gospel's sake, never once lost sight of his own great need. "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." That was the way St. Paul felt. But John Storm feels that the great sinners of the world are other beings, not himself. Even then they are people who are guilty of particular sins. It seems to be a species of social offense that is repugnant to him, not the moral delinquency itself. Therein lies the difference again between the novelists and the New Testament. One deals with generic morality and the other with particular offenses. One is theatrical and melodramatic; the other is human and universal.

The Christians of the New Testament are men whom the consciousness of great responsibility has made thoughtful, sober and self-forgetful. Their duty is first entirely independent of their emotions. When they are weak, as they often are, it is a sheer drop from a severe standard of duty. But they are never weathercocks of whom nothing can be predicted. When they argue about doctrines, they battle just like other men and have intense feelings and express themselves with vigor and plainness. But they hold to their positions. They can be identified always. Paul and Peter show at the end of their Christian lives the same mental traits that distinguished them at the beginning. Matured, to be sure, but still clearly differentiated, they are the same people.

Now the particular effect for which the possession of a deep sense of responsibility is distinguished is a wise and healthful conservatism. The man who has much at stake is careful about jeopardizing it. It is the man who has little or nothing at stake who is ready to follow every ignis fatuus which presents itself to his vision. A man's personality consists very considerably of the things with which he is identified. And concern for these often, when he has no thought for himself, makes him think carefully before committing himself to enterprises which ask his aid. But Hall Caine's Christian has no such sense. His feeling of responsibility is simply sentimental rhapsodizing about fallen women. the course of the book no less than twenty differing life ideals

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are adopted and rejected by the Christian who is to be a redeemer to his generation. Responsibility produces no such result as this. On the contrary, it plants the man in his rationally conceived task and develops him in it. This is also the New Testament presentation of the Christian at work.

The novel-made Christian is simply therefore not a Christian at all. He is merely a modern sentimentalist who talks about the wrongs of the world without having any very definite ideas as to where the seat of the trouble lies; who diffuses his energies in space when he ought to be engaged in prayer; who bewails a lost world when he ought to be practicing kindness and charity; who is distressed about social conditions while he is himself in a state of moral delirium; ever worrying about and never practicing the simplest precepts which lie at the root of Christian living. If these are the only ideals which Mr. Caine could see in England and America to any considerable extent, then we may well give ourselves up to lamentations and prayers, for we are all but lost. But the truth of the whole matter is that we have here what we have so often had before, a theatrical Christianity for book-making purposes. It is not the gospel Christian and never can be. The Christian life is not a sensational

thing at all. It consists in a very few precepts and a great deal of prayer to God. It is by no means a thing for dramatics, whether in books or on the stage. The novelist was thinking of startling effects, not of the Christian virtues. He was thinking of shifting scenes and colored lights and the gaudium theatri, not of the joy of the Christian soul growing in grace. It is not strange that the result should show what the real motive was, whatever may be put forth as the ostensible motive.

Men and women are not helped to a better life by highly seasoned accounts of the aberrations of excited minds, even when these have their aberrations grow out of themes which are in themselves admirable. A man may become crazed on the subject of philanthropy or religion just as he may become crazed about anything else. In either case, he must be treated as an insane being. If Christianity offered as its

usual product such beings as John Storm, then the world would be perfectly justified in throwing it out-of-doors. But Christianity produces no such men. What it does produce is men who, thoughtfully facing the world's sin and woe, apply themselves with energy and reason to the amelioration of both, with the best appliances at hand and with patience and good sense. It helps them to realize that in this world the wheat and the tares will grow together for a long time yet. It does not make men who become hysterical and excited when they fail once, but men who resolutely go to work to succeed better the next time.

That this novelist should have had the courage to offer such a picture of a Christian to the world shows to what an extent we are still in the bonds of spectacular religious ideals. Ordinary faithful service is still something too humdrum and tame to be admired. The great homely truths by which the world must live, if it is to live at all, must be dressed out in feathers and ribbons and have a brass band go before. The mere fact of rightness and wisdom and honor makes the life of sobriety too inert. It must have the sensational accompaniments and must finally die a violent and picturesque death before we take full account of its truth.

men.

But the real Christian life is nothing like all this. The great battles of righteousness are not fought in the sight of The great heroes of Christianity were men who had to be dragged into publicity, not men who were constantly parading themselves before the footlights and every little while looking up to the boxes, waiting for applause. They were more akin to the soldier in his bivouac thinking about the great contest at arms to-morrow and sleeping with his musket beside him ready for service, than to a semi-educated dilettante who is all aglow about saving the world while he cannot behave himself with decency.

Precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little there a little, is far more descriptive of the true Christian life. It shrinks from the blare of trumpets and the analysis of the novelist. It just lives on in patience, hope and prayer. When a man gets interested in the world in these days, if he

is a true Christian he begins by becoming gentle and kind in his home, by supplying more comforts for his family, by giving better education to his children and by spending less money in pure foolishness. He goes to church on Sundays and is found in the caucus and the election booth. He tries to pay his debts and rear his family properly. He tries to be charitable and just. He tries to be open-handed and fairminded. He hates liars and hypocrites, and he thinks more about making one less flagrant sinner in the world in his own person, than of reorganizing the social law. According to Hall Caine's type he would pollute the minds of his children, if he ever lived in one place long enough to marry and rear a family, with all kinds of nauseating recitals of crime. Instead of the Bible they would feed on the Sunday newspaper, and instead of a quiet, wholesome and uplifting life he would rend his household with sensation and claptrap. Nobody but a novelist would ever think of calling such a man a Christian. Literary and dramatic Christianity will never be truly descriptive of the actual Christian life, because there is so much of it that lies beyond the power of human portraiture. The human elements may be given with reasonable accuracy, but what makes the Christian life Christian is the infusion of the divine, and that is beyond the power of man to reveal except by suggestion. The Christian life is an experience in which the human and the divine are united in a common purpose, and it is for that reason essentially a secret which can only be guessed by experience and obedience. The human rule is, By their fruits shall ye know them. But there is a vast fund of spiritual feeling and knowledge which cannot be translated into works, of which only the Eternal Father, who knows the hearts of men, can be aware. And the Christian life with its varying chords of hope and fear, of joy and pain, of exultant triumph and of despair and discouragement will be fully revealed in the day when the hearts of all men are laid bare. Then, and then only, shall we infallibly know what and who is a Christian. Until that time we can only contemplate with patience and loyalty the divine Model, and strive to be like him.

THE FORERUNNER OF GOD

LUKE vii. 28.

THIS is unique testimony. It is remarkable not merely for its unqualified character, but not less so for the source from which it comes and the subject of which it is uttered. The praise of Jesus Christ, even in the slightest degree, would be a possession which might well satisfy any man. The unqualified praise of Jesus Christ is one of those astounding things which none can hope for other than a man utterly lost in devotion to the cause of God. It is this fact which renders the praise of Jesus for John so interesting and unusual. John was a man, and a very fallible man. He was a preacher whose doctrine and method furnish occasion for wide diversity of opinion. His was one of those volcanic natures that apprehend the truth, but yet give expression to it in forms which only a few may understand, and which many must misunderstand. We have only to imagine a John the Baptist of our time endeavoring to bring to us the message which was given to John to proclaim, to understand how greatly the Baptist's temperament and mode of approach to spiritual truth differ from our own. Indeed, we should. almost be tempted to doubt the validity of a spiritual message which began with the fierce imprecations and violent epithets which were apparently the main body of John's preaching. We should not deny the facts. We should deny his authority to utter them in this form. We are not offended when Jesus calls us Pharisees and hypocrites. We are rebellious when one less than the Christ uses these expressions.

What gives a greater air of mystery to the unqualified praise of Jesus for John is the suspicion which is always clinging to us that perhaps John exceeded the terms of