home, clothing, food, and the necessaries of existence, and any interference with this right by legislation, custom, or forced colonization is of a murderous tendency, and to be reprobated as criminal. The right to liberty implies freedom of occupation and accumulation of property by legitimate methods without the fear of persecution or prevention, and any disturbance of this right is of the nature of oppression, and cannot be justified. The right to the pursuit of happiness is so patent that it scarcely requires an allusion; but the colored people, ostracized and persecuted in ways many, are not the contented, happy people they would be if the oppressor would cease his oppression. To all these rights the Negro is as much entitled as any governor, senator, or citizen in the South, and until he is permitted to exercise them without fear or favor there will be friction, and finally social revolution. We must either reconstruct the general theory of natural rights, which is the principal doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, or we must allow the colored people, without any regard to future results, to exercise them as we ourselves exercise them, and without calling them to account for them. Humanity, therefore, pleads for the Negro in his conflict with the white man.

Nor less secure should be the Negro in the possession of rights guaranteed him by the Constitution of the United States, which, broken and despised in his case, may lead to breaks when other interests may be involved, and by other methods of evasion to final overthrow. It is not pertinent to discuss the merits of his constitutional rights, or whether it was wise to confer them upon him; for if faithful service to the country in time of danger would entitle a people to the reward of freedom, with all that it implies, the colored people earned all that has been bestowed; and if we add that the productive slave labor of the South for nearly a hundred years could only be compensated by the bestowal of the rights of citizenship, it will be difficult to dispose of the argument in their behalf. The chief point to be considered is, that, like the white man, the Negro is a citizen, possessed of all the rights under the Constitution that belong to any other citizen, and it is treason to the Constitution to interfere with him in the exercise of those rights. His right to the elective franchise is as sacred and genuine as the same right exercised by Mr. Bayard, and it would be as legitimate for a mob of Negroes to prevent his voting as for a mob of white men in his State to prevent the Negro from voting. It is the Negro's right to hold office if he can secure a majority of votes, and for the minority to organize against the majority and prevent the free expression of their will at the ballot-box is treason of a hateful kind, which should be expiated in the penitentiary or on the gallows. Whatever is guaranteed to the Negro by the Sixteenth Amendment, or what civil privileges are his by virtue of law, he should claim without any fear of interference on the part of the white man, and resent his opposition, when offered, as treasonable. In the name of the Constitution, we plead for the colored people, and urge them steadily to persist in holding to all that they have earned, and all that is theirs by legislation, if they would enjoy the full blessings of citizenship.

The chief ground of defense of the black man is neither nature nor the Constitution, but the Bible, under which he may refuse to call any man master, and by virtue of which he is entitled to both education and religion. As a responsible being, he may insist upon knowing some things, and if he cannot obtain such knowledge as others obtain, then he may seek it in his own way, whether it conform to public taste or usage or not. The school is the birthright of white and black in this country. Instruction in the common branches, in the laws, in ethics, and in our system of civilization, should be guaranteed to every one of school age in the country, for the sake of the republic and the individual. Schools, seminaries, and colleges should multiply in the South until both whites and blacks shall attain to common education and be fitted for the great responsibility of American citizenship. The blacks, however, until within recent years, have not shared in the calculations for general education in the South; but the time has come when the States should provide as liberally for them as for the whites.

In the matter of religion the duty of the Church is so plain that the merest statement is sufficient; but it may be emphasized by remembering that under the slave régime the colored people lost some original ideas of right and wrong, and still hold to some superstitions that only years of discipline will effectually destroy. Unfortunately the native Churches of the South have not exhibited that religious concern in the colored race that even self-interest, to say nothing of the Gospel, would enjoin, leaving their religious instruction and evangelization to the more enterprising Churches of the North. If the South could realize the importance of the education and religious advancement of its ex-slaves, and provide for them with an open hand, the problem now confronting the whites would be simpler in form and easier of solution. If, again, the natural and constitutional rights of the Negro were recognized all over the South, there would be peace, progress, and unity, and the problem would not appear so momentous or distressing as it does to the timid and cruel Southerner. Instead of conceding the rights of the Negro according to Humanity, the Constitution, and the Bible, a policy of repression has been instituted for the sole purpose of extinguishing the rights or the race that dares to exercise them. It is this policy that makes the problem great and its evolution uncertain; it is this policy that complicates right and interest, and furnishes ground for belief in future conflict; it is this policy that Christian sentiment condemns and the patriotic spirit reprimands. It is, therefore, in the power of the South to solve the problem without conflict, and it is to that better consciousness in man that we appeal for the settlement of the difficult question. But if no method of adjustment can be devised and conflict must come, then the Nation's appeal, as in times past, must be to that Providence which, accepting us as the people of his covenant, hesitates not to scourge us for our iniquities, to deliver us from the evils that are destroying us, and to protect among us the innocent and unfortunate from the hands of the oppressor and destroyer.

THE ARENA.

THE DIVINE OVERRULE OF EVIL.

In the September Review, in his "Genesis of Human Responsibility," Dr. L. D. McCabe says: "While it is true that every sinful volition is an act that never ceases to be felt for evil in the divine government, God can, and often does, partially overrule, in the interests of righteousness, wicked volitions after accountable beings have shot them forth into the eye of a witnessing world. But a divine sovereignty that in some subtle manner reaches as a causing force into the sinful volitions of accountable creatures . . . is too shocking to logic to be entertained." This statement, carefully examined, is seen to be in antagonism with his argument. If God cannot produce the incipient act in the volitions and approve the act in its essential qualities when executed, neither can he utilize the sequences of the act. God cannot make that act a blessing which he has already condemned in the volitions; and the sequences of an action cannot glorify God, while the volition that gave birth to the action works unceasing evil against the divine government. If the volition is wicked the act is wicked, and the sequences are evil forever. "Every thing after its kind " is a universal law of God. It is a fatal conception "that God can and does overrule wicked volitions in the interests of righteousness." To concede that proposition is to grant the correctness of the major premise of the Necessitarian Philosophy; and when we grant the major premise, we concede all that is claimed by the system, and it is puerile to add further argument or deny the force of our own admission. Suppose we state as a primary and fundamental fact "that God is by necessity of his own essential being" always an active factor on the side of right. If we accept that statement we must grant that he continually works for his own cause in harmony with all the divine agencies that go out from the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God, the supreme Law-giver, personally co-operates with all of these for the ultimate destruction of evil. Therefore, when a wicked man or a devil "shoots forth" a vicious volition, instead of seizing that and using it as his own, or as if it had originated with him, God defeats satanic power by counter agencies set in operation for that purpose-defeats it by forces which go out from himself. The effort of the wicked agent furnishes occasion for special manifestation of divine power. The satanic effort is not overruled and made tributary to the glory of God, but it is defeated by divine power; and the good which we see remaining after the discomfiture came from God and his auxiliary forces, and is not a sequence of the wicked volition which is still warring against the government of God. God destroys evil, but never utilizes it; the admission that God does bring good out of evil is an acknowledgment that he, of himself, is not the absolute fountain of all good. Moral responsibility is not conceivable of any being who is not the originator and proprietor of his own volitions; therefore Dr. McCabe is right when he says the genesis of responsibility is in the 8-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. VI.

volitions. But as God cannot do himself that which he has made it unlawful for me to do, and as a perfect being cannot be divided against himself, God cannot utilize, for his own glory, that which in its origin and essence is evil. WILLIAM JONES.

Kansas City, Mo.

THE GOSPEL FOR ROMANISTS IN THE UNITED STATES.

The reasons are many and various for the planting of missions among this people.

1. The Gospel should be preached to them, because the Church of Rome is a corrupt religion. Its rule of faith is a garbled Bible-the decrees of councils, the bulls, encyclicals, and other ex cathedra utterances of a pope who is declared to be infallible. Many deadly doctrines are taught by this rule of faith. As a man "thinketh in his heart, so is he." 2. Because the nations the Church of Rome has ruled have declined in material prosperity and in intellectual and moral life.

3. Because, from immigration, a complete organization, and the presence and power of the Jesuits, the Church of Rome is growing in political influence here, and steadily aims at the overthrow of those bulwarks of our nation—a free school, free speech, a free press, a free conscience, and an open Bible as the only and the sufficient rule of faith and practice. She caresses, and in turn is caressed by, all political parties. She controls the Atlantic sea-board, as well as the growing cities of the interior. The evangelical Churches are cowering before her Jesuitical intrigue, her political designs, and her commercial power. In some places, as in New York, she has sought and obtained the support of vast sums for her institutions.

4. Not for geographical, nor for ethnic, but for moral and theological reasons, has the General Missionary Committee planted missions among the people of this faith in Mexico, South America, and in Italy also, with encouraging results. Why should the zeal of evangelical Christianity be a "burning bush," unconsumed, for these people when distant, and as cold as an iceberg concerning their salvation when they are at our doors, led by men who are the foes of all that is spiritual in religion and beneficent in government? Let our apathy continue a few decades longer, and the claims of the papacy will be realized, as declared in an encyclical; namely, "The Romish Church has a right to exercise its authority without any limits set to it by the civil power;" "the pope and the priests ought to have dominion over the temporal affairs."

5. There are neglected districts in the great cities, where these people most do congregate, as truly pagan as to gospel influences as the valley of the Congo. Moreover, within some of these districts there are churches, almost deserted by Protestant congregations, which could be used at once as throbbing centers of missionary life, without the loss of time or money consumed in learning a foreign tongue.

6. One of the most potent reasons that can be adduced is the fact that

there are in the cities of this Union hundreds of thousands of young men questioning and doubting the errors of Rome, and, among these, many priests. At this critical period they must be shown "a more excellent way," or they will drift into a sea of infidelity agitated with the storms of communism and gloomy unbelief.

7. Finally, there is an international awakening among the people; evidenced by the Old Catholic movement in Germany and Switzerland, the work of Père Hyacinthe, of Paris, and the movements headed by Fathers O'Connor and McGlynn, of New York. While these are diverse in their typing, they can all be classified under the general head of protestants against the errors and tyranny of the Church of Rome. The prayers and sympathies of the entire Church of Christ should be given them. The Methodist Episcopal Church, by reason of her omnipresence in all the land, her unity and strength, her tongue of fire, her glowing and rich experience, her humanitarian sympathy, her reliance upon the Holy Ghost to convict, to regenerate, to fashion into the image of God, is pre-eminently adapted for this great work. Pointing to "the cross all stained with hallowed blood," her cry should be, "in hoc signo vinces." Centerville, Iowa.

D. MURPHY.

DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES.

The recent controversy over the religious status of certain universities, which the editor of this Review had the honor of introducing, suggests some practical considerations which the wealthier church members ought to take seriously to heart. If young men reared in Methodist families, for instance, prefer undenominational or State colleges to those of their own Church, it is almost always because the former furnish them the means of getting what the latter do not. My own observation leads me to believe that there are comparatively few young people in attendance upon American colleges and universities who have not pretty strong denominational leanings, and who would not be found at denominational colleges if these offered, in their judgment, equal advantages. No matter how highly one may value the influence of a wholesome religious atmosphere upon a mind in its formative period, our young people ought not to be expected to accept this as an offset against the best obtainable facilities in the arts and sciences. Many of the most valuable positions are filled from candidates about whose religious preferences no questions are asked. A great many people are, no doubt, of the opinion that our denominational colleges provide, on the whole, as good facilities for instruction as the others. The intelligent public does not admit such a claim; and indeed a careful examination of their relative merits will make it pretty clear that there are in this country not over two or three strongly denominational universities that can be regarded as furnishing facilities for instruction equal to those provided by at least a dozen State and individual institutions. If the New York students of Methodist parents prefer Cornell to Syracuse, or Maryland and Pennsylvania students choose the Johns Hopkins instead of