ble rebuke of the other: "Thou wicked and slothful servant"-wicked because slothful-" thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers"-to have put thyself to profitable industry and so be ready to show a favorable balance at settling day. No apology for slackness and shiftlessness here! Without extending, then, this line of observation, the student of Christian social science is not reduced to the awkward conclusion that he has in hand a doctrine of stagnation and obstruction to the proper and necessary progress of mankind: that is, that we must uncivilize humanity in order to Christianize it. Our religion has to carry no such impossible load on its shoulders. They are not broad enough for a burden like this. But we are not forced to rest in so negative a defence. The true understanding of these precepts which are so confidently arrayed against the Gospel authority, puts its friends on a bold vantage ground of positive triumph in this debate. It is true that these questionable passages may be vindicated from much of this detraction by saying that their instruction was very appropriate to the condition of the early Christians; in fact, that they could not have kept any footing at all among those persecuting Pagans and Jews, except on these terms, and that people so situated might well have as little to do as possible with worldly affairs. But, if this be true, it is not the whole truth here, nor the best part of it. The right clue to the vital and permanent interpretation of all this teaching of the New Testament is that it is to be taken as the expression of what essentially is and practically ought to be the spirit, temper, disposition of men and communities, the ideal toward which they should ever be looking and aiming the grosser form and clothing thus pictured of a high and pure and benevolent life in individuals and nations. Thus construed, Christianity is a liveable possibility, and socially and politically is not at war with civilizing forces, but actually their most efficient helper.

We have seen that those early instructions could not be strictly carried out, and were not designed to be, even under the enormous pressure of the surrounding oppo

sition to the church. Nor can they now. But then and now the spirit of these precepts is divine and vital. In putting before men models to be copied, God always has recognized the beauty and claims of absolute perfection. "Aim high!" has always been his motto for his children. He puts forward his own moral life for our human imitation. He ever has. He shows us a millennial, a heavenly state of voluntary, affectional intercourse, and bids us reproduce not so much the methods as the results of this, in our present lives. The object aimed at is a condition of humanity relieved as far as possible of friction, waste, anxiety, everything hostile to purity and peace. The vista reaches from paradise to paradise; and the social and the spiritual law of both these paradises is that which all this intermediate stretch of worrying, colliding, impure and passionate existence needs to make it what it was designed to be, and to-day ought to be, wherever God has a human child. Nor is there any contradiction to this in his special legislation for the Hebrew race which often appears to have gone upon a low and unrighteous policy, not at all justifiable by Christian standards. For here comes in a principle that has been little regarded; namely: that a defective morality is not necessarily a positive immorality: therefore, that (as Mozley has so ably shown in his

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Ruling Ideas in Early Ages") the Lord did not command men to sin when he did command to be done what we now could not innocently and virtuously do. There was a vast amount of inexcusable wickedness perpetrated all along those ages, as ever since, in direct disobedience to the Divine orders; between which thus discriminated classes of conduct the line must be carefully drawn. The problem has always been the upward education and training of the world. This can only take effect on the material existing in any period. Men never could be hoisted, by any sort of moral derrick, upon a higher level than they had attained. Our Maker has worked the race upwards by the most available means at his disposal, rough as these may sometimes have been, through successive eras; this or nothing was the alternative. But while slowly, and often almost,

to mortal view, despairingly doing this, through all the tedious, dilatory process there has ever run the golden cord of perfect requirement; there has ever gleamed the vision of the towers of the New Jerusalem, the perpetual type of a world of men and women worthy, in their individual and associated excellence, of Him from whom they sprung.

Put this key into the wards of the intricate lock in hand, and its wards will answer to it every time. Not a word that Jesus spoke ever had a lower purpose than that now indicated. The thought of all his teachings and of his apostles after him is the same; the clothing of that thought must, in the nature of things, be shaped and fashioned variously as time moves onward. Here is both a mental and moral discipline for us to translate the unchanging essence of the Christian precept into other forms, without losing or wasting its spirit, as social and national life put on new conditions. What is wanted is not revolution but permeation. The systems of government, the tenure of property, as generally settled in civilized lands, are theoretically sound enough for human well-being, if they could only be struck through and through with the mind that was in Christ.' With this proviso, whatever is intrinsically wrong in civil institutions would quietly right itself, by the common consent. Without this, spasmodic efforts to make things very much better will not produce large returns. Certainly we have proof enough that republican forms of government do not ensure universal happiness. Neither would the abolition of all personal and corporate property, and the inauguration of communistic equality. Why? Because in this nation, and in all others, the social and business life is too much inoculated with selfishness. But replace this as generally and controllingly, with a genuine benevolence; make the permanent spirit and significance of Christ's teachings, rather than the bare letter of them, dominant in the people, and all needful changes and re

forms would easily take care of themselves; demonstrating to every one's mind the fact, which is as true now as it would be then, that the innermost laws and the outmost working of Civilization and Christianity are as thoroughly and permanently in harmony as are the light and heat of the solar ray.

We were beating, near nightfall, on an outward-bound Boston ship, and with an angry sky, around one of those dark, jagged promontories which notch like saw teeth the southern coast of Greece, when the master of the vessel, with his hand on the helm, muttered to a passenger beside him on the quarter deck, "A lighthouse would be a good deal more useful thing along a shore like this than an old ruin like that perched up there on yonder headland." It was just the place where an enlightened government would have set one of the brightest of these lights-those evening stars even more welcome to the voyager than the stars of heaven. But there upon that dusky peak no friendly beam was glimmering; nothing but the tumbling fragments of an ancient pagan temple-a nest and watch-tower of pirates who, before morning, might be making quite too free with our persons and property if we should fail to weather that ugly cape. This puts the point sharply which has now been treated, as made by the negative in this debate-that Christian social science, as it lies in the original documents, is no longer a trusty lighthouse along the sea-coast of modern advancement, but precisely and only that antique, tumbling-down ruin of an old system; necessary, perhaps, as a former stage in the world's development, but useful no longer, and rather injurious as a lurking-place of foes instead of friends of man. Unquestionably, the primitive Christianity, as so transmitted to our times, is just one or the other of these two things—a superstition in ruins, or a quenchless illuminator for the safe sailing of careful navigators till there shall be no more seas of this kind to be coasted.

J. T. Tucker.

CATHOLIC Protestantism is not ungenerous and exclusive. It does not regard itself as a something new under the sun and created for the first about three centuries ago; but it recognizes its vital roots as organically connecting it with the whole course of the past. It believes in a Holy Catholic Church which has really existed, radiant and militant, in all times and in all nations; and in a great "cloud of witnesses," true witnesses and true saints, who have never failed even in the darkest and most barbarous ages, boldly and heroically to honor Christ.

St. Anselm of Canterbury is known to Protestants chiefly as a great theologian and as the constructor of a theory of the atonement which has passed for orthodox for more than eight hundred years. But of his personal Christianity little or nothing is known. And yet this personal life was no less rich and beautiful than his intellectual life. May it not be well to glance at it?

Anselm's career lies like a silver cloud upon the blackest period of the Middle Ages,-between A. D. 1034 and 1109. Born of a noble family of Aosta, Italy, he grew up under the prayers and love of a very gifted mother, Ermenberge by name. From her lips he received with implicit faith that magnificent conception of the spiritual world which was afterwards embalmed in the great Epic of Dante. To his childish imagination the four parts of the Catholic universe, earth, purgatory, heaven, hell, were almost as vivid and real as the four corners of the garden from which he gathered flowers and butterflies. He could talk with God and Christ and the Holy Martyrs, almost as familiarly as with his dear old grandfather, and his uncles and cousins. And he did often converse with them, in dreams. Once he thought he had climbed to the top of an Alp, and enjoyed a talk with God. After the great King had said to him many beautiful things, he placed his hand upon the little boy's head and blessed him. Then giving him a piece of bread of "exquisite taste and whiteness," he permitted him to descend to his mother. This dream is evi

dently a product of the mediaval notion of the Eucharist.

Thus passed the tender years of this ardent, noble youth. Ermenberge held him embraced in the arms of her love and her faith. It was a tender delicate plant from which the breath of rude minds and temptations had been fondly warded off. But before his twentieth year Ermenberge was taken away; and the young Anselm fell into the hands of the world. The tender, sentimental piety of his mother was not equal to the strain now brought upon it. He declined into extravagance and vice.

His rude father now conceived against him a cruel aversion. At last Anselm determined to throw himself upon the world, and let come of him what might.

With a single servant and a donkey the young nobleman bade adieu to the grave of his mother and to the beautiful valley of Aosta, and turned his face toward the setting sun. Within a few weeks he had passed Mt. Cenis, and entered into the plains of France. France was all astir at this time with the fame of Lanfranc, the philosopher priest at the abbey of Pec in Normandy. His fame attracted Anselm. Thus were brought casually together these two men who were afterwards to win such wide fame as successive archbishops of Canterbury.

But the motive of Anselm was as yet far from distinctively Christian or even ecclesiastical. He came to Bec to study philosophy. But he had not heard Lanfranc many months before his intense desire for study had quieted the tumult of his passions. A period of meditation ensued. Finally the bright ideals of his pious childhood became to him beautiful and vital again. The Christian philosophy of Lanfranc endowed them with rationality and truth. They took hold now upon both his heart and his intelligence. The young student of philosophy determined to return to his mother's and to Lanfranc's God. But how could he do this? The cloud of his sins stood between. How could he get back to God? The ecclesiasticism of his day knew of only one way-the way of self-abnegation and consecration. This

meant that he was to flee from the world, assume the vows of ascetic holiness, and retire to a cloister. It was thus, at about the age of twenty-seven, that Anselm became a Benedictine monk at Bec.

At once he became a model in all the rigors and austerities of the monastic life. He had the one quality which is never lacking to great souls, good or bad: he was in earnest. But his monastic routine did not bring him peace. The memory of his sins constantly stared him in the face. He was at times at the brink of despair. Finally his great soul opened a passage through the clouds by the penitent's prayer,-the simple way that every sinner must find before he rises to God and to peace. In his earnest weeks and months of return to God his prayers assumed fixed types in his memory. He afterwards threw them upon manuscript, and many of them have thus come down to us. These prayers are an impressive illustration of the identity of piety in all ages. All of us, all penitents in all ages, can readily unite in the soul-anguish of this young monk of the Dark Ages. "O my Savior," exclaimed he, "I know too well that I am unworthy of thy love. But thou art worthy, thou art worthy of all my love. I am but a poor sinner, unworthy and impure; but yet I cannot do without thee. O blessed Jesus, I cannot turn away. O turn not me away; and turn not thou away, until thou hast taken away all my sins."

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But the poor monk did not know the secret of that simple, direct faith which brings peace at once. He often passed whole nights in agonizing prayer. At last the transition came. It came with the gift of tears. His heart began to melt. The name of Jesus became inexpressibly sweet to him. The mere casual hearing of it would often make his eyes overflow. Now his sweetest employment was to think of the love of Ermenberge, to study divine truth, and to pray to Christ. Henceforth and throughout his life, Christ and the church had no more loyal servant than him whom history knows as St. Anselm.

That Anselm understood religion in its genuine Christian sense is clear from many of his preserved Meditations. After divid

ing the virtues into the external ones of fasting, almsgiving, etc., and the internal ones of love, humility, patience, kindness, etc., he says that "even as the body cannot long exist without the soul, though the soul can without the body, so the external virtues cannot long exist without the internal ones. One may indeed love God without fasting; but one will not long fast out of obedience to God, if one does not really love him."

So soon as Anselm was thoroughly converted in the evangelical sense, he entered at once upon that career of practical service to the church, and of profound study of Christian truth, which led him, almost in spite of himself, to the highest rank among Christian philosophers, and to the most august position in the hierarchy of the church.

The impulse to his theological works was his burning, restless desire to draw nearer and nearer to the absolute truth as it is in Christ. "Come unto me," he cried out, 66 come unto me, O God whom I love! I cherish thee; I praise thee; I adore thee. My soul thirsts for thee; it burns with thy love. Thee only do I adore; in thee is all my joy. I desire to think only of thee, to hear only of thee, to speak only of thee, and to treat only of thee!" "O Jesus," exclaims he elsewhere, "O Jesus, my soul longs to gaze upon thee in thy beauty. It burns to hear thee speak. O come thou, desired of my heart; how long shall I wait? Where shall I find thee? Where dost thou dwell? Where is thy palace of light and of glory? O Jesus! what is there in heaven but thee?"

So devoted a soul as Anselm could not remain in obscurity. Three years after he became a monk he was promoted to the mastership of the cloister, on the removal of Lanfranc. His office of prior he held for fifteen years, until 1078, when he was raised to the less cloistral and more elevated dignity of abbot. These fifteen years were the period of Anselm's greatest theological productiveness, and of his greatest influence as teacher of young theologians. It was then that he had the most quiet and leisure for impressing great truths upon his pupils in

the privacy of the lecture-room, and for soaring to the heights of Christian speculation.

From the very beginning of his career as teacher, "he laid," said Eadmer, his companion and biographer, "very great stress upon the sacred Scriptures. He regarded the Bible as the infallible fountain of truth. Hence, he made the utmost endeavors to comprehend the storehouse of truths which are there revealed." His great literary work, the Proslogium, was begun and ended with a fervent prayer. "Come, feeble mortal," says he, on the opening page, "come, let us turn aside a little from the busy din of the world. Cast aside that burden that wearies and clogs thee. Come, look up to God and find rest in him. Enter into the secret chamber of thy heart, and shut the door upon all but God. Say unto God: Lord, thy face I seek. Yea, Lord, I would behold thy countenance. Teach my heart where thou art, and how to find thee. If thou art not here, where shall I search for thee? But thou art here. Why do I not behold thee? Is it because thou dwellest in light inaccessible? But where is this light? And how shall I approach even unto it? Who can guide me? who can lead me? How shall the poor exile get back to thy house? He sighs for thee. He hopes in thee. Ile thirsts for thee. He burns to behold thee in thy glory. Guide me, guide me, guide me." How could a man beginning a work in such a spirit, fail to write truths which would serve as guiding stars to all subsequent ages?

And at the end of the work he lays aside his per in the same spirit in which he began it: "O God, reveal thyself to me more and more. May I love thee more deeply and rejoice in thee more fervently. If I may not attain to thee fully in this life, oh, let me at least make constant advances. Let thy fullness be the subject of my thoughts and the food of my heart. My soul longs for thee. My heart is athirst for thee. May my whole soul desire only thee and thee alone, until the day when I arrive at the fullness of thy joy, thou triune God, my Savior and my Lord, who art blessed forever!"

The thirty years of Anselm's life at Bec

-fifteen as chief spiritual guide and teacher of the monks and secular scholars, and about the same period in the less secluded and more temporal duties of an abbotwere passed by in the most ardent and earnest Christian work. During this period, the fame of his learning and Christian character spread throughout Christendom. Noblemen and prelates, kings and statesmen, came to do him honor, and to obtain copies of his writings.

While on a visit to a dying nobleman in England, in 1092, the body of English bishops laid hold upon him, almost by violence, and proclaimed him Archbishop of Canterbury as successor of Lanfranc, who had died in 1089. With the reluctant conseift of the avaricious William Rufus he was solemnly consecrated to his office in the following year. The sixteen years of his archbishopric were the stormiest of his life. And more than once he was forced to sigh for the peaceful halls and gardens of Bec. It was a rude age. It was the period of tyranny and rapacity which followed the Norman Conquest. The upright archbishop had a fourfold task of herculean difficulty. First, to civilize, if not Christianize, the immoral, brutal, violent mixture of Saxon populace and Norman landlords who made up the people of England. Second, to reform the lives of the lower clergy. Third, to preserve the integrity of the English Church as against the growing assumptions of the Papal court. Fourth, to guard it against the mercenary influence of the Norman court. It was a task of the greatest magnitude. While Anselm was determined to use the machinery of the Church to the Christian end of elevating the people of the nation, William Rufus and Henry I. endeavored to make it simply a means of filling their treasury, by the sale of pastoral offices to the highest bidder, and by the exaction of donations from the higher prelates.

In this struggle, Anselm exhibited the most heroic courage and the most incorruptible integrity. More than once he directly declined obedience to the king. For several years he had to retire to the Continent. Early in the reign of Henry I. the