love; had little, if any, notion of personal guilt; and scornfully declined humiliation as the worst of stains. He possessed no faith in God, no knowledge of how obedience is quickened by love. He had no hope of personal immortality, but at the best only a mournful aspiration toward it; no assurance that all things work together for good to them that love God; no dawn of confidence in the celestial bliss of a life to come. He could only defy fate, blind his mental vision, steel his heart against all consequences, and, leaping into Stygian darkness, hope to find refuge from misery in annihilation.

Epicurus, who taught that pleasure is the end of action, exhorted people "to weigh carefully whether they would prefer death to come to them, or would themselves go to death.” Lucretius, the illustrious poet, Cassius, the tyrannicide, Atticus, the friend of Cicero, the voluptuary Petronius, and the philosopher Diodorus, among his disciples, decided to "go to death.” Their view of creation was that of the bitter, atheistic Hæckel, who pessimistically declares that, instead of "that kindly and peaceful life which the goodness of the Creator ought to have prepared for his creatures, we rather find—if there be a Creatoreverywhere a pitiless, most embittered struggle of all against all. Nowhere in nature, no matter where we turn our eyes, does that idyllic peace exist of which poets sing. We find everywhere a struggle and a real striving to annihilate neighbors and competitors. Passion and selfishness, conscious or unconscious, are everywhere the motive power of life."*

The suicide, endowed with power of "thought and design, a faculty to distinguish the nature of actions, to discern the difference between moral good and evil," is, like the Stoic, without God and "without hope in the world." Eighteen centuries have passed since Seneca died. Fresh light from God's word has broken upon the darkness of this world. Yet men love darkness rather than light "because their deeds are evil." In the gospel radiance of the nineteenth century multitudes are discussing the question, as stated by Paley in his Moral and Political Philosophy, "May every man who chooses to destroy his life, innocently do so"-particularly if he should leave none to lament his death? The only answer from the view-point of Christian ethics is a most emphatic negative. If no positive biblical precept prohibit suicide the whole spirit and tenor of the Bible forbid it. General choice of death by those who groan and sweat

*History of Creation, vol. 1, p. 20.

under the burdens of a weary life would be wholesale robbery of our heavenly Father, gross injustice to society by the abstraction of useful and important forces, and unjust affliction to many families. It would mean the forfeiting of all opportunity to ameliorate one's condition in the present or future state, and would load the memory of the self-murdered with the disgrace of deserting duty, defrauding just creditors, and atheistically defying the Lord God omnipotent.

Such criticisms are natural, not only to Christian, but also to heathen, men. The best and wisest of the old philosophers are at one with Christian thinkers on this point. Pythagoras and Plato condemned it on the ground that we are all soldiers of God, stationed at appointed posts of duty, which it is rebellion against our Maker to desert. Aristotle and the Greek legislators placed the wrong of suicide in the abandonment of duty to the State, to which our services are owing. Plutarch and other writers argued that true courage is shown in the manly endurance of suffering, and that suicide, being an act of flight, is an act of cowardice and, therefore, unworthy of man. The Neoplatonists mystically said that it springs from perturbation of the soul and is, therefore, a crime. "The law of England," writes Blackstone, "wisely and religiously considers that no man hath a power to destroy life but by commission from God, the Author of it, and, as the suicide is guilty of a double offense-one spiritual, in invading the prerogative of the Almighty," the other against the temporal power, which has an interest in the preservation of all its subjects-the law has ranked this among the highest crimes, making it a felony committed on one's own person.

therefore

The original right of the Almighty to all we have and are and can do is absolute and unqualified. Reverently we say it, that this right is doubled by redemption. "Know ye not that... are not your own? For ye are bought with a price glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." "None of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living." This latter fact invests each human life with an unspeakable sanctity. It should be honored and reverenced as being peculiarly the Lord's. To perform all the duties allotted to us therein requires every moment of the time at command, and none can guiltlessly refuse obe

dience. Perfectness of moral nature is attainable only through suffering. Only thus did Regulus embody the ideal of a Roman citizen, and Job that of a patriarchal saint. Suffering, as Madame de Staël has beautifully shown, softens, purifies, and deepens the character. Habitual and submissive resignation, accompanied by zealous activity, is not only the highest duty, but is also a means of purest consolation, and at the same time the appointed condition of moral betterment. The Captain of our salvation was made "perfect through sufferings." Suicide implies rebellion against God, is a sin that does not admit of repentance, and is, therefore, an unpardonable crime. For this reason the early Christians, who, in passionate frenzy for martyrdom, sacrificed their own lives, had no hope except in what Roman Catholicism styles "the uncovenanted mercies of God." St. Augustine decidedly condemned suicide in any form or for any reason, and especially such as was practiced by the Circumcelliones in the fourth century. These killed themselves in great numbers, imagining that thereby they would secure eternal salvation. Neither Augustine nor the Church of his time, however, denounced the slow suicide committed by the early ascetics through their absurd austerities. In the mediaval era the criminality of suicide was discussed by Abelard and St. Thomas Aquinas; and Dante devoted some telling lines to a description of the experiences of suicidal homicides in the inferno. The Council of Arles, in the fifth century, pronounced suicide to be at the instigation of the devil. Another council, in the following century, ordained that no religious rites should be performed at the tomb of the culprit, and that no masses should be said for the repose of his soul. St. Louis added to this deterrent legislation by confiscating the property of the dead man. In some countries the corpse of the suicide was dragged upon a hurdle through the streets, hung up with the head downward, thrown into the public sewer, burnt, buried in the sand below high-water mark, or interred-as in England-at the crossing of two roads, and transfixed by a stake driven through it. The result was a reaction against suicidal tendencies. Diseased imaginations were kept from self-destruction by these hideously grotesque outrages upon the senseless remains. The certainty that religious, legislative, and social influences would aggravate the agony of surviving relatives operated with even greater force, and the number of suicides greatly diminished. The statutes confiscating the property of the deliberate selfhomicide to the crown still disgrace the code of English law; but

public opinion "and the charitable perjury of juries," as Lecky * remarks, "render them inoperative."

What, in view of existing phenomena, is the duty of the Christian Church and ministry? Religious motives, as we have seen, are the most potent dissuasives from this sorrowful crime. Revealed religion powerfully presents four doctrines which ought to be clearly, impressively, and persistently enforced in every church, Sunday school-day school, if possible-aud home within the American republic. These are the government of God, the responsibility of the individual, the immortality of the soul, and the certainty of future reward and punishment. The latter, according to Herbert Spencer, is absolutely necessary to the accommodation of man to his environment. An infinitely higher authority than he impliedly makes the same statement. The duty of unselfish consecration to the service of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the race he died and lives to save, should be pressed with weightiest emphasis. Faith in the overruling providence of God, as simple duty and as the means whereby the heart and mind are kept in perfect peace, should be matter of constant inculcation. A correlative duty is that of resignation to the divine will-resignation not like the apathy of fatalism, but involving the active and passive spirit of the prayer, "Thy will be done." Faith, spirit, lives akin to, but higher than, those recorded so glowingly in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews are the first moral needs of the nineteenth century.

With us no melancholy void,
No moment lingers unemployed,

Or unimproved, below;

Our weariness of life is gone,

Who live to serve our God alone,

And only thee to know.

GOVERNMENT BY REPRESENTATION ONLY.

THE Challenge of our representative system by the so-called industrial armies is probably a passing incident of our public life. Though it is far from being a solitary thing in its kind, it is probably the most striking example of American revolt from government by the majority as determined by elections. It is striking, because we held elections in 1892 upon defined issues, and chose representatives having definite orders from the people. If the mandates are not executed the complaints should come

*History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 59.

from the majorities who elected a Congress. In fact, the complaints come from the defeated, from minorities; and the industrials represent largely ideas which had no place or only a small place in the canvass for votes. The industrial (?) armies represent a revolting minority, and they are a significant indication of a change in American temper; for there is undoubtedly a considerable development of sympathy with the extraordinary proceedings of the Coxeys, Randalls, and Kellys. In short, dissatisfaction with representative government is a large element in the making of current history. An easy test is this: Would not a very large majority of us hail with joy the news that neither Congress nor a State Legislature could meet for ten years to come? We have come to fear more than we hope when a legislative body convenes. Most of us desire some new legislation; but we would forego that for peace and security. We could endure present laws; we fear the effects of changes in the law.

This crisis has long been coming on. It has grown more definite because the perfected work of the political class has taken from the enlightened people and given to the ignorant and the debased an effectual control of elections, to such a degree that a senator or a representative often represents only a "gang" or a " combine," managed by a rich, unscrupulous man. Besides, politicians have audaciously undertaken every two years, for a decade past, to revolutionize the fiscal and commercial policy of the nation, and so to subvert the basis of business security. All business proceeds upon an assumption that to-morrow and next year will be as to-day and this year, so far as legislation can enter into calculations involving time as a factor.

It is plain that, if such conditions continue to surround government by representation, and if these conditions, as is probable, grow more influential-wealthy combinations, ignorant or purchased voters, and interested voting becoming the most potent factors in law making-then our confidence in representative government must decline more and more.

The system assumes a majority and a minority party. But we are threatened with a break-up into a half dozen or more parties. And if there be only three, and the third assume a certain importance, legislation may be controlled by the smallest of the three parties-by a small minority. This situation is actually existent in England and in the United States. In both countries third parties hold in a measure a balance of power. Government by a majority is not free from ethical difficulties; and the only