utterances, and giving to his beliefs and his life the highest dignity. With him it is a persistent and overwhelming duty to give to his ministry this practical content, this ethical intensity. In this he is evangelical.

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments assert or imply that without our personal agency, and without the truth in the substance and texture of our characters, there can be no spiritual elevation or final perfection. In the terms of the Scriptures the divine resources are infinite; but instead of overwhelming our personal agency or responsibility they make a stupendous demand upon us. The truth must be received with unhesitating acceptance and assimilated to our individual being.

To teach such consummate truths the Rev. Minot J. Savage, D. D., strong in every fibre of intellectual and religious faith, has devoted his talents, his strength, and his life, and for that reason he stands before the American people as one of their most noted preachers.

THE CIVIC OUTLOOK.

BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.

I. FRATERNAL GOVERNMENT.

'HE disposition to give due attention to the spirit of Ameri

THE

can institutions is one which needs cultivation. Govern

ment, looked upon only as machinery, may easily become a means for the accomplishment of ends very different from those intended by its designers. In this connection some recent utterances by Dr. Lyman Abbott are worthy of serious thought:

It is sometimes said that the majority rules in America, and it would be unfortunate if it were true. The French Revolution shows that no despotism of the individual is so cruel as the despotism of the majority. When the decisions of the majority or minority are supported by the whole people that is Americanism. Our democracy is not founded on the idea that our people make mistakes, but that the decision of all the people is better than that of one class, and that all the men are better judges than priests and kings and their instruments. Fraternal government is what we are trying to establish, and whoever strikes against the spirit of fraternalism strikes against the foundation of our government. We can get along with anything bad in our laws and correct it in our progress, but we can never live and prosper with the East arrayed against the West, the North against the South, rich against the poor, and labor against capital.

II. TRUE AMERICANISM.

Whatever other meaning may attach to the word Americanism, Dr. Abbott points to its best definition. But what he has in mind cannot be expected in the absence of a spirit which is made manifest in real fraternalism conjoined with faithful devotion to intelligent convictions of duty. This spirit will take patriotism out of the realm of mere sentiment into that of noble passion. It will give to citizenship so high a meaning that failures in civic duty will take on as they clearly ought to one's own manhood and citizen is a member. If

do the character of sins against against the brotherhood of which the this spirit be underneath our laws and manifest in their administration, we need have little anxiety as to their statutory form. Political as well as scriptural wisdom expresses itself in the statement that the "letter" of the law kills, the "spirit" alone gives life.

III. THE RIGHT SPIRIT IN CITIZENSHIP.

How the spirit of genuine citizenship is to be made ascendant is a question of increasing concern. It may nevertheless be doubted whether organized forces for its suppression do not, in the matter of painstaking and persistent energy and adroit management, excel the organized elements specially devoted to its cultivation. Citizenship activities, politically considered, for the most part are merged in the machinery of parties; and this machinery, instead of representing in its tenets the will of great bodies of independent and well-intentioned suffragists, is too often so manipulated by a few skilful and unprincipled political machinists as to represent their will instead. It is obvious that in so far as these clever machinists are able to run our politics to suit themselves, the very machinery through which the right spirit in citizenship must come to power, if at all, is turned into a means for its own suppression. It thus comes to pass that we have the pitiable spectacle of great party organizations through which masses of honest and patriotic citizens farcically nay, tragically — coöperate for the accomplishment of results, which, while secured through their votes and in their name, are in reality results of the clandestine and sinister work of a few men.

men.

IV. REFORM IN PRIMARY ELECTIONS.

Plainly, if the right spirit in citizenship is to be ascendant, it must find some means of doing away with the boss system in politics. This system is made possible only by the ease with which primary elections are controlled by coteries of designing Here is a battlefield where the best and worst elements in our politics need to be brought into immediate and conclusive conflict. A system which foists upon the people as its candidates for office those whom they have had no real voice in choosing, and who are not worthy, represents an actual subversion of popular government, and calls for such a manifestation of the spirit of true Americanism as shall overthrow it once for all. This question is an overshadowing one. Pollution at the fountain means pollution everywhere. Men elected to office through shameful methods may sometimes be better than the methods by which they have profited, but they are not to be

trusted. Their responsibility is to the "bosses," not to the cit izens whose machine-directed votes elected them. The only sentiment to which they bow is that expressed by the leader whose favor bestowed, and whose hostility will deprive them of, official position and emoluments. The immediate outlook is not, however, without hope. Independent movements in several States are in progress looking to the complete uprooting of the boss system. In parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California, and in some of the Southern States "the Crawford County method," which takes the choice of candidates out of the hands of the few and places it in the hands of the majority of voters, is already being tried. In Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota similar methods have been the subject of legislative action, and satisfactory results are anticipated. This is a reform which should not be left to the advocacy of a few individuals, or to the members of a few organizations like the American Institute of Civics and local civic reform bodies. Members of these bodies have done much and will do more to promote it, but its final success depends upon the manifestation everywhere of an aroused public spirit whose demands cannot be denied.

V. CIVICS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Much progress has recently been made in educational provisions for the instruction necessary to qualify American youth for the intelligent and efficient discharge of civic obligations. The Patria Club of New York City, a strong body organized under the auspices of the American Institute of Civics and devoted to the objects which it represents, has offered prizes to the pupils in the schools in the vicinity of New York for the purpose of stimulating their interest in matters of government and citizenship, and has undertaken a similar work in connection with the charity industrial schools of that city. Of great importance is the action of the New York Board of Education looking to specific instruction in civics in all the city schools, and its later action in giving to this subject an important place in the curriculum of the high schools which are to be established the coming year. Another organization which contributes to the same results, the American Guards, is represented

by battalions in several New York schools. This movement, which has already extended into many schools in different States, is under the fostering care of Col. H. H. Adams, an officer of the Institute of Civics. The guards are composed of boys who voluntarily devote a certain amount of time, out of school hours, to exercises promotive of a virile and intelligent patriotism. These exercises include military drill, and the youthful guards, in their becoming uniforms, develop a marked degree of manliness and self-respect. Two of the battalions are under the leadership of public-school principals, E. H. Boyer and D. E. Gaddes, councillors of the Institute of Civics. The guards participated in the ceremonies at the dedication of the Grant monument, and no organization in line attracted more favorable attention.

VI. RURAL INFLUENCES ON URBAN AFFAIRS.

It cannot be denied that the hitherto controlling power of voters in rural districts has frequently been used to the prejudice of city interests. Representatives from country regions have lent their aid in effecting vicious as well as wholesome changes in legislation affecting municipalities, and this aid has sometimes been secured by corrupt methods. It is nevertheless true that the average country voter and the average legislator who represents him sincerely desire to promote only such legislation as will be of highest advantage to urban communities. If their votes fail to secure this result it is more often because of insufficient knowledge of urban conditions and needs, than of indifference or corrupt influences.

It is, therefore, a matter of the very highest importance that citizens remote from our great cities be made sufficiently familiar with municipal needs to enable them to reach wiser conclusions as to the desirability or undesirability of special measures affecting their political, social, and industrial interests. Opinions based, as now, chiefly upon the statements of a partisan press, too often represent the interests of a party regardless of those of the municipalities directly concerned.

With the steady growth of our great cities in population and political power, the question of wholesome State legislation in matters affecting their civic and moral wellbeing, is one of no