of despair. It is open-minded to cling to old faiths. till new truths have made them untenable.

Even in keeping an open mind on such an issue as spiritualism, it is quite legitimate to remember the chicanery which has discredited almost all spiritualistic mediums. "The whole subject," it has been well said, "is entangled with trickery and charlatanism, and there is something very suspicious about the sickening puerility of the unutterable tosh in many of the alleged messages." Browning had some equally scathing things to say of spiritualists in "Mr. Sludge the Medium." Again, however, it must be borne in mind that God, in His infinite wisdom, has, in the processes of His self-revelation to the souls of men, used some very earthen vessels as culverts of His grace. The cardinals who fixed the canon and framed the creeds were not all immaculate characters; and the history of religious revivals reveals that evangelists who have had many ignoble traits themselves have been the means of changing ugly lives into gracious characters. Open-mindedness impels a man to balance pros and cons in this fashion and to reach his final conclusions unbiased by a priori prejudices.

The labeling method of dealing with a new thing settles nothing. Wherever any new subject comes under discussion in a company of men, some one, who perhaps "recommends as wildly as he spells," oracularly remarks: "That is just Socialism," or "That is nothing but sheer Bolshevism." He may have strayed into the truth; but the truth of a label does not guarantee the fallacy of the thing labeled. During the war, when America to a moderate extent and Great Britain to the fullest degree took over railways

and mines, commandeered factories, controlled exports and imports, regulated what we should eat and how much of it, and generally supplied (or supervised the supply of) almost all necessaries, we lived under a socialistic régime. But it worked-in the circumstances of war; and the men who believe it would work in peace times also, pin their faith to a theory which does not perish when it has been duly labeled and contemptuously pooh-poohed.

In the region of organized religion there is a wide sphere for open-mindedness. Happily, sectarian divisions are not so acute now as they were twenty years ago. Denominational barriers are being lowered; and it is no longer the mark of a good denominationalist to despise all other denominations. The Congregational chairman who said, “We have had a bad year in the Church; but thank God the Baptists have had a worse," belongs to an age that has passed. A new Catholicity, stamped with the imprimatur of open-mindedness, is gaining ground. We are coming to see that each branch of the Christian Church meets the spiritual needs of its own particular adherents, and that the sum of all the Churches is the Church Catholic.

Hostility to things new is a sign of dogmatic temper. Christianity suffered grievously during the nineteenth century by the antagonism of its defenders to the discoveries of science. Though God has always, as John Robinson said to the departing Pilgrim Fathers, new light to throw upon His Word, the Church has, unfortunately, all through the ages, been inhospitable to new knowledge. Galileo, persecuted for declaring that the earth moves, had his nine

teenth-century parallel in the fierce assaults made upon Charles Darwin for proclaiming the results of his researches into the origin of species. The world is God's epistle to man, said an ancient sage, and through scientific discovery God continues His revelation of His processes. Revelation is not confined within the pages of a book, and the footprints of the Creator are revealed by geology as surely as by Genesis. A closed mind, bolted and barred against new truth, is a mind enslaved by intellectual cowardice.

Sir Oliver Lodge has said that the day may come when we shall think it just as irrational to administer drugs without prayer as we now think it foolish to use prayer without drugs in illness. Such a dictum suggests the wisdom of keeping an open mind on this point. It may be that Christianity has lost, in the intervening centuries, some element of the faith that

made men whole" in apostolic times, and that a pathway to its recovery is being found. The whole question of the power of mind over matter has still to be explored, and Christianity has nothing to fear from the investigation.

In the early days of wireless telegraphy a young man nearing New York in an Atlantic liner found himself short of money. The purser could not, by his regulations, cash a check sufficient for his needs; but when the purser heard that the traveler's mother was on a sister ship, with which he would be within wireless radius that night, the problem was solved. By a marconigram the mother was asked to deposit five hundred dollars with the purser of her ship, and next morning the young American received that sum from his own purser. Now if any one had told our

grandfathers that such a miracle (as it would have seemed to them) would be an ordinary sort of event in the twentieth century, they would have derided the idea. The story is a parable for this generation.

Vested prejudices, Mr. Lloyd George has said, are more to be feared than vested interests. We all inherit, or early in life absorb, some prejudices that tend to cabin, crib, and confine our minds. Openmindedness is consequently a characteristic not acquired without prayer and fasting. Party, sectarian, and class prejudices crop up unconsciously and strangle fair judgment unless fought down. Dr. Richard Glover used to say, in expressing an opinion, that while convinced for the moment that his view was sound, he reserved the right to differ from himself if later and fuller light justified that course. It is a habit of mind to be commended.

Lest I may be suspected in pleading for openmindedness to be favoring an indeterminate undecisiveness of mind, I would urge that a young man should take a definite side on the great issues of politics and religion. This should be done not precipitately, but after earnest thought. What was known as a mugwump-i. e., a man who sits on the fenceis a pitiable creature. He who hesitates to come to conclusions because he sees both sides of a case so strongly, belongs to the class of men who, having the choice of two evils, chooses both.

F

XVI

READING AND STUDY

RIENDSHIP with books offers the most abid

ing companionship in life. Friends may fail us, or depart, leaving the heart solitary, but a few bookshelves lined with good books are a permanent source of fellowship and delight. A distinction must be drawn between reading and study. Reading is a recreation; study a serious enterprise. The book-lover turns to his books when the day's duty has been done; the student uses his books as a mechanic uses his tools-in pursuit of a definite end. • A political student reads history because, as Lord Morley puts it, a knowledge of the past enables him to see his way through what is happening now. Few men are called to be students, but it should be every intelligent young man's ambition to be "well read." At least he should know world-history in outline, the story of his own country, and the classics of his own language. He should have his own collection of books, however small, and they should have been collected by himself. No volumes have such personal value as the books, new or second-hand, that have been bought at perhaps a little self-sacrifice.

Some young men have the natural instinct for reading, inheriting the taste, it may be, or acquiring it by living in a bookish atmosphere. With others the love of books is acquired by diligence and persistence.