But even if Mrs. Eddy's teachings do contain some absurdities, or apparent absurdities, yet the good church member who will divest himself of bigotry and of all preconceived opinions which he has been led to adopt without the same positive evidence that he would require as to other matters, and who will make a candid investigation of Mrs. Eddy's philosophy, will be compelled to admit that, after all, it contains fewer absurdities-less to insult the intelligence, and certainly far less to shock the feelings of a humane and justice-loving individual—than does the creed of any other denomination in existence.

In his article printed in the Fortnightly Review, called "The Dying of Death," Mr. Joseph Jacobs claims to have made a timely, if not an encouraging discovery; and, if the trend of civilized thought goes on as he says it is going on, Death will not only have died altogether, but be quite forgotten by the generations to come. Mr. Jacobs says:

"The Church in all its sections is devoting its attention more and more to this life than any other. Death is regarded no longer as a King of Terrors, but rather as a kindly nurse who puts us to bed when our day's work is done. The fear of death is being replaced by the joy of life. The flames of Hell are sinking low, and even Heaven has but poor attractions for the modern man. Full life here and now is the demand; what may come after is left to take care of itself. The hurry-scurry of modern life leaves no one time to meditate among the tombs. The increased number of interests lowers the intensity of any single one, and prevents us from being able to concentrate our attention on the subject, which, if it is to be thought about at all, makes a demand upon our whole thought. We have so much to think about we cannot think much about anything. The most significant of all, however, is the attitude of the Church in all its branches. The old idea of the clergyman was of the man who prepared us for another life. This is being gradually changed to a conception of him as a social regenerator."

This writer may be, and we think is, shrewdly right in his conjectures; but when he infers in another part of his article, that an indifference of death implies a decay of belief in existence after death, we feel prompted to offer a criticism. It certainly holds good that the many schools of metaphysical thought springing up in all quarters of the globe stimulate every known tendency to a belief in a future life. With some the faith amounts to a positive knowledge; there is no death for such. With others the belief is quickened to such a degree that there comes a glow upon the face, health in the veins, and a tone of mellowness in the voice. Mr. Jacobs' thoughts are purely inductive and spoken from the standpoint of reason wholly. The metaphysician might supplement his alleged discovery with many others equally significant.

Looking from the center of the circle outwardly, the assembling of the great Peace Conference at The Hague has a significance little dreamed of by the masses. That the Conference was called at all is a fact worth pondering upon. Would the event have been possible at any other period in history? Certainly not. The growth of ideas is the same as the growth of the plant-you can hurry neither. But, when the time comes for the word of action, it is gross and dangerous neglect to loiter and heed not the summons. In a very apt way has the London Review of Reviews presented the facts to its readers. Among other things it says:

Apart from the intrinsic usefulness of the work which is being done by the Peace Conference, there is one aspect of its proceedings which deserves special mention. Far more important than anything which men do, is the evidence which their deeds from time to time afford that there is behind them, and over them, and working through them, a Power that is mightier and wiser than they. The extraordinary manner in which the Conference has been led, by a way it knew not of, to evolve a High Court of Justice among the nations is calculated to confirm the faith of the doubting in the reality of the "stream of tendency not ourselves which makes for righteousness." . . . But the provisions for regulating war, or for rendering its sufferings less acute, are trivial compared with the measures taken to diminish the danger of the outbreak of war, and to provide for the administration of a system of international law. If twelve months ago any one had predicted that the representatives of all the Governments would be employed for two months in elaborating a court and Code for the universal establishment of a system of arbitration among nations, he would have been derided as the idlest of dreamers. But this strange thing is coming to pass before our eyes. And the strangest part of it all is that the very men who have been employed as instruments in the building of this temple of international justice did not know when they arrived at The Hague what task they were to be engaged in. The Master Builder, in His wisdom, did not unfold to His artificers the plan on which they were to build. They came imagining that they were to do one thing; they remained to do another. One of the most powerful of the potentates represented was known to be frankly opposed to the idea of arbitration; yet this composite, heterogeneous conglomerate of representatives from all nations near and far, moved as if by some constraining impulse, has done the very thing which the most sanguine optimists among us would have declared to be far beyond the reach of this generation.

In The Star of Hope, a paper published by the convicts in Sing Sing prison, has appeared an article signed "Clinton, 3,489," which is a plea to the public on behalf of the discharged criminal. Is there not a unique semblance of esotericism in a publication thus given to the public? We have heard much about prisons and prison reforms from

the world at large, but ought not a message which comes from the centre of a penal institution, and written by a convict at that, have a double weight of significance? Literally the world fights, writes, explores and reasons upon the circumference, and so we have a popular philosophy to steady our leanings. But here has come a convict who speaks a word for the criminal so-called who has just been released from prison. Bantlings in humanitarianism have put forth philanthropic pleas for the ex-convict, but shall we neglect to listen when the culprit himself tells us why the convict sins again to get sent back to prison? Even the cop (policeman) spots him, the business man shuns him, and the only gate left open is to steal again, for, we are informed, "the horror of prison life has gone; what little pride he ever had has been crushed, and he knows that good treatment is to be secured by good conduct." Are there not volumes in this?

Within a few years past the eye of intellectual research has been frequently turned towards India, with a greater or less success in determining the exact status of the Hindu mind. Dr. Fairbairn's recent article in the Contemporary Review, under the title of "Race and Religion in India," contains much in regard to the writer's late observations among the Hindu thinkers. He says:

The two things I most expected to find in India were serious difference in metaphysical ideas and considerable agreement in the critical methods of European scholars. But the exact opposite was the case; there was more agreement in metaphysics than in the methods of literary or in the results of historical criticism.

In regard to "the most characteristic and inexorable of all Hindu ideas," he says:

If we could conceive matter without its mechanical properties and could construe it as a sort of metaphysical entity, an infinite homogeneous mass, capable, without losing its identity, of throwing off atoms, or conscious centres of force, each of which should be incapable of destruction but capable of absorption into the mass whence it had come-we should have an approximate idea of ultimate being as the Hindu conceives it. But the peculiarity of his idea does not lie so much in what we may term its noumenal as in its phenomenal form: the conscious atoms that undergo ceaseless transformations according to a law which their own actions at once constitute and administer. For the extraordinary and characteristic note of the Hindu mind is that it conceives its absolute Being as realized in space and time under the form of an absolute and self-governing individualism. Brahma stands at the beginning of phenomenal or individual existence, the impersonal source of all personal being; and he stands also at the end, the impersonal bosom, as it were, which receives the depersonalized; but

what lies between is no concern of his, or rather of its, only of the detached or individuated atoms. Their acts are the providence which governs, and their successive states are the creations of their own wills. They issued into individual being without any choice of their own; but only by their own choice, or by repeated choices maintained through many forms of individual existence, can they return to impersonal existence in the source whence they came.

The year 1900 ushers in a New Cycle. From 1890 to 1900 marks the ending of a Great Cycle, at the close of which the sun passes into a new constellation in the zodiac. This occurs once in about 2160 years, and has always a great effect on the solar system. At such a time the planets are in conjunction, a position which always exerts a great influence over the earth. When last the sun entered a new constellation, according to the correct chronology, Jesus was born. Really the Christian Era began 160 years later than our reckoning; that is, what we call the year 160 of the Christian Era was really the initial year. According to Hindu chronology, when the sun, preceding the birth of Christ, entered a new constellation, Krishna was born. Some of the students of esoteric affairs insist that the year 1900 will find a new incarnation of the Logos, a new manifestation of God upon the earth, who will do as much for humanity as Jesus did in his day. Those who know, tell us that every 2160 years there is a new Buddha or Christ born, who arouses the world to a higher life, gives to the people the knowledge which for centuries has been confined to the few.

When a Cycle comes to an end there are always changes and convulsions in the spiritual atmosphere, in which the physical world sympathizes. When we have learned something of the cosmogony of the universe, of the independence of all parts, we can easily understand that there will necessarily be great physical disturbances when psychic changes are impending. Since spirit is the noumenon of which matter is the phenomenon, it follows that the first effect of the end of the Cycle is on the spiritual side of things, quickly followed by changes in the material world. The latter we can plainly see and feel; but they must be preceded by spiritual convulsion, since first what is above and next what is below; first what is within and next what is without.— The Light of the East.

Death does not annihilate Life, it does but shatter the shrine or tenement in which, for the time being, Life dwells. Life, liberated by Death, rejoins the Life-energy of the Universe, and is free to animate. new forms. Thus in the organic world is maintained the equipoise of Life and Death.-"Life's Mystery," by Wm. Wilsey Martin.

THROUGH NATURE TO GOD.

THROUGH NATURE TO GOD. By John Fiske. Boston and New York. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1899.

Prof. Fiske's volume is an attempt to "justify the ways of God to man." In his first essay, "The Mystery of Evil," this is especially apparent. The essay is supplementary to an earlier one on "The Idea of God," and its main argument is that evil is a necessity. He lays great stress upon these words in the mouth of Satan: "Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." We cannot have good without evil because consciousness is conditioned by it. Incessant changes make conscious life:

"It is only by virtue of endless procession of fleeting phases of consciousness that the human soul exists at all. It is thus that we are made. Why we should have been made thus is a question aiming so far beyond our ken that it is idle to ask it. .... It is an undeniable fact that we cannot know anything whatever except as contrasted with something else. The contrast may be bold and sharp, or it may dwindle into a slight discrimination, but it must be there. If the figures on your canvas are indistinguishable from the background, there is surely no picture to be seen. Some element of unlikeness, some germ of antagonism, some chance for discrimination, is essential to every act of knowing. I might have illustrated this point concretely without all the foregoing explanation, but I have aimed at paying the respect due to its vast importance. I have wished to show how the fact that we cannot know anything whatever except as contrasted with something else is a fact that is deeply rooted in the innermost structure of the human mind. It is not a superficial but a fundamental truth, that if there were no color but red it would be exactly the same thing as if there were no color at all. In a world of unqualified redness our state of mind with regard to color would be precisely like our state of mind in the present world with regard to the pressure of the atmosphere if we were always to stay in one place. We are always bearing up against the burden of this deep aerial ocean, nearly fifteen pounds upon every square inch of our bodies; but until we can get a chance to discriminate, as by climbing a mountain, we are quite unconscious of this heavy pressure. In the same way, if we knew but one color we should

know no color.

"We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness of which cannot be gainsaid. In a happy world there must be sorrow and pain, and in a moral world the knowledge of evil is indispensable. The stern necessity for this has been proved to inhere in the innermost constitution of the human soul. It is part and parcel of the universe. To him who is disposed to cavil at the world which God has in such wise created we may fairly put the question, whether the prospect of escape from its ills would ever induce him to put off this human consciousness and accept in exchange some form of existence unknown and inconceivable. The alternative is clear; on the one hand a world with sin