to be, has never formed a vital part of the history of nations; but through the monuments, the Hebrew records, which hitherto have been unique and isolated, are incorporated into the history of the world. We get closer to the Bible, because we approach it from a human point of view. We discern the characteristics of God's chosen people, by making the acquaintance of other Semitic races.

Much depends upon the authentication of scripture narrative. A writer has said: "Many biblical doctrines are so interwoven with facts, that proof of the facts involves proof of the doctrine." If, then, the monuments disagreed with our accepted canon, as they do with the apocryphal books, we might infer that Christianity was founded upon mere feeling and sentiment. But, though the testimony of the monuments does not by itself establish the divine character of the Bible, it effectually silences those, who, assuming scripture history to be unauthentic, and prophecy unfulfilled, seek to undermine the structure of our faith.

But if the monuments corroborate the Bible, the internal character of the corresponding records reveals a significant difference in their authorship. The Babylonian and Assyrian writings are cold, lifeless, fragmentary, full of idle boasting, of vague groping after Deity; the Hebrew history complete, confident, yet unassuming in tone, soul-stirring, and containing the vigorous germs of a system of ethics, which is evidently the creation of one living God. When two nations, belonging to the same family, write of the same events so differently, the advantage of national culture being with the nation having the inferior history, it is reasonable to believe that while one is of human origin, the other was produced by certain chosen ones whose lips God had touched with "a live coal from off the altar."

The prophecy and history of the Bible, confirmed by the monuments, are less amazing than its precepts, cast in the mold of human experience. Under the influence of this teaching, brute-like men have become exalted in character, beneficent in life. "Quit ye like men, be strong!" was the cry ringing down from the apostolic age, and hearing it, weak women and shrinking maidens have passed through the

flames with the joyous step of conquerors. "I know whom I have believed," said a great scholar of the past. "I believe the Bible to be true, because I know its author," says a great teacher of the present.

With a wealth of experimental knowledge in his possession, the believer need not be deeply concerned about the interpretation of cuneiform writing. The achievements of Christian archæology, magnificent though they be, bear an insignificant relation to the sublime system of truth which has been a renewing, upholding, and directing force in human life for ages; and which the church to-day needs not so much to defend as to disseminate.

The advocates of the Bible need not rest their claims on the monuments of a dead past. "The living, the living," they shall proclaim, through conflict and through victory, the truth that "though heaven and earth pass away, God's words shall not pass away." FREDERICK PERKINS, '89.

A LEGACY OF THE NINETEENTH TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

UNI

NREST characterizes the age. Religion, education, economics, indeed all fields of reason are invaded by a spirit of discontent, a tendency toward change.

In social science the malcontents revel, and many are the evils which they discover to be threatening our present and future social equilibrium. The thousands of human beings devoted to lives of misery and crime; thousands more with no expectation in life but toil, anxiety and destitution, are grounds for the complaints of these alarmists.

Is there wonder at the growing feeling of the workers against the idlers, or that disciples of Malthus raise their melancholy wail even in this land of boundless resource? Murmurs are daily heard against the waxing power of corporations, and the "great modern feudality," the trust, is seen, like a python, wrapping its folds closer and closer round its struggling but powerless victims.

We must see some substance in these alleged evils. We need not admit that the "rich are growing richer, and the

poor poorer," but we do realize that there is need of a social reformation and that, eventually, it must be accomplished. Yet the interests of humanity demand that it shall not be through anarchism.

The socialist, hardly more far-sighted than the levelers of former times, attributes this serious internal disorder, primarily, to the principle of "individualism; competition; each one for himself and against all of the rest." He forgets that competition may be advantageous, and that as mankind advances in morality, education and humanity, its pernicious effects diminish.

These agitators who would destroy and know not how to build up, hardly consider what part in human misery and want is due to immorality, intemperance, waste and ignorance. Our reason and experience teach that civilization, instead of degrading man, lifts him up, exalts him, arouses in him a new sense of his capabilities and a new knowledge of his power to use them. To the instrumentalities of civilization recourse must finally be had for the settlement of these questions.

A legacy of the 19th to the 20th century,-it will devolve upon those now entering the arena of life to see that these issues are not fought out between "ignorant change and ignorant opposition to change." The doctrine of "laissez faire" must not be entertained, but measures which commend themselves to prudent, conservative non-extremists, must be adopted to abate social and economic evils.

Legislation can do much in punishing food-adulteration, in repressing conspiracy and in aiding education; but we must go deeper than the level of its effects. Co-operation in private enterprise, and in the form of trades-unions and assemblies, leads toward the desired end. It needs, however, intelligent direction; and this suggests a third factor in composing social disorder,-education. When the laborer is taught how to live and how to work; is instructed in skillful crafts; is raised, mentally, to higher aspirations and loftier motives, he may be trusted to arrange his relations with the capitalist without danger of anarchy.

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Finally, we have the use of that force which transforms the savage into the civilized being; which crushes crime and alleviates misery; which permeates the social complexity of peoples and makes of them a nation of kindred. Christianity, which teaches that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, is that great renovating power given among men to banish selfishness and establish the law of love.

The thoughtful, candid man, be he Christian or atheist, if he has love for his fellow in his heart, will tell the social reformer to "go alongside the Christian missionary, if he be not himself the missionary." Those devoted servants, who, laboring in our great cities and crowded centres of labor, are endeavoring to elevate the fallen, to educate the ignorant, and awaken the sleeping moral sense of the masses, are they who hold the key to a problem, on the satisfactory solution of which depends the safety and perpetuity of our institutions and the very civilization of the future.

E. L. STEVENS, 90.

REALISM IN FICTION.

HERE has been in the literary world of late considerable wordy strife as to a school of fiction said to have recently arisen, the aim of which is to portray life as it is, not as it ought to be, or as we would like to have it. To these writers the name Realists has been applied, and their works form the class of realistic or naturalist novels. Our most eminent American novelist has been monthly asserting through the critic's page of a great magazine the preeminent importance of those works that hold most nearly the mirror up to nature. Partly through the influence of certain French authors that choose to delineate only the impure and degraded side (?), this teaching has been attacked as materialistic and debasing. But a candid examination of any of the better realistic works will show that this is not the case.

In them may be found as noble, moral lessons, as shining incitements to right living as in the best idealist romance.

As an example of the realistic novel, I propose to take the chief work of one who may be called the founder of this recent school, Count Tolstoi's Anna Karenina. This is the story of a woman, beautiful, sensitive and intellectual, wedded to a cold, formal, unsympathetic man, many years her elder. Too late she finds herself hopelessly and passionately in love with a man with whom she might otherwise have formed a happy union. In desperation, she at length resolves to abandon everything for him. In the gradual unfolding of the tale, we see vividly and even painfully the fate of those who defy the laws of righteousness. The long course of misery and misunderstanding brought about by this step and its results upon the conscience of the parties, ends only in the suicide of the woman under a passing train and in the little better military death of the man. In all this story of sin and sorrow, terrible in its fidelity to the truth of life, there is nothing impure, nothing to trouble the sense of the most rigid or to please an unhallowed imagination. In the blighted life of Anna and her children, in the noble career of Vronsky wasted and ruined by his own act, the author shows us only too clearly the awful consequences of a violated law, the inevitable Nemesis hanging over those, no matter how brilliant, intellectual and lovable they may be, who take this law in their own hands.

Side by side with this, we have another story of a pure and happy home life. In the character of Levin, the ardent but unstable and crotchety young proprietor, a natural optimist, with a profound longing for all ultimate good, yet driven by the stern facts of life into a hard remorseless pessimism, Tolstoi is said to have delineated himself. But he is also a perfect model of young Russia. His marriage with the bright and beautiful Kitty proves the turning point in his life, and we leave this evidently favorite personage of the author resting peacefully in his home enjoyments, in the serene acceptance of the muzhikss fatalist creed.

A fact that especially impresses one in Tolstoi's novel is that it may be said to be without a plot and negligent of style, to have characters but no heroes. His personages