not to stop, at least to check, to sift, and to restrict those immigrants. In careless strength, with generous hand, we have kept our gates wide open to all the world. If we do not close them, we should at least place sentinels beside them to challenge those who would pass through. The gates which admit men to the United States and to citizenship in the great Republic should no longer be left unguarded.

CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP

CHARLES H. PARKHURST

The following extract is taken from a discourse delivered by Dr. Parkhurst, in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York City, during his memorable "fight with Tammany."

The fundamental service which the Church has to render in the line of municipal or national betterment is to develop in Christians as such a civic consciousness. To an American the Stars and Stripes ought to be as actually a part of his religion as the Sermon on the Mount. Other things being equal, it is as urgently the obligation of a Christian to go to the polls on election day as it is for him to go to the Lord's table on communion day.

That sense of the holy obligation which citizenship involves must be made part of our Christian religion. It must be taught from the pulpit, rehearsed in the home, reiterated in the Sunday-school, and practised in the life. I wish the time might come when we could have our national colors displayed in

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the sanctuary; not simply hung from the belfry in a shy kind of way on the Fourth of July and the Twentysecond of February, but made a permanent part of sanctuary decoration.

The old Hebrew never thought of patriotism as anything but a constituent part of religion. To him it was religion in its political aspects. I wish there were some way in which we could make civic virtue part of our creed. It would be a tremendous gain if we could all of us come to conceive of, and to handle civic duties, such as attending the primaries and going to the polls, as lying on religious ground and contained within Christian jurisdiction.

The instant effect of such civic consciousness would be to bring the citizen into direct practical relations to his city or country, and to make him feel in regard to his city, for example, "This is my city." No matter how many mayors or aldermen or police captains you have, it is your city all the same, and no city is safe unless its citizens tread steadily on the heels of those who have been hired to do the town's business. The mayor is bound to look after the citizens, but the citizens are just as much bound to look after the mayor. The police must watch the people, but the people must watch the police.

The evil will have to be overcome with the good, and personality is the thing that will have to do it. It will have to be done by men with convictions and with the courage of their convictions. It will have to be done by men who remember always that the security and the honor of the community lies not so

much in its great statesmen, in its powerful leaders, or even in its educational advantages, as it does in the number of its men with whom righteousness is a chronic passion, civic duty a part of Christianity.

A PLEA FOR UNIVERSAL EDUCATION ROBERT C. WINTHROP

Universal education, without distinction of race, must be encouraged, aided, and enforced. The elective franchise can never be taken away from any of those to whom it has been granted, but we can and must make education coextensive with the elective franchise; and it must be done without delay, as a measure of self-defense, and with the general coöperation of the authorities and of the people of the whole country. One half of our country has recently been, for the first time, opened to the introduction and establishment of free common schools, and there is not wealth enough in that region to provide for this great necessity. "Two millions of children without the means of instruction," was the estimate of the late Dr. Sears in 1879. Every year brings another instalment of brutal ignorance to the polls, to be subject.of cajolement, deception, corruption, or intimidation. Here, here is our greatest danger for the future! The words of our lamented President Garfield come to us to-day: "All the constitutional power of the nation and of the states, and all the volunteer forces of the people, should be summoned to meet this danger, by the saving influence of universal education."

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It is itself one of the great rights of a free people, to be educated and trained up from childhood to that ability to govern themselves, which is the largest element in republican self-government, and without which all self-government must be a failure and a farce, here and everywhere. It is indeed primarily a right of our children, and they are not able to enforce and vindicate it for themselves. But let us beware of subjecting ourselves to the ineffable reproach of robbing the children of their bread, and casting it before dogs, by wasting untold millions on corrupt or extravagant projects, and starving our public schools. The whole field of the Union is now open to education, and the whole field of the Union must be occupied. Free government must stand or fall with free schools. These and these alone can supply the firm foundation; and that foundation must, at this very moment, be extended and strengthened, and rendered immovable and indestructible, like that of the gigantic obelisk at Washington, if the boasted fabric of liberty is not to settle and totter and crumble.

Tell me not that I am indulging in truisms. I know they are truisms, but they are better, a thousandfold better, than Nihilisms, or Communisms, or Fenianisms, or any of the other "isms" which are making such headway in supplanting them. No advanced thought, no mystical philosophy, no glittering abstractions, no swelling phrases about freedom, not even science with all its marvelous inventions and discoveries, can help us much in sustaining this Republic. Still less can any godless theories of creation, or

any infidel attempts to rule out the Redeemer from his rightful supremacy in our hearts, afford us any hope of security. That way lies despair! Commonplace truth, old familiar teachings, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the Farewell Address of Washington, honesty, virtue, patriotism, universal education, are what the world most needs in these days, and our own part of the world as much as any other part. Without these we are lost. With these and with the blessing of God which is sure to follow, a second century of our Republic may be confidently looked forward to; and those who shall live a hundred. years hence shall then exult, as we are now exulting, in the continued enjoyment of the free institutions bequeathed to us by our fathers, and in honoring the memories of those who have sustained them.

PEACEFUL CONQUESTS

JOHN A. DIX

From a speech delivered in the United States Senate, taken from "Speeches and Occasional Addresses," published in 1864. Mr. Dix was United States Senator for New York from 1845 till 1849.

Our conquests have been the peaceful achievements of enterprise and industry; the one leading the way into the wilderness, the other following and completing the acquisition by the formal symbols of occupancy and possession. They have looked to no objects beyond the conversion of uninhabited wilds