just before God and men—and unless he takes you for a maniac, with revolvers hid in your hip pockets, and is inclined to run away, he will simply laugh at you and tell you that that notion of life is "played out." It is the other fellow's business to look out for the methods of justice. It is this man's business to look out for himself alone. It is a part of the modern social order.

I am not intending to overstate the universal condition of things. Cecil Rhodes' idea of a Millionaires' Trust for the perfect government of the world—counting God Almighty out entirely—is an idea that has been dominant in the minds and conduct of the real moneyed men of the nations for many years. Cecil Rhodes, being the son of a parson, had some human if not humane instincts, and in his thoughts and in his plans and in his sayings on this point there were certain phases and phrases that had a humanitarian aspect. But he only put in modern commercial terminology what the Rothschilds have been practicing as an established banking house for nearly a century. If one of them makes a slip he either hangs himself or is helped out by the family. Mr. Morgan and his friends are simply the American tools or copartners of the few Jews, often referred to in these pages, as carrying the whole world in their vest pockets. I do not blame or censure them. It is the spirit of the age. We had better have gentlemen than slaves for rulers.

What nation on earth is not their debtor, and whosesoever debtor you are the same is your master. A few small slips of paper brought forth at the proper moment can produce panic and hell fire at any time. The gentlemen who hold the slips know this better than I. God Almighty has long been supplanted on this earth, apparently, but after the millionaires have done the worst they can do, God will rise in His might and rehabilitate the world. I am not preaching theory. He has done it over and over again.

In view of these general facts my first leading suggestion is that all the plans and processes of modern life being selfish, get all and give nothing, or at all events, as little as possible. Buy all for as little as possible, squeeze your seller to the bone— and sell what is best for as much as possible, every fellow for himKttaxvd t\\e devil talce the hindmost—actually and universally flat, \iv v\ev? of this state of society—this social order in our Christian, democracy, and our approval of it, our assent thereto and Out "worship of trie millionaire, and every fellow that apes or accroaches mm in wealth—in view of our making of wealth the only standard of value; in view of the honors we pay daily to this, golden calf, the least and the greatest among us, all talk oi moral or commercial reciprocity is simply the foolish babble of knaves or fools. It is true that in our worship of wealth we have classic example and authority, and are ourselves excellent pagans. Draco, of ancient Athenian fame, from whose name we have our adjective draconian, signifying severity or cruelty,might have been in psychology the legitimate ancestor of the Hon. Joseph Chamberlain—and an excellent Englishman. He believed in the lawful privileges of the hereditary aristocracy of Athens, but it was in a day when the notion of democracy was growing among the Greeks, and the citizens being tired of Draco and thinking that they wanted to be reciprocal with their slaves—that is in a day when all Attica could show only 31,000 citizens and more than 400,000 slaves. In such a day their generous and timid souls were touched with notions of liberty, and they called upon Solon, fresh from his capture of Salamis, to get up a code of laws for them.

As a result of Solon's labors, standard authors tell us, "all hereditary titles to privilege or office were abolished. Money qualifications taking their place." Solon was the true father of Pierpont Morgan. And the whole business is, as I have often stated, between a government by oligarchs or a government by aristocrats. Kings, Presidents and the people are not in it. And your "Mr." Mitchells, of coal digging notoriety, are either subtle knaves or fools.

In view of this state of the "Social Order" I agree with Periander, the last of the Seven Sages of Greece, to utter his thoughts on the subject, viz.: "That the more truly aristocratic a government is; that is, the more it is in the hands of a few and worthy men, the better it is for the people."

But here the whole question hinges on the "worthy." Where and how will you find them or make them? And who is to be judge of their worthiness—God or the devil? The real laws of Christ or the mouthing vapidities of Mr. Hay.

I believe in a government of aristocrats, and no fooling about it, but the aristocrats must be Christian, aristocrats of morals and intellect, and I do not care how many millions or billions they own or control.

But justice and the prophets of justice must rule the aristocrats. Do justly and love mercy, and if you don't know how, ask of God and He will show you. But shut Him out and it makes no difference—Rothschilds, Morgan, Hanna or Mitchell, you are bound for hell any way.

In view of the state of society described in ancient Greece or in the modern world, all talk of our being a Christian nation is not only humbuggery but absolute blasphemy. And all talk of building up the social order other than by building up virtuous individual life is a lie.

Free Trade, an open door everywhere, every day and night of the week, of every week, every month of every year, on all seas, and in and between all nations of the earth is the only sensible and natural meaning of true reciprocity anywhere or at any time. I may add, also, that it is the only conceivable theory and practice of life that, even in appearance, makes any attempt toward realizing in actual life the simple principles of Christianity—"as you would that others should do unto you, do ye even so to them," which modern life, half in jest but wholly in earnest, has concentrated into "do others as they do you." It is pagan to the bone, and that is the practice of modern life, and the sure and inevitable pathway to hell and destruction. "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine," and they never fail.

We have been pursuing this pathway of selfishness as a nation during the greater part of our existence as a nation, and, of course, we have grown prosperous, but the thing we constantly overlook is this, that every act of selfish prosperity bears in its bosom a self-destroying hell. Our hell has come already in several ways, the outcome of which has, in each case, only made us more exultant over the methods we have pursued and the means we have used, but the end is not yet. God is not dead or asleep. Neither is He mocked, nor bluffed, nor deceived. He is wide-awake and near us. In Him we live and move and have our being, and His laws, though apparently pliant, are exact is \ta \av,Ts of tne stars. We are proud of our victories, our cleverness and our strength. We argue that selfishness is better than sacrifice, even, better than peace, etc.

rlol&ng this general view of modern commercial life—and everything is commercial in our day—the Church dispenses funerals even at $100, or $50, or $25. The poorest corpse has to pay its way before reaching the Styx, and of the crossing of that stream nor you, nor I, nor anybody knows.

The old principles of justice,as taught by God via His prophets, the sweeter principles of loving sacrifice as taught and practiced by Jesus Christ and intended for all men and nations in every particular of their personal, national and international relationships, are now hooted at or treated as obsolete even in our respectable and so-called Christian literature, and the questions: Is there a God any way? Is there any real religion or revelation of God in the world? Have we any souls? Is not war a blessing? Is not commercial falsehood and rascality after all only a phase of truth and honor? Was not Jesus a fool? Is not God really dead? Are we modern men, who, by our wars and our commerce, judged in the light of Christ's pure gospel, actually murderers—wholesale murderers and thieves—thus murdering not only men but the very principles and characteristics out of which men are made? Are we not after all fine gentlemen—our bank accounts proving us such? Are we not as good as the old Greeks and Romans, any way? And what more do you want? Simply and alone we want that you should be not Greeks, or Romans, but Christians, for whom Christ died, and whose Spirit ye have unless ye be reprobate and rejected of God and surely damned. That is all. Will you look into it?

I acknowledge and constantly teach that among us there are a goodly number of men and women who are at least believers in and striving to live up to the old eternal standards of justice, truth and charity. I constantly assert that these are the salt of the earth, and that solely for their sake and not by reason of your commercial smartness or your tariff laws, is the world spared from destruction and the nations given time and time again to reform. But these few do not elect your Presidents or your Governors, they do not run your legislatures, rule your armies or navies, or pulpits, or Sunday-schools. They occasionally lay a ray of light at your feet, across your pathway, and you despise or crucify them as of old.

Holding this view of modern life, and believing, moreover, that nothing, absolutely nothing, but applied Christianity has in it any cure for the universal malady, my friends can readily understand how small an interest I must feel in our Congressional and newspaper babblement on American reciprocity with Cuba, or with any other section of our Western hemisphere, as if God, and some faint, dim hinting at the law of justice should be practiced only among dwellers in the Western hemisphere and not among and between all peoples and all nations on the face of the whole world. Are we still barbarians, knowing only the men and women of our clan and tribe? What has the Gospel of Christ done for us? Why have the valleys been exalted and the hills brought low? Why have pathways of flame been made across the mountains and the seas? Simply that Mr. Hearst's newsboys may see how quick they make the trip around the world? Is that all? Or to show how rapidly great navies may steam from nation to nation for murder or for fun? Is that all? Simply that machinists may vie with each other and boast of the speed of their engines? Is that all? Or should it not be that ships and engines and telegraph wires, or waves of air without wires, should make of all nations one Christian brotherhood, ruled by the Spirit of Christ?

I do not teach or intimate that the theory or the practice of free trade by any man or nation of men is to any appreciable extent synonymous with or the realization of justice among men, and I must not be charged as so teaching or intimating; much less have I ever intended, as I have been interpreted in some quarters as teaching, that Blaine and McKinley, when near their end, in advocating reciprocity, intended to advocate free trade. Both of them were too small of brainial capacity and too selfish and untaught or perverse to see even the natural connection between reciprocity as they, the poor weaklings, were inclined to it and the broader principle of free trade. All we have ever meant in referring to those dead gentlemen and their poor, narrow theories when about to die, was that reciprocity, whether taught by Blaine or McKinley, is of no account, except as it develops into free trade between the parties to the arrange