before. A sailor declared that he had murdered the missing man and had buried him in a meadow. No remains were discovered, but the result of the investiga. tions made by the police led to the trial and conviction of the sailor for a murder committed by him a few weeks previous to his false confession. A thief is not often troubled by that silent monitor called conscience. There is, however, on record, one instance in which either conscience or gratitude compelled a thief to make restitution. Charles Dickens, the novelist, when in France was robbed of his watch a valuable gold repeater, presented to him by admirers who had caused their appreciation to be engraved upon the case. Dickens's grief was short, for, on the following afternoon, he received the watch, and with it a polite note apologizing for any inconvenience that might have been caused by its temporary withdrawal. The pickpocket had not recognized his victim as a fellow-countryman, and still less as the inimitable portrayer of Bill Sikes. A

one

more amusing freak of conscience-o that would have gone very much against the grain of Falstaff, who refused to give a reason on compulsion even though reasons were plentiful as blackberries—is told of a negro. Some important works were being constructed, and the engineer sought to engage native labor. One man, who had turned a deaf ear to tempting offers of payment for no other reason than that he was too lazy to work, came at last to the engineer. "Massa," said he, “I will not work for you unless you throw me into the river." The engineer was naturally astonished at this singular method of securing a laborer, and refused to adopt it without knowing the reason. The negro refused any explanation, and the engineer, having no fear of his safety, dropped him into the river. He struggled to the bank and went cheerfully to work, with the remark that he would dig and delve not willingly, but only on compulsion. He had satisfied his conscience with a ducking.

certainly not be exercised in obtaining for Jewish soldiers that promotion from the ranks which under past rulers has been denied to them. Respecting his predecessor, Count Moltke, it is not inappropriate to recall the fact that in July, 1886, we published the substance of an article on Poland written by him fifty years previously, at which time, judging by his remarks on the Jews in that country, he was certainly not imbued with any friendly feelings towards the Jews as a body.

Jewish Chronicle.

THE NEW CHIEF OF THE GERMAN ARMY | AND THE JEWS. There may have been no other motive for the appointment of General Count Waldersee to succeed the famous Count Moltke, as chief of the general staff of the German army, than his fitness for the post. But it is impossible to forget the occurrence which took place last November in Berlin, when the present emperor attended a meeting at Count Waldersee's house to support a movement directed by court chaplain Stöcker, ostensibly for the advancement of the Christian Mission in Berlin, but practically in furtherance of the anti-Semitic agitation. So great was the sensation caused by the presence of Prince William at this gathering that A STRAIGHT RAILWAY.- According to the it became necessary to send a communiqué to Iron Age, the longest straight reach of railway the press disclaiming all sympathy on the part in the world is on the new Argentine Pacific of his Royal Highness with anti-Semitism. Railway from Buenos Ayres to the foot of the The late Emperor Frederick, it will be re- Andes. For a distance of two hundred and membered, was so deeply impressed by this eleven miles the line is laid without a curve. circumstance, that he contemplated removing The level nature of the country will be eviboth Count Waldersee and Stöcker from Ber-dent from the fact that there is neither a cutlin, and transferring them to posts where their of working mischief to the Jews would power be less potent. His fatal illness necessitated the abandonment of this plan, and it cannot but cause a pang in some quarters that the new emperor has selected Count Waldersee for the highest post in the army. If the new chief of the staff be in reality the anti-Semite he is supposed to be, his great influence will

ting nor an embankment which is deeper or higher than one yard. The entire absence of wood on the plain across which the western end of the road passes has led to the extensive use of metallic sleepers. Operations have already been begun on the mountain section of the road, which is to cross the Andes, and to open up communication with the Chilian line."

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GOOD-BYE.

SOFT falls the moonlight's silvery rays,
Glistening the crest of the wavelets dancing;
Fair is the maid, by the shore who strays,
Gladness and hope from her blue eyes
glancing.

Now, she is nearing the trysting-tree,

Soon her true lover she's fondly greeting.
Little she thinks, as the moments flee,
This is to be their farewell meeting.

Sad would the heart be, oh, bitter the sigh,
Could we know when we're bidding a last
good-bye.

No longer the moonbeams gild the tide;

Athwart the sky is the lightning gleaming; The youth has sailed from his promised bride; Safe in her home she is sweetly dreaming. No dread forebodings disturb her sleep;

Peaceful, she rests on her snowy pillow; Her love the while, where the surges sweep, Lies cold and still 'neath the foaming billow.

Sad would the heart be, oh, bitter the sigh, Could we know when we're bidding a last good-bye.

All through our lives we are dropping friends, Bidding good-bye without thought of grieving,

And dark the shadow each parting lends

To the web of life we are deftly weaving.
In that land of light where no shadows rest,
Life's web complete, and our labors ended,

We shall find our lives had not been blest

Had the shadow ne'er with the sunshine blended.

THOUGH age to age has handed down the tale,
Since first the Grecian shaped it into song,
Of Itys slain and Philomela's wrong,

I, listening to thy music, nightingale,
Hear not the tortured heart's despairing wail
But love's triumphant pæan loud and long,
Love forcing utterance for thoughts that
throng

Ah, grieve not, dear friend, heave no bit- The soul of fire lodged in a form so frail.
ter sigh;
Or if I catch a saddening undertone,

To the faithful and true there is no good

'Tis but the old-world note that joy is brief, Summer treads all too quickly upon Spring,

Autumn on Summer, and the woods make

From The Fortnightly Review. THE SCIENTIFIC BASES OF OPTIMISM.

BY W. H. MALLOCK.

In many ways public attention in England has lately been called afresh to the great and universal question of what our modern science, if fatal to miraculous Christianity, will itself put, or allow to be put, in place of it. Only a few months since, in the pages of this review, a new manifesto was issued by one of our bestknown Positivists, which purported to describe the exact religious position taken up by the infant Church of Humanity. Mr. John Morley has republished in ten volumes what is, under one of its aspects, neither more nor less than an anti-Christian creed, embedded in a series of criticisms. Other eminent writers equally anti-Christian have been again exhibiting their opinions to the gaze of the pitiable millions, who still sit hugging the broken fetters of theology. Indeed, we may say that during the past two years, each of the principal sects into which the Protestantism of science has split itself has appealed to us afresh, through the mouth of some qualified minister; whilst the hold which such questions have on the public mind, whenever they are put in a way which the public can comprehend, has been curiously illustrated by the eagerness of even frivolous people, in devouring a recent novel, which on ordinary grounds would be unreadable, and whose sole interest consisted in its treatment of Christianity.

Stimulated by the example of our scientific instructors, I propose to follow, as faithfully as I am able, in their footsteps. There are certain canons of criticism and there is a certain sceptical temper, which they have applied to Christianity, and which they say has destroyed it. The same canons and temper I now propose to apply to the principal doctrine which they offer to the world as a substitute.

their creeds collectively, under the name of scientific Protestantism. But though, like theological Protestants, they differ amongst themselves, and even quarrel amongst themselves, like theological Protestants also, they have fundamental points of agreement; and it is solely with these last that I now propose to concern myself. Let us take first a hasty glance at their differences; and it will be presently plain enough what the points of agreement are.

Putting aside, then, all minor questions, scientific Protestantism may be said, with substantial accuracy, to be composed at the present moment of five principal sects, which differ from one another mainly in the following ways. One of them, whilst denying, as they all do, both miracles and a future life, believes in a personal God, not unlike the Father of the Gospels. Indeed, it adopts most of what the Gospels say of him. It accepts their statements; it only denies their authority. There is a second sect which retains a God also, but a God, as it fancies, of a much sublimer kind. He is far above any relationship so definite as that of a father; indeed, we gather that he would think even personality vulgar. If we ask what he is, we receive a double answer. He is a metaphysical necessity; he is also an object of sentiment; and he is apprehended alternately in a vague sigh and a syllogism. He is, in fact, a God of the very kind that Faust described so finely when engaged in seducing Margaret. Neither of these two sects is greatly admired by a third, which regards the God of the first as a mutilated relic of Christianity, and the God of the second as an idle, maundering fancy. It has, however, an object of adoration of its own, which it declares, like St. Paul, as the reality ignorantly worshipped by the others. Its declaration, however, unlike St. Paul's, is necessarily of extreme brevity, for this unknown God is nothing else than the unknowable. It is the philosopher's substance of the uni

Of course it will be said that thinkers who call themselves scientific offer us doctrines of widely different kinds. No verse underlying phenomena; and it doubt this is true. Amongst men of science as doctrinaires, there are as many sects as there are amongst theological Protestants; nor was it without meaning, as I shall show by-and-by, that I spoke of

raises our lives somehow by making us feel our ignorance of it. These three sects we may call Unitarians, Deists, and Pantheists. There is a fourth which considers them all three ridiculous; but the

The scientific theists, denying both a future life and a revelation, and yet maintaining that God has moral relations with man, and that a man's personal pleasure is the least thing a man lives for, can explain such a doctrine only by affirming a social progress which enlarges the purposes of the individual and exhibits the purpose of God. The religion of the unknowable is obviously but the religion of humanity, with the unknowable placed under it, like the body of a violoncello, in the hope of producing a deeper moral vibration; and of every form of scientific theism we may say the same with equal even if not with such obvious truth. I do not suppose that anybody will dispute this, otherwise I should dwell on it longer, so as to place it beyond a doubt. I will take it then for admitted that in all scientific religions, in all our modern religions that deny a future life and a revelation, the religion of humanity is an essential, is indeed the main ingredient. Let us now consider with a little more exactness what, as a series of propositions, this religion of humanity is.

third, with its unknowable, the most ridic- | worship on precisely the same foundation. ulous of all. This fourth sect has also its God, which is best described by saying that it differs from the unknowable in being known in one particular way. It is revealed in a general tendency, discoverable in human affairs, which, taking one thousand years with another, is alleged on the whole to make for righteousness or for progress. The individual man is not made in God's image; but the fortunes or the misfortunes of a sufficient number of men are something still better they are the manifestations of God himself. Lastly, we have a fifth sect, nearest akin to the fourth, but differing from it and from all the others in one important particular. It rids itself of any idea of God altogether, as a complete superfluity. An object of adoration, like all the others, it has; and, like the fourth, it finds this object in the tendencies of human history. But why, it asks, should we call them the manifestations of God? Why wander off to any thing so completely beside the point? They are not the manifestations of God. It is obvious what they are; they are the manifestations of humanity. We have here, under our noses, in a visible and tangible form, the true object of all these sublime emotions, those hours of comfort-propositions in which alone it can be ing contemplation, which men have been offering in vain to the acceptance of all the infinities in rotation. The object which we have scoured the universe and ransacked our fancies to find, has all the while been actually in contact with our-pletely, thus. Let us take Shakespeare's selves, and we ourselves have been act- lines, ually integral parts of it.

Every religious doctrine has some idea at the bottom of it far simpler than the

stated logically. Let us see what is the idea at the bottom of the religious doctrine of humanity. It appeals to us most forcibly perhaps under its negative aspect. Under that aspect we may seize it com

Life is a tale,

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Let us realize fully all that these lines
mean. The idea in question is a protest
against that meaning.

Here, then, classified with sufficient accuracy, are the principal forms of religion, which those who reject Christianity are now offering the world, in the name of science, as substitutes. Now the great fact which I wish to point out is this: however much the four first differ from one another and from the last, yet the main tenets of the last form an integral part of all. The worshippers of humanity base their worship of it on certain beliefs as to evolution and progress, which give to human events some collective and co-ferent basis—from the subjective experiherent meaning. Every one of the other sects, let it worship what it will, bases its

In this form, however, there is nothing scientific about it. It is merely the protest of an individual based on his own emotions, and any other individual may with equal force contradict it. To make it scientific it must be transferred to a dif

ence of the individual to the objective history of the race. The value to each