Our Own Columbia that is to be

lets of machine guns, cannon and small arms in the hands of regulars, national guards, cossacks, etc., held enchained.

But soon there will be but one class-toilers; hence no longer wars; and but one religion, the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man-all men and all women baptized with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. In the building of ships of war, and of fortifications, the making of arms and all other munitions of war, the momentum is of Paganism. Pagan force is otherwise nil. When all men speak with one voice, as soon they will speak, warships and swords and guns and cannon will all go to the junk shop for old iron, to be made over into plowshares and other useful twentieth century implements of production and into the framework of skyscrapers and into railroad iron, etc., etc.

II.

There are four gigantic evils that society must cease to support: (1) the liquor evil; (2) the nicotine-drug evil; (3) the disorderly house evil; and (4) the divorce court evil. It has been thought that the school house on the hilltop will rid us of these evils. And I believe it will. The lesson to be taught may be defined in three words, viz: "What is best." There isn't a living human being that is not anxious to do what is best. When "what is best to do" is known to all and public opinion is crystalized in the recognition of it, as it is in regard to dress all will clothe their minds alike then, as they do their bodies now. The truth can be so clearly presented that all will see it, and no man will evermore set a bad example before the young. I hold this to be the one supreme, unselfish motive to right doing. There is no love so all-controlling as the love natural to all-the love for childhood. And when all men see that example is the primal force in teaching the youth, no man, that is normally sane, will ever enter a liquor hell or be seen on the street with pipe or cigar or cigarette or quid of tobacco in his mouth. It isn't enough to have it placed in the statute book of the state that "public school teachers must instruct their classes that alcohol and nicotine are dreadfully harmful hygienically." But it is a right beginning. It will, when called to the attention of parents (who are the only real and positive teachers of youth) lead them to be ashamed of themselves if they are not the kind of men and women they would have their sons and daughters be.

And we are on the eve of a mighty change for the better. We are each of us about to say, "None can teach my sons righteousness like myself. I will depend on none others to do so." There is but one end and purpose of human existence-of human effort-of ambitionof giving one's life on the battlefield. It is to make it good for children to be born. That is all there is in getting rich, or in plowing the fields, or in any labor done by human hands. It is all there is of. life according to nature.

The following press dispatch I copy from yesterday's (Sept. 22, 1906) daily: "William K. Vinderbilt, Jr., set the pace yesterday morning for the racing autoists on Long Island during the high speed practice hours over the Vanderbilt cup course. Starting out from his home near the Lakeville turn before 6 o'clock in his ninety-horse power Mercedes, Mr. Vanderbilt showed that he had lost none of his old time ability as a fast driver by going around the course in twenty-eight minutes. As the course measures 29.7 miles, his speed was, therefore, better than a mile a minute, and it is the best time yet made over the cup course." Here we have Caligula in the arena. Here one of the richest men in America risks his life driving a huge machine costing thousands of dollars-speeding it around a race course! Now this man, when a child, had no right instruction regarding the true object of life, as all chlidren will one day have, or he would be ashamed to so belittle his manhood. Wonderful man-worth mil

lions-a Washington of the twentieth century! How he labors to make it good for children to be born! He is merely an untaught savage, no further advanced in the measure of manhood than a naked Zulu of South Africa. So will public opinion universally say of him soon, and of all others like him who are but the ripened fruitage of plutocracy.

Public opinion is the conservator of civilization. Rapidly gathering power more than the ninety-horsepower Vanderbilt machine, it is moving forward-hurrying around the course to the goal. It will reach equality of opportunity to every child. Then will each adult be estimated by his or her measure of worth-not length of purse; but of helpfulness to the young contributed by each. What is the best thing that any one can bestow on the young? A high purpose in life- an ambitious aim to have his or her name enrolled in the list of the benefactors of the human race. But no benefaction exceeds an exemplary life in its influence for good. "I will live to make the world the better, the wiser and the happier for my being in it," every one says who has reached the measure of the stature of true manhood or womanhood that "of the fullness of Christ." The only true ideal that has ever been presented to the world of living men and women in any age is the Christian ideal the altruistic ideal as exemplified by the Master.

Let the power of the pulpit and of the press and of the school from kindergarten to college-all human effort-be directed to focusing public opinion on this ideal until, like the most brilliant electric lamp of light, it gleams along the way of right acting and renders the darkness trebly dark outside the straight and narrow path, so that no one will choose to enter the night of gloom. Then will every man lead an exemplary life-be devoted to home and wife and children, and the divorce courts will be unvisited henceforth and forever

more.

Every single lesson, essay and discourse of the following pages is complete in itself and may be read separately and apart from the rest. Each is a unit, as is each individual living personality. This is the toiler's book to be read at odd moments while resting after his day's work, and by the tired mother, as she holds her baby on her lap. The longer discourses are adapted to Sunday's leisure. There are in its pages unavoidable repetitions, but not a sentence that ought not to be got by heart. This work is addressed (1) to the youngthe students in school and college; (2) to the fathers and mothers whose hands are calloused with toil. However, it will be helpful to the men and women of wealth and leisure to study it while spending their summers at the watering places.

Never was disciple more sincere in his belief that the New Testament teaches only God's truth of man's duty to his fellows and to the All Loving Father; never one more devoted to the church-Pentecostal and beyond all else solicitous that it be reinstated in its primitive grandeur of "all things common" and become universal-the United States of the World-Our Own Columbia That Is to Be, than is YE OLD SCHOOLMASTER OF YE OLDEN TIME.

Böcker