bright mind, a frank and earnest Christian spirit, and as giving evidence in his sermon of possessing an unusual power, which is bound to tell some day. It seemed as though he had been putting his time into the study of subjects which had not fitted him well for answering the questions which on such an occasion must necessarily take precedence. It was also clear that he had been taking into his mind a great amount of material which he had not yet found time to dispose of, and which left his theological position not unorthodox, but vague, so much so that the Presbytery did not see fit to license him, at the moment, as a teacher.

Even the older and more conservative members of Presbytery were impressed

with the young man, and so expressed themselves; they believed in his future; they dealt with him most tenderly; they sustained his examination at all points but theology, in the sense I have specified; and simply deferred action on this until the fall meeting, anticipating his able and triumphant entrance upon the ministry at that time. In this all the ministers, so-called liberal and conservative alike, agreed. There was positively no discrimination against Union.

I write this as an alumnus of Union; also as one who, on the formal roll-call, supported this young man as well as the others.

(Rev.) HENRY ELLIOTT MOTT, D.D. Elizabeth, N. J.

1. What is meant by "covenant theology," and what objection has modern theology to it? Which do you consider the two strongest books written on the Baptist controversy, one on each side? 3. Did Phillips Brooks become interested in Spiritualism in his later years? J. G. M. 1. The doctrine (for which see the Westminster Shorter Catechism) that God originally entered into a covenant of works with the human race as represented by Adam, and, when this was voided by the Fall, into a covenant of grace with the elect. The objection is that these covenants were really made in Holland about three hundred years ago. See Schaff's "Creeds of Christendom," Vol. I., p. 773. 2. If you refer to the controversy on the meaning of the Greek word baptizo, and the original mode of administering baptism, The Outlook, not having cared about it, has formed no judgment about the merits of the disputants. The controversy no longer exists among scholars. In a technical view the Baptists have won the case. The Outlook, however, does not regard the ques tion as a technical one, to be settled by the dictionary and precedents. So far as any controversy can be said to exist now, it is of that elusive kind which depends mainly on the point of view from which the question is regarded. See Stanley's "Christian Institutions," Chapter I. 3. If

you mean attracted to it, no.

Please tell me of any work or commentary upon the Old Testament, brief, concise, inexpensive, but up to date, written in the light of the very best modern criticism and historical research. I wish to follow the thread of truth for myself and for my Sunday-school class. For instance, what is the kernel of truth in the story of the taking of the city of Jericho? N. H. S.

This question is often asked. The work that answers these requirements is yet to be written. For a textual commentary the "Cambridge Bible for Schools," whose many volumes range in price from 40 cents to $1.25, will serve an ordinary reader, but for a critical view of the narrative must be supplemented by at least such books as these: Day's "Social Life of the Hebrews" (Scribners, $1.25), Cornill's "History of Israel" (Open Court Company, Chicago, $1.50), "The Messages of the Ear

lier and the Later Prophets "-two volumes, contain ing valuable historical introductions (Scribners, $2). As to Jericho, the fact probably was that through the terror of its people hardly any defense was made, and it was taken as easily as if the walls had collapsed.

An editor of large influence, in considering the seat of authority, says: "Those who speak of the authority of religion as internal rather than external do not thereby intend to disparage the authority of Christ or the Bible, but rather to emphasize the idea that it is only as Christ and the truths of revelation are enthroned in the heart that they really becca controlling force over the lives of men.' Doe: express the real issue? If so, it does not appear there is any real issue. Is the editor right in wh here says?

H.

The author of the statement quoted is correct. There is, however, an issue which his remarks do not touch. It is made by those who maintain that in the case of a revelation authenticated by certain external evidences, as miracles and credible witnesses, the reason, which has been called to pronounce judgment on these credentials, has no further authority, and no right to sit in judgment on the substance of the revelation as credible or incredible.

BOYS' CLUBS.-As we are frequently addressed on this subject, we refer recent and intending inquirers to the "General Alliance of Workers with Boys," at 34 Chestnut Street, Charlestown, Mass., of which William Byron Forbush, Ph.D., is President. Its special purpose is to be a Bureau of Information about boys and work with them. It publishes a quarterly, "How to Help Boys" ($1 a year). Its annual conference is held next October in Boston. A membership fee of "one dollar for life " is required. President G. Stanley Hall and Dr. E. E. Hale are named as its Counselors.

D. L. P.-Your post-office address was incorrectly given. The following books will meet the point of your inquiry: "Foundations of Belief," by A. J. Balfour; a critique of the same in "Man's Place in the Cosmos," by Professor Seth; "The Seat of Authority," by Dr. James Martineau. These are well known, and can be ordered of any bookseller.

Vol. 68

The Pan-American

Exposition

The most picturesque feature of the informal opening of the PanAmerican Exposition at Buffalo on Thursday of last week was the releasing at three o'clock of nearly four thousand homing pigeons, each bearing a message from the Director-General "To the people of all the Americas." The gates were opened in the morning, and at noon there were brief speeches in the Government Building. Mayor Conrad Diehl, of Buffalo, Mr. John G. Milburn, President of the Exposition, and General William I. Buchanan, Director-General, were among the speakers. A message from President McKinley was read, forty-six aerial bombs were fired, one in honor of each State in the Union, the flags on all the buildings were unfurled, and in the evening the buildings were for the first time illuminated. The formal ceremonies marking the opening have been postponed until the twentieth of May, and the indications are that by that time the Exposition will be in good running order. Much of the delay has been due to the almost unparalleled weather of the past six weeks, culminating in the heavy snowstorm of a fortnight ago. Most of the buildings are, however, practically completed, and the exhibits are being very rapidly installed. The grounds of the Exposition cover three hundred and fifty acres, which is somewhat more than half of the total space occupied at Chicago. The architectural scheme has a unity which has not marked any preceding Exposition, and the liberal use of color for decorative effect has already suggested the title of the Rainbow City. A large majority of the Central and South American States are represented by exhibits, and several of them have striking buildings. The beginnings of the fair are auspicious, and there is every prospect that the attendance during the

No. 2

coming six months will be second only to that at Chicago. The illumination of the buildings in the evening will be, when the grounds are complete, the most beautiful spectacle of its kind that the world has ever seen. On Sunday the grounds were open but the buildings closed; the decision as to the final arrangement with regard to Sunday opening has not yet been announced.

The Jacksonville Fire

Every

On Friday of last week one-half of the city of Jacksonville, Florida, was reduced to ashes within a few hours. The fire started in the yards of a fiber company, where sparks from a neighboring chimney had fallen, and was swiftly carried by the wind over a district thirteen blocks wide and two miles in length. The terrible speed of the conflagration was the result of the frame construction of nearly all the buildings, the dryness of the season, and the height of the wind-all of which worked together to make the calamity as sudden as it was appalling. church and nearly every public building was swept away, while the homes of ten thousand people were burned before anything of value could be saved. "The disaster," says a despatch of Saturday night, "has effectually obliterated the dividing line between the rich and poor, and a common catastrophe has made all akin. To-night the sidewalks are thronged with homeless persons. The wharfs are crowded with sleepers, and every available craft in the harbor has been made into a temporary hotel." Secretary Root promptly placed government barracks and tents at the disposal of the local authorities, the Governor of the State as promptly aided them with the support of militia companies to prevent looting, and everything seems to have been done with rare energy and discretion to meet the crisis.

But the crisis still remains, and for weeks to come the local authorities will need the help which already is being generously sent to them from all parts of the country.

Tracing the Connection

New York City has been witnessing a strange spectacle: on the one hand, poolrooms and gambling-houses have been raided one after another on evidence previously obtained and on warrants regularly sworn out and served (if necessary even with violence) by Justice Jerome, of the Court of Special Sessions, in person; on the other hand are seen the Commissioner of Police, Murphy, and his Deputy, Devery (in all but name Chief of Police), calmly and repeatedly denying that they have any evidence that public gambling exists in New York. To add to the anomaly, the keepers of the illegal poolrooms in New York are in a state of virtuous indignation at the illegal gambling at the race-tracks, and call upon the police to stop it! Justice Jerome has the law behind him in his unusual course of serving warrants personally, as might be shown by quoting several sections of the penal code. As to the dignity of such a proceeding, a reformer and enforcer of the law who thought more of his personal dignity than of his object would in New York prove more statuesque than efficient. Moreover, in recognizing the debt of good citizens to Justice Jerome, it should be remembered that he is working for something far more important than any number of sensational raids and arrests. The whole force of the attack on corruption and lawbreaking now is and must be in finding the links of the chain of guilt which, as every man on the street believes, stretches from gambler to policeman and politician. It is for evidence of this that District Attorney Philbin, the Committee of Fifteen, and Justice Jerome are striving. Letters, checks, and receipts found in the safes of raided places have already furnished much evidence tending in this direction. The mysterious "John Doe" about whom there has been so much news paper wit and vague wonder is in reality probably not one but several men, and before long there may be evidence enough to enable the Grand Jury to lay before the

courts and the people the details of a systematic conspiracy to defend gamblers from punishment or interference with their business on payment of regular tribute through systematized channels. With this ground gained, one point of vantage in the coming political campaign will be gained, for emphatically that campaign must be primarily moral as well as nonpartisan.

The President's Tour

It is a mistake to attach special political significance to the cordial welcome everywhere accorded to President McKinley in his tour throughout the United States. That crowds greet him at every stoppingplace indicates that the people pay an honor to the office of President which the press does not pay, and that in this respect the average American is both more of a patriot and more of a gentleman than the partisan newspaper, or that type of independent newspaper which out-Herods Herod in its partisanship. Doubtless

Mr. McKinley is personally very popular; doubtless this trip will add to his popularity; for he has that unaffected interest in all classes of men, that spirit of genuine comradeship, and that sincere admiration for the common virtues of probity, industry, and thrift which always tend to popularity among what Abraham Lincoln called "the plain people." But that he is seeking to turn this popularity to his own advancement, or even to that of the Republican party as an organization, there is nothing to indicate. As is fitting, Mr. McKinley's speeches have dealt in generalities; the occasions for speech afforded by such non-partisan receptions are not appropriate places for the defense or even the definition of party policies. We are not of those who think that the utterance of the simpler moral maxims by such a speaker at such a time is valueless; such maxims uttered by a successful political leader, whose sincerity is appar ent, come with a weight which does not attach to them when uttered by the minister from the pulpit. Among the most significant of his political utterances, as reported, are two-one bearing directly on expansion, the other indirectly on the protective policy:

The policy of the United States has always been to keep what it originally started with,

The first of these paragraphs indicates clearly that, in the President's mind, the Philippines are to remain permanently in some form under American sovereignty. We think that this will be the probable result; though we hope and believe that they will remain, not as possessions, but as measurably autonomous colonies. The second of these paragraphs indicates that the President is prepared to ally himself with that increasing fraction of the Republican party which recognizes the fundamental truth that, in the words of the New York "Times," "expansion is sure, soon or late, to do away with restriction."

Democratic Division

at the South

Just when the division of the Democratic party at the South will show at the polls cannot be foretold, but the division is no longer a matter of prophecy, but of record. Within the past month there has been a series of events indicating the lines of the cleavage. The firstand least important-of these was President McKinley's appointment of a Gold Democrat, Mr. Capers, as United States Attorney for the District of South Carolina. Similar overtures have been made in the past by Republican Presidents to Southern Democrats-pre-eminently by President Hayes in the appointment of Postmaster-General Key from Tennessee-but the present instance was exceptional in that the appointment was strongly recommended by one of the Democratic Senators of the State from which the appointment was made, and was received within the State as significant of a new order. Hardly had this appointment been made than Senator McLaurin, who had recommended it, made a speech before the

Manufacturers' Club at Charlotte, North Carolina, in which he not only defended his support of the expansionist, protectionist, and subsidy policies of the Administration, but called upon the business interests represented by his audience to repudiate the policies of the "new Democracy" which dictated the Kansas City platform. The South, he declared, ought now to support the policy of protection in order to develop its growing manufactures, and it ought to support Oriental expansion and subsidies to shipping in order to develop markets for the South's great industry-cotton. More than this, he continued, the South ought to condemn the spirit animating the whole programme of the new Democracy:

To sow discontent with industrial conditions

and distrust of the governing power, to array class against class in the hope of securing fancied social and industrial equality, is, to my mind, the first step in revolution. . . . I, for one, do not believe that the people of the South hands of this so-called are ready to trust this government into the new Democracy" to begin the leveling process through the exercise of the taxing power; and yet this is exactly what this new propaganda means, and outside class who preach and practice social equality of the South it is proclaimed by the very same between the races. The two dogmas are inseparably interwoven. Go into the West, attend one of their campaign meetings, scratch beneath the skin, and you will find the same old social equality dogma, to the tune of which the soul of John Brown is still "marching on."

The concluding sentences quoted marked the only point upon which Senator McLaurin's platform did not square with that of the Republican party, and the reception his speech met with showed that his audience was substantially in accord with him. A Conservative party, in harmony with the Republican party on everything except the negro question, already possesses the allegiance of the manufacturers of the South.

man's predecessor, ex-Senator Butler, the representative of the old régime in Carolina politics, warmly commends the position of Mr. McLaurin. "We have passed the point," he said, "when the white people from necessity were arrayed on one side to protect their civilization, with the negro race on the other, and we can now afford to divide upon paramount political issues." Ex-Senator Butler, it may be said, strongly champions the course of the Administration in the Philippines, but his view of the readiness of Southern people to divide upon new issues is in all respects corroborated by Southern Democrats who criticise this policy. Congressman Livingston, of Georgia, for example, says: "Among the bankers, railroad men, cotton manufacturers, and others interested in big business enterprises in the South, there are some who believe in the policies of the Republican party.” . . . The negro question has kept them in the Democratic party, but, that out of the way, they are Republicans in their theories." Still more emphatically, Congressman Bankhead, of Alabama, declares that "there are many men of wealth and social and business prominence in the South who affiliate with the Democratic party under protest. . . . With the negro out of politics, I believe the time would come when Alabama would be divided between two great parties of nearly equal strength, and that elections would be determined there by the candidates and issues of the hour." Mr. Bryan himself recognizes the strength of the elements at the South which are against the principles he advocates. In last week's issue of the "Commoner" he says, in comment upon Senator McLaurin's speech:

Some leader will arise to give direction and force to the aristocratic and plutocratic element for which Mr. McLaurin speaks. There is such an element in every community, and now that the race question no longer unifies the white people of the Southern States, it will doubtless manifest itself. Senator Tillman has already taken up the gage of battle thrown down by Senator McLaurin, and will doubtless be able to marshal a considerable majority in that State, but the same influences are at work in other States where there is greater danger of their success. A white Republican party in the South may bring some compensation, in that it is likely to divide the colored vote in the North and answer the argument of those Northern Republicans who have been able to give no

better reason for remaining with their party than that the South was solidly Democratic. In case the promised division in the race vote takes place South and North, it will help both races in both sections by placing political life upon a rational basis.

The Texas Oil Excitement

The recent oil discoveries in Texas have produced an excitement in that State which recalls that produced by the similar discoveries in western Pennsylvania a generation ago. During the past three months, says an Austin despatch of last week, two hundred new oil companies have been incorporated, the capitalization of a single company often exceeding a million dollars. In nearly all cases part of the stock has been put on the market, at prices sometimes as low as ten cents a share, and visions of sudden wealth have made epidemic among even the very poor a form of gambling usually confined to the well-to-do. According to the New York "Evening Post," some of these companies in their advertisements of stock do not even mention the location of their properties, while others try to give an impression of solidity by adopting names like the Rockefeller Company or the Stevenville Standard Oil Company. In both of the last named the investor may acquire a share for ten cents, as against the eight hundred dollars he would have to pay for a share in the original Standard Oil Company. Of course the "investments" are gambling pure and simple— and especially simple. When the oil properties have value, the owners try to develop them themselves, with the aid of a few financiers and men skilled in the

business. The amount of capital required is not often large, and therefore stock is rarely put upon the market except at a higher figure than any one who has looked into the property is willing to pay. Those who buy the stock for speculation are entirely at the mercy of the managers, who can take part in the game knowing exactly how the cards are placed. These obvious considerations, however are insufficient to stop a craze when every one knows that oil has been found in enormous quantities, and that some people have suddenly become rich. It is possible that the Texas oil territory will