god. The overthrow of a nation would be the dethronement of its god. Israel's land was the heritage of Jahveh. There his altars were erected and his sacrifices offered. He was Israel's natural protector, and what he demanded in return for his favor was numerous offerings and a rich and splendid ceremonial. When the nation faithfully rendered this outward service, it felt sure of his help in every time of need. Worship and morality were things apart.

But the prophets viewed the relation between Jahveh and his people in a different light. They spiritualized the idea of God and ascribed to him a truly moral character. They discovered in the world a moral order established by Jahveh, in the interest of which he governs the whole universe. What he requires is not sacrifice and offering. With what scorn he rejects them, if unaccompanied by a righteous life, we read in the prophet Amos: "I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them, neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy viols " (Amos 5: 21-24; comp. Is. 1:11-15). What he requires is moral good. Says Amos: "Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live"; "let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" (5:14, 15, 24; comp. Is. 1:16, 17; Mic. 6: 6-9).

From the Jahveh of early Israel to the Jahveh of the prophets there was a marvelous advance. How can it be accounted for? No other Semitic people attained to this ethical monotheistic conception of God. Every other Semitic religion developed a crude and immoral polytheism. As Israel stands alone among the ancient nations in this, as in so many other respects, there must have been something in the character of Israel's religion from its very birth, which differentiated it from the religions of the other peoples. And that must be sought in its fundamental principle, that Jahveh is Israel's only God, and his worship excludes the worship of every other

god. This principle saved Israel from sinking into polytheism, to which it was naturally inclined, and made it possible, through the influence of divinely inspired minds, gradually to develop a religion of such a spiritual and ethical nature.

There remains to be considered the critical, in contrast to the traditional theory of the history of worship as developed in the Old Testament; but not to prolong this article unduly, we reserve the subject for a later time.

II.

CONCORD: HER ANCIENT GLORY AND ABIDING

CHARM.*

BY C. ERNEST WAGNER.

It was on a rare morning in July, fresh and pure after three days of rain, with the wind coming steadily from the northwest and the snowy clouds trooping in stately file across the sky, that I found myself longing for the gift of a Goldsmith, to sing the charm of Concord, "loveliest village of the plain." For so, in her radiant beauty, this new England town impressed me. As I walked her muffled, sandy streets, arched by aged elms and lined with cottage homes, as I watched the sunlight filtering through the leaves upon the softest of green swards, and, looking through the open spaces, caught now and again a glimpse of meadow, stream and tree-crowned upland, enchantingly bright and beautiful, I communed with myself, saying: "The clouds are the clouds. of Somerset; the meadows are the meadows of Oxford; but the elms and cottages are the inalienable birthright of our own New England." So exceptional were the conditions, so pleasurable the sensations, and so vivid the impressions that I could not help censuring the strange inertia which had permitted me to live so long in ignorance of the marvelous physical charm of this otherwise famous town. Inspired by the revelation of beauty then vouchsafed, I shall try to communicate to those who have not yet been moved to a like experience the knowledge gained and the impressions received during a fortnight's sojourn in old Concord.

* For many matters of fact and detail I am indebted to the following publications: "Concord: Some of the Things to be Seen There," by George Tolman; "The Concord Guide Book: Historic, Literary, and Picturesque Concord," by George B. Bartlett.

As things go in America the town may well be called old; for it was in 1635 that the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay established a plantation at Musketaquid to consist of a tract six miles square. Musketaquid, meaning the grass ground or meadows, had been the site of an Indian village, wisely located at the junction of two rivers, now the Assabet and Sudbury, which here unite to form the Concord. These rivers, full of fish, flowed through a broad alluvial plain, almost entirely cleared of wood, although the low hills that surrounded it were well-wooded and accessible. The meadows, being the largest expanse of clear and tillable ground that had yet been found in the limits of the colony, naturally attracted the attention of the early settlers. Under the leadership of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, an English clergyman who, for non-conformity, had been deprived by Archbishop Laud of his living, the land for the new settlement was bought from its Indian owners. The story of this transaction is best told by a bronze tablet set in a stone wall on Lowell Street, near the village square:

HERE IN THE HOUSE OF THE
REVEREND PETER BULKELEY
FIRST MINISTER AND ONE OF THE
FOUNDERS OF THIS TOWN

A BARGAIN WAS MADE WITH THE
SQUAW SACHEM THE SAGAMORE TAHATTAWAN
AND OTHER INDIANS

WHO THEN SOLD THE RIGHT IN

THE SIX MILES SQUARE CALLED CONCORD
TO THE ENGLISH PLANTERS

AND GAVE THEM PEACEFUL POSSESSION

OF THE LAND.

A. D. 1636.

The squaw sachem referred to above seems to have been a woman of great power in her tribe, and it may not be unwarranted to assume that the peaceable settlement was, in some degree at least, owing to this feminine influence. The first owners were evidently well satisfied with their bargain; for

in all the Indian wars which followed Concord was almost the only town in the entire colony that never suffered from an Indian raid upon her territory. It is commonly believed that this peaceful mode of settling the Indian question gave to the town the name of Concord, a place name unknown, it is said, until that time.

Of the subsequent history of Concord-her well-known distinction in Revolutionary times; her prominence in the antislavery agitation; the fame of her School of Philosophy; her activity in statecraft, jurisprudence, journalism, and pamphleteering (not to speak of the undimmed glory of her pure literature); her eminence in art and philanthropy, ay, even in horticulture (witness the Concord Grape!)—of this brilliant record it may well be said, the history of Concord has been the history of her great men and women. And so, in our ramble about the historic town, as the names and places suggest in turn facts and events, I shall let the story, in this natural and perforce somewhat inconsequential fashion, tell itself.

Monument Square, which is, by the way, the exact geographical centre of the original six miles square, is the proper starting point for our tour of observation. In its centre, on a grass-grown plot, stands the Soldiers' Monument, an obelisk of New England granite, erected in 1867, and bearing on one side of its base the names of the forty-two sons of Concord who perished in the War of Secession. Near it is the town elm, a noble tree of enormous girth and reach of bough, which, according to tradition, was already of fair proportions in Revolutionary times. Under its branches, it is said, the Rev. William Emerson, grandfather of the poet, delivered his famous speech on the morning of the Concord Fight (April 19, 1775). Behind the old elm, and touched by its widespreading boughs, is the Town Hall, where Emerson delivered many of the lectures which, when given to the world, went far to establish the eternity of his fame. A bronze tablet, on the opposite side of the square, marks the site of the old