must be the grasped hand. The doing which helps is with the people, among friends, not for the people among strangers."

Second, Oberlin found and stimulated that ultimate element of selfhood which survives in the most forlorn. His was no dole of unscientific charity, stultifying alike to giver and receiver. He found what the people did or ought to aspire to. He created the aspiration in the one case and put the means of attaining at the disposal of all. He did for them what Peter and John did for the lame man at the gate Beautiful. He set them on their feet and put them in the way of getting their own silver and gold.

Third, Without the sacrifice of principle Oberlin accommodated himself to the prejudices of his mixed sectarian environment. He avoided shibboleths and party names. The Gospel to him was above all differences of nomenclature and sect. His religion was synonymous," not with institutionalism, not with denominationalism, nor with barriers or badges, but with the spirit and life of Jesus Christ."

Fourth, From the day he entered the Ban to the day of his death Oberlin identified himself with the civic life of the little commonwealth. He joined his fortunes with those of the community. He claimed no exemption, even from service as a juror. He discharged each civic duty with minute particularity. He demanded for himself the advantages arising from citizenship.

Fifth, He was no Theudas, "boasting himself to be somebody." He did not strive or cry. His were the quiet ways of his Master. Thus the kingdom of heaven came to the Ban without observation, like the dew upon Hermon.

Such are the governing principles of one of the most unique social reformations of which modern history gives any account. But these in turn are the governing principles of the Social Settlement, a movement distinctively of our day and graced with the names of Canon Kingsley, Frederic Denison Maurice, John Ruskin, and John Richard Green. The spirit of refined, gentle, ambitious young men and women, manifested in the university and college settlements of England and America, vies with that of Oberlin, and will not fail of the reward which he

received. There are fifty such settlements in Great Britain and eighty in the United States. But these figures do not adequately indicate the present scope of the movement, for there are many organizations operating upon substantially the same plan, though not called settlements, and more and more the principles of Christian socialism obtain in the philanthropic effort of the day. But, as Canon Barnett, of Toynbee Hall, has said, "The done is only a platform from which to see the vast undone."

The Providence which at the opening of this century cried, "Go, disciple the heathen!" at the close of the century is saying by signs as infallible, "Come, love thy brother in the slum!" The Church obeyed the first call. Great is her reward. The fervor of her converts in distant lands now comes back like a warm breath to chase away the chill induced by a current skepticism. Will the Church obey this latest call? If she fails, if she insists upon running for missionary prizes in stadia whose seats bid fair to be as tenantless as those of the Circus Maximus, if she insists in wearing insignia and employing devices whose proper place is a cabinet of curios, she will deserve to be as well satirized as Cervantes satirized, in Don Quixote, the attempted revival of chivalry. But the Church will not be guilty of such a crime unless she first loses the spirit of her Founder. Indeed, this new movement is a sign of hopeful adaptiveness on the part of the Church. For the social settlement is of the Church. It proceeds from her universities. The young people now in residence are her vanguard. The new century will see the Church planted at this point of greatest need and menace, the city slum. Planted there, not with the rigidity and coldness of institutionalism or the ever-enigmatical form of sectarian divisionalism, but with the practical adaptiveness, the sincere friendliness exemplified by Jean Frederic Oberlin.

Davis H. Clans

ART. III.-SPIRITUAL MESSAGES FROM THE POETRY OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. WHEN the traveler visits Westminster Abbey he will not fail to spend a reasonable portion of his time in the "Poets' Corner." Beneath the pavement over which he walks lie the mortal remains of those who have won lasting honors in the realm of English letters; and against the wall on every side are monuments, great and small, which a grateful people have erected to these illustrious dead. The visitor will be delighted to find there, among the memorials to England's poets, historians, and novelists, a bust of our own loved Longfellow, the only American poet who has been thus recognized in the great Abbey. This indicates the judgment regarding Longfellow's place among the American poets. There is none to be placed above him in the temple of fame, and there is no other that has exercised a nobler influence. If Bryant is the pioneer American poet, Longfellow is thus far our star of the first magnitude.

But he is not great in the sense that Homer, Dante, and Goethe are great. According to the dictum of the best critics of the present period first rank is accorded to but five of the poets of the English-speaking world. These are Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth. In the opinion of the same critics it is possible that even the second rank of the Anglo-Saxon sons of song would be completed without the name of Longfellow. And yet no poet of the English tongue has been so universally read and admired, unless it be Wordsworth and Burns. One critic has said that a number of Longfellow's best lyrics are known to more people than the same number of Wordsworth's, and that he has a larger clientele than any other modern poet except Burns.

Compared with other poets, Longfellow lacks the creative genius of Milton, the many-sidedness of Shakespeare, the polished diction of Tennyson, and the fire and passion of Byron. But, while they are superior to him in these particulars, he excels not only the above-named poets, but all others, in the particular that he is one whose songs gush from the heart. It

does not require a special education to understand and love what Longfellow has written. Most people have to acquire a taste for Milton or Shakespeare in much the same way that a taste for classical music is developed. This is not the case with Longfellow's poems. He is distinctively the people's poet, because he speaks for the people and to the people in a language they can understand and appreciate. He has not written for the learned, but for the masses of men on both sides of the Atlantic, wherever English is read. He has treated the common experiences of life in speech that is artistic and simple. It requires great genius to do this. Longfellow has succeeded where thousands have failed. In that gem, "The Day is Done," he has voiced the longings of the great mass of readers in this busy age, as well as given the reason why he is so loved and read. He was, indeed, that "humbler poet whose "songs gushed from his heart," and whose harmonious numbers always come

like the benediction That follows after prayer.

And how much we need him in this crowding, bustling age! It is a blessing that we have such a poet of peace, from whose heart the restlessness had been driven and from whose shoulders the burden had fallen so that he could sing,

Now only the sorrows of others
Cast their shadows over me.

It will perhaps help to a better appreciation of the truths we desire to illustrate if we outline some of the facts in the life of Longfellow. It will be remembered that he was born in Portland, Me, in 1807; that, like Bryant, he could trace his descent to John Alden and Priscilla Mullens, of whom he has written so beautifully in "The Courtship of Miles Standish;" that even in boyhood he displayed a love for literature, a passion for the beautiful of every sort, and no small aptitude for verse-making. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825, in the same class with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Immediately after graduation he went to Europe, where he remained three years, mastering French, German, Italian, and Spanish, in order to prepare himself for the professorship

of modern languages in his Alma Mater, which work he began in 1829. Two years later he married Miss Mary Potter, of whom he speaks so touchingly in the opening chapter of Hyperion and in the poetical gem entitled "Footsteps of Angels." This noble woman died at Rotterdam in 1835, whither the poet had gone on his second European journey to perfect himself in the Teutonic tongues, that he might be better fitted for the chair of modern languages in Harvard, to which he had been called at the age of twenty-eight. The death of Mrs. Longfellow came to him like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and it was years before he recovered from the blow. In 1843 he made his third voyage to Europe. While on this trip he met Miss Fanny Appleton, a daughter of the great publisher, who really figures as the heroine of Hyperion under the name of "Mary Ashburton," while Longfellow is himself the hero under the cognomen of "Paul Fleming." They were married in 1843, and their life was one of great happiness until Mrs. Longfellow's tragic death from an accidental burning of her dress, as she was engaged in an evening entertainment with the children. This new sorrow cast a cloud over the poet which was never dissipated. In 1845 he resigned his professorship that he might give himself wholly to literary work. His life flowed on its peaceful way, while he lived surrounded by friends who appreciated and loved him, till he was called to lay down his pen in 1882, at the ripe age of seventy-five.

Too much cannot be said in praise of Longfellow, the man. He was possessed of the first requisite of a poet-preacher. He had a message for humanity—a message of hope, trust, and love. He was a truth-loving man, of clean lips and life. Charles Frederick Johnson says that his nature had no affinity for evil in any form; that he was naturally in sympathy with all that was beautiful and of good report; that he was as trustworthy at nineteen as if years of experience had molded his character; and that the purity of his verses was a reflection of his radical goodness of heart. Love to God, faith in God, and reliance on self are constantly manifest in Longfellow's poetry. They sanctify "The Courtship of Miles Standish," breathe in "The Song of Hiawatha," and shine forth like stars every