finally, there might be a political union without a commercial union, as is the case in the Kingdom of Sweden and Norway. These considerations make it quite clear that, at least theoretically, a community may be admitted to the Union of States for some purposes and not for others; it may be admitted to the international union and not to the commercial union, or to the commercial union and not to the legal union, or to the international and commercial and legal union, but not to the political union. And this is almost exactly what has taken place.

Cuba has not been admitted to the commercial union-there is no agreement that imports and exports between her and the United States shall pass freely unhindered by customs; nor to the legal unionthere is no agreement that differences which may arise between her aud ourselves shall be submitted to a judicial tribunal, the Supreme Court of the United States, or any other; nor to the political union she has no share in the election of our President and Congress. But for certain international purposes she is one with the United States, for she has agreed that she will neither directly nor indirectly alienate her territory to a foreign power, and we have agreed implicitly, and doubtless will agree explicitly as soon as a treaty can be drawn and adopted, to guarantee her against foreign invasion and against domestic anarchy. Porto Rico is united to the United States by all the bonds which bind the several States together except the political bond. Internationally she is at one with us, and we are pledged to protect her alike from foreign invasion and from domestic anarchy as if she were a State in the Union. Legally she is at one with us; her people may appeal to the United States Supreme Court for protection, and any differences which might arise between her and any State in the Union or between her and the Federal Government can be submitted to that Court, a fact exemplified in certain of the so-called Insular Cases already so submitted.

And after July 4, 1901, she will be commercially one with us; under the Foraker Act, as she has assumed the expenses of her local government, all imports and exports between Porto Rico and the United States will, it is expected, be free. But she is not politically in the Union;

that is, she has no right to help elect the President and Congress of the United States. So long as she has all the other advantages of the Union, it is difficult to see any reason why justice or expediency demands that she should at any time join in this political union. The Philippines are not bound to us commercially or politically-they will have no share in electing our President and Congress, and trade between them and the United States will not be free; but they are bound to us by legal and international ties. After the Fourth of July they will be no longer a military dependency; they will be recognized territory of the United States, with a civil government of their own, conformed, as far as conditions permit, to that of the States and organized Territories of the United States; the Philippines will be guaranteed by us against foreign invasion or domestic anarchy, much as our several States and Territories are guaranteed; and their citizens will have presumptively a right to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and an unquestionable right to appeal to the Courts of the United States in the Philippines. The possession of liberty founded on justice, protected by law and guaranteed by a Republic abundantly able to fulfill its guarantees this is what the Fourth of July, 1901, will mean to the people of Porto Rico and the Philippines, and, though in less measure, to less fortunate Cuba.

And the Fourth of July ought to mean, and we believe will mean, to all Americans more than it ever meant before. On the Fourth of July, 1898, the destruction of Cervera's fleet at Santiago practically brought our war against Spain to a close. Up to that time for three centuries she had treated her colonies in the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean as legitimate subjects for legalized plunder. Their people had never known either civil or religious liberty, and in Cuba and the Philippines had never known civil government or an era of peace. We have turned the plunderers out; we have suppressed the anarchy which almost invariably follows the overthrow of a longcontinued despotism; we have established civil government; we have given to the people a large share in that government, a share which will be increased

as experience and training prepare them for it; we have given them in General Wood, Governor Allen, and Judge Taft some of our very ablest and best men to organize their governments for them and prepare them for self-government; we have done this despite the suspicions and the jeers of a minority at home intensifying the suspicions and awakening the opposition of the Cubans, the Porto Ricans, and the Filipinos abroad. But the first stage in our work of emancipation is accomplished, and the Fourth of July, 1901, is a fitting occasion to celebrate so splendid an achievement. It will always be possible to contend that the result might have been accomplished at less cost, by negotiations with Spain in the case of Cuba, by negotiations with Aguinaldo in the case of the Philippines. We are not of that opinion; but the discussion is now profitless, since neither party to it can ever hope to convince the other. The unquestionable fact is that, whether at necessary or at excessive cost in life and treasure, whether by the best method or by a method not the best, the work is accomplished and these peoples who have never been protected in their persons or their property, who have never known the meaning of just government, general education, or freedom in religion, are to-day freed from the oppressions of the past and by the American flag which floats over them are guaranteed protection for the future.

That is quite sufficient to afford a new occasion to Americans for rejoicing on the Fourth of July in this opening year of the twentieth century.

politics to understand the bill's form and to gauge the difficulties in application.

Up to the present France has lacked legal provisions for the free grouping and for the collective action of her citizens. By the existing legal status no meeting of more than twenty-one persons may be held. The Associations Bill asserts the absolute freedom of religious or secular associations, except (1) in the case of mixed organizations of Frenchmen and foreigners, (2) in case the headquarters of organizations are in foreign countries, or (3) in the cases of organizations the members of which live in common. The bill has a twofold purpose: first, to all French citizens it secures the widest freedom of action; secondly, it places just restraints upon certain monastic orders.

Let it not be thought that this measure is an instrument of anti-clerical persecution. Instead, it meets a great national wanta want presented to the Parliament by thirty-three bills in thirty years; a want expressed again and again by the leading spirits of France from the days of Prime Minister Guizot to our own. While the measure has been opposed by a few idealists, it has the general support of the liberal public and of those who sympathize with the modern idea of liberty. Such a law is demanded also by the irresistible current of the national life, which for a generation has put into practice freedom of association. Its effect will be to bring French law up to date with modern French life.

As compared with the legislation affecting Roman Catholic associations and orders in some other Roman Catholic lands, the measure is liberal. It will not disturb the Roman Catholic orders already

France

On Friday of last week M. WaldeckRousseau, Prime Minister of France, carried the most important project of his Ministry, and perhaps the most important project of any recent French Ministry— the Law of Associations Bill. The measure now only awaits the signature of President Loubet to become law. In a single session the Chamber of Deputies of the French Parliament, by a majority of sixtyfour, adopted the bill as amended by the Senate. It is important to all students of

comply with Government requirements to be admitted to the same privileges. The whole system of ecclesiastical machinery, paid by the State and enjoying State favors, remains untouched. The parish priests, at present the most intelligent and most devoted whom France has known, have never enjoyed so much freedom. Indeed, by many the law is viewed as a protection of the parish clergyman` against the intrusions of his monastic brother. A fair examination of the text of the law reveals no trace of an antireligious spirit, whatever may be the attitude of some of those who framed it.

gression. The intelligent peasants, the moral backbone of France, dread nothing more than government by priests and monks. It is obvious, then, that the progressive part of France will heartily support the law. The orders protest, but will have no alternative but to accept the inevitable. In the temporary agitation which they are now creating the present Cabinet may, by some sudden coalition, be overturned. But the best of the monks know that the real spiritual power of their Church will not be lessened. The forces of her life, ill spent in some monastic activities, will intensify the energies which are rapidly bringing about the humanization and the spiritualization of the Roman Catholic Church in France. The triumph of the orders would have been, if not a calamity, at least an anachronism.

Ralph Connor's Story

In this issue The Outlook begins the publication of a serial story by Ralph Connor (the Rev. Charles W. Gordon, of Winnipeg, Manitoba), author of "The Sky Pilot" and "Black Rock," two stories which have not only been widely read, but which have awakened the deep interest always aroused when vital conditions of life are realistically treated from the standpoint of a writer who believes in God and in man, and who therefore, feeling deeply with all classes of men, enters with his imagination into their experiences and comprehends their problems. Very rarely have relig ious motives been worked out to their logical results in character more forcibly, or has character been projected against more striking backgrounds, than in Mr. Gordon's earlier work. He has shown a first-hand knowledge of somewhat primitive and elementary aspects of a life of great dramatic interest; the ability to know a man when he sees him, no matter how rough his exterior; and throughgoing religion, free from pietism, from fanaticism, from provincialism, and therefore fresh, wholesome, and manly. In "The Man from Glengarry" Mr. Gordon will describe the life of a boy growing into manhood against surroundings the blackness of which is strikingly and awfully outlined on the canvas in the first installment of the story. Mr. Connor's realistic treatment

is no small part of his strength, since it makes it possible for him to throw into whiter light and more definite outline the religious growth and the moral development of the man whose story forms the central theme of his novel.

Concerning Christian

Science

It is difficult for any one not a votary of Christian Science to understand what it is. This is partly because, like other theologies, it has a dialect of its own; partly because, like other religious enthusiasms, its language is more or less mystical; and partly, in our judgment, because it is not a coherent and self-consistent system, but a mosaic of self-contradictory affirmations and negations. In our endeavor in this article to tell our nonChristian Science readers what we regard as at once the secret of its power and its ethical evil, we expect that our definitions as well as our criticisms will be unsatisfactory to our Christian Science readers. In this endeavor we accept as an authoritative interpretation of the principles of Christian Science, in so far as it can be properly said to have principles, the Annual Message from Mrs. Eddy to her followers, read in the Boston Christian Science Temple on Sunday, June 23, and printed in full in the Boston "Herald" of the following morning.

This Annual Letter is largely devoted to an attempted definition of Christian Science and a defense of it against critics. It consists of three parts: the first devoted to an interpretation of the doctrine of Christian Science concerning God, the second to its doctrine concerning evil, and the third to a specific reply to a specific critic.

The first may be dismissed in a few words. Mrs. Eddy denies that Christian Science repudiates or ignores the personality of God. It is true that she apparently has no clear idea of what personality is; she certainly gives no clear definition of her idea. It is true that she confounds Tritheism and Trinity, and shows herself wholly ignorant of the technical meaning of the word person (or persona) in the Church definitions of the Trinity. But, making due allowance for a mind wholly

untrained in philosophy, coupled with an ambition to use philosophical terminology, it may be fairly said, probably, that Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of God is that of a divine immanence, though very vaguely conceived and therefore ill defined. She denies, in common with all evangelical Christians, a corporeal deity and affirms God's spiritual personality. Her exact language is as follows:

We understand that God is personal in a scientific sense, but is not corporeal nor anthropomorphic. We understand that God is the infinite Person, but not three persons in one Person. Christian Scientists are Theists and Monotheists.

Coupled with this is the further affirmation of the divinity of Christ:

When Jesus said, “I and my Father are one," and "My Father is greater than I," this was said in the sense that one ray of light is light, and it is one with light, but it is not the full-orbed sun. Therefore we have the authority of Jesus for saying, Christ is not God, but is like God.

The figure is a very common one in orthodox interpretation of the evangelical conception of Christ's divinity. In other passages in her Letter, Mrs. Eddy confounds Principle with Personality, and writes in phraseology not easily distinguishable from that of pantheism; but we must charitably impute this to either confusion of thought or imperfection in the use of language, and recognize, on the whole, that she at least attempts to affirm her belief in both the personality of God and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Certainly the distinctive tenet of Christian Science is not to be found in what its representative declares about God, but in what she declares about evil. That

declaration is as follows:

Incorporeal evil embodies itself in the socalled corporeal, and is manifested in the flesh. Evil is neither quality nor quantity; it is not intelligence, a person, or a principle, a man or a woman, a place or a thing, and God never made it. The outcome of evil, called sin, is another nonentity that belittles itself until it annihilates its own embodiment; this is the only annihilation. The so-called visible sin should be invisible: it ought not to be seen, felt, or acted; and because it ought not, we must know that sin is a lie, an illusion, nothing, and only an assumption that nothing is something. We must not assume the position that sin is sin, and can take possession of us and destroy us, but that we take possession of sin with such a sense of its nullity as destroys it; it can have neither entity, verity, nor power thus regarded, and we verify Jesus'

words, that evil, devil, sin, is a lie, therefore is nothing, and the father of nothingness. In Christian Science love lays the ax at the root of sin, and destroys it on the very basis of nothingness. When man makes something of sin, it is either because he fears it or loves it. Now, destroy the conception of sin as something, a reality, and you destroy the fear and the love of sin; and there is nothing left of it, and sin disappears. A man's fear conquers him in whatever direction it runs.

From the old aphorism, "Whatever is is right," Mrs. Eddy deduces the pleasing conclusion, Whatever is wrong is not: sin is nothing; therefore the way to vanquish sin is to believe that it is nothing. Believe that it does not exist and it ceases to exist.

It is self-evident that evil is not Truth; then it follows that it is untrue; and if untrue, unreal; and if unreal, to conceive of evil or sin as real is sin in itself. To be delivered from believing in what is unreal, from fearing it, following it, or loving it, one must watch and pray that he enter not into this temptationeven as one guards his door against the approach of thieves. Sin is thought before it is acted; you must control it in the first instance, or it may control you in the second. To overcome sin, it must become unreal to us ; and it is good to know that sin has no divine authority; therefore man is its master. I rejoice in the scientific apprehension of this grand verity. This doctrine that sin is naught, that it does not exist, that it is nothing, that to believe that it exists is itself sin, that at best it is but a negation—the absence of virtue, as darkness is the absence of light

constitutes at once the power and the vice of Christian Science. Who would not be glad to believe that there is no sin in the world? Who would not rejoice to believe that in his own life sin can be van

quished by simply believing that it does not exist? Who would not rejoice to be thus freed from all fear of sin and its consequences, and all conflict with sin and temptation, if only the deliverance could be real and permanent? This doctrine is not consistently stated nor logically followed out; but this logical inconsistency adds to its popular power, for when one revolts from the necessary conclusions he is calmly assured that they are not conclusions.

This was not the view of Christ, who bade his followers fear him who hath power to cast both soul and body into the fire of Gehenna; this was not the experience of Paul, who wrote, almost as though he had a prevision of Christian