Nothing daunted him. Unostentatiously he kept his line of march, the goal of which was the seizing of Kansas for God; and it is safe to say, as has been declared by one entirely conversant with the facts, that to no one man is Kansas Methodism (the largest denomination within the borders of the State) so greatly indebted as to Werter R. Davis During those years of the planting of the Church he acted at three distinct times as president of Baker University, assuming that responsibility when others left the post unoccupied. He at one time saved the college from mortgage foreclosure by giving a note, in company with others, when the creditor declared that if Dr Davis would stand surety for the debt he would be satisfied; and this note he paid all alone. He was associated in those early ministerial labors with such men of God as Denison, Mitchell, Rice, Fisher, Dearborn, Lawrence, Bowman, Dennis, Shaw, and others. He habitually clung to his friends with affectionate tenacity.

During the closing thirteen years of his ministry and life he was in the pastorate. But, from the time of his coming to Kansas in the fifties, wherever he might live he looked on Baldwin as his home. Thither he hoped to come at last to die. And it was esteemed a special blessing from God that the last ten years of his life were spent in or near Baldwin. Here he saw his youngest son graduate from the university, saw him enter the sacred ministry, and heard him preach his first sermon. Erect, with step elastic, with a heart like the heart of youth, with hope eager as if life were a coming, rather than a departing, glory, without censoriousness, with a lofty nobility of spirit and bearing with only love for his brethren, and rejoicing in their labors and successes, he commanded respect and won admiration and confidence. Although a man of firm, unwavering convictions, he was not dogmatic nor self-assertive. dignity was without haughtiness, his modesty as genuine as that of the violets of spring, his courtesy natural and perennial, his faith fixed as the stars, his loyalty to country, home, and God unswerving in its absolute fidelity. Such a man moved in and out among the students, an inspiration and a blessing.

His

As an educator Dr Davis shaped the destiny of the first college of Kansas and made his indelible impress on the educational work of the State. But, although a soldier and an

educator, he was first, last, and most of all a preacher. As a preacher he was fervent and powerful. For years he was conceded to be the most eloquent man west of the Mississippi. Essentially an extemporaneous speaker, his flow of speech was wonderful. The writer has heard many speakers, but none whose fluency of utterance surpassed his. His thought moved on high levels. His eloquence was like the rush of streams on the mountains. He was, like all orators, unequal; but when the occasion fired him and the spirit filled him he was sublime. Truly, "his were eloquent lips." It is to be regretted that a distaste for writing kept him from recording the facts of his career, for they were as interesting as a romance of chivalry and possessed rare historic value. Having associated on intimate terms with the leading men of the Church, his memory was stored with reminiscences. It was his often expressed desire that God would let him die in the work of the active ministry. His prayer was answered His exalted conception of the Christian ministry is expressed in his own words, "I know of no greater honor, no greater dignity, no greater privilege than to be a minister of Jesus Christ." The Gospel colored his life. To him impurity of word or thought was ignoble and unthinkable. Not one dishonorable deed is in his record. To his own household he was unspeakably dear. His was a saintliness which shone like a star, unwavering and undimmed in the daily routine of domestic life. And it was a solace to him that on his dying bed he saw all his living children, as he was soon to see those who had died long since, when death should be swallowed up of life. Having loved his own, "he loved them unto the end," may be reverently applied to him.

41-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XI.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS.

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

THE aldermen of Chicago have "resolved" that mail cars ought not to be run on the cable car lines, because men will thus be deprived of employment. This action is, perhaps, the latest revolt against machinery, against the reduction of the amount of human effort in obtaining a desired end. This war upon machinery must be near its close. The politicians are almost the only people so little enlightened as to keep up a show of fighting, and we suspect that many of them really know better and are only practicing the make-believe of the demagogue. Intelligence perceives that the man released by a machine is a man gained for some service. To find the new work and place the man in it involves a little delay, but the gain of a man is certain. The power of the machinery of the world is reckoned up as equal to the labor of one thousand millions of men. There are not more than one third so many men on this planet. Machinery is doing three times as much work as all the living men could do. If the fears of politicians had been realized there would be no work for anybody; but, in fact, the involuntarily idle are not claimed by the most pessimistic orators to exceed two per cent of all men living, or say five or six millions; and the most careful and capable estimate the number at not more than one per cent. It is somewhat amazing that persons of any intelligence should fail to see the logical argument respecting machinery. We have in effect done what we would have done if we had captured, on Prospero's island or some other fairy land, one thousand millions of slaves. These slaves, these natural forces, which do not suffer weariness or pain, are doing our hard work for us, and doing three times as much as we could do if we ourselves suffered the weariness and the pain. This is the right view of machinery. The workman is not a slave, he is a master over slaves—a slave driver, if one prefers the word; and his slaves, the unconscious forces, require of us no pity. A human arm or back is released whenever we set a unit of these forces at work-forces in place of a man. Generally we have found it easy to employ the emancipated man in a profitable way.

The proof is that, in a vastly increased population, so small a fraction represents the enforced idleness which annoys and afflicts us.

COULD anything more incongruous and improbable be suggested than that the Methodist Review should be found going through the United States mails as lottery matter? Nevertheless, we have been solicited to become a party to such lawlessness. Mrs. Joanna Doiron, of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, has requested us to assist the Roman Catholic congregation of that city to build a new cathedral by sending a sample copy of the Methodist Review to be disposed of by lottery in a grand bazaar, the lucky winner of the prize to be entitled to receive our Review gratuitously, at our expense, for one year. The lady has the modesty to hope that we will not regard her request as presumptuous. We almost doubt the correctness of her letter's postmark, for a spirit thermometer, immersed in her proposition, registers a degree of coolness which would locate its origin at least as far north as Baffin's Bay, with date of midwinter. The writer of it suggests that we communicate directly with the Rev. J. C. Macmillan, secretary to the Bishop of Charlottetown. Our duties leave us no time for such correspondence; and, furthermore, while in general we have no objection to circulating our Review among the subjects of the amiable old gentleman resident on the Tiber who is hallucinated with the notion that he is deputy God Almighty, we are yet deterred from complying with Mrs. Doiron's request, partly by the fact that, in the region where we reside, the lawmaking and law-interpreting authorities have declared that Church lotteries are as clearly gambling as any other lotteries, and by the additional fact that a United States law, passed September 19, 1890, prescribes penalties of fine and imprisonment for using the mails for the conveyance of lottery matter of any kind. Whatever minor errors we may inadvertently fall into, we desire, at least, to prevent the Methodist Review from appearing as lottery matter and its editor as a lawbreaker.

And just here it may not be incoherent to add, incidentally, for the benefit of those whom it may concern, inside or outside the membership of Christian Churches, that judges in various States of the Union have seen fit and thought it necessary to give public warning, by charging grand juries, that progressive euchre "is gambling within the meaning of the law "-" gambling plain and simple "-and liable to the punishment prescribed by statute; so

that any house where this game is played may, under such laws, be as properly raided, and the participants arrested and locked up, as if it were the lowest gambling hell in the place.

THE SUPERIOR TRUTHFULNESS OF MEN OF SCIENCE. AN admirer of Professor Huxley, after saying that the author of Science and Hebrew Tradition might adopt Strauss's words, "I have fought for that which seemed to me the truth, and against that which I have thought error," expresses the hope that many will do Huxley the justice to say of him that "he has done that which he felt able and called upon to do, and has done it without looking to the right or to the left, seeking no man's favor, fearing no man's disfavor." And we are told that, if we are willing to say so much as that concerning this distinguished scientific teacher, it will, though far from being a complete account, be a eulogy, and a high one. So much sincerity as is thus claimed for Professor Huxley we are in no wise reluctant to concede; but what we strenuously deny is that, this being true, he is entitled to exceptional praise, as seems to be intimated, on account of superior devotion to truth; and what we take occasion to affirm is that immense multitudes of men and women in the ministry and membership of the Christian Church have lived and labored with equal sincerity, veracity, fidelity, and fearlessness, and with far greater self-denial, on behalf of truth supported by evidence, and that in Christian circles through the Christian ages such devotion has been a common thing-in fact, is the veriest matter-ofeourse commonplace of Christian history from first to last.

Professor Huxley has announced that it is the high resolve of modern science to take nothing for truth "without clear knowledge that it is such "-a commendable resolve, unquestionably, and manifesting a spirit which might easily have been imbibed from a certain Galilean fisherman, whose words do not appear at any disadvantage when placed beside the best substantiated scientific statements of to-day: "For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of