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the day of ascension, there would seem to be little encouragement to at tempt to convey thought by the use of language.

To one who is caught in the toils of such metaphysical speculations about the reality of the life of Jesus we recommend a perusal of Balfour's "Foundations of Belief," where he will find drawn out the entirely similar lines of speculation which can be pursued concerning every department of knowledge, even the plainest cases of inference from direct perception. A sound philosophy lies at the basis of a correct interpretation; while an unsound system is sure to vitiate everything and pervert the plainest truths and the simplest statements of fact and history.

G. F. W.

PROFESSOR HERRON'S IMPRESSIONISM.

The nineteenth century bids fair to go out witnessing the fields of literature and art dominated by impressionism. Socialistic thought in its very nature loves glittering generalizations, and abhors details as nature does a vacuum. That socialism as a theory, and socialistic thought, has had its influence in literature, no one can deny who reflects upon the enormous sale of such a book as Bellamy's "Looking Backward." There is a growing tendency to impatience of details, to paint truths of impression rather than truths of fact, to aim at tone and effect without proper regard to exactness and truth. The motive is the desire to make a striking picture.

In art, this desire for effect ignores and even despises photographic accuracy, and rebounds "into the extreme of fleeting and shadowy impressionism." (See Century Dictionary, "Impressionism.") "It is the doctrine that natural objects should be painted or described as they first strike the eye in their immediate and momentary effects-that is, without selection, or artificial combination or elaboration."

Professor George D. Herron has painted another impression piece,— for he can paint none other, and the result is before us in the form of a tasty and modest appearing book entitled "The Christian State." He is frank to admit that his book may have no more than an inspirational value, and this confession reveals the fact that he is aware of the limits of the practical utility of impressionism. There have been many and conflicting opinions of the real need and influence of such writings as Professor Herron's. By many he has been hailed as a new apostle full of divine truth and inspiration and an impetus for the rapid development of Christ's kingdom; while others have deemed him a destructionist,—

1 The Christian State. A Political Vision of Christ. A Course of Six Lectures delivered in Churches in Various American Cities. By George D. Herron. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 1895. (Pp. 216. 5x3.) 75 cents.

VOL. LII. NO. 207. 12

tearing down, with no effort to rebuild, and going through the Lord's vineyard plucking its half-ripe fruit, and pounding it to make it ripe, while all it needed was but time and sunshine to develop and mature it. Of course it rots.

There need be no such conflicting opinions, however, of Professor Herron's work. He is simply an artistic impressionist, an impatient idealist, and, as such, has an abundance of merit. He is poetical, striking, and oftentimes, even inspiring. He is emotional but never judicial; full of fancy but not of fact; theoretical but not practical. His sayings run easily and sometimes naturally into the hysterical, the fanatical, and even the crazy. They have the merit of possessing passion and fire, but are rhetorical and sensational.

Professor Herron writes for effect and not for truth. In this particular he is a quasi-Jesuit, justifying the means by the ends; for so long as his theme is Jesus, or the principle of sacrifice, or the "kingdom," he deems exaggeration justifiable, and fancy an honorable substitute for fact.

We account for the large number of able minds that have been captivated by Professor Herron's style, precisely as we account for the admiration for Turner's Slave Ship which Ruskin expressed when he said it was the greatest work of the greatest living master. Ruskin simply read into that canvas what was in his own mind, and the very haze and mist of such an impression piece enabled him easily to do so. Many minds that have been captivated by Professor Herron's writings are able to read into them their own knowledge of detail, and hence they find in him an abundance of merit, an inspiration which is stimulating and often exhilirating. So Goethe saw his ideal in Marguerite, and Keats saw in Fanny Brawne what the practical and everyday mind could never discover. It is a truth of everyday life. And here Professor Herron has genuine merit, for he does stimulate thought, and awaken an earnest desire to know the truth and to follow it.

But to the trained mind, suspicious, accurate, careful, patient, in love with the truth only as the truth is painted in colors of fact, much that Professor Herron writes seems but a series of shrieks or mental spasms, the fruit of a nervous temperament, even of a disordered brain, oftentimes fanatical in spirit, purpose, and tendency. Such a mind evades a critical analysis as successfully as the screams of a spoiled child, no less than its questions, outwit the reflections of a philosopher, or the whims of fashion evade the sanctions of the reason. The petulancy of a Xantippe may even defeat the quiet contemplative reflections of a Socrates, and leave unproved the doctrine of immortality.

Professor Foster has so ably analyzed Professor Herron from the standpoint of the class room, that we have no desire to do it again. The arguments against the union of church and state have been so unanswerable, even before Macaulay wrote in 1839 his remarkable essay on Glad

stone's "The State in its Relations with the Church," that we find no time or disposition to go into the subject in reviewing this book.

We take it that it is conceded by all earnest and careful thinkers that as anything but an impressionist Professor Herron has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. How such a mind found its way into the class room must remain a mystery, for the emotions, spasms, and shrieks have no more merit because they play on the word "Jesus" than if they shouted "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," or Hosanna to the Son of David," or "Crucify him.”

But as an impressionist, Professor Herron is delightful reading, warm in his sympathies, earnest in purpose, original in his way of putting things, but so erratic and unreliable as to lose the confidence of accurate thinkers. He reveals a loving and forgiving nature that charms and captivates even the most critical. No one can call these qualities in question, and we would not underestimate his great power for good when his sphere and mission are rightly understood. He has genuine merit, and with all his faults we respect him and admire him. And we wish it understood that this is an impression review of one of the leading impressionists of to-day.

Z. S. H.

ARTICLE XI.

SOCIOLOGICAL NOTES.

CHARITY.

THE first duty of every human being born into this world is to toil. To be a toiler in some part of this vineyard called earth is the highest prerogative and privilege of each person. Work is a blessing and not a curse. This relation of existence and labor has been imposed upon man as a law by a wise and benevolent Creator. Man comes to his best, physically, mentally, morally, and religiously, by a life of industry and usefulness. This truth is taught deductively by ethics no less than by religion, and is enforced inductively by the widest observation and experience. Toil transforms the wilderness into a garden,-it makes the barren desert to blossom with flowers. Our World's Fair was a tribute to industry where all men paid homage to its utility and beauty. It became a place where the unseen forces and laws of the world divine and beautiful were revealed through man's love of toil.

Industry begets value. This is a fundamental truth of political economy. Not all value; for capital, mind, and land share with it the honors of production. But capital may be said to be only the accrued results of the toil of yesterday, or in other words, coagulated labor. We must be careful not to confine the meaning of the word "toil" to the manual laborer or the worker in the mechanic arts, but it must include all the toilers in all the useful arts and sciences and in every sphere of human industry. Esthetic and intellectual culture, moral and religious training, executive ability, by which we achieve business supremacy,-these, all, are necessary forms of activity in the great vineyard which man is commanded to culti vate and improve. Shall the man who makes the piano usurp the honor and title of laborer, or must he share it with the man who brings forth music out of the instrument after it is made? It must be admitted that the poet, the scholar, and the artist, no iess than the artisan, are among the noble toilers of earth.

Not only objectively, but subjectively, is industry seen to be beautiful. It is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Industry not only begets value, but it begets virtue. Nothing of human origin can so purify the soul from evil and kindle in it new light, life, and energy; new hopes, aspirations, and desires; new ambitions, new sense of duty, new love, like the daily and faithful pursuit of toil. Industry brings

out the dormant and latent forces in man's nature, and it alone can reveal to man the object for which he was created. It brings life, health, sunshine, growth, development, fruitage. For the body physical strength, for the mind intellectual vigor, for the soul spiritual life and light It brings peace and contentment, the consciousness of progress, the conviction of fulfilling wisely the end for which we are created. The duties of life become light by bearing them, the law of toil becomes beautiful by fulfilling it. The Venus of Milo, Gray's "Elegy," no less than mechanical inventions like the telephone, are perfect so far as they are simple, for simplicity is ever the soul of culture. But this is the result of training or toil. When the work of genius stands before our eyes, we marvel at its naturalness, whether in sculpture, painting, literature, or invention, and we wonder that we never saw the truth before in its simplicity. But this is the genius that is born of hard work. It is the simple child of toil. Any religion adapted to this world must count among its earlier precepts the truth that no man is saved until he loves work. The world cannot be saved in the truest sense until it has come most deeply in touch with labor and the toilers are recognized as the uncrowned kings and the true sons of God. Had Milton lived in this day we should never have had a celestial city as he has portrayed it. The Apocalypse has not yet been written which we can understand.

If it be true then that industry is a blessing to earth, it becomes a corollary that furnishing employment to those unable to obtain work is a high form of philanthropy. The employer who takes upon himself the duties and responsibilities of furnishing useful and profitable work for his fellow-men is practically a philanthropist. He is the best friend of the laboring classes and more deserving of their confidence and friendship than their parasite, the walking delegate; than the political demagogue who incites them to hatred and violence by reciting their real and imaginary grievances; than the political economist who assures them that all wealth is created only by labor, and that they only are producers, while all others are robbers, sharing unjustly the results of their labor. It matters little that the motive of the employer be a desire to acquire, the result to society and to the laborer is the same; and it is results that we are considering.

Over against industry stand sloth and idleness. These are not negative virtues, they are positive vices. Man is not made to remain stationary,―he grows better or worse. Hence idleness is not only destructive of self-respect and happiness, causing a diminution of the forces of body, mind, and soul, but it breeds crime and vice. Idleness is, therefore, demoralizing, debasing, degrading. The greatest loss to any man is the loss of his self-respect. To be self-respecting he must be useful, to be useful he must toil. The slothful servant who hides his talent in the earth and lets it rust, is bound with many chains and cast into outer dark

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