The difficulties are not removed or lessened, but rather increased, when it is proposed to make a Prohibition party National in the scope of its action. One of the things to be done by such a party, in order to realize its own idea, is, once in every four years, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President respectively, and also to nominate Presidential electors who, if chosen by the people, will vote for these candidates. The chance of success, by setting up this electoral machinery, in the presence of the two great parties of the country, amounts simply to nothing at all; and if such a party could elect its candidates for President and Vice-President, neither of these officers could establish Prohibition over a single foot of the territory of the United States.

Another thing to be done by a National Prohibition party is, once in every two years, to nominate and elect, from the several States, candidates for membership in the House of Representatives, and to do so to an extent that will give it the majority in this house. The same party must be numerically strong enough in the States to control the action of the majority of the State legislatures, and thus secure a majority in the Senate of the United States. In a word, it must, by the election of its candidates, either directly or indirectly, obtain control of both Houses of Congress. A condition of public sentiment, in the several States, rendering all this possible, would entirely supersede the necessity for the party, so far as these States are concerned, since the end could and would be gained by State action; and if such a condition did not exist, then the end could not be gained by such a party. The tug of war on this subject is to supply the necessary public sentiment; and this is not to be done, on a scale adequate to the result, by the organization of a National Prohibition party. Such a party may by its action defeat one party and give victory to another; but this will convert neither to the adoption of its principles, so long as such adoption will cost more in votes than it will gain.

If, moreover, we suppose this party to become strong enough to control both Houses of Congress, it would then be confronted with the fact that Congress has no power to establish Prohibition within the territorial domain of the States. The utmost that Congress can do is to legislate on this subject in the District of Columbia, in the Territories of the United States, and in places used for forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings belonging to the general government, and to regulate foreign and interstate commerce, and commerce with the Indian tribes, including commerce in intoxicating liquors. Congress, as the Constitution now is, has no power to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in the several States, any more than it has to prohibit the manufacture and sale of bread in these States. It may, for the purpose of raising a revenue, impose a tax on the liquor business; but this, upon the very face of

the case, would not be Prohibition. To impose a tax so heavy as to make it absolutely prohibitory would be to defeat the constitutional end of the tax, and, without any warrant in the Constitution, to suppress a business allowed by State authority.

Far the greater part of the evil to be removed exists in the States, and hence beyond the legislative power of Congress. And if the public sentiment in the States were such as to secure a majority of the members of both Houses of Congress favorable to Prohibition, then, as already remarked, this sentiment would be abundantly able to establish Prohibition in the States by State action, without any legis lation on the part of Congress, even if we suppose it true, as it is not, that Congress has power to enact a prohibitory law to operate in these States.

The only way in which Congress can be put in possession of such a power is by an amendment to the Constitution, giving it the power. If political Prohibitionists propose to secure this result, then they must elect a Congress that will by a two-thirds majority submit such an amendment to the legislatures of the several States, and must also gain such control over the State legislatures that three-fourths of them will ratify the amendment; or, if they do not adopt this method, then they must get two-thirds of the legislatures of the several States to ask Congress to call a Federal Convention to propose the amendment, and then get this Convention to adopt it, and then secure its ratification by conventions in three-fourths of the States. Is there any prospect that an effort to gain the result in either of these ways would be successful? Absolutely none whatever.

If the people of the several States were universally in favor of Prohibition they could and would establish it by State authority in these States, and would not seek to do it by Federal authority. To establish it by the latter authority would be to change the character of the General Government, and also that of the State governments, as much so as if Congress were authorized to pass laws in respect to all the rights of property in the several States, or in respect to all crimes committed in these States, or in respect to any other subject that is now properly regarded as a matter to be regulated by State authority. Whether intoxicating liquors shall be manufactured and sold in a given State is a question for that State to determine; and it cannot be determined by Congress without working a fundamental change in our system of Government. He who thinks that the requisite majority can ever be persuaded to sanction such a change in the "supreme law of the land," has passed beyond the reach of reason; and the attempt to reason with him would be labor lost.

These considerations show that the difficulties of the problem are not lessened or simplified, but rather increased, when it is proposed to create and perpetuate a Prohibition party that shall be national in

the scope of its action. The effort, however persistently made, can result in nothing but its own failure. Prohibition, as a third party movement, should not, at the very utmost, pass beyond the sphere of State politics; and, even here, the chances of its success are reduced to a minimum quantity. The conditions upon which it can succeed entirely dispense with its necessity as the means of that success. These conditions being given, the movement is not needed; and if not given, it is a failure.

I have, in this argument, purposely omitted to consider the question whether Prohibition can, in this country, be put into practice to such an extent that, by removing the facility for the use of intoxicating drinks, it would wholly or mainly remove the evils resulting therefrom. My object has been to show that, if this question be answered in the affirmative, the organization of a third party to attain the end, whether in National or State politics, is not a wise mode of action. Whether such a party shall be organized and supported or not is not at all a question of principle, but simply one of ways and means. I have never acted with any such party, and I do not expect to do so. I do not believe in its practical wisdom with reference to the end sought. The political Prohibitionists, who form but a small fraction of the real friends of temperance in this country, have not, in my judgment, advanced their cause at all by their course at the recent election. They have indirectly helped the Democratic party into power, and, in so doing, they have done the very thing which the liquor interest desired to have done. The triumph of this party is not, in the light of its well known antecedents, to be regarded as a victory for Prohibition. Nor is the defeat of the Republican party, in part by the Prohibitionists, to be reckoned as such a victory. This party is not likely to be converted to Prohibition by any such process, especially when the conversion would be sure to secure its defeat. The political Prohibitionists are to-day a very small minority of the whole people of the United States, and a small minority of the whole people in each of the States; and I do not believe that their policy of organizing a third party will ever make them anything else. The reasons for this opinion I have stated in the preceding argument.

VI.-LEAVES FROM A PREACHER'S NOTE-BOOK.

NO. IV.

BY ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D., PHILADELPHIA.

XLI. The Last Judgment.-Rev. xx: 11-15.

1. The Throne. "Great," because in comparison all other thrones are small. "White"-i. e., as intensest light that dazzles, blinds, repels. Earth and heaven flee away, as mists vanish, as owls and bats fly, as even stars grow pale and disappear at sunrise. Before such majesty and glorious holiness what can stand? Adam and Eve shrank behind the trees of the garden. Daniel's "comeliness was

turned into corruption," and even John "fell at his feet as dead!"

2. The Judge. Jesus Christ.-John v: 22, 27.

3. The Judged. Small and great; no caste distinctions. The Sea, Death and Hades unlock their depths, and their dungeons deliver up their captives.

4. The Books. Records of the sorrows and service of saints.-Ps. Ivi: 8; Mal. iii: 16, and of sins unforgiven.-Ps. li: 1. Especially Book of Life.

5. The Law of Judgment. Works, including all forms of activity, secret thoughts, words, acts, etc.

6. The Issues. Eternal Life and Death.

Yet the believer need have no fear.-Heb. ii: 14, 15; 1 John iv: 17; 2 Tim. i: 12. The Judge is his advocate; his name is in the Book of Life; the record of his sins is "blotted out"; he is not to be judged on his own merits, and his eternal life is already begun in believing.

XLII. The Lion of Scotia. A warm friend of Dr. Chalmers had his portrait in a conspicuous place in his study, and had inscribed under it "The Numidian Lion" -"asleep."

XLIII. The Martyrs. The word "martyr" means simply witness: but as the early witnesses sealed with their own blood their testimony to the faith, the first meaning was readily merged into the second. At Lyons, A.D. 177, those who had been scourged, branded and exposed to wild beasts, humbly disowned the name martyrs, preferring to confine that exalted title to Christ (Rev. i: 5; iii: 14) and to those upon whose testimony, as upon Stephen's, He set a special seal; and they said of themselves, "We are but mean and lowly confessors."

XLIV. Prophecy anticipates the glory of History.—John viii: 56. The people of a city were commanded by the oracle to assemble on a plain outside of the city, and he who first saw the sunrise should be made king. A slave turned his back to the sun and looked up the shaft of a high temple where the sun's earliest rays flamed, and he cried, "I see it." He had been told to do so by a wise citizen, who stayed at home. This citizen, revealed by the slave, they made king, and he was the wisest that ever reigned there.

XLV. Next to not sinning is confessing sin. A very learned man has said: “The three hardest words in the English language are, I was mistaken.'" Frederick the Great wrote to the Senate, "I have just lost a great battle, and it was entirely my own fault." Goldsmith says, "This confession displayed more greatness than all his victories." Such a prompt acknowledgment of his fault recalls Bacon's course in more trying circumstances. "I do plainly and ingenuously confess," said the great chancellor, "that I am guilty of corruption, and so renounce all defense." "I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed." XLVI. Success is the reward of endeavor, not of accident. Rufus Choate, when some one remarked that great achievements often resulted from chance, thundered out, "Nonsense! As well talk of dropping the alphabet and picking up the Iliad."

The retort was not original with Choate. Dean Swift said that he would no more believe the universe to be the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet would fall by chance into an ingenious and learned treatise on philosophy. But, alas for originality! even Swift borrowed the idea from Cicero, and as Cicero was fond of borrowing, he may have gotten it from somebody else.

XLVII. Trainig of a Jewish Boy. Canon Farrar says: At five he would begin to study the Bible with parents at home; and even earlier than this he would doubtless have learnt the Shema and the Hallel (Psalms cxiii-cxviii) in whole or in part, At six he would go to his "vineyard," as the later Rabbis called their schools. At ten he would begin to study those earlier and simpler developments of the oral law, afterward collected in the Mishna. At thirteen he would, by a sort of "confirmation," become a Son of the Commandment." At fifteen he would be trained in yet more minute and burdensome halachôth, analagous to those which ultimately filled the vast mass of the Gemara. At twenty, or earlier, like every orthodox Jew, he would marry. During many years he would be reckoned among the "pupils of the wise," and be mainly occupied with "the traditions of the Fathers."

XLVIII. Irresistible grace. Dr. Butler says that there may be irresistible conviction, but never irresistible conversion. Paul could not help seeing Jesus and knowing that He was the true Messiah: but nothing compelled him to ask, "What shall I do, Lord?"

XLIX. Count Zinzendorf presents a character and career of unique beauty. The faith that was in him dwelt first in his grandfather and father. It was like an inheritance of grace. At four years of age he made this covenant with Christ: "Be thou mine, dear Savior, and I will be thine"; and from the window he used to toss letters to the Lord, opening to Him all his child heart. At ten he was a pupil of Francke at Halle, and there formed prayer-circles, cultivating in himself and others a most devout piety. The ambitious designs of his uncle on his behalf, the seductions of the European cities he visited, and the allurements of his own wealth, all failed to draw him from Christ. His motto, adopted by Tholuck, was, "Ich hab' eine passion, und die est Er, nur Er" (I have one passion, and it is He, only He). At school he formed his fellows into "The Order of the grain of mustard seed," which bound them to work for the conversion of souls. He married Countess Reuss, and they two covenanted together to renounce rank and wealth, and be ready to go anywhere as missionaries. He founded the revived sect of Moravians, or United Brethren, and Herrnhut (Protection of the Lord) he gave for the community to dwell in. There, after a life of 60 years, he died and was fitly borne to his grave by 32 ministers and missionaries whom he had reared, from Holland, England, Ireland, North America and Greenland.

VII.-A LIST OF TREATISES ON THE "LIFE OF CHRIST." BY HOWARD CROSBY, D.D., New York.

Editor of HoMILETIC REVIEW:

Will you answer in THE HOMILETIC REVIEW the following query: What are the leading "Lives of Christ" and books near akin which have appeared within the last century, and what are the character and the comparative merits of each? P. R. P.

Lake Linden, Mich.

THIS century has been prolific in treatises on the Life of Christ. Strauss' "Leben Jesu," published first in 1835, and offering a mythic theory of the Gospel narrative, was probably the stimulating cause of these treatises. That work was a learned assault on not only Scripture, but common sense, and its learning made