so to speak, of half a dozen faiths; they read the text-books of all the arts, and end by losing whatever capacity for pleasure in beauty they had when they became "globetrotters" in the galleries, museums, and studios; they hear lectures on philosophy, and get a smattering of the dialect of thought without learning how to think; they join a hundred charities, and never give themselves; they are eager for all the reforms, but have no time to give real support to any of them. They accept everything that comes their way; they reject nothing; and life in their hands takes on neither unity nor beauty. respond to every call, and no sooner start in one direction than they are diverted into another path, and never reach the end of any road.

CHILDREN OF GOD

They

They could not have thought that they were God's children because they were his favored ones, for this sentence stands in the midst of a chapter vehement in its denunciation of their iniquity. The third text is taken from Paul's address on Mars Hill. He is speaking to pagans-Greeks who had never heard of Jehovah, who knew nothing of the Old Testament (the New Testament did not exist), who knew nothing of Christ, nothing of what we regard as the essential doctrines of Christianity, nothing of Christianity itself, nor anything of Judaism; and he quotes one of their own heathen poets to illustrate the truth. You pagans, he said, are God's offspring. Here we get the third application of the same great truth: First, those who are within the covenant of God, and have made the covenant with him, are God's children; second, those who have violated the covenant and sinned against God in every conceivable way-they are God's children; and, third, those who have never heard of him and are apparently ignorant of him, except as nature has taught them something, those who have lived wholly outside of what we call the pale of revelation-they are God's children.

Would you be good enough to give me in a few words your answer to the question, "Are we all children of God?" meaning both Christians and others. Are the children of God only those who accept Christ, and all others "outside this fold," or are unconverted persons simply like wayward children whom the Father is ready to receive at any time? I like to think we are all "His children and the sheep of his pasture," only some of us have left the road for a while, but will always get the help of his strong hand to help us out of the worldly mire when we will. B. F. C.

The Outlook's answer to this question is furnished by the following quotation from a sermon preached by Lyman Abbott in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, November 6, 1898:

Deuteronomy xiv., 1.-" Ye are the children of the Lord your God."

Jeremiah iii, 22.-" Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings." Acts xvii., 28.-". . . as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."

Each of these verses declares that men are God's children. The first declaration is made to the children of Israel. It is made by the prophet to them as though they had not yet been trusted and tested and tried. "Ye," he says, "are God's children." It might well have been apprehended by them as an indication that they were God's favored

ones.

It is the broad, general declaration that seems to run all through Scripture, that man is God's child. Not alone the intelligent man, the virtuous man, the Jew man or the Christian man, the converted man or the regenerate man-man is God's child. He is God's child before he has been tested, while yet he lies in the cradle; he is God's child when he has deliberately chosen the ways of wickedness and gone into them with his eyes wide open, knowing what he does; and he is God's child if he has never at mother's knee lisped, "Our Father which art in heaven."

You, apart from the rest of mankind, you he has chosen to be his household. The second declaration is made by the prophet after they have been tested and failed. You have sinned, the prophet says, you have forsaken the Lord your God, you have become idolaters, you have sinned against me in innumerable ways, and still you are my children. "Return, ye backsliding children."

The relationship between parent and child is a twofold relationship. It is a moral relationship, which involves, on the one hand, a certain duty of guidance and protection and education on the father's part; and, on the other hand, a certain duty of loyalty and service and obedience on the child's part. But this moral relationship, this duty of protection on the one hand and of obedience on the other, is really based on another and a deeper truth-that this father and this child, these parents and these children, belong to the same stock; the same blood flows in their veins; they have the same essential nature. These truths underlie the doctrine of Fatherhood as it is to be found in the Old Testa

ment and the New Testament. There is first the moral relationship; man owes duty toward God-a duty of obedience, of loyalty, of service; and (I say it reverently) God owes duty toward man-a duty of protection, of guidance, of just government,, of righteous dealing. That is what is meant by the declaration, over and over again, that God is a righteous God. That is, he fulfills all that a child-weak, infirm, and sinful—has a right to expect of his Father, and more. But this relationship depends upon the deeper truth that God and man are kin, that man is made in God's own image, that he is made like God, that he possesses the attributes and qualities of God, that he is in his inherent and essential nature divine. He may have overlaid that divinity, he may have done much to undermine and despoil it, but still he is of the same kin as the Father who created him, and out of this kinship grows the relationship of service on the one hand and of protection on the other, of obedience on the one hand and of righteous government on the other.

EDUCATION THAT EDUCATES

A correspondent, who has made a careful study of public school matters in the city of New York, sends us a copy of the semiannual report of the President of the Board of Education, Mr. Thomas W. Churchill, with the statement that it is one of the best reports which has appeared for a long time regarding the public schools of New York City. We have examined the report of President Churchill and have found in it a good deal that is both suggestive and commendable. But in its fundamental position it is antagonistic to the chief principle which we think should govern the Board of Education in all its activities. President Churchill assumes without argument that a non-expert Board of Education should "deal first-hand with education itself," and that it should be "clothed with full power in regard to courses of study." In this we think he is wholly wrong.

It is true that there is always danger that expert educators will make courses of education too academic, too dissociated from life. The disastrous results of this detached and highly theoretical plan of education are illustrated in a very human fashion by the article by Mr. Edward Bok, “Is the College Making Good?" which appears elsewhere in this issue. But the remedy is not to take the authority from experts and give it to non

experts. The real remedy is to select experts who will put their expert knowledge at the service of the public. What Dr. Draper did for the State, and what Dr. Finley has done for the city, shows that this is entirely practicable.

It is just as possible for a Board of Education in the city of New York to decide in favor of vocational education and to get an expert to organize it as it is for the Board of Trustees of Hampton Institute to do that for Hampton. To have a Board of Education attempt to organize a vocational system, defining it in detail, deciding just what trades. shall be taught and how they shall be taught, and leave it to be administered by experts who are not in sympathy with it, is to create a mongrel no-system.

We have stated before what we believe to be the real function of the Board of Education in New York City, and, for that matter, in every other municipality and village of the country. It should be the business of a Board of Education to administer the finances, to determine the kind of education which the public needs, and to select experts to organize and administer that system of education.

The President of a Board of Education who attempts to usurp the function of a Superintendent of Schools, or of a School Principal, will not only spoil that work but his own usefulness too. President Churchill, however, is quite right in saying that the scheme of high school education in this city, and, for that matter, in this State, needs reforming, if not a thorough reorganization. "We are not maintaining high schools," he says, for any abstract or imported doctrine, but for the training of boys and girls of older growth to those propensities of mind and body which will enrich the city with sane and efficient workers for its best interest."

Dr. Thomas J. Jones, of the United States Bureau of Education, took the same ground recently in a paper which he read at the Salt Lake meeting of the National Educational Association. Dr. Jones puts it in this way: "The high school teacher who would grasp the greatest opportunity now open to any person must realize that education is life, and that every activity in the high school must be an integral part of life."

The American public school should furnish an education which at every step shall be an education for life, not merely an education for the next grade, finally ending in a college.

J

-Jesus Christ, the faithful witress."-Revelation 1.5 ESUS CHRIST is often spoken of as though he were a philosopher, but he is not so spoken of in the New Testament. We recognize in common life the distinction between a witness and a philosopher. The witness comes to tell us something which he has seen and knows, which we have not seen and do not know; and whether we believe him or not depends partly upon the reasonableness of what he says, but chiefly upon his character and veracity. The distinction is recognized every day in our courts of justice. Witnesses are called upon the stand and tell what they have seen, and the judge draws certain conclusions from this testimony. The witness is not permitted to draw deductions from the facts, and if he attempts to do so the counsel stops him and says: "I do not want your theories, I want you to tell us what you know." But if the judge undertakes to tell the jury what are the facts, though there is no way to stop him, he clearly transgresses the restraints which the law puts upon him; he has no right to tell the jury what are the facts; he has only the right to tell the jury what are the principles by which they are to draw conclusions from those facts.

Mr. Darwin was both a witness-bearer and a philosopher. He made an extensive examination of certain phenomena of life. He had a very accurate observing faculty; he was very painstaking in his investigations; and, so far as I know, the facts to which he testifies are universally accepted by men of all schools. He is universally credited with being a careful and a veracious witness. But the deductions which he made are doubted in many quarters, both scientific and religious. We doubt whether his conclusions were correct--we do not call in question his veracity s a witness.

It

Now, Jesus Christ claims to speak to us as a witness. He does not come to us he the philosopher, saying, “I have observed certain phenomena of life, studied them carefully, and drawn certain conclusions from my observations." He draws no conclusions. would be almost impossible to find anything in the nature of a syllogism in all the teachings of Christ. He says, Verily, very. I say unto you." He comes to tell us the things that he has seen and known; not to tell his opinion; not to teach hypotheses: not to give his deductions. He comes as a witness, to tell us something about which we do not know, and he does know. And the simple question for us is," Is he a veracious witness? Did he know? Does he tell the truth?"

Father and mother and group of children are traveling across the prairie, and are caught in a pitiless snow-storm. They struggle a little while; the father makes a rude tent of the buffalo robes; they creep under it for shelter, and wait, wondering whether they wait for death or for rescue. And while they are there, and the death-bringing cold is creeping on them, they hear a cheery voice which calls out to them, "The village is only a mile away! Make your choice of the child that I shall take and carry to the village; I have come out from the village; I heard of you there, and have come to find you and rescue you; I can take but one at a time: give me the one, quick! and I will come back for the others." And the mother presses the child to her own arms, and gives him one long kiss, and then surrenders him to the stranger, and he bears the child away. He does not think, perhaps there is a village a mile or two away; he knows; he has come from it; and though he is a stranger, and though still her heart is full of anxious foreboding until she meets her child again, she

The burden of sorrow and the burden of care are nothing to the burden of remorse that burden that comes upon a soul that has sinned. What did Christ say to those who felt this burden of remorse? He was preaching one day to a houseful, and they broke open the roof and let in the paralytic, whose self-indulgent life had ruined the divine temple in which he dwelt. Christ saw through the disease to the sin that caused it, and, turning to him, said, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven." He was sitting at dinner one day, and talking to the group around him, and a woman of the town stood before him; and as she stood and listened, something he said fanned into a flame the dying ember of hope and purity in her soul; and the great tears gathered in her eyes and dropped, one by one, upon the naked feet outstretched before her; then she stooped and wiped the tears from off those feet with the long tresses of her hair, and then anointed them with ointment; and Christ turned to her, and said, "Daughter, thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee.'

These were the words of a witness; not the words of a philosopher-“I think there must be forgiveness with God;" not the

words of a poet-"If there is forgiveness with mother and with father, there must be forgiveness in the great heart above." They were words with the stamp of authority upon them; the words of One who knew what he was talking about; the words of a witnessbearer. These are the words I bring to you— these words of deepest comfort to those that bear the deepest burden of all, the burden of unpardoned sin. I believe in these words; I believe in the great Guide and Care-taker ; I believe in the immortal future toward which we and ours are being drawn; I believe in the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of the race-not because philosophers have taught it to us, though it seems to me to agree with life; not because poets have seen it in a vision, though I also have shared their vision at times; but because I believe that He who has come out of the bosom of God can declare him. He is a faithful and true witness. The comfort that saves men here and now from the scalding tears and the riven heart and the bowed back and the lacerated soul is a faith that accepts Jesus Christ as a faithful and true witness, and believes that he says those things which he has seen and testifies those things which he does know. And they that have that certitude and assurance born in their soul have become themselves in some sense witnesses, because the Father has entered into them, and immortality has been born in them, and the burden of sin has been lifted off from them. We go singing and with radiant faces because the witness that we have received we have trusted, and the life that is offered we have taken.

"T

HIS is a night in American history. It is a veritable Fourth of July for the young people of the Nation." That is what Mr. W. R. George, speaking at a meeting of young people in Ithaca, New York, called the 26th of June.

"Daddy" George, as he is familiarly known to hundreds of boys and girls, the founder and National Director of the Junior Republics, is starting in Ithaca a new plan for the practical training of American citi

zens.

This plan is known as the Junior Municipality.

The boys, and perhaps the girls also, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one are to become junior citizens, and are to elect from among themselves officials corresponding to the adult officials, from the Mayor down. The boy Mayor will place himself at the disposal of the adult Mayor, and will co-operate with him in the enforcement of laws and ordinances, more especially

those relating to boys and girls and matters directly affecting them. The boy Police Commissioner will in like manner co-operate with the adult Police Commissioner. and so on down the line. The boys' Common Council will sit from time to time, as guests and auditors, with the regular Common Council, and each adult Councilor will have a boy Councilor from his district upon whom he may call for assistance.

At the meeting of the Common Council at which Mr. George outlined his plan, and at which he was authorized to put it into effect, Mayor Reamer asked him to illustrate specifically just how the boys could be of service. This Mr. George did by taking up some of the matters which had just come before the Council. Some young vandals had overturned and defaced some tombstones in one of the cemeteries. The police had been unable to locate them. Mr. George said that undoubtedly some of the boys knew who had committed this outrage and would speedily bring them to book provided they felt any responsibility in the matter, as they would under the organization proposed. The question had been discussed as to whether the trains on a certain railway were unduly obstructing traffic at a certain point. No one had the requisite data to decide the question. A count must be made of the trains passing in a given time. There was no inspector to do the work. The Councilman of the district was appealed to, but he pleaded that he was too busy. Mr. George suggested that there were plenty of boys in the district who had plenty of time to count trains. The matter could be put up to them through their own Councilman and his boy colleague. In another case the question of whether a certain public job was being diligently pushed was discussed. Nobody knew. Here again there was no inspector and the Councilman of the district was too busy to look into the matter. Once more Mr. George pointed out that if certain boys of the district were selected and told how the work should be done they could find out in short order whether it was being so done.

On Thursday evening, June 26, at a massmeeting of boys and girls held in the Ithaca Court House, delegates were elected to prepare a Constitution to be submitted to a Constitutional Convention in the autumn, and a considerable number of representative boys

and girls signed the following "Petition for Independence:"

We, the undersigned, being the youth of Ithaca, New York, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, do respectfully call to the attention of our elders that, although not of age, we nevertheless feel we have reached the point where we could and should actively participate in the government of our city.

We regard as merely a legal fiction the assumption that we are infants in all matters relating to the government of the community.

We respectfully call attention to the fact that in time of war boys between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one are sent to the front to fight for their country, and are frequently as officers placed in positions of peculiar responsibility and danger. Is it not self-evident that if youths can thus honorably acquit themselves in time of war, they could and should assume the less dangerous and onerous responsibilities of peace?

We find in the annals of history that from time immemorial youths of our age have, when placed in positions of trust, acquitted themselves creditably. Before the age of twenty-one Alexander the Great was not only the ruler of Macedon, but the dominant power in all Greece; Charles James Fox became a member of the British Parliament before he was of age, and the younger Pitt became Prime Minister of Great Britain when he had scarcely passed his majority. In short, there is abundant evidence both in the past and the present that youth can and will rise to responsibility when it is placed upon them.

Such being the case, we do hereby resolve to accept the suggestion of William R. George, the founder of the Junior Republics, and the invita tions to adopt the same from Mayor Reamer and the Common Council, and organize ourselves into a Junior Municipality, in order that we may at once actively serve our city as junior citizens, and there by prepare ourselves for more efficient citizenship as adults.

We hereby pledge ourselves to assist in the enforcement of all the laws and ordinances of the city, particularly those directly relating to boys and girls and their interests.

We further pledge ourselves that when elected to any office in the Junior Municipality we will give our full and faithful co-operation to the adult official holding the corresponding office in the city government, and will discharge our duties solely with reference to the welfare of the whole city.

If given the duties and privileges of junior citizenship, in accordance with the plan for a Junior Municipality devised by our friend, William R. George, we pledge our sacred honor to strive to be worthy of the great trust placed upon us.

Already the neighboring city of Cortland has invited Mr. George to start a similar organization there. If the plan proves successful in these two small cities, there is no reason why it should not gradually be extended to all the small cities of the country. Mr. George also hopes to work out some modification of the plan for use in large cities.