all that travel from east to west and north to south will disqualify us to return to what prima facie does appear to be, not indeed the religion of the majority of mankind, but the religion of the best, so far as we can judge in past history, and despite of professed infidelity of the most enlightened of our own time." As the deliberate opinion of one who had earlier cut adrift from the greatest of his country's universities because of his inability conscientiously to retain his post on account of what is now considered to be a rather open Trinitarian religious test, and whose investigations had subsequently been conducted with unusual freedom, this sentence, among some others in the "Fragment," is worth remembering.

The materials for a detailed and explicit study of Clough's spiritual evolution have not been given us—it is perhaps impossible that they safely can be given us in the case of more than one in many thousand souls;' but the writer ventures to believe that, on the whole, the attitude of Clough's maturer mind is a reason for encouragement rather than for dismay, by reason of the very discursiveness and freedom of his wanderings; and that to those of us who are struggling, however feebly, to insist upon those real and inescapable evidences of Christianity which survive all the attempts of modern science to invalidate them, and of criticism to explain them away, there is a message in those lines of his which have been so often quotedand by none more frequently than by those whose aims differ antipodally from our own:

"Others, we doubt not, if not we,

The issue of our toils shall see :
Young children gather as their own
The harvest that the dead have sown,

The dead forgotten and unknown."

The writer desires, however, not to be misunderstood. That haze of uncertainty in which Clough was content to leave the origin of Christianity which he sums up in the words "Whether Christ died upon the cross or not, I cannot tell," and which meets us in the opening paragraph of his "Fragment" where he is treating of the genuineness of the Gospels, forbids his classification even with the more conservative of the school of Unitarians, unless we regard such utterances as-what indeed

they seem to be-less the expression of the position of his own mind than a warning against the credulity of that dogmatic temper which accepts whatever it pleases to believe without examination. And while the extract from a letter written soon after he left Oxford, and published in her memoir by Mrs. Clough, is a sufficient evidence of his attitude towards subscription to the articles-or to any Christian creed-in 1848, it does not prove-what is elsewhere, it seems to the writer, disproved by many passages in his later writings, as well as apparently by the judgment of his wife-that the attitude of mind in which he left Oriel was the one in which he died at Florence. Concerning the whole tenor of this extract there is one remark to be made. It is obvious that the condition of mind which it displays is one incapable of being very widely indulged in without reducing to its primeval chaos much of the crystallized social, and ethical, and intellectual experience of the world. To stand off and declare one's self undecided with regard to the pivotal belief of the life and the central momentum of the actions of the ruling portion of mankind is a thing that may be safely done only so long as a majority of the race act upon the belief and yield their wills to the momentum. So long as the traditional and the personal and vital belief of a working majority of any nation can be depended on as a police-force for the regulation of that nation's conduct, and so long as the belief in a self-revealing God can be postulated for the inspiration of its nobler energies, it will continue to be a matter of minor practical importance whether or not a gifted mind shall here and there declare itself speculatively unable to coalesce; but should there ever come a time when the scales between the numbers who maintain and the numbers who oppose a Christian conception of human society are standing even, the attitude of mind which this extract reveals to us will become a dangerous thing. The soul that can now so safely hesitate will then be forced to give in its adhesion to the one side, and so help to weigh down the opposing party in the interest of what the writer cannot but regard as the best destinies of the race; or he will be constrained to cast in his lot with the opposing view, and share in the responsibility for the consequences which history seems to show would follow upon its triumph. And

that this was in reality plain at times to Clough, as it was also plain at times to Mr. Matthew Arnold, there is evidence enough in his writings to make us sure; though the conscious efforts of both were directed rather to a conservation of the secondary influences of the Christian revelation than to its primary and fundamental truths, or their necessary implications.

WILLIAM HIGGS.

ARTICLE II.-MASTER AND SERVANT.

In the natural order of things all men occupy a two-fold relation to society which is most simply and fitly expressed by the two words master and servant. Mark, this is not saying that society is divided into two classes, the master class and the servant class. That is a wholly false notion when applied to American society. As a people we have never been so divided, and so long as we remain true to our national ideal we shall not be in the future. The truth is that each individual occupies this double position. We cannot properly say of one man

"He is a servant," and of another, "He is a master." Of any man we must rather say that he is in one case a master and in another a servant. Whoever fails to fulfil the duties of either relation, fails in that degree to fulfil the duties of a true citizen, and society has just cause to protest against his mode of life.

Thus, if I employ a man to care for my horse, he is a servant so far as the care of my horse is concerned, and I am the master. If he employs a boy to assist him in any way he becomes a master in his relation to the boy. He may even become my master under certain circumstances. If both of us were connected with the army, he being an officer and myself a subordinate, then in our military relations he would be the master and I the servant. Or if I am a railroad man, I become his servant whenever he rides on the railroad or train with which I am connected. In countless ways I may be his master and his servant at the same time without inconsistency or friction. The two relations are everywhere so closely interwoven that we cannot separate them by lines of division, although we may clearly distinguish the character and significance of each.

The relations of master and servant suggest at once the idea of service rendered and of payment made, or more briefly, of work and wages.

Between the two, the work and the wages, there is a natural balance which cannot be disregarded without doing violence to

the common principles of right and justice. To adjust this balance correctly is one of the most important elements in the social question of the present day. A lack of adjustment, either real or fancied, is the chief source of discord between different classes of society. In this connection two practical lines of duty present themselves to every man. As a servant, it is his duty to work. As a master, it is his duty to pay for work. Let us look at these points a little more in detail.

First, consider the relation of work and wages from our position as servants; remembering that all of us occupy this position unless we have become social barnacles or parasites. Looking at the subject from this standpoint, service must be the most prominent thought. The first duty of the servant is to serve or to work: and the fulfilment of this duty should be his chief care. Not that we always think of this. Quite the contrary. Too often the first and chief thought, yes in many cases the only thought of the servant is with reference to his wages. He cares very little how or when his work is done or whether it is done at all, so long as he receives regular and liberal payment. The ambition of many men is to discover some profession or to obtain some official position where there will be "no work to do and a large salary for doing it." They look upon society as a huge reservoir from which they are to draw out if possible all that they need or desire for a livelihood, and they never trouble their minds to enquire who shall fill the reservoir. Enough for them to know that it contains all they want and they care not though it be exhausted when they are done with it. It is this narrow and selfish view of life that has thrown the wheels of society out of gear, and nothing but a thorough change in the popular principles of action will restore the desired harmony.

We say that there is need of reform; but what shall the reform be? How shall it be brought about? As in all other matters so in this, each class or relation must accomplish the work of reform within its own limits, if that work is to be effectual and permanent. Instead of looking over the fence to discover some evidences of our neighbor's thriftless work, let us earnestly try to put everything in good order on our own side.