from many directions. The chestnuts hang on the chestnut boughs, and grow through many months, but one sharp night of frost bursts open the burs, and one morning of wind shakes the ripe chestnuts to the ground. The aloe grows for fifty years, without blooming or showing any sign of it, then suddenly shoots up one lofty stem, and bursts at its crest into a perfect splendor of flowers. Have you seen a frozen river break up at the close of winter? The ice looks solid and firm as ever on the surface, long after the snow has melted on the hills and the springtide begins to swell; but the turbid water, full of grit and soil, flowing beneath, is wearing and eating and rotting away the under side of the ice, and some day suddenly the ice splits, gives way, breaks in pieces, and goes rushing and tumbling to the sea, and the river is open all at once. The great currents of human thought and life, where they have been frozen over by paganism and idolatry, may feel as sudden a springtide burst their fetters and flow free. In all human effort a struggle which has trembled and wavered long sometimes terminates abruptly. The victory long poised descends all upon one side, swift as an avalanche. The great battle of Leipsic, when the allied Russians, Austrians, and Prussians fought Napoleon, in 1813, which the Germans call the "Battle of the Nations," was painfully slow, severe, and dubious in its progress, but finished swiftly. It was waged uncertainly for three days, but was concluded at noon on the fourth day, when a single battalion of Prussian Landwehr stormed the Grimma gate and forced an entrance; in one hour Napoleon was in full retreat, in another hour the allies occupied the town, complete victors. Is nothing like this possible in the great siege of man's soul?

All considerations forbid us to despair or doubt. The poor in faith and courage, like the poor in pence, are always with us; but no aggressive enterprise goes forward by listening to croakers and discouragers. Prophets of evil never braced anybody's armor for battle. Let us listen to Caleb and Joshua, and go up to possess the land. Felix Adler, from his ethical culture platform, holding one service on a Sunday in New York, while Christian Churches hold a thousand services, thinks the Churches are dissolving and the salvation of society depends on the ethical culturists. Father Pardow, a Jesuit priest, tells his New York congregation that Protestantism is now dead and absolute un

belief is all that remains for Rome to fight against. President Harper, of Chicago, is reported as saying that the Church has alienated the laboring class and the wealthy class and is now alienating the intellectual class. But the reverse of these statements is true, for never were the Churches so firmly established and thoroughly organized for action, Protestantism never was so alive and powerful, and never was so much of brawn and brain and money pledged to the service of the Church. There is not anywhere a single excuse for retreating or faltering. When General Buford was dying, in his delirium he imagined he saw his troops giving way and fleeing before the enemy, and raising himself on his elbow he said, "Send for the brigade commanders, and put guards on all the roads to prevent anybody from going to the rear." Our bishops, secretaries, general committees, and presiding elders are our brigadiers, and every pastor is a guard on some road to see to it that nobody goes to the rear in the great campaign for the conversion of the world.

If our Christianity retreats, falters, or fears it is unworthy of the age we live in. Shall Christianity be the one dead thing in a living time? Shall it be the one torpid, bedridden thing, unable to go abroad and travel, in this day of electric stir and mighty motion? Shall science occupy the whole earth with its stations, and not the Gospel? Shall commerce conquer all lands and seas, and not the Gospel? Shall the telegraph go everywhere, till the globe is thrilling round and round with millions of electric nerves, and not the Gospel? Shall explorers search the heart of Africa, and not the Gospel? Shall Arctic expeditions make the acquaintance of the farthest Eskimo, and not the Gospel? Our Captain of salvation orders an advance of the whole line, and unless we go forward with intrepid faith in the destiny of our religion we are unworthy the name of American Christians, in this land, which is leading the nations, and, by the free confessions of men beyond the sea, is rapidly laying its hands on the supreme power of the world; and unworthy, above all, of the Master whose glorious name we bear. The visitor to Athens has few more thrilling moments than when he stands upon the bema of the Pynx, overlooking the Athenian plain and city, with the Areopagus and the Acropolis towering on his right, and says to himself: Here stood Demosthenes when he melted the heart of Athens. On this spot it was that the mighty Stammerer

took the ocean pebbles from his cheeks, and, swelling in the springtide of his power, broke like the heavy rolling surf of the sea, with the passion of a storm and the noise of winds and waves, against the headlands and into the gulfs along the shore of Athenian thought and feeling. Here the great orator thundered and hissed till Athens boiled, and answered, "Lead us against Philip!" O for a Christian Demosthenes in every pulpit and on every platform to fire the hearts of the people with holy militant enthusiasm until the cry shall burst from all our assemblies, "Lead us against the idols and the false gods!"

Every Christian is called to render missionary service in person or by proxy. Rapidly increasing numbers respond to this call, "I will go. Be swift, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet!" So that every year thousands of missionaries "at His bidding speed and post o'er land and ocean without rest." Those who do not go are bound to send and support those who are willing and waiting to go. A multitude of young people in schools and colleges and churches, the finest flower of Christian culture, are offering themselves for the mission field. How can the Church dare to refuse to send them? In 1902 the Methodist Episcopal Church added fifty-seven thousand scholars to its Sunday school enrollment, and increased its communicants by fifty thousand, swelling our actual Church membership to a round three millions. "One dollar a year per member for missions" is but a small cry to raise, and it will put three millions a year in the treasury. Then the Methodist Episcopal Church will begin to do its duty. Enlarging contributions to the regular collections, the securing of the Twentieth Century Thank Offering of twenty million dollars, such wonderful gatherings as the unparalleled Missionary Convention at Cleveland last October and the enthusiastic General Committee meeting at Albany in November, and the spiritual stir and expectancy which every watchful and sensitive soul must perceive in our Church, all indicate that God is with us. The pulse of Methodism beats strong with energy and purpose, and they who have been talking of its decadence and trying to explain the cause thereof need to divert their energies from groaning and grave-digging to the commanded business of "pushing things," if they desire to keep up with the procession which is swinging forward at a quickening pace, marching to the conversion of the world for Christ.

THE ARENA.

THE OUTLOOK IN CHINA.

RETURNING to Shanghai in September, after a flying trip to America, I began work at once with my Chinese "teacher," endeavoring to get in touch with the current of events from the Chinese point of view. For this purpose I make use especially of a Review which is published about every ten days, giving a summary of important events, with public documents frequently in full, and of one or two leading native dailies. What struck me at once were the more independent tone of official communications addressed to foreign representatives and the very uncompromising temper shown in the maintenance of Confucianism as against freedom of religious observance in the new colleges. One example of the first is the letter of the Shanghai taotai to the Belgian consul-general on the question as to whether the protocol of 1901 made gold or silver the standard for calculating the successive installments of the indemnity. Another example of bold tone in argument is the flat-footed repudiation, by the Chinese treaty-revision commissioners, of the interpolated clause in the French treaty of 1860 relative to missionary residence in the interior.

The Chinese nation, particularly the official class, smarts under the humiliation of foreign invasion, occupation, and imposition of an indemnity which bears heavily on the disordered finances of the country and runs on through tedious decades. With the wonderful adaptability of the race, they have accepted the situation, officially, with perfect grace. It was a case of mu yu fah tze-"can't be helped"-and in such a case a Chinese never frets. But there are no people on the globe who, in their social forms, attach more significance to the hurt that honor feels; and it would not be surprising that officials should seek, in every safe way, to retrieve their country's dignity. It is, in fact, precisely the course which was pursued by the chief ministers of the empire after their unwilling acquiescence in foreign demands in 1842 and 1860. The matter of prime importance for Western powers to remember is that after every painful lesson which they teach the old empire by force of arms they find their pupil wiser and less docile. When China and Europe met some forty years ago it was a nineteenth century Europe and a seventeenth century China; when they meet again-perhaps before the forty-year term of the indemnity is filled out-China will be found progressingly better prepared to deal on equal terms.

The recent evidences of renewed zeal for Confucianism may be due to the same strenuous effort to regain and hold lost ground. I think, however, that it has a deeper meaning. I believe China is in the throes of a veritable renaissance. Here, as in the period of

the renaissance in Europe, the ancient classics are being turned up for their practical teachings, and instead of scholastic disputations and disquisitions we find newspapers and pamphlets filled with pleas for improved policies and methods, with citations of historic examples from Western civilization, but always introducing, as the base of the argument and as the point of the appeal, quotations from the rich store of classic thought. Confucius is, for China, the preeminent master of a dominant cult-the lord of scholars. The respect paid to him is not a religion, and the obeisance made before his tablet is not worship. Yet it is the only cult for which the people have any respect, the Buddhist and Taoist priests being tolerated only for the performance of customary rites at feast times, funerals, and the like. The Chinese, as a people, have no religious system which in any degree affects the conduct of the common day. If they are to have any religion at all, in the proper sense and as a dominant belief, it will, in my opinion, be the religion of Christ. Even now, under the surface, its influence is permeating the empire. It is not yet time for a Constantine to arise to make Christianity the religion of the state; such a policy at this time would be even worse for China than it was for Rome. But when the progressive enlightenment of the people shall have straightened out the present tangle as to "toleration," it will be found that the scholars of the country-and this means its rulers-can harmonize reverence for Confucius with faith in Christ.

It cannot now be doubted that the progressive movement is a fact. This is true especially in the matter of education. Last winter I had occasion to make a cursory study of the imperial edicts bearing upon the educational system, which had been put forth during the period of reconstruction after the flight of the court from Peking. Upon the face of them these edicts showed such a progressive temper, coming as they did from the same court that had crushed the reform movement of 1898, as to constrain some discounting of their sincerity. Quite likely one of the considerations which prompted their promulgation by the empress dowager and her conservative counselors was the wish to hasten the exit of the insistent foreigners from the imperial city by making a show of reform. But, as has happened before in the world's history, a strong personality has changed the wordy project of the legislative trimmer into a reality. Yuan Shi-kai, then governor of Shantung, now viceroy of Chih-li, recognized the emergency and, having the opportunity, used it for his country's good. He took the edicts at their face value, and not only drew up plans of educational organization for his province, as all his colleagues were doing, but proceeded to organize-not only called a capable foreigner to plan a system of elementary schools, besides the provincial college, but provided the teachers and put them to work. When, under the viceroy's instructions, President Tenney, of the Tientsin University, who is also inspector of schools for the province, sent out his first batch of teachers to take charge