sociology, or the science of society. Sociology treats of all the relations of man; it is, in fact, a collection of sciences. Political economy is that part of sociology which treats of man in his relation to economic goods. The standpoint has been shifted from wealth to man. As Professor Roscher says: "The starting point, as well as the object point, of our science is man.” When political economy was considered as treating of wealth it might well be called a "dismal science," and one which could hardly merit a place in a college course. It was a philosophy of selfishness. With the new conception interest in the science has revived, and it has reached a higher plane. Although only forty years old, the new political economy has swept all before it in Germany, has gained a foothold in England, is strong in Italy, and in the United States is championed by such able economists as Dr. R. T. Ely, Professor E. J. James, Dr. E. R. A. Seligman, Professor H. C. Adams, Professor Simon N. Patten, Richmond Mayo Smith, Professor E. A. Ross, Professor John Commons, and a host of other wellknown economists.

A.B. Fredenburgh.

ART. VIII.—THE NEED OF THE PULPIT.

It was once possible to take a bird's-eye view even of the world. So recently as the early part of this century, men and women nursed the pleasant conceit of ability to grasp the general information of every department of knowledge. In this last decade of the century, however, no sophisticated person thinks of assuming the possibility on his part of exhaustive acquisitions in science, ethics, and letters. Even the popular instinct of to-day perceives the necessity of a division of knowledge, based upon the existence of many channels through which the rivers of wisdom flow, whose rushing floods can be gathered only in such reservoirs as dictionaries, cyclopedias, histories, scientific treatises, art galleries, musical compendiums, and the great depositories of the applied arts. The wise man is he who knows where to seek special information on a special subject. He would not dream of trying to read, let alone retain, the contents of the vast array of books in the national library at Washington. There was an occasional person who intended to stay long enough at the World's Fair to inventory and remember the details of every exhibit, from those of the anthropological collection to the engineering problems of the Ferris Wheel. A week at the fair destroyed such an illusion. Each branch of knowledge now has its special students. Each division under each general subject also has its specialist. Large acquisitions as a specialist and a reservation of vitality for great issues are demanded to-day of the man or woman who endeavors to exert an influence. Only one hundred and fifty years ago Samuel Johnson wrote the first dictionary of the English language. The Century Company employed a multitude of men and women to trace the origin and widest use of each word in its great dictionary. Once to the Church alone was relegated the subject of ethics. Now the physician talks about sanitation from the ethical standpoint. The scientist writes on the ethical basis of sound minds in sound bodies. The anarchist descants on the ethics of land tenure, the socialist on the ethics of curtailing individual possession of wealth. The dress reformer contends that from an ethical motive women should wear tights, girdles above the flotaing ribs, and

trousers. The political economist is certain that the ethics of national development are dependent on the possession by government of the railway, the telegraph, and other systems pertaining to the public welfare. Moral issues, therefore, like other issues, have their special advocates and exponents. Everywhere, in all classes, in every department of knowledge, if a man assume to teach his neighbor his neighbor is but waiting to teach him. The optimist believes that eventually the resultant will be an abundance of mental and spiritual bread for every needy soul.

There are three great forces, among numberless others, which are reckoned as tremendous ethical influences, either potentially or in reality. These forces are the press, the novel, and the pulpit. In this article the first two will be treated incidentally to the third.

The pulpit, venerable with the associations of centuries, has gradually, since the invention of printing, and notably within the last century, been stripped of much of its authority. Those who are believers in tradition have regarded these changes with dismay. Optimists and rationalists have hailed them with delight. Some who, from temperament or habit, unduly regard the mere accessories of spiritual power, mistaking the engine, the vehicle of such power, for its function, have said that the decline of the pulpit means its extinction. Those who have neither inherited nor acquired a belief in organized mediums for divine truth have looked on with quiet interest, imbued with the notion that the last and most complex stronghold of superstition is falling. Others again, regarding the signs of the times with apprehension, have declared their intention to uphold the pulpit as a useful means of keeping the masses in check. Others still, half skeptically and half wistfully beholding an excellence of both faith and works, wide reaching and beneficent in influence and ultimate effect, even if sadly inadequate, have dreaded lest a door be forever closing through which later they might wish to enter.

The writer was much interested lately in some excavations. The slope on which houses were being erected is a bed of solid rock. As the digging progressed it could be seen that the rock, with a thin layer of soil, ended in the middle of the plot. Then came a mass of filled-in soil, and then a con

fusion of earth and stones which had been piled and heaped together to make the grade of an avenue. There was no special

disturbance when the earth and loose stones men had filled the hole with were removed. There was much confusion; the neighborhood was rendered unsightly; a superficial structure was exposed, which heretofore had seemed a part of the topography. But, finally, great pieces of jutting granite had to be bored and seamed with explosives. Then red flags of warning were held out. Business was stopped. Men went to a distance to escape possible injury. The blast was fired, the rocks were sundered, the houses in the neighborhood trembled on their foundations. A great deal of the hue and cry about the pulpit is an excavating process. Rubbish has a wonderful faculty for accumulation. Form and shape are given even to the expression of spiritual matters, which are, after all, only transitory. No harm will come from their removal. "The old order changeth." Every age goes down to bed rock. Touch that rock, the foundation God has laid, and there will be earthquake shocks.

Every moral change beneficent to man reveals in its accomplishment some ugly facts. When the change has been achieved, even if in the process the very foundations of truth are laid bare and torn asunder, the pieces blasted out will be used in the building of a structure more seemly and beautiful than any that preceded it. God does not confine himself to classical orders in architecture. We are in an age of disintegration, of upheaval. Literally and figuratively, it is a mining age. Truth is truth. Truth is eternal. It may show itself under new forms; it will be truth none the less. It always has had and it always will have an inherent power of revelation. It has always sought, also, and always will seek apostles, teachers, prophets, priests through whom to enunciate its messages. If every pulpit in the country should be swept away truth would find new rostrums. The pulpit is not the preacher. The church edifice is not the Spirit of the living God.

Sinister influences, active and efficacious in accomplishing their ends, are, indeed, recognized by us all. During the calamitous winter of 1893-94 there were as many reasons given for the widespread distress as there were political creeds or doctrinal differences. But all agreed that the distress was un

usual and real. The eye of the country was upon the Churches during that ordeal. It was upon literature. It was upon the press. Who could interpret the writing upon the wall? What great laxity in government or, possibly, in the life of the people or in the structure of society had brought such a condition about? But of far more importance than these questions are those greater ones: Who shall discover remedies which shall be for the permanent alleviation of misfortune? Who shall convince the nation that the only assurance it has of perpetuity is national character? Who is to inform a people, as heterogeneous as that of the Roman empire just prior to its fall, that material prosperity alone makes a rotten foundation totally inadequate to the support of a heavy superstructure of ignorance and immorality?

Good works are multiplying. Praise enough cannot be given to them. May they increase ten, a hundred, fold, but in such a way as not to increase pauperism or destroy that spirit of American independence which is to the nation what circulation is to the blood. When Athens had passed the acme of her glory amusements were made free to the people. When Rome was declining the crowded masses in the capital of the world were fed at the nation's expense. When medieval Italy was a hotbed of political extortion, and the marvelously sudden aggrandizement of plebeians was matched by the extravagance, immorality, and intellectual culture of the nobility, there began a sudden and, apparently, unaccountable decay in State, Church, and society. To-day, the palaces of the Cæsars are occupied by beggars, and mold and ruin linger side by side with the treasures of art. It was for this century, in the midst of the American jubilee, to witness a scion of European nobility publicly pleading poverty and begging alms because of the excellence of a glorious ancestor ten or eleven generations removed. A recent writer tells us that the last of the Borgias died a photographer; that a Montmorenci is a farm servant in the neighborhood of Paris; that one of the Valois family is a letter carrier; that the last of the Plantagenets was the son of a chimney sweep; that the Russian nobility has its representatives among stable girls, cab drivers, and circus riders. There is pith in the American saying that there are but three generations between shirt sleeves and shirt sleeves.