Revivals and Evangelists.

REVIVALS seem to have become a part of the established policy of nearly the whole Christian Church. The Catholics have their "Missions," the Episcopalians have their regular special seasons of religious devotion and effort, while the other forms of Protestantism look to revivals, occasionally appearing, as the times of general awakening and general in-gathering. Regular church life, family culture, Sunday-schools and even regular Mission work seem quite insufficient for aggressive purposes upon the world. We do not propose to question this policy, though the time will doubtless come, in the progress of Christianity, when it will be forgotten. We have only to say a word in regard to the association of evangelists with revivals, and the two principal modes of their operation. With one we have very little sympathy, with the other a great deal.

There is a class of evangelists who go from church to church, of whom most clergymen are afraid; and their fears are thoroughly well grounded. There arises, we will say, a strong religious interest in a church. Everything seems favorable to what is called "a revival." Some well-meaning member thinks that if Mr. Bedlow could only come and help the fatigued pastor, wonderful results would follow. The pastor does not wish to stand in the way-is suspicious that he has unworthy prejudices against Mr. Bedlow-tries to overcome them, and Mr. Bedlow appears. But Mr. Bedlow utterly ignores the condition of the church, and, instead of sensitively apprehending it and adapting himself to the line of influences already in progress, arrests everything by an attempt to start anew, and carry on operations by his own patent method. The first movement is to get the pastor and the pastor's wife and all the prominent members upon their knees, in a confession that they have been all wrongmiserably unfaithful to their duties and their trust. This is the first step, and, of course, it establishes Mr. Bedlow in the supreme position, which is precisely what he deems essential. The methods and controlling influences of the church are uprooted, and, for the time, Mr. Bedlow has everything his

own way.

Some are disgusted, some are disheartened, a great many are excited, and the good results, whatever they may seem to be, are ephemeral. There inevitably follows a reaction, and in a year the church acknowledges to itself that it is left in a worse condition than that in which Mr. Bedlow found it. The minister has been shaken from his poise, the church is dead, and, whatever happens, Mr. Bedlow, still going through his process elsewhere, will not be invited there again.

We will deny nothing to the motives of these itinerants. They seem to thrive personally and financially. They undoubtedly do good under peculiar circumstances, but, that they are dangerous men we do not question. If neighboring clergy

men, in a brotherly way, were to come to the help of one seriously overworked, and enter into his spirit and his method of labor, it would be a great deal better than to bring in a foreign power that will work by its own methods or not work at all,— that will rule or do nothing. If this magazine, or the writer of this article, has seemed to be against revivals, it and he have only been against revivals of this sort, got up and carried on by these men. We question very sincerely whether they have not done more harm to the Church than they have done good. That they have injured many churches very seriously there can be no question. The mere idea that the coming of Mr. Bedlow into a church will bring a revival which would be denied to a conscientious, devoted pastor and people, is enough, of itself, to shake the popular faith in Christianity and its divine and gracious founder. Even if it fails to do this, it may well shake the popular faith in the character of the revival and its results.

There is another class of evangelists who work in a very different way. It is very small at present, but it is destined to grow larger. It works, not inside of churches, but outside of them. It has a mission, not to the churches, but to the people who are outside of them. It works in public halls with no sectarian ideas to push, no party to build up, no special church to benefit. It aims at a popular

awakening, and, when it gains a man, it sends him to the church of his choice, to be educated in Christian living. To this class belong Messrs. Moody and Sankey, whose efforts we have approved from the first, because they have done their work in this way. That it is a better work than the other class of evangelists have ever done, we have the evidence on every hand. The churches are all quickened by it to go on with their own work in their own way. There is no usurpation of pastoral authority and influence. There is no interference with methods that have had a natural growth and development out of the individualities of the membership, and out of the individual circumstances of each church.

There is another good result which grows naturally out of the labors of this class of men. It brings all the churches together upon common ground. The Presbyterian, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Episcopalian, sit on the same platform, and, together, learn that, after all, the beginning and the essence of a Christian life and character are the same in every church. They learn toleration for one another. More than this: they learn friendliness and love for one another. They light their torches at a common fire, and kindle the flame upon their own separate altars in a common sympathy. They all feel that the evangelist has to do mainly with the beginnings of Christian life, and that it is their work to gather in and perfect those results which have only been initiated. Hence, all have an interest in that work and help it on with united heart and voice. more of this kind of evangelism we have, the better.

The

66

Keeping at It.

EVERY man has his own definition of happiness; but when men have risen above the mere sensualities of life,-above eating and drinking, and sleeping, and hearing and seeing,-they can come to something like an agreement upon a definition which, when formulated, would read something like this: Happiness consists in the harmonious, healthy, successful action of a man's powers." The higher these powers may be, and the higher the sphere in which they move, the higher the happiness. The genuine "fool's paradise" is ease. There are millions of men, hard at work, who are looking for their reward to immunity from work. They would be quite content to purchase twenty-five years of leisure with twenty-five years of the most slavish drudgery. Toward these years of leisure they constantly look with hope and expectation. Not unfrequently the leisure is won and entered upon; but it is always a disappointment. It never brings the happiness which was expected, and it often brings such a change of habits as to prove fatal, either to health or to life.

A man who inherits wealth may begin and worry through three-score years and ten without any very definite object. In driving, in foreign travel, in hunting and fishing, in club-houses and society, he may manage to pass away his time; but he will hardly be happy. It seems to be necessary to health that the powers of a man be trained upon some object, and steadily held there day after day, year after year, while vitality lasts. There may come a time in old age when the fund of vitality will have sunk so low that he can follow no consecutive labor without such a draft upon his forces that sleep cannot restore them. Then, and not before, he should stop work. But, so long as a man has vitality to spare upon work, it must be used, or it will become a source of grievous, harassing discontent. The man will not know what to do with himself; and when he has reached such a point as that, he is unconsciously digging a grave for himself, and fashioning his own coffin. Life needs a steady channel to run in-regular habits of work and of sleep. It needs a steady, stimulating aima trend toward something. An aimless life can never be happy, or, for a long period, healthy. Said a rich widow to a gentleman, still laboring beyond his needs: "Don't stop; keep at it." The words that were in her heart were: "If my husband had not stopped, he would be alive to-day." And what she thought was doubtless true. A greater shock can hardly befall a man who has been active than that which he experiences when, having relinquished his pursuits, he finds unused time and unused vitality hanging upon his idle hands and mind. The current of his life is thus thrown into eddies, or settled into a sluggish pool, and he begins to die.

We have, and have had, in our own city some notable examples of business continued through a long life with unbroken health and capacities to the last. Mr. Astor, who has just passed away, undoubtedly prolonged his life by his steady adherence

to business. There is no doubt that he lived longer and was happier for his continued work. If he had settled back upon the consciousness of assured wealth, and taken the ease that was so thoroughly warranted by his large possessions, he would undoubtedly have died years ago. Commodore Vanderbilt, now more than eighty years old, is a notable instance of healthy powers, continued by use. How long does any one suppose he would live if his work were taken from his hands, and his care from his mind? His life goes on in a steady drift, and he is as able now to manage vast business enterprises as when he was younger. There was never a time apparently when his power was greater than it is to-day. Our Nestor among American editors and poets, though an octogenarian, not only mingles freely in society, makes public speeches, and looks after his newspaper, but writes verses, and is carrying on grand literary enterprises. Many people wonder why such men continue to work when they might retire upon their money and their laurels ; but they are working, not only for happiness, but for life. Mr. Stewart is treading in the same path, and wisely.

The great difficulty with us all is that we do not play enough. The play toward which men in business look for their reward should never be taken in a lump, but should be scattered all along their career. It should be enjoyed every day, every week. The man who looks forward to it wants it Play, like wit in literature, should never be a grand dish, but a spice; and a man who does not take his play with his work never has it. Play ceases to be play to a man when it ceases to be relaxation from daily work. As the grand business of life, play is the hardest work a man can do.

now.

Besides the motives of continued life and happiness to which we have called attention in this article, there is another of peculiar force in America, which binds us to labor while we live. If we look across the water, we shall find that nearly all the notable men die in the harness. The old men are the great men in Parliament and Cabinet. Yet it is true that a man does not so wholly take himself out of life in Europe as in America when he relinquishes business. A rich man in Europe can quit active affairs, and still have the consideration due to his talents, his wealth, and his social position. Here, a man has only to "count himself out" of active pursuits, to count himself out of the world. A man out of work is a dead man, even if he is the possessor of millions. The world walks straight over him and his memory. One reason why a rich and idle man is happier in Europe than at home is that he has the countenance of a class of respectable men and women living upon their vested incomes. A man may be respectable in Europe without work. After a certain fashion, he can be so here; but, after all, the fact that he has ceased to be active in affairs of business and politics makes him of no account. He loses his influence, and goes for nothing, except a relic with a hat on, to be bowed to. So there is no way for us but to "keep at it;" get all the play we need as we go on; drive at something, so long as

ON Decoration day some unknown person is sure to ornament the Washington Monument in Union Square with wreaths, and rows of funny little flowerpots. But, on the Centennial 22d of February, and the first 22d which was celebrated as a true national holiday, by act of Congress and proclamation of the President, we looked in vain for the wreaths and the flower-pots, nor had we the presence of mind or bravery to fling one single votive rosebud over the iron railing, to rest at the foot of that majestic and benignant horseman.

Instead of which we are moved to improve the

occasion.

George Washington was a conspicuous and beautiful instance of a man who minded his own business. Suppose that an intelligent person living in one of the European centers of civilization had been asked, about the year 1770, what man then over thirty-seven | years of age was most likely to be the typical great-and-good man of the modern world! Would he have singled out the Virginia militia officer, at that time busying himself with the care of his plantation on the Potomac, and whatever social duties and delights, or whatever polite politics were convenient and appropriate? The strong point about Washington was, that the duty or the pleasure, the ceremony or the self-sacrifice that lay in his way, he enjoyed or performed without shirking, and to the very best of his ability. He did not, as a youth, lie awake o' nights wondering" what he would be when he grew up to be a man. When he became a man he showed neither imagination nor genius, but he had one of the traits of genius, namely, concentration. He put his mind upon his present occupation, without looking back or looking ahead. He engineered,❘ fought the Indians, rode horseback, wrote letters, went fox-hunting, attended church, proposed to young women, conducted campaigns, and governed the United States,-each at the proper time, and each with sincerity of purpose and assiduity. We do not hear of his swearing often; but when he did, it was thoroughly and effectively done. If he seems not to have been as successful in the matter of matrimonial proposals as in other occupations, we must remember that the centennially revived old wives' tales of early and indiscreet refusals of Washington by the said old wives themselves, must be taken with a few grains of deferential allowance.

THE discussion about the reading of the Bible in the public schools will, it is to be hoped, do this good, if no other, namely, draw attention to the subject of Bible-reading in general. The Bible is read altogether too much. Of course, it is not read too much by people who do not read it enough, or who do not read it at all, or who know how to read it a great deal, and to edification. But there is not another good book in the world with which so many Christian people bore themselves, and bore their neighbors. Some people read and read the Bible

till its beauties and consolations have little or no effect upon their minds or souls. In fact, the Bible has been made so trite, that only by indirection and at rare intervals are we apt to get clear impressions of its incomparable wealth of poetry, passion, and religion. We knew a good soul who used to read the Bible literally "on his knees;" who read it three times a day; who read the genealogies with the same steadiness of purpose as the Psalms or the Beatitudes, and who confessed that he got less good out of the book than when he became a kind of heathen and stopped reading it almost altogether. The experience of this person suggests an intelligent middle course, which we leave it to the parsons to point out.

As for the poetry of the Bible, it would seem that the hardest test to which the greatest of the socalled secular poets can be brought is that of comparison with the Hebrew bards. Even in translation the Bible poets hold their own.

As for the passion of the Bible,-the strong, pervading, unsurrendering human love,-it burns with a purity and intensity that make the fire of our modern so-called passionate singers a pale and sickly flame. Where else in the world is there such love poetry as that of "Solomon's Song?"

As to the religion of the Bible, compared, for instance, with the religion of the Vedas, we beg leave to refer to an interesting little book published by Macmillan & Co., entitled "The Sacred Poetry of the Early Religions." It contains two lectures, one on the Vedas and the other on the Psalms, delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral by Dean Church, the object of the lecturer being to show the failure of the earliest sacred poets of India to discern God, to approach Him in any way except in an exterior and unintimate manner; and, on the other hand, the confident, discerning approach of the Hebrew poets to Him whom they worshiped as God of Gods,—and the general superiority of the Psalms in insight and moral tone. "To pass," says Dean Church, "from the Veda to the Psalms is to pass at one bound from poetry, heightened certainly by a religious sentiment, to religion itself, in its most serious mood and most absorbing form; tasking, indeed, all that poetry can furnish to meet its imperious and diversified demands for an instrument of expression; but in its essence far beyond poetry. It is passing at one bound from ideas, at best vague, wavering, uncertain of themselves, to the highest ideas which can be formed by the profoundest and most cultivated reason, about God and the soul, its law, its end, its good."

IT is a question whether our ears have not become in these days somewhat unaccustomed to the subtler and more lasting kinds of poetic melody. The tendency of the poets of the present is toward the production of melody by an extraordinary insistence upon rhythm. Much is made of the recurrent

stroke of the wire; and little of the vibration between the strokes. The custom now is to "mark the time" very distinctly. Swinburne's lyrics are probably the finest flower of this particular method, although Tennyson went before, and has almost, if not quite, matched the younger poet in his special lyrical department. Swinburne prefers | this method, even in his blank verse; and the reader is kept on the jump from the first to the last page of his longest poems. His poetry is, in this respect, like the singing at the negro camp-meetings, where the whole congregation beat time with their feet. The negroes, by the way, are very fond of "marking the time" distinctly in all their music. Blind Tom's piano-playing is an example.

There is something irresistible in the rhythmic movement when used by poets like Tennyson and Swinburne. The lyric verse of these and other modern masters of the method gives the ripple of waters, the roll of drums, the beat of the hammer on the blacksmith's anvil, the ringing of bells, the gallop of horses, the thunder of battle, the rattle of rain and hail; it records moods and produces impressions that could be recorded or produced in no other way. But rhythm is easily overdone. It is not the highest part of even the mechanics of verse.

And yet, as we have said, it is the habit of the living generation and the tendency of the times. Tennyson, it may be suggested, has created a melody of his own that depends very little upon the charm of rhythm ; but even his most musical notes have not the birdlike melodious quality that we find in Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth.

In using the term bird-like, we hit upon what is perhaps the secret of the matter. The tendency toward rhythm, and toward elaborate and experimental forms of verse, may be an outgrowth or a part of the modern artistic self-consciousness. There is a lack of spontaneity, and a recourse to artistic elaboration. Rhythm is that portion of the art farthest from the purely poetic and spontaneous. A young poet would have to journey far away from the most potent contemporary influences in order to bring back again the free, delicious minstrelsy which seems to have deserted the language,-from influences not only emanating from the elder living poets, but from the more subtile spirit of the times by which the elder poets have themselves been fashioned.

THE proverb which says that the absent are always wrong has a new application and a new force among us moderns who breathe the atmosphere of criticism. With us the absent are intellectually wrong. The stress that is upon us to form "opinions" upon all subjects is felt in other directions. It is a necessity that the opinion should be creditable. We must shine; our neighbor must not outshine us; and in conversation we must be careful lest, by too favorable an expression with regard to our absent friend, we are committed to an opinion of him, especially of his intellectual or artistic caliber, which would be compromising to our own intellectual standing. Our

friend writes books, or writes criticisms, or paints pictures, or decorates, or himself is given to the verbal expression of opinions. His name is mentioned, perhaps with praise; we agree, but there is a shrug of the shoulders that shows an anxiety not to go too far. We are not anxious to explain our standing with relation to people obviously on a lower intellectual plane, our car-driving or carpentering acquaintance. It is only with relation to our equals or our superiors that this anxiety is shown to avoid intellectual self-compromise.

-IN Some the trait of which we speak is developed and given wider scope.

A modest and deferential person finds his pleasure in conversation greatly impaired by a tone which many people habitually assume. It is a tone of superiority and depreciation with regard, not directly to the person present (although that is implied), but to pretty much all other persons and things brought forward as topics of discourse. This tone, we are inclined to think, is more apt to show itself in socalled literary or art atmospheres, and in its modern aggravated form is (like the trait noticed above, of finding the absent intellectually wrong) an offspring of the over-critical spirit of the times. Hardly any one who breathes these "atmospheres" is totally exempt from it; but in some it amounts to an inveterate habit. Doubtless, all thoughtful minds are subject now and then to the high Emersonian mood of exaltation above all human and artistic grandeurs, -moods in which no men that are or were, no pictures, no books, come fully up to the mark. It is, however, of course the best evidence of a small mind when the mood degenerates into a function.

But the modest man finds it hard to console himself for the continual shocks and disappointments received in conversation with a superior person of the kind mentioned, by any philosophical consideration. One of the necessities of his nature is a generous sympathy with, and deference toward, the person to whom he happens to be talking. He cannot meet the pooh-poohs of his friend with the immediate reflection that perhaps, after all, the latter is not a greater man than Michael Angelo or John Milton. When, at mention of one of these famous persons, his friend betrays a gentle and seductive ennui, the first feeling of the modest person is apt to be one of shame at his own lack of insight and originality. Here, he says, is an unconventional and valuable opinion, my friend will justly look upon me as a Philistine. Sooner or later the modest and sensitive person recovers his intellectual integrity, and has a keen sense of irritation and indignation. But by that time the other man is half way down the

street.

Our only object in these remarks is to offer a suggestion for the benefit of the sufferer. There is one way of dealing with the superior person. Turn his own weapon upon him; smile indulgently upon his admirations; make him blush at every inadvertent committal in favor of any man, method, or principle; patronize and pooh-pooh him out of his very house

and home.