piece for it, as soon as it " failed to draw." 411 this is of the earth, earthy; but should the Church of Christ be ruu on the same lines? In the legal and medical professions, in spite of the fierce competition of the day, there still lingers some portion of that spirit of honor and professional etiquette which we old-fashioned folks used to think belonged to all the learned professions, and not least the clerical. But I am afraid it is dying out; the competition of " denominationalism " is killing it Some few preachers in the States get enor- mous salaries, equal to those of "my lords" bishops among the " bloated aristocracies" of the Old Country; and I often see accounts of the "magnetic powers" of such preadiers. Cer- tainly they " draw." Have these three Cana- dian preachers lost their " magnetism " 9 Alas I for all pastors, henceforth who, in their declin- ing years, " fail to draw I" July, 1883. CHAPTER IX OOWtlUrtlro the •• irroont. . «M«*ii« problem TL "''* >» • veiy b- make « « eau^I » ' ""' "^ «*•«»<> I «>»M IwcIbZ, X!& «"» "Pe-*. V dint of for thoiurh thev hni^^ ^* gave it up, however, *» «» other'. Zlt"^, t""' " ™'"»« •i ..« '•' .11 II mti 'jT I i. » -.1 I t ' 4 7t A Paraon's Ponderings of Ohritt'f Ohnroh. Etoh it doing what he can to bring about what we all desire to see, an organic reunion of Chriitians. Both conclude their several deUveranoet with a reference to thii hope. Dr. Briggi tayi in hii last para- graph: "All American churohm are in the stream of that tendency which is rushing onward to- wards the unity of Christ's Ohurch. The hedges which separate the doiominations are tradi- tional theories and practices. . . . The problem in the near future is this: Can the liberals remain in their several denominations, and so become the bridges of Church unity! . . . There seems to be little doubt that the lib- erals, at the present time, are quite comfortable as Episcopalians and Congregationalists, and not altogether uncomfortable as Baptists and Methodists," etc, and he doses by hoping that Fresbyterianism has become less " uncomfort- able," and " as broad, catholic and progressive as her Congregational and Episcopal sisters; and thai Church Union will be nigh at the doors, and a happy end of controversy will be seen in a united Protestantism, which will then be encouraged to seek a higher and grander unity in which the Roman and Greek com- munions will likewise share." The "HIitoric KpUoopwe" « •bJMt which WDM XL ni. ^' " •'*' «''" a»„^A^^::r^ch^h-«Y n,,u latter i.^ * ^ '^'^'"' "peci^ly th. often loSJ7^'^S,tr- ^«'o™-«- ^aeiy. The members of the O P P » u a»« supposed to work JJ *u ^***' <* spiratoTTteraJ^'to^?*^ """^"r **^ «>»' ™i I If- I 'ft i 74 A Parson's Ponderings which may be compared to the secular one of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in " A Look Ahead," which he published in the North American Review of last June. Mr. Carnegie sees in the future a grand reunion of the English-speaking race, and it is to be brought about in this fashion: The Queen is to abdicate her throne, for which Mr. Carnegie is kind enough to canonize her in advance; India, Egypt and other inconvenient parts of the Empire are to be abandoned to their fate; England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Australia are severally to become " independent states " in this new union ; and the seat of government is to be transferred from London to Washington. !N'ow, glorious as this " Look Ahead " might seem to Mr. Carnegie, I think most of us Brit- ishers, however much we may wish for the con- solidation of the English-speaking race, will cry, "Non tali auxilio!" And so with regard to the ecclesiastical scheme of Dr. Briggs, we of the Boman, Greek and Anglican communions «7ho adhere in various ways and degrees to the ancient episcopal dynasty, will hardly concur in forwarding Dr. Briggs' extremely liberal views of the Church, which he would like to see. Nevertheless, let us try to make some sort of "equation," even out of these unpromising factors. i' i: ; The "Historie Epiwsopate" 75 men., .„d l2^tt.7°f",rr'7- "^ ^'""^ the work o* »!,. w- J ^f Anghcans. As to fortabk ''MotI„t^ /"«?*'''' " " "■»«»»- P«i»g it ahou d he«X"be*" """■?,= '■■•>• «ded that the PenteteS i.^^ ^T'"^ ""- or n,o« hand., C thet^U'Tr^.th'*' ■":? K> on; .upposinir all fl,.7 7"! I«»«h«, and o.he„, we» tS «M t^^r.l.'^T''''' question, I do not a« .w ''''"'* " six^^Kiewoir^d'tVTH.::^.''^"-' ipran^r:::^-^£?™V2 scheme of or^^ani- „nm« r ^ ^"gSP K;«i,« proposals. We cannot irive un our bishops any more than our Queen. TM- ^ sistence by the A»,»i;« '^"^en. This m- ^^ uy me ivngiicans on th« « tt;»* • Episcopate " callfl fnt*j. * » Historic ^"aigna-tionorji'rur^'S::?,: 5 ! ^ ft m i If / ■ \ u I '1^ 76 A Parson's Ponderings what can we do I The propoeed United Church must have some organism, some form of gov- ernment, some r^men; and with us Epis- copacy is the very backbone; we cannot agree to adopt a molluscous condition of things. In spite of this difficulty, however, I think we may approach one another, even on this score. Some time since an Anglican deq^yman found the parish to which he had been appointed badly broken up by two opposing parties; the one, led by Mr. A., being very High Church, and anxious to adopt every possible adjunct to the services ; the other party, led by Mr. B., very Low Church, and exposed to all ^' iimovations," however commendable in themselves. The rector at length invited the two parishioners to a conference in his study, and with his frank and blunt common-sense, he said : " Now we can't go on in the way we are doing; we must average the thing. So let me know, Mr. A., how much ritual you are willing to give up ; and you, Mr. B., tell me how much you can stand." The parson's suggestions were carried out, and a happy adjustment was the result. Now, in this matter of the historic Epis- copate, the Anglican Church is willing to " give up" a lot Indeed, in my opinion, sudi a course would be not only essential in the case The "Historic Epiacopate" 77 of nranion, but beneficial to herself W- « not PXDeot nil «fk^ J "^ "BMeu. We can- .«WK«e thi. St Ign,a»<^ whom^ « tfen quote, were anffered to riw fmn, i,,-. , M™L« " *' *!f''- S'PP"* he w«« to find wmIV" ""* "* """• '"^ C«>.di,n to™. Z^ ZJ^ ?* *^«' ■*««' ".Iking lit «.d becomuig bewildered with the cnriZ m. Ohnreh hM ril Jong faithfnlly adhered to the ancient line of « order,." ThereuZ TnM ^e^. oonver^tion aon.ething'Z^Jt' S„n!."ni ■."''' ''«««'d'>'t» of the old Cathoho Ohnrch, with it. faith and order I I 4! .[. ^J J ft A Parson's Ponderings would like to we your bishop ; prav conduet me to him." Angliomn— " I tm sorry to say, I can't do that, sir; for His Lordship lives some sixty miles away." St Ignatius — "Indeed I Then how often does he come here ?" Anglican^" Oh, about once in two or three years." St. Ignatius — "Then who is his deputy?" Anglican — "No one exactly. Each clergy- man looks after his own church." St. Ignatius — "And how many presbyters has your bishop, and how far does his jurisdic- tion extend?" Anglican — " He has about one hundred pres- byters, scattered ever a space about as large as Asia Minor." St. Ignatius — ** And how many deacons are there?" Anglican — " About four or five." St. Ignatius — " Ah, doubtless they are with the bishop in his cathedral ?" Anglican — "Oh, dear, no! They are each m charge of a mission with four or five sta- tions." St. Ignatius — "Do you mean four or five congregations ?" The "Historic Episcopate' 79 Anglican — " Tea." St Ignatius — "Well waIH a i We rij' f", '*^ *« 1^ S«»t would «ave a sigh, and conclude that tlim»« u j . pretty much mixed On Vk. il ?^ }^^ «^* should visit sZe P««K^ "^^ ^"'^^^ '^ ^« would find r m«r K^'?'*? congregation, he bishop «nH "'*?7*'« ^^^red himself its Disnop, and a presbytery of eld««i o«^ ber of deacons all CSi^ fi^! T / T" and I think it wouirstS l^^J:^/'"' that thev wa«« ♦!, i ' prtma ^octe, «> •» " copy » C ZT^ «"r™'««»«. and bodies to " «f«„^ » . ^® ^^^''^ other I'lr I 1 i >ll 80 A Parson's Ponderings of every Anglican priest, and, indeed, of every miniater of every denomination. It sbows great reaeareh, and is a capital hand-book of quota- tions £rom divines of every age, and besides it would serve as an einnieon, I feel sure. It is entitled, '' Bishops and Councils,'^ 1^ a Layman of the Ohuroh of England. (Kingston, Ont. : John Henderson & Go.) Among other valuable extracts it gives, in extenso, Bingham's pro- posal (Antiquities, Book IX., Chapter VIII.), wherein that learned divine, nearly two hun- dred years ago, held out the olive branch to the non-episcopal bodies in a way which may yet prove of service. At any rate, if we Anglicans are sincere in the proposals put forth by the Lambeth Confer- ence, especially if we are willing to stand by the term^ of the fourth proposition, vie., " The Historic Episcopate locally adapted in the methods of its administrations," we ought to be ready, and I am sure we would be will- ing: (1) To "give up all such adjuncts of the episcopate as may be objectionable to the rest, such as temporal titles of ' lordship,' " etc (2) To have a bishop in every town of any size — which would 4*iean an indefinite multiplication of bishops — provided, of course, that, after the ancient model, no town or city, however large. The " Historic Episoopate" si .Pjcop.1 bodie.'S^?,. ^■»^. «» tb, „.n. So. tftor .11, 1 thini T ^^\ of the p«,p,ed «„ni<„. T 7, '^ K^™ •»i»« of little «)a«m,„Ls . (• ""B <, u »d other .dveS'JS^L'^V" "'"^" ^trfy, 1803. •f. St; CHAPTER X. ' ' OONOXBNINO THE WILL OF THB PEOPLB. The House of Lords is doomed; it must be abolished at once. So say the people of Eng- land, if we are to believe the reports which ap- pear in our papers; and the reason of this is that the Lords are so pertinaciously obstruotiye ; they are always opposing the will of the people. It is a terrible thing in these days to oppose the will o.* the people; we. wonder how any- bpdy can think of doing it. Indeed, for years — I may say, generations — ^past, ever since that unfortunate cargo of tea was infused in the Atlantic at Boston, the will of the people has been asserting itself pretty loudly. I have been lately looking over some volumes of a liberal English magaziiM, which were issued in the first quarter of this century. I was interested in noting the complaints here and there of the will of the people being overborne by some tyrant, or some ministry, or some ecclesiastical hierarchy. I suppose things are not quite so ^e Wai of the People Bo the world i. lookingforw^ .. a . . tune oomin. when thJj V\^ w Uuit good •"•J Wood, notSn^ J^^ " '**•'»' »■> «» win of fl,e p^r^» ** f •«- <>«»»« ««' tk,t will by tSl,r" '"""'''Wy '^- J-a. for it. B,,b>, .t!^ ""' •"'' «»n«Wgation sqnabbW P™«»<>»«» or of chnroh tk.t whence "t^,l"S: *.° "^^ *^^^^' tennine. Xn.terd/het^nSfol'!'"^ *» '^'■ -r* '"■«. it often p^,^ TteT^ ''™"*^ poo te affair anrf . „ «« "e a yeiy com- -e.in,e,',^r::lHn^:~n'r'i- J' «t provocation. Even J^ «?' ,*° ''?*"- the ballot it ™.v fe ™ ,:^^\t . ™''*"t"' °^ • ii-ke, a little dexte J ^l^;,',":" "J""-*- Piwe to he the will of b,.t . n ' , ""^ ""MM majority '""" ""* P"" I (■', i f M A Panon'f Ponderingi If the whole number of the Commons of England were to demand with one voice some particular measure, and the Lords were with one consent to reject the same, we could under- stand that the sense of the people of England would be outraged. But when, after hard fighting, innumerable speeches, enforcements of the closure, boundless activity of the whips, and other contrivances, a measure is passed hy a majority of thirty or forty in a house of six or seven hundred members, it requires a deal of imagination to view that measure as the em- bodiment of the will of the people. Not long ago an election was held in one of our counties to choose a representative to sit in one of the very numerous legislative halls which are required to give effect to the will of the few millions who constitute the people of this Dominion. One would think two candi- dates would have been enough to choose from; but there were no less thap four; and votes were cast: For Mr. A., 961; Mr. B., 944; Mr. 0., 804, and Mr. D., 61 ; in all, 2,770. I congratu- late Mr. A. on his snocess as being at the top of the poll; I am snra he will wear his honors worthily. But I also sympathize with the un- successful competitors. They can only comfort themselves with the reflection that 1,809 voters * !i V The Will of the People 85 M did not want Mr A fl^.-ii ^ «»nbi«d vote U, tu^'t ^L"* '^' But it 3 bells?* * "»Wh*«><» men. gentlemen bad voteTTl!! a ^ onimnom own poBti J p^; "2 ^'y "«« on «< U. iell^d to put bKloXtTd "&.'»'' Pwt^ clow diave at thaH Tj 1 , '**° ' would »on bo on agJk^d tZ ^ '^"^ men .tood at bay JSZ '»„ • ^ *** «"*>»■ next oiJ^iy^^irvr **" •»«»»• •tory b«le off jn.. tbe«, I don't LTwVtL maocxm waoumoH tbt cnait (ANSI ond BO TEST CHART No. 2) la. 1^ |Z2 y£ 1 118 125 iu L6 J^ /1PPLIED USANCE Inc I (S3 East Main SIrwt RochMltr, Nm Yore 1460« USA (716) «a2- 0300- Phon. (7t«) 288 - SS89 - ra« \l 86 A Parson's Ponderings sheriff decided to act Let us hope the good man showed due discretion. Let us hope that he 18 still alive and hearty, and that he is still m the enjoyment of his salary and fees, as sheriff of the county by the will of the people. We parsons know something of this in church matters. What m the wiU of the people ? Who constitute the people whose will must be obeyed ? These are questions which the most subservient minister may often find it hard to answer, espe- cially in the Anglican Church, where such latitude prevails on many points. And we find that congregations are sometimes weighed— like "Salem Chapel," in the "Chronicles of Car- Iingford "—with the counterparts of the Tozers, men who labor under the delusion that their own individual wiD is identical with that of the whole congregation. When any change is proposed in the interior of the church, or in the conduct of the services, our Tozers are apt to say, " Well, personally, you know, Mr. Parson, I don't object; but the people would not like It" And, on thorough investigation, it has sometimes been found that this very vague term, " the people," was resolvable into Mr. Tozer himself. Occasionally the parson has re- sorted to a plebiscite to test the question, "Shall we have such decorations or not ?" or " Shall i, I The WiU of the People 87 ^rt;r r~- ----« i Ji* ,^ P^P^® " beginninir to assert «U riae to the oc«u.i„r lit ^ w' ' ?" Church 1.8 weU m Stoto .« • ^"^''' "' H-e»t.„ tae"ti"fi:r.:'^::j;snx't extract a workable verdict oJ ^^ 1:^^..*^ opinion. But do».t ut Zt rtS! IN i l! t ( 88 A Parson's Ponderings that 18 to say, don't let us talk cant. Don't let us say that any fortunate condition of thims. which in reality was the result of a due m^l shallmg of votes or the skilful engineering of some cabal, is a bright exhibition of the ^1 of the people. March, 1894. -ili* I I f: !«1 CHAPTER XL WNotBNaro eBo,Em>g drvmmond. read i^ ""'^"" "* ■'«»' *»'«»«. « I had «.e «.evi..He ,„«.^*; ^,'^1^^! ^^, W ^?. ° f ""■* »* °P'»'»'" ''"tiag to »^Z«^ " *? "P''^'"' of «>»« one rf the Mas of his mtemower. On the oecaaion J q«»t.on, whether I committed 1^? " H"; 'J""?'."^' 'i ^ oventa,Tm.n".^ in Dnamnond Z 1 .*" '*'^'''°°° the&if), ■ ••, Ho has departed from the faith. . . . He haadechtted himself an 8> fi '\ i 90 \K ■- \ A Parson's Ponderings out-and-out evolutionist! . . . It is certain that if evolution is true the Old Book must F\ :. ' ' ^**® ^»We and evolution cannot be believed together. ... If evolution is true there is no place for Christ or the Incarna- tion. . . . Mr. Drummond, avowedly a Christian, gives in his adherence to what even Huxley confesses is a mere hypothesis I . . . Mr. Drummond has fallen from grace; I have lost all faith in him r Of course (as indicated by the periods) he did not say all this continuously; I ventured to put m a remark here and there, though ^vith the utmost caution. Now, my intervie^^er was a scholar and a man of culture; he was aot of my own communion, but a Soot by birt'^i and a co-religionist of Professor Drummoiid's. I quote his expressions, not because they were peculiar to himself, but because I am certain they voice the sentiments of very many relig- ious i^ple, who, after having been charmed and edified by the Professor's previous utter- ances, felt a shock and a revulsion of feeling when they read this last book and discovered him to be a thoroughgoing evolutionist. But they need not have been surprised if they had fully appreciated his first popular work. At the time that " Natural Law in the ■If Professor Drummond 91 Spiritual World" aDDearpH tv.^ imeasinesft ,*« th^ • ^'^^^^^> t*»ere was much tw^ rX^^^^^^^ ''''''^'^ *h« conflict be- hearts ^e^Umf.^ZTo'r'. "T "^^'« chann of its^^ ri^^d E^'^^^^^ *'^ and was dp],'.,!,; I , -E^^'J^ody read it of Jief ttt:.^''''^^y »''^«thed a sigh 01 re lef to thmk that among the very exr^rtl f»7L "^ *° ■"*' ''!"' d't^ted that Tta s^Ta^:?.2rrd£^ deemed himself a 00^;:^^ ^dt"^^^^^^^ 8 the book that puts to the rout all these sde^ tific agnostics Uere U a Chy.;.*; '"lf®j°*®^- of ScienoP wl,« ^iinstian Professor Huxley 1 J ' T T*" ^"^^^ *« confute »luxley, and makes Darwin overthrow Dar- r^^ tfc- 92 w A Parson's Ponderings win, and Herbert Spencer diaprove Herbert Spencer I"~-«nd bo on. When I ventured to Buggeat that the brilliant author wag himself an evolutionist, the old gentleman lodced at me, at trst with astoniahment and then with dubious- nofls, evidently making up hia mind that I my- self was not " sound." About the same time I wrote a letter to the yyeek (it appeared in the issue of 8rd of Sei>- tember, 1885) in which I expressed the opinio^ drax^ from hia own words, that Mr. Drum- mond 8 religious views were undergoing meta- moiThosis, and hoped that in time those views would be enlarged into what we High Anglicans cal the « Catholic " aspect of Christianity. I feel proud of that letter now; as proud as a weather-prophet when one of his predictions happens to be verified; as proud as a man al- ways feels when he can say: "I told you sol" For this expansion of Professor Drummond's spmtuid outlook has taken phice ; it is evidenced by his delightful booklet, « The Programme of Chnstiamly." To make my meaning clear, let me state that there are two divergent Hues of Christian thought which I will call-not invidiously, but for convenience-the Puritan and the Catholic. The Puntan" conceives of Christ as having I Professor Dmmmond 93 come into the world to save from future Buffer- ing (by tah^ upon Himaelf their burden) a Oa^ohc" dwells rather on the conception of Ohrwt as hamg come into the world to save mankind at la,«e from suffering both here and hereafter, and effecting this purpose " not only by working m them personal religion, but by joining them together in a body, or fa^nily, or tangdom or church." (Sadler's « Church Doc- trine Bible Truth.") Hence the "Puritan" conception of Chris- tir^^P 1 Tf''^? individualistic, egoistic; the Catholic " mainly collectivist and altru- istic. Of course, as in the natural world, the egoistic emotaon must first arise, as "The Data ^ Ethics has shown; or, as " The Ascent of Man puts It, nutrition must come before repro- duction. The Puritan's dominant thought is expressed in the burden of one of his favorite hymns: " I ftm ao gUd that Jesua Iotm me." But the mind which rests content with this egoistic sentiment shows a case of "arrested development" in the spiritual world. The more altruistic one becomes the more he will value the coUectivist or "Church" idea of ^1 94 A Parson's Ponderings TJT ^^"'*^?»»*y> •«<» the less altruistic and the more egoistic he becomes (for there is de«enera«sy and atavism in the spiritual world, too) the more ruthlessly he viexr . the break' ing up of the corporate unity of the Church. sri'-T """ ^'^V" *^*"^ ^^ '^^- «* the old Scottish couple who separated from this com- munion and that, not finding any to their lik- ing, "ntil at last they formed « a wee kirk o' their am." When some one asked the old lady: Do you think you and your husband are the only two in all this town who will be saved?" J^T" * "^' ™^' ^ ^^^ "* ^*^*« "^"t Now let any one study « Natural Law in the /Iv «'«f ^''^'" *"*^ '^°*^*^ the utter absence of the Church " idea therein. Let him take, for instance, the chapter on « Growth," and see the believer » after the Puritan idea, growing without effort in the "effectual calling," which came to him without desert, and viewing with calm and indolent self-complacency his own assurance," while all around are rotting in total depravity." And then, by contrast, let him take up the charming little essay, "The Programme of Christianity," published seven years afterwards, which so lucidly sets forth the Church idea," and he will see how Mr. Professor Dmmmond 95 the koM the dooWne, of Ohrirti«,ity .W ^ «»« to dof Thi. i, the que.ti«n which pe° ,M 1? my fnend who interviewed me, md which, I ,m „«, perpkae, ve^^ m,ny ft .fe™ m hi. denomination md in mine, and I p^ »me jnofter. al». To pnt it in hi. own C nthewhemeofeTOlntion?" I did not annre, the qne..i^ , the time. I wa. « di^ir.^' A«.log.an. have go, fe, face. To ignore the wid«jp«.d,ng «»ept.n« of evolntio., to act a. If nibody of any account h^ld it, and to go on ^chmg platitnde,, i. .n o.trich-Ii1ce pdi.^ to call ,t, „ becoming diwredited, or dying for "*»'»' ™"«»«on, i. a f«.d dream T^ divine^ who have not 1»pt pace with modem »ve,Jga.i„n which dream ^' *^^ ^'-'^ I«l« ™ Of samte, the home of every virtue, in the days King Bnan Borume; but her troubles b^n w^^th t^e advent of the Saxon in the rei^of Kuig Heru-y II. (By Ae way, he did nTre- mind us that the invader came armed with Z auUionty and blessing of Pope Adrian IV ) He aid ^at stress on the fact Sat, in ^te if ri^ the efforts to stamp out Irish Itoms ^d iJ.e Jnsh language, those customs and that language people, and would not be stamped out, and cannot be stamped out even to this day. 106 V I. t I Dual Languages i©7 I caught a bad cold that nigbt I don't mean to gay It was the effect of that speech. It must have been the draftiness of the place where I sat; for all the while I felt a cold chill down one side of me, while the other half responded to the genial warmth of my surroundings. Anyway I had to lie up and nurse myself for the next few days; and I whiled away a part of the time in reading that delightful novel of J. M. Barrie's, « The Little Minister." I was fairly carried away with that story; I sym- pathized so heartily with the sorrows and trials ot that httle man as he became the cynosure of all the eyes of his beloved flock, who constituted themselves a committee of detectives to shadow his every movement. I became, like him, fas- cinated by « Babbie " with her winsome ways, equally at home as the grande dame with a well of English undefiled, or as the roUicking gypsv talking the broadest Doric. I was deepk in- terested, too, in all the little squabbles of the Auld Licht, and F. P., and Established Kirk divisions of the people of Thrums. Along with this relaxation my mind was also considerably occupied with the discussions then taking place in the British House of Commons on the Welsh Church Disestablishment BiU. I read all the arguments, pro and con, and all 108 A Papson'a Ponderings the ourrwit literature upon the rabjeot tUt Estabhd^ent was that Ae had fSed to fecure the attachment of the masMs ^Wale^ becau« she had ignored their^ve to^^ The seiTioes were, or rather had been, ahSvs drfect had been largely remedied, bishops and pnests were seleoted for their aptness in the vernacular, and Wehdi services were now quite ^ZJ°' * ^u * *^" """^^ «^« too l«te; the (^ the 28th March I found myself suffi- ciently recovered from my attack of influenza to venture once more into the Town HaU, and Tn i . * "^^ sensation. Mr. Dalton McCartiiy that night addressed an immense crowd on bestirring question of the day-the Mamtoba School Law. He spoke of the dS^ evil of introducing the "race and religion" dissensions into the new country, and he en- larged ^atly upon the grievous mischief arising from tolerating the "dual language » syston. ^ ^ l^ow, I would like to ask: Is it any wonder If, after such a week's experience, I got things Dual Languages 109 •wfuUy mixed! At I pondered on Irish Bainti and Saxon sinnen, Auld Liohts and U.P/» and Established Kirk and Welsh dissenters, and that 6e«0 noir, the Anglican Establishment, trying for centuries to stamp out the dual languages of Ireland and Wales, but aU in vain, and then thought of Mr. McCarthy's auditors valiantly resolving that they would stamp out this dual language nuisance in Mani- toba— in the land where are heard " The bells of St Bonilhee," which Whittier has made classic— is it any wonder that, in my convalescent state, I felt like calling, if not upon the moon, at all events upon the shades of St Patrick, St David, St Chad, and every other saint in the British calendar, to tell me, in the words of the Captain . of H.M.S. Pinafore,— ** O why is eTMrything Either at sizes or at sevens ? " I may be wrong, but it looks to me very much as if we, in this country, and at the close of the nineteenth century, were about to repeat the mistakes of centuries ago, the mistakes of the Saxon invaders of Ireland and Wales, and ^ that we mean to try once more the " stamping no ' i A Panon'f Pondering! wt ** prooew which, after .11 thi. hr^ of Urn. leave • wmiiar unenriable legacy to our d^mJr^ •»t.f Language, won't b^t^^'^T^t ««»'* be stunped out The fmnt^^^u ^ 2.^2^^^ "."^P O"* «*• '"ling, or ".■»i.^p.^V' "^ "?" *• «" Ti,~r J^ *"" '•• ««na«o " mutton " 1 iZT 'f, ""•y,™"'' "«««« of the «d„,I l«ngn«««i .trnggle embedded in our tomme ever .mce the Nonmm C.nq„e.t i ^j «y, Let nature tjte if cou.i-Let the W aeteuS::rTo«d.T.Vs:"xr o^niggue, « the guert of Captain Pereyof the Steamer Meleor, j^^^ al« T't^' Dual Language! m ^iUlity of Mr. M«n, tht F«rtur of the Hudjon B«y Ca'. po.t the«. One rtomj ^t I wu .topping at the "Fort" The STL^'p"*' in ch.^ of the „i«ion at Baie dee Pew. had oome down that afternoon m aoanoe with M»ne Indian^ and being rtorm- •tayedwa. alw made a welcome gnert. The dear old gentleman entered into a moat pleaMnt chat with us in excellent English. There were five or six English^ipeaking perwn. prewnt, and I doubt if any one 7{ rT^l Lave conversed with him in French with the facility with which he conversed in English. Besides his mastery of the two languages (and Latin, as a matter of course), the good father preached to and conversed with the "sauvages » of his mission in their own Iroquois. The dual language, or the mulUplied language, was no trouble to him. «««««e, was If it is a nuisance and an expense to have documents published in the dual language, it w no more than Great Britain and other countries had to contend with in their early evolution And it is nothing to the trouble incurred by the vendors of patent medicines in the United States. One often sees their wrappers of directions printed in four lan- guages—English, French, German and Spanish I' ■ 112 • I A Parson's Ponderings —and sometimes Italian ♦^ k^ x «-ice.Me to ^ ^'^ rf Si;^ " ^ "^ I am ponderinir n« *i.- republic. -tamp out" the wedier hSf ^2*.^°'™ ' <» takes its con™. » ^i.. • "' nature "Oneto„roTnat„^l:rr' ^"^ «7» = «»." What S>dt«„"tare *'•:■?'* "O'" that we AonU rat . f^^ '/ "• ^ '">''^' Canada kin? T f L* S""?"" "^ *» ""ke al of Bahbie, tJ' l^tffrl ""-"T" •"""" "The Little MinislS^"' '"^'^ » ■4>ril, ISSt. be a u- al jf )r •e i: i CHAPTER XIV. CONCBRNING OALLIO. I HAVE come to the conclusion that Gallio has been grossly maligned by preachers of all denominations. I refer to the GaUio men- ded in Acts xviii. 12-17, who has always been held up as the impersonation of apathy m religion. All those who won»t come to church, all the careless and godless, are con- stantly warned of what is in store for them if they persist in foUowing the awful example of Galho, who "cared for none of those things." Now I maintain that the said Gallio has thereby been libelled. Instead of holding him «p to execration, the divines of the present day --especially those who most loudly advocate the entire separation of Church and State " -should hold him forth as a model of states- manship, and call up all rising, and risen, politicians to emulate the noble conduct of Galho. For what are the facts? Gallio was « 113 114 A Parson's Ponderings ■^v. pro^iwul of Achaia (see Bevised Version). That IS to say, in modem language, he was Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Morea. m Greece, representing H.I.M., the Roman Emperor. But he was more than that: he was Governor, Prime Minister, Cabinet. Parliament, Chief Justice, all roHed into in short, he represented the State. The Jo; of the place dragged the Christians before him,- he, very properly, declined to interfere in their quarrels. He was determined that Church and State should be kept entirely distinct The matter brought before^ him to adjudicate upon was, in his eyes, a squabble between two rival religious sects. It was a m^r of denominations » and not of politics. He drove them from the judgment seat," and would have nothing to do with their quarrel He was quite right; and he should be held up as a model for all statesmen in these modem days. The great problem we Canadians have to solve 18, how to keep religion out of our politics; and we have not accomplished the feat yet. But the only way to solve any pro- blem IS to be logically and mathematically exact, and carry out every premise to ite legitimate conclusion, even though that con- Concerning Gallio 115 elusion brings us-like Euclid's ex hyp. anm- ments-to the confession "which is absurd." As an old-fashioned Tory, a beUever in Church and State (m the abstract, that is to say), I must confess to a certain grim satis- faction m seeing thmgs getting into the muddle they are now m in our Canadian politics. I feel i t\ ?. i^ ""^ ^^""^^ *°«^*^«' «^d saying, That IS the outcome of all our sectarianism; we shall soon arrive at the ' which-is-absurd » end of our experiment!" However that is neither here nor there. Whatever my pre- dilections as an old Tory may be, as a practLl Canadian I ask, "What is to be done, things being as they are?" The true answer seZs to be. Carry out our principles to their logical end." The much-vaunted principle which we have set up as the Idol of the Forum tor this fin-de-siecU age is the entire separa- tion of the Church from the State; that is to say, of religion from politics. Very well- be It so; but let us be thorough, let us have no shams, no half-way measures. Let every member of Pariiament, whatever may be his personal religious convictions, as a politician be a Gallic. For example: a certain member, let us say, brings m a bill for the better observance of 116 i.'i ii ■ I'll :ia A Parson's Ponderings he Lord 8 Day. What has the State, I should Ike to know got to do with that? Suppose Wore T 1,-^ .*^; ^^"^*^*^ ^'^ «^ before Galliots judgment-seat as to whether hn 7Z\^'^r '^' ^"* ^^y of the week should be kept holy? Indeed, possibly that was one of the questions they discussed when he i^phed; "If it were a matter of wrong that I should bear with you; but if they are questions about words and names and of your minded to be a judge of such matters." So should It be now treated, for this is purely a Church » matter, and one on which the various sections of the Church itself ai^ not agreed Jews Seventh-day Baptists, Second Adventists, Quakers and others would be aggrieved by the State s interference. The various religious or- ^nizations must look to it themselves. Let I'arhament follow the precedent of Gallio Again, in the matter of education. The State IS determined that every child shall I« fur- nished with sufficient mental training to make him or her an intelligent citizen. That is a^^ right; but the religious knowledge or training of the child 18 the business of the particular Church to which the child belongs-if it be^ >8e ed ler ek at m Id re ir )t lo a s Concerning Gallio n; longB to any. Let us carry out to the full end the great principle " of this continent-the entire separation of Church and State. The State schools and colleges must be wholly of Aristotle, Cicero, Herbert Spencer, and the I know all this will sound shocking to some gooi^ Christians; but "logic is logic"; we will have to come to this sooner or later. I can imagine a conversation like the following be- tween some pious lady and myself: "Would you have no religion in our Public Schools?" ^^ No, madam." « No reading of Scriptures ?" .I^'lt ""t T'^ "'*^*°^-" " ^« ^'^y^^> not even the Lord's Prayer recited ?" « Certainly not, madam; for let me tell you a fact in my own experience. In taking charge of a certain parish I found the senior boys' class in the Sunday School was taught by a young lady whose 'views' were those of the Pl^outh Brethren, and she positively objected to the use of the Lord's Prayer. I had to dispense with her services, considering such views somewhat incompatible with the usages of the Anglican Church, though my action savored of 'Hi^h Church tyranny.' Now I want to know, if ^ sistance to the use of the Lord's Prayer was j; 118 A Parson's Ponderings made in a Church school, how can we enforce Its use m a State school ?" The State then must learn to act like Gallic, and the Church must learn to retrace her steps m many important particulars. For these eighteen centuries and more she has been work- ing hard to make Christian states of the nations of the earth. Now, on the threshold of the twentieth century she must begin de novo, and remember that religion has nothing to do with the btate as such, but concerns only the elect Of coui^, to my old-fashioned Tory mind, all this 18 a reduetio id dbmrdum. But we Chris- tians have brought ourselves to this by our sec- tarian divisions; it is not the State that is to blame. If the members of one sect take the chief rulers of the synagogue of another sect and, metaphoricaUy speaking, beat him before the jud^ent seat, the civil power must needs dismiss both parties, and carry out the states- manlike policy of Gallic. Jvly, 1886. 11 ;' ee IN MY STUDY Theeb ig a very pretty legend in classioid naythology that Astnea, the goddeas of Justioe, lived on familiar tenns with men in the Golden Age, but when they became corrupt and im- pious the Golden Age terminated and Astwea left tl e world in disgust Thereupon Jupiter assigned her a place in the sky, where she still appears as the constellation Virgo—the virgin —while her scales of Justice form the sign Libra — the balance. It is a pretty idea on the face of it, this of the guardian deities of the several virtues mingling freely with men ; but there is a reverse and very ugly side to the legend. Is it not too bad, when you come to think of it, that Jupiter should have picked out from the world Astnea, and other such individuals, heroic men and virtuous maidens, and pinned them to the sky as curiosi- ties—just as a butterfly-hunter pins his choice 119 ■i 1 ISO A Parson's Ponderings Jii specimeng while he left Mercury, the patron of thieves, and Venus and Bacchus and such like to roam at large at their own sweet will? ' But, perhaps, that is a wrong way to put it. i-erhaps we ought to say that Jupiter, on account of the pure " cussedness " of mankind removed these worthies from a stage where they were not duly appreciated, or where their useful- ness was gone, to a sort of Senate or House of Lords,^ where they found themselves perman- ently ' fixed "—just as some good and faithful members of the Commons sometimes undergoes apotheosis by removal to a life seat in the Upper However, in these iconoclastic time's the myth of the Golden Age has lost its value; and par- don me, gentle Christian reader, if I, for one. rejoice thereat Nowadays we take no stock in a Golden Age that is past and gone. Geology and other sciences have taught us that Ac eaiS Has passed through many ages and periods, but thwe was none of them "golden." Nay, the further we trace them back the worse we find them, until we get to the age of— " Dragons of the prime That tare each other in their slime." of ce, it. >n d, 'y 1- •f i- ii 8 P In My Study if i Nature's progress has been one from the im- perfect towards the perfect— from the crude to the ripe— from the worse to the bettei^-from chaos to cosmos. The Golden Age is not one to which we, like the pagans, look back, but one to which we look forward, and one which we can help to bring about. " Excelsior " is Nature's motto, and it should be ours. To adapt St. Paul's words, " Forgetting the things which are behind," we should " press forward to the things which are before." Our business is to bring Astraea down from her stiffened position in the sky and let her live freely amongst men, ever exercising her just and beneficent sway. • Nevertheless, the high priests of science re- mind us that progress and development in gen- eral are quite compatible with degeneracy and reversion to type in individual cases. While •humanity at large is advancing, particular na- tions may decline. And then again, nations, like individuals, may gain in some special de- partment of virtue or culture and lose in an- other. The ancient Romans, in becoming more literary and refined, became at the same time more dissolute. - • • • • One can imagine a people becoming more 18S A Panon'i Ponderingi y\ I •ober .ad ^t le« tnitUul. Indwd-I mv it ^J^" •""""'»*• Ti™w.^„dZ not « «:y ta« .go, when BritM,. Mrf to !»«, w.th »Bo juiUce of thdr l«e of truU.^ .t th.t time . f.mo». Methodi^Z?.K' W . .pbndid .pe«4, in the oo««e of whidT StfTf^ ?'^"' truthfdne. ;^ tooital dnphaty, he .Uted th,t in Curo the d«nkey.boy^ when they w«.ted to n«ke . t^ M ui l!,ngl,dun«nl« I mentioned thia state- m«^ with «»e feeling, of pride, to « Ct «o, but I un afrud we Englid, m lodng our I felt mortified at this, for u an EmdiA E„,..^ri, r"""*.*"' « ^'"h customary in Engheh school.. Our good master often Zuld put us on our honor"; and if any boy broke iis parole he would be « »nt to Coven^T! In My Study it is now called " boycotted "—by hii very play- mates as a " cad/' unfit to associate with gentle- men. To call any one a " liar " was the greatest stigma that could be put upon him. • • . . , But my crude ideas upon this subject were soon rectified in this country. The first shock to my prejudices was listening to an ethical dis- cussion among some seniors as to whether the English or the American maxim were the bet- ter, the English being: "Treat every man as honest until you find him to be a rogue," and the American: "Treat every man as a rogue until you know him to be honest" The decision arrived at was that, though the English formula was ideally more beautiful, yet the American one was sotader in practice. This gave a very uncomfortable feeling to one who had been in- doctrinated in the proverb, " If a man cheats you once, blame him; if he cheats you a second time, blame yourself." Yet, notwithstanding, I imagined that the " upper classes"— at least, in American society —were very sensitive up <"«dit to the man of ample means that he does not steal; his temptations do not lie that way. DoubSlAe freedom of speech and the personal liberty we tSt"^*'/^.' *^^ «P^"* ofcandoTard tru hfulness of which we boast But, then, if • "hlo"» '. T' ""^^ ^*^"^^ *^« spirit of There must be other factors in the case •^ofMiary, 1901. I In My Study 1S5 n. Thi accession to the throne of His Gracious Majestj, King Edward, recalls to mind some curious lines, purporting to be very ancient, which appeared in English papers some forty or fifty years ago. They were . " For fall thrN hondnd jmn and mo* King Bdwarde's idmm Ouil h» Uid Iowa, When 8«Tanth Edward* King thall raign, King BdwMde's uimm shall be layad againe. It appeared in all the dignity of black letter and ancient spelling. I do not undertake to reproduce the exact mediseval orthography; I only remember there were over so many final *e's, so I have stuck them in ad libUum. But they were remarkable lines withal, and their author, even if he lived only fifty, and not three hundred years ago, made a bold predic- tion. Its publication created much discussion. There were those who firmly believed in its prophetical character; there were those who scoffed and profanely spoke of it as what is vul- garly called a " put-up job." As \iith Mother Shipton's prophecies, so with these lines, some believed and some believed not. 11 im. If 126 A Parson's Ponderings But Mother Shipton had the temerity to close with — " The world unto an end ihall oome In eighteen hondred and eighty-one."- and consequently ever since 1881 her prophecy has been discredited. It remains to be seen whether the forecast of our anonymous author will be verified or not. One argument of the unbelievers was, that there would be no Edward VII., for if the Prince of Wales succeeded to the throne he would certainly be called King Albert, or Albert Edward. His Majesty has nullified that argu- ment by assuming, in his manly and dignified proclamation, the title of Edward VII., to the disappointment of some, the surprise of many, and the delight of still more; among these last, I see, is the "Englishwoman," whose "Love Letters " have been lately published. And other circumstances are pointing to the fulfilment of this prophecy in due time. Al- ready the distinctive features of " King Ed- ward's Mass "—the six points as they are called — are in actual use in many Anglican churches. The Oflice of Holy Communion in the Ameri- can prayer-book approaches the old office more nearly than ours. And if one looks at the pic- A, In My Study 127 ture of the group of bishops f the P. E. Church, vested in cope and mitre, and so fortli, which appeared in several jourua]g not lor^ ago, one would conclude that there was nothing in " King Edward^s Mass " that those Right Reverend Fathers would stick at. But, again, another notable sign of the times is, that not only are the omissions of the prayer- book of 1652 being restored, but also many of its additions to the prayer-book of 1549 are more and more dropping into disuse. It is in- teresting to watch this process, not merely from a polemical, but from a literary and historical point of view. These additions to the latter prayer-book are some prayers, but mainly and most prominently certain " Exhortations." These are not strictly devotional, but rather didactic and homiletical ; they are addressed, not to Almighty God, but to the congregation. They are instructive, to be sure, but the instruction is of a very primary, elementary character. They are just the sort of thing that was needed at the time of their composition, when education was the property of the few. In those days preaching was a rare gift, even among the clergy; and so "Homilies" and "Exhortations" were provided in abundance It 1 !l : 1 128 ■ ^5. I If: -1: A Parson's Ponderings fulfil the duty of preaching. But, then, thow who were deemed competent could preach; they could preach for hours I Nowadays eter^body can preach, women and small boys included. The preachmg function, then, being so very conmion nowadays, these homiletic additions of the prayer-book of 1652 seem somewhat super- fluous, especially that sermonette beginmW Dearly beloved brethren," which is the intro- duction to both morning and evening prayer. And so the authorities of the Anglican Church have given us leave-or we parsons sometimes take leave-to cut these preachments short, so SIlLfa^c^r"^*^"^'^*"^^^^'^^-"-- ■Not only so, but there is a marked contrast in literary style between the "Dearly beloved Th* rr. '^2 ^^^^ °* *^« prayer-book. The fathers of the Reformation succeeded ad- mirably in translating the concise, stately and sonorous Latin of the pre-reformation ser- vi<^ books into equally happy English. But by 1552 literary tast^ had evidently undergone ^eat change, which is very much in evident in that opening exhortation. This exhortation and the other part» then added, mst«ad of being concise, are prolix; In My Study 129 redTindancies abound, and indeed are studioualy affected; for example "acknowledge and con- fess"— "sins and wickednesses "—" diaaemble nor doke "—" goodness and merej "—'' most chiefly "—"assemble and meet together"- "requisite and necessary "—" pray and be- seech." All this is of a very different type of word architecture from the rest of the services; It belongs to another era in literature. It is a matter of wonder how literary taste should have undergone so great a change in so short a time. But there are fashions in writing just as much as in dress. Someone sets the style, and forthwith every young writer strives to copy it until it palls upon the pubUc taste and is dropped. In the days of our grandfathers the style in vogue was based on Latin mythology; a writer was nothing if not classical. The sun was in- variably written of as " Sol," the moon was Cynthia"; the poet began his poem with an invocation of the muses : " Descend ye nine, descend and sing I " or words to that effect. How entirely all that has gone out of fashion I We have, to be sure, occasional references to 130 A Parson's Ponderings Hymen and Cupid and Venus, but these are getting more and more rare. At present the favorite model, among the scientists at all events, is not Latin, but Greek; and we have all sorts of clumsy compounds of Greek words added to our dictionaries from year to year- geology biohgy, ontology, rhinology, anthropol- ogy, paleontology and every-other-kind-of-ology. • But to return to the "Dearly beloved breth- ren and Its love of duplication. I am inclined to attribute the fashion to the revival, at that time, of the study of the Hebrew language. All readers of the Old Testament must needs have noticed how this doubling of terms was a com- mon thii^ with the Hebrews. "He arose and went — He opened his mouth and spake "— he lifted up his eyes and saw"— "he spake and said "-« the poor and needy "-" dns and iniquities "-« meroy and goodness," and so on. 1 conclude that the author of the opening ex- hortation and the other additions to the prayer- book of 1649, was so saturated with Hebrew learning, that he fell instinctively into the Hebrew mode of expression. There is a charm in the composite structure of the prayer-book, just as there is a charm in [14 tS- re le II II Is In My Study m the composite structure of many a cathedral or church in the Old Country. The Norman crypt or the Saxon porch, or the Tudor arch, or the perpendicular window, each tells its own story. As the various strata in any locality aflFord in- terest to the geologist, so the historian and divine find interest in the philological strata of the prayer-book. Ftbntary, 1901. III. This is an iconoclastic age. In Church history the eighth century was so named because, by order of the Emperor Leo, all the pictures and images m the Christian churches were removed and destroyed. Still, the eighth century was not the only age of idol smashing; we modems can lay claim to that title. And sometimes a little iconoclasm is a good thing. • With our twentieth century illumination we can look back on ancient times of idol-smashing and take a philosophic view of it. We know that at first the Christian Church took root mainly among the poor and lowly, and naturaUy could not cultivate the graces. But by the eighth century she had become wealthier 'I fll S f ; •■I- .1 182 A Parson's Ponderings and more wthetic Perhaps too much so; and a little « Puritanism " was needed to check the tendency to hecome, like the luxurious people around, too devoted to the picturesque. Leo the Isaurian was the Cromwell of those days. And doubtless there was a danger then in the love of the artistic Many of the Christians had been before their conversion veritable idolators, and the old infection of nature re- mained in them not wholly eradicated, so that everj picture or image filled the beholder with an irresistible craving to worship it; just as evtry sight or smell of wine fills the old toper with an irresistible craving, no matter how often he has taken the pledge. So, possibly, it was a great advantage to the Church, in the long run, to receive a check from Leo and his ''^ Iron- sides." • • • • Indeed truth is never arrived at in a direct line. The seeker after positive truth, in wha^ ever department of thought, is like a ship bound to reach her destination under a head wind; she can only do so by tacking to starboard and port in succession. This, by the way, is sug- gested by Mr. Herbert Spencer's most interest- ing chapters on the " Direction of Motion " and the "Rhythm of Motion" (First Principles, 9- 3. In My Study 133 Part II., Chap. IX. ai^ X.), wherein he speaks of the undulations and oecillations of aU move- ment He argues that the same law which governs the billows of the seu and the fluttering of a flag m the breeze and the vibrations of a harp string, governs also the movements of the heavenly bodies and the alterations of climate; and m sociology also, the same law operates, in the alterations of good and bad times in the monetary world, and of conservative and pro- gressive legislation in the political world. Our progress in all affairs is by "tacking," like a zig-zag fence, as it were. • There is a picture in the illustrated papers of the statue of the late Queen Victoria in Bom- bay on the day of the Empire's mourning, the atatue being loaded with heaps of lovely flowers. The spirit of loyalty was touchingly displayed, but no doubt some of the Parsees and Buddhists and Hindoos in the city concluded that the statue was an « idol » which the British were worshipping." Indeed, if the spirit of Oliver Cromwell were hovering anywhere around the Queen's dominions at that time, I am sure his ghostly fingers were aching to do some idol- smashing. But there are other idols besides pictures and 1 ■ . ! 1 i ■ -l W* A Parson's Ponderings molten images and graven images; tlie idols which the Prophet Erekiel says we " set up in our hearts " ; idols which the PhUosopher Bacon classified as " Idola Tribus, Idola Specw, Idola Fori and Idola T eatri," which we will roughly translate into English as Historical Idols, Per- sonal Idols, Commercial Idols and Conventional Idols. In all four respects this age, as I re- marked at the beginning, is an iconoclastic age. And I ask permission of the reader to do a little idol-smashing on my own account I have been reading over again Watson's English translation of Xenophon's memoirs of Socrates. Now, if there is an historical idol in existence bigger than most it is Socrates. After all these centuries we still look upon him as the paragon of wisdom, austere and ab- stemious (as no doubt he was), dropping words of wisdom everywhere, persecuted at home by a termagent wife, and a martyr to the cause of truth at the hands of his ungrateful fellow- citizens. His disciple Plato undoubtedly idolized him -or idealized him, which is much the same thing. When Plato in his works tells us that Socrates said this or that, we are convinced in mind that Plato in his humility suppresses him- In My Study 135 self arl gives us his own thoughts under cover of his beloved master's great name. In point of fact the disciple far surpassed his master. In the same way, that portion of the book of Isaiah (chapters xl. to Ixvi.) which is attributed by critics to a disciple of the older prophet- Matthew Arnold calls him "the Isaiah of Babylon "—surpasses in sublimity of thought and grandeur of language the first portion, the work of the original Isaiah, or " the Isaiah of Jerusalem." I conceive that the portraiture of Socrates, given us by Xenophon, is fairly true to the original; but even that is an idealized portrait After reading what his " worshipper," Xeno- phon, says of him, I cannot help feeling that old Socrates must have been an awful nuisance. He had private means enough to live upon in his own frugal and abstemious way; so he did not care to work to earn money. He made it his mission in life to teach everybody all he knew without any remuneration— a very bad precedent to set. And so he spent his whole time poking around— now in the sculptor's studio, now at the bridlemaker's, now at the corselet-maker's, now kicking his heels on the carpenter's bench, and all the while pestering m i i ' . 136 A Parson's Ponderings hia viotims with questions till he got them fairly faiuecL What a grand oross-qnestioner he would have made as a modem banister t And how often must the poor artican, hindered from his work, and plagued with the old philosopher's company and his questions, have wished him far enough away. « What I" says Hippias, « are you stiU saying the same things, Socrates, that I heard from you so long ago?" Yes, he was, without doubt, an awful bore. • And so I sympathize with his wife, Xantippe. She has always been held up as an awful ex- ample of a shrew and vixer; but we may be sure die had good cause, ji*any a time, for get- ting mad at the old philosopher. I can fancy his coming home to his dinner, after plaguing people with his questions ell morning, and a dialogue ensuing something like this: " Well, Xantippe, and what are you doing now?" "Tm cooking the dinner, don't you see?" " And will you tell me what method of cooking that dinner you adopt?" "I'm boiling the mutton." "But yesterday you fried the mut- ton; why boil it to-day?" "Why, for a change, you fool." " But if the meat was agreeable to us yesterday, why " and so on and so on, i|: In My Study 137 until he got her mad enough to ghy something at hiB head. We must make allowance for poor Aantippe's bad temper. What aniconoclast we have in Mm. Carrie JNTationl What consternation she has wrought among the worshippers of Bacchus? But was there need of all this idol-smashing in a pro- hibition state like Kansas ? One naturally asks, What 18 the good of prohibition, if this kind of thing IS necessary ? And then, again, iconoclasts of all ages have been famous for smashing, not their own, but o^er people's idols. Here is some lady who has been smashing drug-stores in Chicago, because as a Christian Scientist she abjures dnigs. If iT!i,'*' iconoclasm spreads, where shall we end? The vegetarian will be smashing all the butcher shops. The victims of some unlucky speculations in stocks will be smashing all the exchanges with their "tickers." And even irate husbands, when their wives' bills come in, will be for smashing aU the milliners' shops. If we would be iconoclasts, let every one set to work to smash his, or her, own idols. March, 1901. !«• A Paraon's Ponderiogs IV. ^ the iMt number of The CommonweaUh Pnncipal Petry was kind enough to notice my remark, in the February number about the ad- ditions of 1662 to the Prayer-book of 1640. Concerning the "duplication of terms," such a« pray and beseech," he says, very truly, that they are "the outcome of the bi-lingualism which was so common in early English." He quotes Mr. Earle's " Philosophy of the English Tongue " to that effect, and also Pro- fessor Meiklejohn, who says, " From 1066 down to perhaps the end of the fourteenth cen- tury .. . French and English words came to grow in pairs." All this is very true; and perhaps we in Can- ada will hereafter becor^e addicted to a similar pairing practice as the result of our dual lan- guage. And, to look still further forward, no doubt His Majesty's subjects in the Transvaal will by and by find the convenience of " pair- ing" in the bi-lingualism of Boer and English, which will certainly prevail for many a day, no matter what the terms of peace may be. • Yet, notwithstanding, I think Mr. Petry has overlooked my main contention. Be italicized this portion of Professor Meiklejohn's note: In My Study 139 "Anu thus we find in the prayer-book the phraaef, acknowledge and confess, assemble and meet together, dissemble nor cloak, humble and lowly." Now let me italicize my conten- tion. All these pairs, and several others, are crowded together in one short paragraph— viz, the opening Exhortation, or " Dearly beloved brethren"— in a way that cannot be matched by any other piece of English composition that I know of. Certainly no other part of the Prayer-book 18 like it— and let me remark that this par- ticular Exhortation is not the product of the eleventh century nor of the fourteenth, but of the middle of the sixteenth century. In the ex- hortations of the older Prayer-book of 1549, as in all English literature, we now and then come across a "duplication" which is rather agree- able than otherwise; but the piling up of them in such profusion in one short passage evinces to my mind some literary fashion or fad of the year 1552, which fashion I attributed to the revival of the study of Hebrew at that time. If all portions of the Prayer-book had been con- structed on the lines of the " Dearly beloved brethren," the services would have been very tiresome. ':"(- 140 A Parson's Ponderings The terms " humble and lowly " mentioned by Professor Meiklejohn remind me of the "duplication" in the Magnificat, "and hath exalted the hmnble and meek." These two adjectives represent the single term humilea in the Latin and tapeinoua in the Greek (Luke i. 66). the Authorized Version changed this duplicate term into " them of low degree," which the Bevised Version has re- tained. But for my part I prefer the old " humble and meek" of the Prayer-book; and for this reason. We may be humble in circum- stances or humble in spirU. The Greek word tapeinous represents both aspects; at all events, in the New Testament, if not in the classics. Archbishop Trench, in his " Synonyms of the New Testament " (chap, xlii.), has a very in- teresting dissertation upon this. The expres- sion, "them of low degree," only gives one aspect, viz., the humble in circumstances. In fact, we want the two words, "humble and meek," to reflect the fulness of the Latin humiles or the Greek tapeinous. We know well that the humble in circum- stances are not always humble in mind. And there is a pride among those who have fallen from high estate, which, however impotent or foolish it may appear, we can understand and B'i In My Study 141 even admire. The Spaniards are a proud people; and thejr have a great deal to he prond of in their part' history, when they occupied the seats of the migh^.'* So, too, we respect the pride of the scion of some ancient and nohle house which has come to misfortune through either ill-luck or ill-con- duct We generally pity— though we sometimes mock at— the pride of the hearer of some nohle name who is out at elhows. And that is a sore evil in these days when, as in the days of Eodesiastes, "money answereth all things." Lady Oara Vere de Vere, though « daughter of a hundred earls," when poor, has no show to^lay in comparison with the daughter of ten million dollars. 'fl V. I HAVE heen lately occupying my leisure hours hy reading an old novel— old, that is, in these present rushing days of novel writing and novel reading. Novels, it seems to me, get out of fashion like clothing, and we look on one puh- lished forty or fifty years ago in the same way n 1*« A Parson's Ponderings as we look on an old photograph or " daguerroo- type ' of a lady with enormous hooped ski^ and hair stroked down her face, who might have been one of the first readers of the novel in question. Nevertheless, as it often touches our hearts to look upon these old-fashioned pictures of those we knew in our youth, and to recaU « the tender praoe of a day that is dead," so an old novel— if It IS a good one— is a source not only of pleasure but of profit to the thoughtful reader. By a good novel I mean one which not only amuses but instructs, and by a thoughtful reader I mean one who can trace the lessons, historical or sociological, embodied in an in- teresting story. * Shirl^," by Charlotte Bronte. It described life m Yorkshire, England, in the early part of the last century, during the Peninsular War— in 1812 and thereabouts. We have a pretty faith- ful delineation of ihe manners and customs of ^ English, or at all events of the people of Yorkshire, at that time. • • There are three contiguous parishes treated of, each with its rector and his curate. The In My Study 143 three curates— mere boys juat out of the univer- sity--often meet and are great "chums," though each has his own individuality, and the three rectors are elderly gentlemen, each char- acter beii^ quite distinct from the others. In those days there was, of course, no " Ritualism " to cause dissension among the clergy or people. JVevertheless, there was the High Church, Tory element, and the more democratic, or Low Church element. In fact, there were the diver- sities of sentiment which must needs exist in every institution, political or ecclesiastical, which permits freedom of thought and expres- r^'Ji" .*!l^* ^'^PP^^y *^*« *^^«y« prevailed in the * Establishment " so-called. However, it was not the ecclesiastical,* but rather the social aspect of those times which most interested me. For the period (1812) was a most critical one in English history, as every one knows. Britannia in that eventful year seemed like the « Noble Six Hundred," in Tennyson's poem of « The Charge of the Light Brigade." The War of 1812 is known to eviry sjAoolboy in America, whether Canadian or Yankee. ' (I hope our friends across the border will pardon the term, but really there is a sad need of some word which wiU distinguish ii w < 1 j- 144 A Parson's Ponderings the oituens of the United States from ourselves, who are Americans as well as they.) But in that same year Wellington was sweep- ing the army of Buonaparte out of Spain. He stormed Ciudad Eodrigo and Badajo»— he gamed the great victory of Salamanca, and he entered Madrid in triumph. So at that time It may be said of Britannia: " Cannon to right of her, Cannon to left of her, Cannon in front of her. Volleyed and thundered. And then, too, with regard to her own internal administration it was true that " Someone had blundered." For those famous "Orders in Council" seriously hampered the trade and manufactures of the country and caused much distress in consequence. Among the great sufferers of that time were all who were engaged in the woollen manufac- tures of Yorkshire, both capitalists and laborers, both masters and men. And then, too, there was the displacement caused by new inventions and new machines. The warehouses were gorged with goods which ihe owners could not dispose In My Study 145 of, thanks to the " Orders in Council." The miU hands were being dismissed, because the new machines could dispense with their ser- vices ; and what were they to do I Mother Church preached patience and sub- mission. That was very pious and proper. But patience and submission meant starvation and ruin. Dissent preached impatience and resist- ance. "Smash the ma'^hinesl" was their cry, and smash them they did. But Cut bono? The troops were ordered out, the rioters were either shot or imprisoned, and general misery prevailed. And the capitalists were wondering when they would get money for the goods they had manufactured, and the hands were wonder- ing how and where they could get work to give them and their families Vead. All this is graphically described by Miss Bront& • And now, after dwelling on those times of trade depression, as depicted in " Shirley," we turn our eyes to the present state of things in Yorkshire. We find the mills there still; but enormously enlarged. The machinery which aroused the wrath of tho "hands" has been removed indeed, but only to give place to machinery of an infinitely grander type. And yet labor has survived the innovation and is 10 I II h ti I- 146 A Parson's Ponderings better off than before. But yet we are not happy. Instead of riots we now have " strikes.'' How true are the poet's words to-day, as in 1812, or in 1842, when " Looksley HaU " was published: • " Wlut ia tlwfc ^ieh I ihould tarn to, liahtiuff upon dv»liketheM? -• h f~ Every door is b«rr«d with gold, and opcna bat to gol- den keye. Bat the jingling of the guinea helps the hart that Honor feels, And the nations do but marmar, snarling at each other's heels. Slovly oomes « hongry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly- dying lire." To-day we hear of fortunes made in a few days by some shrewd speculation, fortunes not counted by the ten thousand pounds, but by the ten miUion dollars. Here's a Pierpont Morgan thinking of buying up the Atlantic Ocean as a private lake for himself. Here's a G. H Phil- lips, who, like a second Joseph, has bought up all the com in Egypt, and made himself a Croesus all at once. Here's a James R. Keene, the famous « plunger," whose " operations " on the New York Stock Exchange brou^t him in $20,000,000. Why, it takes one's breath away In My Study 147 to read the daily news of such things. But aU the while there are the hungry people, like a lion creeping nigher, and hefore long I fear we shall have another " Coxe/e Army," who, it may he, will he more militant than the hosts* of that famous leader. May, 1901. VI. I WAS much interested in the article on Spell- ing Reform in last month's Commonwealth, and I am slowly coming round to the writers' opinions. It used to irritate me woefully when the phonetic system of spelling was introduced by the American press, especially by the firm of Funk & Wagnalls, whose publications are of great interest to clerics. My gorge rose at * program," "theater," "center," "thro," and a host of other « reformations," which to me were deformations. But when we reflect we remember «iat many of the words which the reformers are now trimming and pruning bloomed into their present shape after centuries of growth. The evolution of our present English is not like that of a vast building designed and constructed at one particular time, and expected to remain in I 1». 1*8 A Parson's Ponderings that shape for ever. Rather it is like that of » huge vine ever-increasing, ever-spreading, catch- ing hold with its tendrils of aU sorts of things and utilizing them in some way or other, and spreading and sprawling in such a way that it mr jt needs be pruned now and then, if it is not to grow wild altogether. Certainly much pruning has been done here- tofore. If we read "ye olde Englyshe" and compare it with the modem, we shall see how many superfluous 'e's have been cut off, and how many '/s have been turned to 'i's, and so on. Then why not apply the knife to the superfluous -me in " programme," and finish it off like "diagram"? So with words ending -re. We are gettinir used to "theater," "center," "fiber," "sab*" and so on. Well, be it so. But whilst we are at It, let us lay down some rule of general appli- cation ; let us treat -le in the same way as -r« • let us write Bibel, sabel, tabel, abel, fabel, catteL pickel, bottel. Indeed this last word, at all events, used to be so written. Chappel's « Popular Music of the Olden Time" has a "ballade," entitled The Leather Bottel," of which rhyme— I beg pardon, rime— there is an amusing parody in In My Study 149 Blackwood's Ma^axim, of May, 1871. This parody is a satire on Darwin's "Descent of Man, which appeared about that time— thirty years ^(o-and was then, I may well say, the r^ ; 'ot everybody raged either at it or in Its favor. The verses are prefaced with a quotation from the "Descent of Man" (Vol. I., page 212), which begins: "The most anci^ PK^emtors in the kingdom of Vertebrates, at which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine animals, resembling the larva of existing Ascidians." BUchwood suggests that "the word Ascidian, if not spelled Ashidian, should be 80 pronounced"; because it is derived from the Greek askos, a wine^n, which the vener- able, though minute, creature under considera- tion resembles. The first verse of this "Darwinian Dittv" runs thus: "^ " How many wondrous things there be Of which we oui't the reason see ! And this is one, I used to think, That most men like • drop of drink : But h«»re comes Dsrwin with his pl«i, And shews the true • Descent of Bfan ': And that explains it all full well ; For man-was-oQoe-a leather bott^l 1 " 1»0 A Panon's Ponderings There's a lot of intexesting matter in that old numher oi Blackwood. " The Leather Bottfil » w followed by another song, entitled, « Platonic Paradoxea." About that time was issued the late Professor Jowett's admirable English translation of Plato's « Republic." Thelong IS a satire— not on the EngHsh rendering, the beauty of which is gracefully acknowledged in a note, but-on the ideas and doctrines pro- pounded by the great philosopher of ancient Oreeoe— the socialism and communism of that famous work of his. let us sample this song of "Platonic Para- doxes": " Bveiy honeat man grievM At the nombar of thievM That oar aooiid tampUtioiM enate, O I And our hearts are all aoie For the wretdiedly poor ; And I'm sure the same feelings had Plato, But the system propounded by Plato, These deplorable ills to abate, O I Was to break off with Mammoo, Have all things in common : • Pdvate property's gammon,' said PUto." Moreover, this same number of Blackwood contains the remarkable brochure which created such a sensation at the time, viz., "Olie Battle of Dorking," which described— as a sort of secu- In My Study 151 ^r •pocalypee— the invwion and conquest, of JBntain by tome European power, presumably Wennany. Thig disaster was the result of her unprepareduess, her want.of " militarism," her false economy, and so forth. It is interesting to read this toKlay, in the li^t of modem events in South Africa. If it had been thoroughly studied by the powers that be— for it certainly put Its finger on some of our weak spots— per- haps the blunders and disastere which marked the banning of the war would have been avoided. But on the other hand, how many of the goomy forebodings of the writer have been belied I He imagined England in the direst straits; at war with the United Stated-send- ing ten thousand men to defend Canada: with India in revolt; with the Fenians threatenimr her at home, and with the invading army landed on her shores after having sunk the Channel fleet by their superior explosives. She calls home the squadron from the North Pacific coast, which can only come by sailing round Cape Horn, and so is too late to be of service; and she can only muster some fifty thousand volunteere on her own native heath to repel the enemy, which, of course, " makes no bones " of them. 1. ISS A Parnon'i Ponderingt I hope the writer of « The Battle of Dork- iag" i. etiU Uyiog; if goy he wiU he pleiMed to ■ee how hi« peMimiiUo prophecy hu so glori- ouily failed; how, initead of England sending ten thousand men to defend Canada, Canada and Australia between them have sent more than that number to figfat the battles of the Empire— how, instead of India being in re- volt, the Indian troops have been the oomrades of the British in much warfare, and are proud of being "Soldiers of the Queen"— how, in- rtead of bein^at war with the United States, British and American soldiers are now fight- ing side by side in China— how, instead of the Old Flag trailing in the dust before a Euro- pean power, the " Laureate of the Empire " can make his Tommy Atkins sing with truth : " You mj take the wingi of the morniiig, And flop rovnd the ewth tiU jon're deed, Bat 70a fl^'t get eway from the lane Uut they pky TothekUoomingoldngoTeriieed." JtMM, 1901. In My Study 158 VII. Oh, that awful beat we had to endure at the end of last month I Several times I " took my pen in hand," but it was no use, I could write nothing. I oould think of nothing to write about except the heat Then I would fling my pen on the desk and my body on the lounge and try to Bleep. But that, too, was impossible; those detestable flies would persist on holding a pionio on my face. " What were flies made for anyway f' I was tempted to remark. And then I remembered a good little Sunday School story which I had read in my childhood about a litUe boy who propounded that same question to his mother. The good wise religious mother— all mothers were of that type in those days, at least accord- ing to our Sunday School books— answered him not in words, but deeds. She took the lad across some commons, and they passed a spot where lay the carcase of a dog or some other ammal surrounded by a host of flies. The odor was very disagreeable, so they hastened away, the mother not yet vouchsafing to interpret this object lesson. But a few days afterwards she took him IM A Parson's Ponderings again for the same walk ; and on the spot where the carcase had heen there was notliing but a few bones. Thereupon the good wise mother began her discourse. " Now, my dear, if it had not been for those flies "—and so forth. We can imagine the rest of her instruction, how the fliqs had acted as scavengers in making away with the offensive object. • This story came to my mind as I lay fight- ing the flies; but I said, "Why should tboy torment me ? I don't want to be *scavengered.' " if'!';!^ ^ procured some sticky paper called " Tanglefoot "; the flies in the room s^n became attached to it, and I had a few minutes of blissful dozing. But when I got up and looked at that paper which afforded me such re- lief, my heart misgave me, as I saw the flies which had been bothering me themselves in such agony. There they were, with rueful countenances and gestures of despair trying to extricate their limbs from the Sirbonian bog into which I had enticed them. I thought of those lines of Shakespeare: *• And the poor bMtle that we tread upon In oorponl sufferanoe ficda a pang aa great A* when a giant dies." In My Study 155 Nature seems so cruel. Mr. Seton-Thompson tells us that all animals in a state of nature come to a tragic end. And those innumerable flies are bound to end their little lives in some sad manner, whether caught in the spider's web or snapped up by a bird, or beaten to death by a storm, or mired in " Tanglefoot'* But do they suffer ihe pangs of which' the poet speaks? Indeed, does the ,^ant, when he dies, find those pangs ? I am in. med to'think we have maligned nature, and that death is not ordinarily accompanied by great pain, as we have been taught to believe. There have appeared of late some articles in scientific papers stating that ordinary deaths are unaccompanied by pain. In the case of most fatal diseases a state of stupor— one might call It anaesthesia— precedes the "giving up the ghost" And in violent deaths the shock at once destroys or dulls sensation. I like to think this true; it makes nature not so fell and ruthless as she seems. Men who have been rescued from the jaws of some wild beast— the great Dr. Livingstone among the number— have described their sensations as being rather pleasurable than otherwise. They lay cahnly watching the beast and wondering t i4. IM A Parson's Ponderings with the utmost apathy where he would take hia first bite. It is very gratifying to know this, for when one sees a cat playing with a mouse it has caught, which seems the refinement of cruelty and makes one's heart bleed for the poor little creature suffering such torture, and provokes one to rail at nature for its hideous cruelty, it is a satisfaction to think that the little chap feels as impassive as Dr. Livingstone did. When a terrier shakes a rat, or a greyhound a rabbit, it is comforting to think that he has thereby shaken . the senses out of the wretched creature, who thenceforth suffers no pain. It is remarkable that Shakespeare, in the line immediately before those I quoted, makes Isa- bella say: " The tense of death u moet in apprehenaion." What a thinker Shakespeare was, and what a lot of philosophy he boiled down in the Duke's speech in that same scene I (« Measure for Measure," Act III., Scene I.) I was once standing on a small rustic bridge looking down into the water and watching a shoal of minnows—they played about the edge where the water was shallow, but every now and I In My Study 167 then they would venture out further. In the deeper part was a pike lurking among some weeds. By and hy he made a dart at them; away they scuttled into the shallows and the pike returned disappointed and surly. The little fishes, after taking breath an4 enjoying a good laugh at the pike's expense, and embold- ened by their previous success, ventured Iforth again, this time still further into the deep. They reminded me of a lot of street arabs in some large city teasing a burly policeman. Out darted the pike again and this time ho succeeded in gobbling up the hindmost of the shoal. I wished that I could have caught that pike and made him disgorge the plucky little fellow he had caught I would have liked to have resuscitated him and to put him the ques- tion: "Now, do you think, in view of your tragic end, that life is worth living?" I feel sure he would have answered, " Why certainly, for while I lived I had heaps of fun, and when the pike swallowed me I knew nothing more until you officiously meddled. You caused me more pain in restoring me to life than I felt when the pike give me my happy despatch." Fainting is not painful; it is the "coming to " that is painful. So it is with drowning. More than once I have watched by some death- 158 A Parson's Ponderings ■J,,. bed and have seen the dying breathing away his hfe, with effort it may be, but with an ex- - pression of apathy on the face. And then some lovmg watchei— out of pure affection, no doubt -would apply a spoonful of brandy to his lips, and I have seen tiie look of irritation awJep ov^the face of the dying man, as if he said, , Why do you torture me ? Let me alone to die m peace." In fact, pain seems to be tho concomitant of the begimung of life rather than of its close; and the pretty sentiment of the Persian poet is happily, m most cases, fulfilled : " The morn thafc asher«d fchee to life, my chUd, Sjw thee in team whUe aU .round thee smiled When sammoned hence to thy eternal sleep. O mayest thou smile while aU aronnd thee weep." Jidy, 1901. VIII. WiTHix the last few months the Anglicans of Ontario have had to mourn the loss of many of their leading divines-Archbishop Lewis, Dean Lauder, Archdeacon Bedford-Jones, Canon Spencer, and others. Among them is one to whom I would pay my little tribute, the Right Rev. L Hellmuth, D.D., who died a few weeks In My Study 159 ago in England. After holding many important positions m the Church, hoth in Upper and in Lower Canada (as the two provinces were for- merly termed), he was, in 1871, consecrated as coadjutor to Bishop Cronyn of Huron, with nght of fluooession. He resigned his see and went to England in 1883. nwS^-r** ^i'^'^'P*' ^^ ^"^'^ ^«"«««' ^Wch owed Its eastence to his zeal and energy, when T was a student there. I found the value of his instructions, especially in Hebrew language and hteratare; for he was a full-blooded Jew, brought up in the « straitest sect of his re- •^"^1 .'1^ F""^^' "^^ ^'^ ^o* «°»t™<* Chris- tianily till he was over twenty-one years of age. He was well-versed, not only in the Hebrew Scriptures, but also in Talmudic and Cabal- istic lore. He was always quoting "Rashi" (which IS short for Rabbi Solomon ben larchi), Aben E^a," "Kimchi" and Maimonides and a lot of other learned and mystical Jews of the Middle Ages. His little work on "The Dmne Dispensations "-of which he gave me a copy that I value on account of his autograph in it-is interesting, because it emphasized a truth, which we all recognize now, but which was then in abeyance, viz., that "The Divine Dispensations" were a gradual development— I I ' I' 160 A Parson's Ponderings that, in fact, Divine revelation was a matter o«f evolution. Of course, this is a mere commonplace now; but I well remember the day when many an old- fashioned Anglican would shake his heed over some passage, and scent "heresy," or "broad ohurchism," or some dreadful thing in that little book. How funny it all seems to-day— after forty years— when the Higher Criticism is tak- ing our breath away with its assertions as to how the " development " took place. Principal Hellmuth— for it was under that title I first knew him— was a remarkable man; his personal magnetism was immense. He had a wonderful pair of dark brown eyes— large, mobile, luminous, keen, penetrating, yet kindly. One felt it was best to be thoroughly open and honest with him, for then one could rely on his good will. But he soon wearied of the onerous position of a bishop, and retired to England to assume once more the functions of a mere presbyter, as so many colonial bishops have done. Indeed so common an occurrence has this become that the list of colonial bishops who have resigned their sees is quite a lengthy one ; and these ex-bishops are derisively spoken of as "returned empties." But this is not fair. it In My Study i^i Many a man who is a great suooess as a preacher or leader of a theological parly might, as a bishop, find himself in an atmosphere nncon- genial and even noxious. A laivyer who may be an admirable pleader might, I should fancy, find himself out of his element on the bench towhich he may be called. I believe there have been cases when a judge has gladly stepped down from the bench and resumed his place at the bar. And why should he not, if he finds him- self "built that way"? A barrister must needs be a partisan. It is his business, and his duty, to make the very best of his client's case. He must cover the weak points and accentuate the strong ones. But the judge's duties are just the opposite. He must duly estimate every point, weak or strong, on both sides. In fact, the « judicial " temperament must be the oppo- site of the « barristerial," if I may coin a word. • As with the Judicial Bench, so with the Episcopal. But the trouble with us Anglicans is that appointments to the Episcopal bench are by popular election. Now all elections— whether ecclesiastical or civil— are of necessity, struggles of partisans. It is all very well Ut decry "partyism," but it can't be abolished— nor should it be. Any one who is elected to 11 I I i 162 A Parson's Ponderings any office— whether bishop or bailiff — must needs be the nominee of a "party." "The will of the people," "the voice of the people," and suchlike phrases are very pretty no doubt, but they are ideal " The choice of the people " means simply the choice of a ma- jority of the people." That majority may pos- sibly be ninety-nine per cent ; but usually it is nearer fifty-one per cent That majority, whether in ecclesiastical or civil affairs, up- holds one particular opinion or policy or measure, in opposition to the party of the minor- ity, and the nominee of that majority is sure to be a strong if not a violent partisan. It is not always wise to convert a mainspring into a pendulum. David may be an expert in attacking the Philistines with his sling and stone, but he might not succeed so well as Solo- mon upon the judgment seat. By the way, that judgment of Solomon's, which is recorded as an instance of his magisterial wisdom, seems to us modems a somewhat rough-and-ready way of settling a legal case. To be sure, he showed his wisdom in seizing what modem philosophy calls the " psychological moment" Still, it is a kind of judgment that would not bear repeating. It reminds us too much of the ways of settling dis- putes in the Wild West We modems require In My Study i«8 our Solomons to hear with heroic patience the counsel on hoth sides— and then give elaborate and equable directions to the jury who shall pronounce the verdict— whereupon Solomon passes sentence. But we must remember that all this elaboration is the result of the evolu- tion of judicature since the days of Solomon. The East^arrested in its developmentr--8till prefers the crude, rough-and-ready way of Solo- mon's time, without his wisdom or even his love of justice. I fancy many a mufti or cadi de- livers his judgment, not according to any psychological knowledge he may possess, nor according to the weight of the evidence, but according to the weight of the several bags of gold which each party to the suit hands him. But alas I if all tales be true, even our boasted Western civilisation, especially in those places where the appointment is a matter of popular election, is not altogether free from this stain. Anyhow, it must be a most uneasy seat, that upon the bench, whether judicial or episcopal. Avqv^ 1901. it' t« IM A Parson's Ponderings IX Thm year is the jubilee of a memorable time. In the year 1851 was held the first World's Fttr. The credit of establishing industrial ex- hibitions belongs to the French; for "exposi- tions " had been held in Paris at various times from 1798 to 1849. England, following the precedent set by France, held an industrial ex- hibition in 1828, but it was not a success. She blundered at first, as in many other cases, and notably in the South African campaign. How- ever, although she often fails at the beginning of an enterprise, she generally comes out all right in the end. This is characteristic of con- servatism, and the English people are awfully conservative. Mr. Herbert Spencer has some weighty remarks in his "First Principles," on the " all-important function " which is exer- cised by "conservatism, both political and theological " in social evolution. At all events, the English people fifty years ago seized upon the idea of holding an exhibi- tion which should be not national merely, but universal. I say "English," but perhai^ we owe it to the German element of the Prince Consort— " Albert the Good"— the father of In My Study leg our King. The idea shonld certainly be credited to him, for in.l849 he addressed the Society of Arts, of which he was President, in these words (I quote from Haydn's "Dictionaiy of Dates ") : "Now is the time to prepare for a Great Juchibition, an exhibition worthy of the great- ness of this country; not merely national in its scope and benefits, but comprehensive of the whole world; and I oflFer myself to the pubHc as their leader, if they are willing to assist in the undertaking.'' • ; The Prince's suggestion was adopted and ear- ned out enthuaiasticaUy. The Crystal Palace, the creation of Sir Joseph Paxton— and a won- der of the world in those days— was erected, and the first "Great Exhibition of All Na- tions " was held, being opened in state by Her Majesty on the Ist of May, and remaining open to the public until the 16th of October, 1861. ; , Another notable event of 1361 was (woe worth the day I) that the American yacht, at the Cowes regatta, on the 22nd of August, won from aU the yachts of the United Kingdom the famous cup, which has remained ever since in possession of the United States. I was a school- ! i h " 166 A Paraon'A Ponderings boy in England that year, and I well xemeinber what a atir these two events created. Proud as we were of the suooeas of the Great Exhibition, with its beautiful Crystal Palace and the vast conflux of people thereto, we were mortified beyond measure at the defeat sustained by our yaohlwnen. Many were the sighs and lamenta- tions, the explanations and excuses offered for the loss of that cup. Punch had a ballad, to be said or sung by Jack Tar, which began: '* Now weep, ye Britirii Milon true, Above or ander hatcfaee ; F r i^ 170 A Parson's Ponderings awaple worshipper inatead of a functionary. One can experience from a layman's point of view how it feels to be preached to-or at. as the case might be. On that day the furniture of the church was hung in black, the service was almost funereal, the Dead March in Saul was played; the sermon, a splendid one, by the Bishop of JViagara, concluded with a most pathetic al- lusion to the cause of our mourning— the death of the President of the United States at the hands of an assassin. On the following Wednes- day the Synod attended in a body a requiem— I beg pardon, as a Protestant I should say a memorial service— in Christ Church Cathecfral. Noiking could be more solemn and sombre— the dead President was most reverentially re- membered. • Three or four hours afterward the members of the Synod were— not collectively, but indi- vidually— in the midst of a vast crowd hailing with enthusiasm the advent among us of the heir to the British throne. The streets were brilliant with flags and shields of all colors, and all the pageantry of court and camp. That night the great city shone with illuminations, fireworks and torchlight processions. Oh I it was a joyous time. Hii la My Stady 171 How strange the ctmtnst I At one hour signs of mourning and woe for die assassination of a man representing the highest type of modem democracy — at another, the wildest enthusiasm and joy at the arrival in our midst of the repre- sentative of a throne which has endured a thou- sand years I " IJneasy lies the head that wears a crown," says our poet But we have seen both in republican France and in the republican United States that the uncrowned occupant of the chief seat must be just as uneasy — at least, during his brief tenure of oflSce. I left Montreal on Thursday evening, 19th, 80 that I was in town to take in the festivities at Ottawa also. " Comparisons are odious," we all know, but there really was mu 180 A Parson's Ponderings We are powerfully reminded of this, as once again "The time draws near the birth of Christ," by the awful disasters which have hap- pened among ourselves of late. The accidental deaths of Mr. McRae by a bullet, of Major Bond by fire, and of Mr. Harper and Miss Blair by water, have suddenly brought mourning to relatives and loss to the community. • I am glad it is proposed to raise a monument to the late H. A. Harper. The gallant deed in which he perished ^vinces his nobility of soul ; and those, like myself, who had the pleasure of intimate converse with him, whether in lighter or more serious vein, know his intellectual worth. I ! ■( : Ah, well I Let us close this line of thought with the lines wherewith " In Memoriam " closes that stanza: " Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn. Draw forth the cheerful day from night : O Father, touch the east and light The light that shone when Hope was bom." Thanksgiving Day has come and gone. This is a holiday which somehow does not fill us Canadians with the enthusiasm that it does our neighbors to the South. Its approach does not In My Study 181 speak to us of homecomings and family gather- ings, of the turkey and the pumpkin pie, and all that sort of thing. It is a statutory holiday— that's all. The shops are shut — at least most of them — and the workers in the great hive of industry have another chance to take breath, and they govern themselves accordingly. Some —a small minority, I fear— go to church and hear a sermon expatiating on the material and secular blessings which Almighty God has showered upon Canada, and upon the Empire at large. But it seems a half-hearted kind of business. What is the reason ? Undoubtedly the main reason is that it is held at a time when people least feel inclined to be joyful. The days are getting shorter and shorter, and gloomier and gloomier. The ice is forming on the streams and ponds — enough to prevent boating and sailing, but not enough for sports on the ice. The harvest is all gathered in, to be sure, but that was two months ago. There may be snow; there may be mud; there is sure to be an unwelcome state of things. Within the houses there is a condition of un- unsettledness ; we have not yet got down to our winter ways, and we are ruefully watching the pleasant autumn slipping away. i-\ i 182 A Parson's Ponderings To be sure, we in Canada are not so badly oflF as the denizens of Old London during a Novem- ber fog. We cannot wail, as did Tom Hood : " No sun, no moon, No stars, no noon ; No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day," And so on, with his long list of " minus quanti- ties," until he cries: " No comfortable feel in any member. No swallows twittering beneath the eaves ; No fruit, no flowers, no trees, no grass, no leaves, No-vember I " And happily, in Ottawa, through the enter- prise of our journalists, we had not to bewail, at morning and at evening, that most serious of all holiday privations, "No paper 1" Neverthe- less, the citizens, on the eve of the national thanksgiving, owing to the " anchox ice," which formed so suddenly this year, were forced to growl : " No electric light, no cars, no water !" All of which did not tend to stimulate the spirit of thanksgiving. • •••.., One can understand why that time of year was originally settled upon by the good Pil- grim Fathers of New England. Those worthy Puritans, in their zeal for civil and ecclesiasti- In My Study 183 cal reform, had decreed that Christmas Day, with its "superstitions," should not be ob- served except as a fast. So, to offset this day, they made an " ordinance " that the day of family gatherings and good cheer should be held a month earlier, at that gloomy time when human hearts were least inclined to " be merry and joyful"; a severe test of faith; a "self- denying ordinance," indeed. But they did not manage to kill out Christ- mas Day. All the traditions and folklore, not only of England, but of Germany and all Europe, have congregated in this country, and they seem to increase and multiply; the Christ- mas trees, the stockings Inmg up, the visits of Santa Claus, and all the frolics and follies of the old season. I doubt if the English or con- tinental papers contain among their advertise- ments as many atrocious pictures, as our papers do, of Santa Claus preparing to reach our shores, and getting into all sorts of scrapes by the way, and all that sort of thing. So the simple legends of our forefathers, charming in their naivete, are exaggerated into monstrosi- ties. The learned disquisitions, pro and con, as to whether the Christ was actually bom on Christ- 184 A Parson's Ponderings mas Day, do not interest me. There is, to my thinking, too much special pleading on both sides. Certain it is that the Scriptures, or (to accommodate myself to secular phraseology) the documents of that period, say nothing about the precise date of His birth. What matter? Suffice it for me that the Church— I mean the Christians of the early days in their corporate capacity— determined to keep some day to com- memorate the birth of One whom all admit to have been a tremendous factor in the ethical and spiritual evolution of humanity. What if the Church— I mean organized Christianity— did adopt the season of the pagan Saturnalia? A better time could not have been chosen, at least for the northern hemisphere; the time of the solstice, when the sun, which has been growing weaker and weaker, takes a turn for the better, and nature's hopes revive as every day sees a little more than the last of the life and light- giving sun. A most typical time to observe the birthday of the Christ And so we wish all our friends and readers " A Merry Christmas." December, 1901. -3v BY THE SAME AUTHOR. The Old Faith and the New Philosophy. WITH AN INTSODUCTIOK BV THE LATE REV. PRINCIPAL GRANT, OF QUBBN'S VNIVnsiTV. CLOTH, 80 CENTS NET, POSTPAID. Th« Quardlan (London, Eng.): "Dr. Low'i illuiuation of the ChriMian doctrine of the Trinity from phyUcal icimice is admirable. The whole boolc is most fresh and interesting, and is well worth reading." Th« Interior (Chicago): "The lecturer believes that there is no breach [between faith and science] The wide circula- tion of views like this will have the effect of dispelling alarm and enabling both philosophers and believers to discuss the questions involved with calmness and with protit. ' Th« Chr itlan Guardian (Toronto): "Five intuesting and valuable lectures. .... Though intended, first of all, for the clergy of his own Church Dr. Low's volume has a message for the ministry of all denominations, especially for those the years of whose service lies before them."— (S. P. Rose.) Tha PrMbytarian WItnaas (Halifax, N.S.): "We have read these lectures with pleasure, for they show in the clearest way that the author has patiently and courageously grappled with the per- plexing problem of our day, the restatement of the Christian virtues in terms that shall not contradict the truths of modem science." WII^I^IAM BIUGG8, PUBLISHER, TORONTO.