What We Can Do

There are two practical things which our Government could legitimately do to express the universal sympathy of Americans for oppressed Cretans and struggling

Greeks. For the first we have the example of our own action in 1824; for the second, the recent action of Bulgaria.

We can pass resolutions of sympathy with the oppressed subjects of the Turkish Empire. Such resolutions on behalf of the Armenians were passed last year, but whether they were forwarded to the European Powers or pigeonholed in the office of the Secretary of State is not generally known. The case was one for acting on the text, Let your light shine before men. The Government acted on the text, Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth. Said Daniel Webster in his plea for Greece in 1824:

The Greeks, contending with ruthless oppressors, turn their eyes to us and invoke us by their ancestors, by their slaughtered wives and children, by their own blood poured out like water, by the hecatombs of dead they have heaped up as it were to heaven-they invoke, they implore of us some cheering sound, some look of sympathy, some token of compassionate regard. They look to us as the great Republic of the earth, and they ask us by our common faith whether we can forget that they are struggling, as we once struggled, for what we now so happily enjoy. I cannot say, sir, that they will succeed that rests with Heaven-but for myself, sir, if I should to-morrow hear that they have failed, that their last phalanx had sunk beneath the Turkish scimitar, that the flames of their last city had sunk in its ashes, and that naught remained but the wide, melancholy waste where Greece once was, I should still reflect, with the most heartfelt satisfaction, that I have asked you, in the name of seven million of freemen, that you would give them at least the cheering of one friendly voice.

O for another Webster in the Senate of to-day!

The other thing we can do is to press our just claims against Turkey for damages. She has threatened the lives of American citizens; she has destroyed thousands of dollars of American property; she has refused to receive American consuls, on whom American citizens must rely for protection. Now is a good time to send one or two of our White Squadron

to the Turkish waters with a demand for the instant payment of our delayed claims. The presence of the American flag to enforce a just and reasonable American claim, by methods to which no European Power can take exception, for they are methods familiar and recognized by international law, would give substantial aid to the oppressed Cretans and the struggling Greeks. And it would probably

secure the prompt payment of our demand and a better protection of our citizens on Turkish soil in the future. Why not?

The Real Standard

If, a century ago, a Puritan preacher in a New England pulpit had referred, in a catalogue of heresies, to Arianism, Socinianism, Pelagianism, Antinomianism, and Arminianism, a majority of his adult hearers would have known fairly well what he was talking about. It is very doubtful whether as much could be said for a majority of adult hearers in any Puritan church in New England to-day. If, a hundred years ago, the preacher had asked his hearer, What is the doctrine of the Trinity? and Why are you a Trinitarian? he would have probably received a prompt and tolerably definite reply. If he were to ask the same question of a hearer today, the reply would certainly not be so prompt and probably not so definite. The same thing may be safely said of questions as to Inspiration, Atonement, and other important doctrines in theological science. It is true that the answer of a hundred years ago might have been inaccurate. The catechised might have given a definition of Arianism which the Arian would repudiate. He might have said that the doctrine of the Trinity is that there are three persons in one God, and have cited as a proof-text, "There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one," and not have known that the word " person in the creed means something very different from the word "person" in common conversation, and that the cited proof-text does not belong in the Bible. He might, and very probably would, have been wrong; but he would not have been vague.

Unquestionably theological definitions have changed and are changing. The words God, Immortality, Revelation, Trinity, Atonement, do not convey the same ideas in 1897 which they conveyed in 1797; and, perhaps not infrequently, they convey indefinite ideas or even none at all. Our enlarged conception of the universe has made a localized conception of the Deity more difficult, not to say impossible; a better understanding of the processes of nature and of life has dissociated immortality from the resurrection of the body; the study of comparative religions, coupled with modern Biblical criticism and scientific ethics, has supplanted the conception of revelation as an extraordinary meteor by a conception of it as the gradual dawning of God upon the consciousness of an elect people; the Tritheism which worshiped three Gods equal in power, wisdom, and holiness is disappearing, and a new definition of Trinity has hardly yet taken the vacated place; men are no longer able to believe that God's forgiveness had to be parchased by the blood of a victim, though more than ever they perceive the vicarious suffering of the innocent for the guilty. Whatever the future may have in store, these changes are not, at present, so much from old to new definitions as from the clear definitions of a satisfied intellect to the vaguer expressions of a feeling never to be satisfied. Indeed, a school has grown up, known abroad, from its most distinguished representative, as Ritschlianism, but participated in by thousands who never heard of Ritschl, which disavows definition altogether, and des'res to substitute for it feeling. These regard definitions, not as a trellis on which the vine climbs, but as bands which forbid its growth.

It is not strange that this change should be regarded with apprehension, if not with dismay, not only by those who confound theology with religion, but also by those who think that life is dependent on theology. But those who regard religion as a divine life, and theology only as a human science of that life, will not be in despair because theology changes. They will be more apt to see in such changes the evidence that the divine life is too great and too divine to be kept within the ancient definitions. They will

rejoice in this demonstration that religion is a living power.

For the standard by which theological doctrine is to be measured is always the standard of life.

Are the old definitions disappearing because the life is shriveling, or because the life is expanding? To this question we can give but one answer. To us it is clear that the modern conception of God is larger; of Immortality less sensuous; of Revelation more world-wide and more vital; of Trinity more consonant with the supreme fact of eternal unity in the universe; of Atonement more full of ethical inspiration, than were the older views which are being supplanted. It is for these reasons that the old definitions are falling off-that they may give room for the larger life which, if they remained, they would impede and deaden. Those who believe thus will fear nothing from the decadence of the old, but rather will rejoice in it.

For creeds and definitions are only the expressions of life, and he who would know whether theology is gaining or losing in power must examine the life itself to see whether it is less or greater than it was. This examination may well inspire us with hope. Is the question of Immortality? We ask ourselves, not whether the belief in a general resurrection of the body is as clear as it was a hundred years ago, nor whether the vision of a heavenly city or Elysian fields or celestial choirs is as clearly seen and literally accepted, but whether, under the inspiration of what is at once a larger and a vaguer hope, more men have “a right to the tree of life "--that is, so live as to justify the possession of immortality. Is the question of the divinity of Christ? We ask ourselves, not, Can the Christian give a clearer definition of that divinity than his ancestors could do? but, Does the Church to-day entertain a thought of God more consonant with the belief that Jesus Christ is the supreme manifestation of the divine justice and the divine love than when Jonathan Edwards preached his sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"? question of Atonement? We ask ourselves, not, Can the congregations of to-day pass a better examination on the nature of sacrifice for sin than the congregations of the eighteenth century? but, Is there

Is the

less or more of the spirit of self-sacrifice in the Church to-day, with its thousands of missionaries, home and foreign, than in that epoch when not a single missionary society had been organized, and probably not a single missionary sent out, by any Puritan church?

For ourselves, we cannot doubt that very radical changes have taken place and are taking place in the theology of the Church of Christ. Old definitions are in some cases being modified; in others, abandoned for new definitions; in still others, abandoned without a substitute yet found to take the vacant place. The theological positivism of the past is giving place to a spiritual vagueness in the present, which is sometimes as much too vague as the former was too defined. But neither can we doubt that, on the whole, these changes are the evidence of a life and growth which cannot be restrained; that if the definitions of the Church are less clear, its faith is more vital; that if it cannot, and does not even endeavor to, define Christ as scientifically, it follows him more truly in thought and life; that never before, despite all its faults, was there as much Christ-life in Christ's Church as there is to-day.

But, whether this is true or not, it is certainly true that by its divine life, not by its human creeds, the Church and the epoch are to be measured.

Forward, Not Backward

A thorough workman completely fin

ishes what he has in hand before he leaves it, and then is done with it forever. It is true that the greatest artists sometimes keep work by them for many years, touching it from time to time, because a work of art sometimes grows in the thought of the art'st after it has been begun, and the enlarged vision which comes with the mere exercise of the hand compels a larger treatment. With action, however, this is impossible. deed is done, it has gone beyond the power of the doer just as the picture which has been removed from the studio and has gone to the home of the purchaser no longer belongs to the artist. Strength of character is evidenced, among other things, by the completeness with

When a

which a man detaches himself from his deed when he has finished it, or his decision when he has reached it. This does not mean that he separates himself from its consequences-that is beyond his power; but it does mean that he ceases to go over the ground which he has traversed, to ask the questions which have perplexed him, to brood over the problem which has preceded his action. When the deed is done, he leaves it behind him; he is not continually going back to question whether he could have done otherwise-whether his action was wise or unwise. He recognizes the fact that, whatever its character may have been, it has passed beyond his control, and he has now to confront the new question, to solve the fresh problem, to make the present decision. Nothing is so useless as this constant reopening of old decisions to which some people are given. It takes from the present the strength which is needed for new questions, and wastes it upon the things that are already settled beyond the possibility of being reopened. It is well to reflect on what we have done yesterday, and to get from it new wisdom for tomorrow; but it is useless to spend to-day in asking idle questions about the decisions of yesterday.

Editorial Notes

Those who desire information on the subject of equal rights from the standpoint of the suffra

gists, instead of addressing Mrs. Helen G. Ecob,

as The Outlook suggested in its issue for April 10, should apply at the headquarters in Boston. Samples of forty different leaflets are sent for ten cents. Address Leaflet Department, Woman's Journal Office, Boston, Mass.

The next issue of The Outlook will contain the second paper in Ian Maclaren's "American Impressions." The particular subject of this article is "Good Manners." In this respect the author of the "Bonnie Brier-Bush" was most favorably impressed by the men and women whom he met in America, and he talks in an ex

tremely pleasant and entertaining way of Ameri

officials, and business men, making some acute can editors, university men, club men, political comparisons and contrasts between social conditions in England and in the United States. The article is discriminating as well as complimentary. It will be followed at early dates by two other articles on the same general subject.

When the Spectator allows himself to covet any one's gift, he longs for that of the "psychometrist." The psychometrist, it may be permitted to remind the non-occult reader, is one of those modern seers who can, by touching an article with their fingers or placing it against their forehead, get an "impression"-a "veridical impression," the Society for Psychical Research would say-of the history of the object. Thus Robert Browning tells of a psychometrist who, on touching one of the poet's fingerrings, ejaculated, "I see murder when I touch this gem." The ring had indeed come to Mr. Browning from an ances tor who had been foully dealt with. But pleasant as well as painful pictures are said to be seen by the psychometrist. With his power of reconstructing the past from the suggestions imparted by the "aura" of any object, he can in a new sense see "sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks." To take up a curio and see in imagination the far-away land and the alien people that produced it would be a highly satisfactory substitute for the stereopticon

Typesetting by Machinery

traveler, clerk, and cash-girl, the cotton-gin, freight train, and factory full of whirring machinery-the panorama would be as fascinating as a glimpse of fairyland. Or, to take a still easier instance, if one could press

lecture and the book of travels, and would be an invaluable stimulus to the jaded fancy. But the gift would be equally pleasant in tracing the history of articles of more common use and interest, which we are wont to accept as a matter of course, but all of which have entertaining stories in them. If one could take up a spool of thread, for instance, and by pressing it to the forehead see the various people and processes associated with its progress from the cotton-field to the user-the black men and white, the field-hand and factory operative, merchant prince, commercial

to his temples this copy of The Outlook, while reading these words, and see the complex processes which have conspired to bring the paper to his hands, would he not find its perusal afterwards even more interesting than before-if that were possible, the Spectator will add, to do justice to his friends the editors!

The Spectator, while not occult claiming to possess powers, is inclined to turn psychometrist for a half-hour and show his readers a few of these hidden pictures which the pages of The Outlook conceal. He would like to show them first the great paper-mill near the banks of the Hudson, with its elaborate machinery which works the marvelous change by which the treasures new and old of the housewife's rag-bag are transformed into the great spotless, glistening sheets of "120-pound paper," which is the colloquial term for the sheet on which these words happen to be printed --meaning that a ream of the will paper weigh 120 pounds. But the more familiar pictures to the Spectator are those which are seen nearer home-the image of our old friend the typesetter, for example. The march of modern improvement has of late years pushed the old-fashioned typesetter pretty hard, what with the machines which do away with movable types by casting a complete line at once, and other machines that set and distribute the separate types far faster than can the deftest fingers of man or woman. But here and there, for various reasons, the oldtime methods

of hand work Cutting Overlays for The Outlook

are still adhered to, and we can see the lineal descendant of Gutenberg at work at his case in the good old way that has given the world its masterpieces of printing.

His

in our days as formerly. He is dropping out. place is not filled in the Spectator's heart by the smart young fellows, the operators on the linotypes, even though they set three or four times as much type in a day. The Spectator is glad that the old printer and the old ways have not been altogether crowded. out of The Outlook's composing-room, where the manuscript copy is put into type by hand as the initial process in getting The Outlook to

The Spectator wonders how many of his readers know what a complex process of small details is that which results in this printed page. Each letter has been lifted by a human finger; the type has been "proved " in long columns on a "galley;" the proof has then been corrected by proof-reader and editor, and perhaps contributor; these corrections have been made in the type, and then the columns have been made up into pages, and the type again handled in running around the pictures, if there are any, the cuts themselves having been made by the aid