workers against vast combinations; and the promise of the earth's inheritance, not to the world's hero, "impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer," but to the meek and lowly. It is a universal assault on huinan nature in its stronghold with an old book and an invisible Spirit.

Viewed on the human side the vital problem of the Church is simply hopeless. Sydney Smith so far was right when he pronounced the difficulties in India "insuperable." Martyn said substantially the same when he likened the conversion of the Hindu to the "resurrection of a dead body." The case cannot be overstated, and it is everywhere substantially alike. How often does the young convert, all aglow with Christ's love, feel persuaded that he can so tell the wonderful story to his comrades that they too must believe! And how sadly does he learn his impotence! I remember well the lamentation of a distinguished teacher, a man of rare intellect and a most accomplished speaker, that in more than twenty years of preaching in various pulpits he knew not that he had persuaded one soul to Christ. All his eloquence had halted at the ear. In truth, no class of men so profoundly comprehend the unspeakable barriers that lie in the pathway of Christ's chariot as the ministers of the gospel. They know full well the apathy of the masses, the pitying incredulity of the great, the mighty ambitions of mature life, the enticements that draw the young from the Master's service, the errors and defections of Christian leaders, the unworthy membership of the churches - the gnarled and twisted sticks

and shapeless stones with which Christ must build his temple, both abroad and at home. Xavier, indeed, in ten years rushed from India to Japan, ringing his bell and scattering baptismal water till he had "made Christians" of a million persons. But it was his own comment on his own work: "If you will search India through, you will find that few will reach heaven but those who depart this life under fourteen years of age with their baptismal innocence still upon them."

Never were human force and fortitude strained to a higher tension than by the devoted band of Jesuits who, a hundred years later, attempted to convert the native tribes in Canada. They lived in the filthy wigwam or slept on the uncovered ground, or roamed and suffered with the hunters. They traveled on snowshoes, tugged canoes and burdens round portages, were jeered at by the sorcerers and threatened by the warriors. They went wet and hungry and frost-bitten. They sickened with exposure and toil, but they would not die of disease. The martyr's crown encircled the heads of Daniel, Lallemant, Brébeuf, Garnier, Chabanel, Jogues, Buteau, and Garreau. Their zeal and selfabnegation were as matchless as their failure was complete. That failure, for which their Boston historian, in 1867, can find no deeper cause than "the guns and tomahawks of the Iroquois," lay clearly in the system they represented, and broke on their devoted heads as a direct retribution for the hollow religion they bore. It was Jesuit principle, avowed by Father LeCaron, that these "infidels needed but a drop of

water to make them children of God," changing "little Indians into little angels." It was Jesuit practice to apply that drop deceitfully, and to inform the scowling father that they were only giving a little sweetened water to drink. They pledged themselves to help the Hurons in all their wars; and they impressed "the mysteries of the faith" by the wonderful performances of a striking clock, a prism, a magnet, and a microscope, together with horrible paintings of devils and lost souls, and with grand religious tableaux `and parades. They told the Algonquin chief that God's ways with friends and foes were the same as his own, and while they resisted the eating of prisoners they made but feeble remonstrances against the killing and torture. But they reaped as they sowed. All their dangers and their martyrdoms, whether from Hurons, Mohawks, or Iroquois, were on the definite charge of being sorcerers or in league with hostile tribes. And it was a fearful retribution when their own water-made Christians not only shed their blood, but heaped their own doctrines as coals of fire on their heads. It was

a renegade Huron convert who murdered the priest Chabanel and threw him into the river; and when Lallemant and the dauntless Brébeuf stood unflinching at the stake it was apostate Hurons who taught the Iroquois to add new keenness to their fiendish tortures, and to aggravate them with still more fiendish taunts. "We baptize you," said they, as they poured boiling water slowly over their heads, "we baptize you that you may be happy in heaven, for none can be saved

without a good baptism." And as they lacerated Brébeuf's athletic form in modes too awful to relate they called out to him: "You told us that the more one suffers on earth the happier he is in heaven. We torment you because we love you." "That such beings could have been civilized," exclaims the Boston historian, "is scarcely possible." And from his standpoint he spoke well. We accept the verdict. To Jesuit Christianity it was impossible, and to any form of humanitarian Christianity similar obstacles lie everywhere. When the humanitarian religion of America at length, like a century plant, blossomed out into one solitary missionary to the Hindus, he was speedily absorbed not by "Great Brahm," but by the Brahmo Somaj, and his successor could not tell whether it was well with him or no.

It would seem that no subtle argument can be called for to show how helpless are all merely human agencies to work out that internal purity, disinterestedness, and love, and that wide and deep reign of inner and outer righteousness which the gospel commands and the world has pronounced Utopian. By no conceivable stratagem can the teacher or the preacher eke out the lack of the life from God or animate his clay images with some human spark. Had these things some potency the world can beat him at his own weapons. His jocular Christianity is not half so attractive for the crowd as the true comedy. The most artistic performances of the church are inferior to the opera. All the sugar-coated panaceas, the consecrated billiards,

if

the church kitchens, and religious merrymakings these be chief things are as nothing beside the infinite allurements of the world. In the "study of human nature," on its weak side or its strong, the Protestant Jesuit will never approach the followers of Loyola; while, alas! when all has been learned that can be learned of human nature it is still the desperate problem, not how to humor but to reverse its whole moral drift. The Boston historian in 1867 may be supposed to represent the average judgment of the world when he wrote: "As for the religion which the Jesuit taught them [the Indians], however Protestants may carp at it, it was the only form of Christianity likely to take root in their crude and barbarous natures.” If we look for some skillful apparatus of propagandism, no human machinery will ever surpass the vast and varied resources of Rome. To that we may surrender in advance. If we are directed to the constant and vehement reiteration of the great laws of lofty morality in all the relations of life, we grieve to see that the one grand lack is not of the knowledge but the will, of the power that shall lift character and life into that higher plane. Common preachers can do little with the Christless morality with which Thomas Chalmers, at Kilmany, could do nothing. We admit that the ethics of the Scriptures can largely be culled out from the maxims of the heathen; that Confucius taught the negative side of the golden rule; that Plato held that a good man will injure neither friend nor enemy; and that Seneca uttered maxims which remind us of Paul. But