should be lent to the village commune, not given; and, later on, employed for the benefit of the village. This will have two good results: (1) the reproach that charity only breeds idleness' will have no foundation; (2) the money returned, even partly, will be used for the good of the people, not on drink ; and (3) the donations will thus, probably, only increase."

For my part, I can only express my gratitude for every farthing given on behalf of our famine suffer ers, and assure my helpers that every penny will actually first be turned into a loaf of bread, and later on-when instead of our present ordeal God will favor us with a plentiful harvest-into something to feed the mind and the soul of our grateful peas

ants.

ME. NOVIKOFF, the writer of the above letter,

M who is one of the most distinguished ladies of

Russia, is in London collecting money for the famine sufferers. As yet, the gifts she has received have not been in large sums, nor is the aggregate a very encouraging total. Miss Hesba Stretton is also receiv ing contributions, and the editor of the Nineteenth Century has opened a fund in compliance with the suggestion of Mr. Shishkoff, of Samara, who has published an appeal in that English periodical.

Mr. Shishkoff says that twenty millions of peas. ants have lost their daily bread through the terrible drought which ruined the rye crop. The Russian peasant really eats nothing but two or three pounds of black bread a day. He is now being kept alive by a daily ration of one pound, and even that is often not procurable. Mr. Shishkoff, between October 7 and 25, made a journey of four hundred miles in the province of Samara; his account is very pitiable:

"I saw numbers of men in their prime with drawn, stony faces and hollow eyes; miserable women clothed in rags (having sold their best dresses), and children shivering in the keen October wind as they stood silently round me while some old man would be telling the same weary, wretched tale: 'We have sold our last horses, cows, and sheep; we have pawned our winter clothing; we have seen no bread for a fortnight. There is nothing left to sell. We eat once a day-stewed cab. bages, stewed pumpkin; many have not even that. Some of us still have a little bread made of chaff, pounded grass seeds, and a little barley flour [this

bread looks like a cinder, has a bitter taste, and causes violent headache and nausea from the poisonous seed]. Many of us have not tasted any food for three days. Have mercy on us; we are dying.' And while he speaks, in a low, quiet voice, I see the tears slowly welling from the eyes of stalwart men and falling one by one on their rough beards or the frozen ground. No complaints, no cries; a dead silence, broken only by the sobs of some wornout mother.

The Provincial Assembly petitioned the Govern ment for the loan of a million to buy bread for the people and seed for their fields. Up to November about half that sum had been granted. In round numbers there are 2,500,000 men, women and chil. dren in the province of Samara, half of whom will have to be kept alive by charity or by the Government. At least $1,000,000 will have to be voted exclusively by private charity, or they will die. About $1,250,000 is needed, therefore, by the relief committee in the province of Samara alone; and Mr. Shishkoff maintains that $15,000,000 in private charity will be wanted if the peasants have not to die by thousands. He concludes his article with the following appeal :

"Christians of England! We are far off; you cannot see our misery or hear our famished children begging for bread. But will that deter you from doing what you can to help us? Have you not a penny that you can spare? Your 40, 000, 000 pennies. would make nearly £170,000-sufficient to save 17,000 human lives."

N a most important sense laymen are already at

They have been and are the actual leaders of men. Copernicus, with his theory of an orderly universe, prepared the way for Calvin, with his theory of a Sovereign Ruler in the universe. Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, Emerson (who began his public life as a clergyman, but afterward expanded into a layman), Longfellow, Lowell and others of their type are the men who have broadened the horizon of human thought and released Christ's Sermon on the Mount from "the sinuosities of scholastic logic." Maurice, Robertson, Channing, Bushnell, Beecher, Farrar, Phillips Brooks follow those leaders and work on the broad highways which they created.

There is philosophy and method in this sequence. It is natural and inevitable that, of two broadminded men, he who is outside of a system of thought can see wider relations than the one who is in the system, or a part of it. "Erasmus laid the egg and Luther hatched it." Although nominally a priest, Erasmus was in reality a man of letters and of science. His work was practically that of a layman. His wisdom and wit in exposing the errors of the church prepared the way for the monk's work in casting them out.

Lay influence was never so potent a factor in the development of the race as now. What it needs is to realize its power (and hence its responsibility) and to concentrate, combine, and co-operate for the grand results which cannot be gained by diffused and inharmonious efforts. The purpose of this article is (1) to remind the reader of the special religious need of the present age, and (2) to consider the adaptation of the laity to the work of sup plying that need.

THE RELIGIOUS NEED OF THE AGE.

The special religious need of the present age is the release of religious truth from its bondage to ecclesiasticism. The Lord Jesus Christ needs to be changed from a theological definition to a living force. He is a living force, as we well know, but to vast numbers of people the scholastic distinctions and subtleties which have been woven about Him are more influential than His personality. The crying need of the church to-day, and hence of the world, is a restored Christ.

That the chief part of this reformatory work cannot be done by the clergy is no fault of theirs. It grows out of their unfavorable conditions. They are hampered and hindered on every side by their vows, their ecclesiastical associations, and their personal relations. They cannot act as individuals. They

are bound by close and vital ties to their churches, their presbyteries, their ministerial fraternities. What I have to say concerning the importance of lay effort does not imply the slightest criticism of the ministry. I regard them as among the most consecrated and useful of all God's chosen instruments for the development of His kingdom in the world. If I speak strongly of their limitations and disad vantages, it is only with a desire to use the layman's better vantage-ground to help them.

We are apt to forget that Jesus himself was a layman. Knowing that He was instructed by the spirit of God, and reading of His interview with the wise doctors at the age of twelve, we unconsciously assume that the knowledge He showed at that time was of things doctrinal and ecclesiastical. There is not the slightest ground for this assumption. On the contrary, it is far more reasonable to suppose that He manifested the same type of wisdom which characterized His later teachings, and that it was this new form and expression of truth which caused the elders to be "amazed at His understanding and His answers."

What does the layman see, looking back upon his tory in its broadest lines, and free from all theological strabismus? He sees a man appearing upon the earth eighteen centuries ago claiming to be divine. He sees Him substantiating that claim, not only by living a life of divine love but by revealing the laws of divine wisdom. But these laws were utterly beyond the comprehension of mankind at that time, and for many centuries after. In fact, they could not be understood till now, because the revelations of modern science were needed to make manifest the methods of an immanent God. The conception of God as separate from the universe is characterized by Charles Kingsley as "the theory that God wound up the universe like a clock and left it to tick by itself till it runs down, only at rare intervals interposing miraculous interferences with the laws that He himself has made."

HOW IT APPEARS TO THE LAYMAN.

The layman who is able to study the subject in its broadest aspects believes that a new order of religious thought is necessitated by the new and true theory of a "God within." He sees that the teachings of Jesus were all based upon that truth. Christ stated the law of growth, that is to say, of evolu tion; "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." He showed the principle of education: "Learn to do by doing." "If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine." He laid the foundation of the kindergarten: "Suffer

the little children to come unto me. "Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

Seeing all this, the layman can understand why the church is not the power in the world that it ought to be. It is trying to hold fast to formularies of truth which grew out of the former conditions of imperfect knowledge. This is admitted by many of the clergy themselves. The Rev. J. M. Williams says, in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra of October, 1890. "The acceptance of the Westminster catechism by intelligent churches will be deemed by our grandchildren the marvel of history." Dr. Parkhurst, in Zion's Herald, says "the church of the fut ure must not be the church of the past." But while some clergymen accept the newer views, many of them still think and preach from the old ecclesiastical stand-point. How can it be otherwise while their training-schools cling to the methods of systematic theology? The Churchman, a leading representative of the Episcopal communion, recently gave expression to a strong condemnation of the methods of their theological seminaries. In its issue of October 10th it said: "Of the world as it really is, he [the seminary graduate] knows hardly anything by per sonal experience. Human life is the one thing of which he has been taught nothing, and yet it is human lives that he is sent to form and train for all eternity. Could anything be more pitifully absurd?" And much more to the same effect..

An illustration from actual life occurs to me. A young clergyman calling upon an old woman' in his parish, asked her if she had been regenerated. She said she didn't know the meaning of the word. He then asked if she had been sanctified, with the same result. After exhausting his catalogue of synonyms he inquired if she loved the Lord, and was assured that this was a subject she understood and was deeply interested in. This young man was by no means stupid. He afterward became an honor to his profession.

The earnest and thoughtful layman is greatly troubled by the lack of straightforward honesty among the churches in dealing with the theological question. There is a minister now occupying a prominent pulpit in a prominent city who would not accept the creed of the church over which he was called to preside, and the presbytery, knowing this, rushed the case through after the exact methods of the ward politician.

A PROPOSED NEW BROTHERHOOD.

But while seeing such evils and deeply regretting them, the layman knows well that the elements involved are complicated, and that remedies are hard to find and hard to apply. This article would not have been written but for the fact that a new field seems to be open in which the laity can serve a most useful purpose in enlarging the scope of Christian influence. It came about in the following

manner:

A meeting was held in Orange, N. J., on the 20th

of last April, "for the promotion of Christian unity." At that meeting I suggested the plan of a "Brotherhood of Christian Unity" with a platform so broad that Christians of every name could unite in this fellowship, while still remaining in and working in their own churches. The result of this suggestion has been truly remarkable. It was printed in the Christian Union, the Century Magazine, and other periodicals, and responses have come to me in great numbers from all parts of the country, and from representatives of nearly every known sect or denomination, orthodox and heterodox, and from many people who belong to no church. These letters not only give evidence of great dissatisfaction with sectarian divisions and antagonisms, but their writers express a strong hope and faith that the plan will prove to be a step in the right direction.

The proposed association is not the germ of a new sect, and it involves no complex machinery for its operation. It is scarcely to be called an organization. It is a fraternity. For carrying out the plan no machinery is needed beyond a central committee, and local committees wherever the movement extends. The central committee can appoint "Field Secretaries" as may be needed to work for the cause, and can hold and disburse funds as required.

The only qualification for membership in the Brotherhood of Christian Unity is signing the fol lowing pledge:

I hereby agree to accept the creed promulgated by the Founder of Christianity-love to God and love to man-as the rule of my life. I also agree to recognize as fellow-Christians and members of the Brotherhood of Christian Unity, all who accept this creed and Jesus Christ as their leader.

I join the Brotherhood with the hope that such a voluntary association and fellowship with Christians of every faith will deepen my spiritual life and bring me into more helpful relations with my fellow

men.

Promising to accept Jesus Christ as my leader means that I intend to study His character with a desire to be imbued with His spirit, to imitate His example, and to be guided by His precepts.

The aim or purpose of this pledge is twofold. (1) It provides a "first step" in Christian consecration for people who are not members of a church and who for any reason are not willing to join a church. (2) It furnishes a common platform and hence a bond of union for all who desire to lift the church of Jesus Christ above the dominion of mere intellectual belief in ecclesiastical doctrines. It seeks to do this not because the Christian's belief is unimportant, but because any belief to be true and genuine must be individual. People have moved in masses heretofore simply because the masses were unthinking. In proportion as universal education brings universal thinking, each individual must by the very law of his individuality hold views of religious truth which grow out of his own religious life. The followers of Christ should therefore, it seems to me, combine on the basis which their Leader took pains to give them-love to God and

love to man. "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

AS TO POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS.

A few words should be written with regard to possible objections to the terms of the pledge or the modus operandi of the Brotherhood. Criticisms

have been very few in comparison with commendations. I expected to be met by a general protest against the absence from the pledge of any allusion to the divinity of Christ. Some objections have been raised on this point, but to a small extent in proportion to the expressions of approval. Evidently the idea is rapidly gaining ground that it is better to serve Christ than to define Him. The bane of theology has been its constant effort to define the undefinable and to explain the unexplainable. Every ecclesiastical battle that was ever fought has been over doctrines that were beyond the possibility of human knowledge; questions which God alone can understand and decide Such controversies were inevitable while the belief prevailed that theology and science are antagonistic, and that God's revelations in the Bible and His methods in nature have no relation to each other The theory of the divine immanence gives a scientific foundation for all religious truth. Not for all religious dogmas, by any means, but for all helpful, livable truth. It marks a new epoch in the religious history of the world when a scientific writer, speaking from a purely scientific stand point, expresses his convic tion that "atheism is bad metaphysics.'

An objection to signing the pledge of the Brotherhood is sometimes made by church members on the ground that it expresses so much less than their belief. This difficulty disappears when we remember the twofold object of the pledge. To the nonchurch member it is a pledge of faith, while to the professing Christian it is a pledge of fellowship. As a help to Christian unity I think the latter use of the pledge is of equal importance with the former.

One more objection and only one has been suggested the apparent vagueness of object and effort proposed by the plan. It seems to me that this is only in appearance. Could any purpose be more definite or more useful than to bring about a unity of spirit and effort among different bodies of Christians in place of the divisions and antagonisms which now exist? In a report on "The Social Problem of Church Unity," by Bishop Potter and Prof. Charles W. Shields, printed in the Century Magazine of September, 1890, the following statements occur :

"The situation of the Christian denominations in modern society is not unlike that of a wrangling army among invading foes. It is no petty quarrel before the onset, but a bitter feud in mid-battle. The contending factions have become so absorbed that they do not even see the hosts mustering around them and the ranks closing in upon them. Worst of all, they have neither organization nor leadership in their hour of peril."

Prof. John Fiske.

ITS PRACTICAL PROGRAM.

With such a state of "Christianity" among us it is not strange that the suggestion of a "plan of campaign" should meet with a quick and earnest response. It will be observed that the movement involves no attack upon existing creeds. The formularies of the church cannot be changed in a day or a year. The Brotherhood plan seeks to provide, during the evolutionary process through which the churches are now passing, a bond of union which shall help toward the ideal of perfect unity for which our Lord prayed so earnestly a few hours before His martyrdom.

Everything indicates that the moment has arrived for such an effort. The skies are full of gracious portents. Scarcely a religious or secular journal can be opened without finding some allusion to Christian unity. The Brotherhood plan provides a means for translating a rapidly growing sentiment into practical effort. Its members are recommended to work on the following lines:

1. To induce non-church members to sign the pledge as a first step toward or into the kingdom of Christ.

2. To lead church members to sign it as a means of breaking down ecclesiastical barriers.

3. To help and encourage each other in carrying out the spirit of the pledge, thus substituting love and sympathy for the class and caste distinctions which are now too common in the churches.

4. To serve as a medium for united effort among the churches.

5 To assist all other organizations that are working for the same result. By helping to create a sentiment of unity it will be a valuable ally of the Evangelical Alliance, the Society of Christian Endeavor, Working Girls' Clubs, and all similar societies.

6. To circulate literature for the promotion of Christian unity.

LAYMEN TO THE FRONT !

There have been various distinctive epochs in the history of our race, but none so pregnant with vital issues as the present. The power of tradition is waning, and God's divine laws of life and growth are beginning to be recognized as universal and uniform in method and operation. Mediæval theology assumed that because religion is supernatural it must therefore be unnatural. The recognition of universal law brings a new era which may be called an era of “common sense in spiritual things." The absurdity of separating religion from the daily life can no longer be tolerated. The old line of demarcation between the sacred and the secular is seen to be wholly artificial, and it is rapidly disappearing in the broader spirit of the New Age. Mr. R. W. Gilder says, in the Century Magazine of last August (Topics of the Time): "It is idle to say that the whole matter [of religion] is a specialty, and that the opinion only of specialists is of any account. Matters of religion are vital to every soul, and the