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is altogether likely that not a few readers, in examining the upper group of thermometers, will be surprised at the relative positions occupied by the denominations making the largest five contributions.

The greater eight of these fourteen denominations, having each over a halfmillion members, are: (1) Methodist, North, 2,240,354;1 (2) Baptist, South, 1,280,066; (3) Methodist, South, 1,209,976; (4) Baptist, North, 800,025; (5) Presbyterian, North, 788,224; (6) Disciples of Christ, 641,051; (7) Protestant Episcopal, 532,054; (8) Congregational, 512,771. The smallest of the fourteen denominations is the Free Baptist, 87,898, which takes its corresponding place at the foot of the list.2

Proportionate Denominational Contribution. The lower group of thermometers ranks the fourteen denominations according to their contribution as measured by the valuation of church property. It is fair to presume that each denomination has provided itself with church property approximately proportioned to its wealth. Now, if the mission spirit which seeks to aid others were equally adjusted in all denominations to the self-spirit which provides the church home, then each $100 of church property would represent just as large a mission contribution in one denomination as in another, and there would be no such thing as rank.

The property-contribution thermometers show, however, a considerable variation in this respect, and at the same time prove how easily and widely mere totals may mislead. For example, the Cumberland Presbyterians, who rank ninth in total contributions, take second place when measured by the "as ye are prospered" test. The Reformed in the United

These figures are from the report of the Eleventh Census (1890), because they best represent the average membership for the ten years (1885-1894) included in the period presented in the exhibit.

2 It would have been interesting to have included the Salvation Army, but its official record of contributions dates back to 1891 only, beginning at $353,859, while its average during the panic years, 1893-1896, is $590,571, although the census gives its 1890 membership at less than nine thousand. The United Brethren in Christ would from its quadrennial reports seem to be entitled to a record of about $100,000 as its average annual contribution.

As examples of missionary contributions made to organizations having no church membership, the report of the American S. S. Union shows an annual average of $102,347: the American Tract Society, $87,795; and the Baptist City Mission of New York. $39,367. Incomplete reports seem to indicate credit to the American Bible Society of a yearly average of about $200,000, and the International Missionary Alliance of about $75,000, during the ten years under review.

States take fourth rank instead of tenth, while Presbyterians, South, move up from eleventh place to fifth. The Methodist, South, and Baptist, South only, hold the same place in each comparison.

Another interesting relation shown by the property thermometers is discovered by considering that each denomination has provided itself with a permanent church property, on which it pays an annual dividend to the cause of mi sions. The Congregationalists, for example, lead with a missionary dividend of nearly seven per cent. (6 per cent.) on their church property, while the Disciples of Christ provide a dividend of only a little over one per cent,

Another interesting feature incident to this exhibit is that the two thermometers for each denomination show how nearly each church member represents $100 of church property. In the Presby. terian Church, North, each member represents almost exactly one hundred dollars of church property, there being a differ ence of only nine cents in the respective contributions, as is readily seen by looking at their two thermometers. In the Protestant Episcopal Church each member represents $152 of church property, over ten times as much as in the case of the Baptists, South.

These comparisons ought to furnish encouragement. Coupled with the "per capita" and "per wealth" studies, they should give strong foundation for a steady faith in the attitude of the people of the United States toward missionary work. As a crystallization of the results of the investigation of growth, the following comparison will be helpful. From 1860 to 1890 valuations increased:

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I

By Hamilton W. Mabie

and changes of form, one of the most subtle, obscure, and hidden, because it is one of the most spiritual. It is idle, therefore, to dogmatize about the appearance and disappearance of the different forms which literary expression wears from time to time.

The essay, which has been decently and sorrowfully interred from time to time by critics of more or less distinction, is not only still written, but shows an unusual vitality at this particular time. has a good pedigree, for its practitioners have been men of the highest intellectual distinction

T has often been said that the essay, as a form of literary art, as extinct as the mastodon or the dodo; but the essay continues to be written and read in the face of these pessimistic deductions. The attempt to deal with literature from day to day, from what may be called the journalistic point of view, is foredoomed to failure by the very conditions of the art upon which judgment is so jauntily and confidently pronounced. Literature, like democracy, civilization, and religion, is an activity of the human spirit too vast, too obscure, and too profoundly vital to disclose at any moment, or to any person, the full sweep of its stream or the deeper currents which flow through it. If a period of great poetic activity is followed by a period of comparative barrenness, the cry at once goes forth that poetry has had its day and henceforth prose is to be the universal speech. This quick and easy judgment is as irrational as the opinion of the untaught observer who should mistake the annual subsidence of the Mississippi for a permanent diminution of its volume.

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men who have had the feeling for form very keenly developed, but who have had also thought, observation, humor, and wit of a highly individual quality. Distinction has been, in some form, the note of the great essayists. Such names as Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Addison, Steele, Goldsmith, Carlyle, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb, Arnold, Emerson, Lowell, suggest gifts of many different kinds, but of a very distinct quality. The American mind has, perhaps, natural affinities with the essay; it is keen in observation, it loves humor, it rejoices in quaint or delicate characterization, and it is not averse to a vein of philosophy. The essay is, as a rule, comparatively short, not for lack of material, but for effectiveness; it seeks clearness, definiteness, or charm by rejection as well as by inclusion. At its best it is not only ful of human interest, but it is also full of thought. Carlyle's essays have had as deep an influence as

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

In journalism events are registered and judged from day to day; in literature we are fortunate if once in half a century a movement can be intelligently traced and finally interpreted. The shallow movements in human affairs are easily understood; the deep movements comprehensible only when they have left their impress on thought, art, and institutions. Of these deeper activities the art of writing real books is, in its impulses

are

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any body of philosophy which our time has produced; because there was a philosophy behind them. Emerson sets the imagination at work as successfully in twenty pages as if he had filled a volume. The brevity of the essay is not a sign of weakness or weariness; it is the result of a concentration which often packs material enough to make an octavo into the compass of a brief paper. Bacon's little chapters contain more of the results of profound observation and thought than most of those great quartos of which his time produced not a few.

In England the essay is written to-day with skill if not with genius; in France it shows that perfection of form which the French have attained as the result of infinite painstaking; in this country it discloses a strong, wholesome influence, the vitality of a genuine interest, and notable variety of skill, although with a good deal of inequality in the matter of workmanship. It is noticeable that American essays, as a rule, show a very close relation with the vital conditions of the country; our men of letters are keenly alive not so much to material as to spiritual conditions on the new continent. They strike a high note; they stand for the highest civilization.

Mr. Warner is, in this sense, one of the civilizing forces of the time; a man who is not confused by the noise of purely

WOODROW WILSON

material activities, who has a definite scale of spiritual values, and estimates the importance of products, results, achievements, and conditions with rare insight and soundness of judgment. In the confusion of social ideals which prevails in a new society, Mr. Warner's sanity of vision is of inestimable importance. He knows the best, and he is incapable of that kind of lying to which literary men are exposed in a democracy; he cannot commend a thing because it is popular. He cares too much for the higher life of the country to be otherwise than absolutely loyal to the highest standards of morals, manners, education, and political habit. A glance at the titles of the essays in his latest volume1 shows how deeply concerned he is to keep life in touch with literature by developing the sincerity, simplicity, integrity, and deep culture of the instincts and imagination which go to the making of literature. He has the spirit, the quiet temper, the easy, flexible style of a man who has known the best in life and art. He is a thoughtful observer, he has a delightful quality of humor, and his style is notably free from eccentricity and excess; it is sound, well balanced, and interesting.

Colonel Higginson is a writer of different quality and temper. The charming

Dudley Warner. Harper & Brothers, New York. $1.50. The Relation of Literature to Lite. By Charles

chapters of autobiography which he has contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" bring into clear light the ardent reforming spirit of his youth, and the literary influences which found him receptive but by no means imitative. The enthusiast who threw himself with such impetuosity into the fierce moral movement of his time was by no means lacking in the ability to judge for himself. Colonel Higginson had from the beginning a vein of chivalry, but he has never followed any standard blindly. There is in his work a touch of criticism which is always frank and sometimes sharp. He is

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son of their lucidity, their simplicity, their admirable and charming style. In "Book and Heart"1 Colonel Higginson shows the same trained skill, the same moral sagacity, the same refined touch. No literary man of his time has more loyally kept faith with his art and his readers.

Mr. Howells has disclosed of late years a steadily deepening experience, a growing power of sympathy with his kind, a deep and passionate yearning for those happier and holier vital conditions towards which society moves with such tragic slowness. Those who have read his recent verse have felt the anguish of spirit which sometimes oppresses him in the presence of the sorrows and burdens of men, and it is

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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

Colonel Higginson is an aggressive American when the national spirit or tradition is touched in any way; but he does not make the mistake of assuming that to be patriotic one must be blind. On the contrary, he has been one of the most incisive critics of national manners and habits which this generation has known; a man who identifies Americanism with independence of character, simplicity of life, and the courage of ideal ism, and who hates sham, pretension, vulgarity, snobbishness, and money-getting with a very wholesome and effective hatred. When the "Atlantic Essays" appeared years ago they affected many young men of literary tastes very deeply by rea

no secret that those who know him see in him a spirit of compassion and brotherliness of which it is not easy to speak in public ways. And yet the lightness of

touch, the

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quickness of observation, the charming humor, which long ago won Mr. Howells his audience, still remain. an essayist he is interested chiefly in people and their surroundings. Abstract subjects have no charm for him; it is of "Impressions and Experiences" 2 that he writes. The streets, the parks, the hotel, the East Side, the police courts, command his attention because they are so rich in human interest. How much he sees in places which seem so barren to the untrained eye! How

1 Book and Heart. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Harper & Brothers, New York. $1.50.

Impressions and Experiences. By W. D. Howells. Harper & Brothers, New York, $1.50.

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