refuge and a virtue, to-day they are almost a crime, and their opposites a necessity.

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3. The observance of the Christian year is both stimulated by the fresh interest in the life of Christ and promotes that interest. Christianity, both as a creed and as a life, depends absolutely upon the personal character of its Founder." As the chief attention of criticism, and so necessarily of theology, and thus of the actual Christian life, is more and more concentrated upon the story of the Gospels and upon the portrait and life of the Divine Man therein set forth, such an annual following of that life in study, worship, and practical application to our own conduct as the felicitous ordering of the Christian year affords becomes more attractive and useful. It tends to fix attention on that which is simple, primary, and essential to the faith. It incites personal affection and loyalty to Jesus, and lifts Him up, as an example and inspiration, in daily conduct. In this way the Christian year tends to bring Christians out of the abstractions of theory and opinion into the region of life. It makes our religion more real and vital, because closer to the life and person of our Lord.

4. The observance of the Christian year naturally tends to relieve us of that uncertain, restless, and arbitrary way of arranging for special services and periods of religious activity which is often now so distracting and wasteful. There is tacit agreement that we must have times and seasons for rejoicing, for penitence, for confession, for revival. But the appointment of them is left to chance; the observance of them to gusts and freaks of feeling. Many churches feel the need of making the autumn a time of spiritual preparation. Why should we not all agree to observe the Advent regularly at such a time, and concentrate attention upon this? The Week of Prayer was established from a sense of the necessity of a fixed and regular period in which all could unite in confession, repentance, and supplication for the divine favor. As such, the Week of Prayer constitutes a very strong argument for Lent. But it is a very arbitrary appointment, unfortunate and impracticable in its time, artificial in its suggestions and associations. So of the Day of Prayer for Colleges. Why should not the regular observance of Lent by our churches helpfully take the place of these two appointments, and, indeed, by bringing our churches into sympathy with other Christians, make this period of repentance and revival much more effective? And if especial evangelistic efforts are to be made in our churches, let them not be made suddenly by fits and starts, at odd and acciIBRA

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dental times, but regularly and soberly in connection with these occasions of the Christian year.

What with the constant craze for new organizations, and original methods and fresh appliances for Christian work, our churches are becoming bewildered and their forces scattered and frittered away in change. The further observance of the Christian year would be in the direction of a check upon this dissipation, and of concentration and conservation. Our Sunday-school work would be vastly improved if, instead of the arbitrary hop, skip, and jump method of selecting the lessons which now prevails, some attention could be paid to the systematic study of the life of Christ, the history of the church, and the meaning of faith in connection with the festivals of the Christian year. The individual minister would gain some relief from the distractions which now oppress him. His themes would be chosen with more point, and his whole year's work would have more consistency and effect.

Moreover, neighboring churches would have more interest in one another's work, and could plan it more in harmony and sympathy. As Cardinal Newman so beautifully points out, six months of each year, from Advent to Trinity Sunday, would be the period of struggle, of work, of effort in Redemption; and the remaining six months, from Trinity Sunday to Advent, would be the period of growth, of joy, of peace,- of peace in believing.

5. We may well go further in the observance of the Christian year for the sake of our children and youth. We can hardly understand how the Puritan child two hundred years ago got on without any Christmas or Easter. It is true that he did, but then he did not have to contend with the disadvantages of the modern child. He had his own simple resources, and they served him well. But our children have a different outlook on a different world and far different proximate ends to serve, though none the less noble and necessary. There is the same Bible, but it must now be read with very different eyes; the same Gospel, but it must be studied with different tools and methods; the same history of the church, but it discloses greater treasures and different lessons; the same Jesus Christ, "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," but He is drawing nearer to man, to society, to life, to claim them more simply and directly for himself.

The Christian year, with its beautiful literature, its divine associations, telling significantly year by year his mysterious and

thrilling story, contains treasures, avenues, and inspirations to a larger, simpler, and more serving spiritual life, which we shall be blameworthy if we keep hidden from our children and youth, when they, in this day of specialties, subdivisions, and distractions, need all that they can get of sobering and steadying association and tradition.

Turn now to the other side for a moment. No doubt there are many objections which will arise to any further observance of the Christian year. Let us glance at two or three of these:

1. It will be said that there is a dislike in the minds of most Congregationalists of such observance, and a prejudice against the churches that practice that observance, and that such dislike, and prejudice are natural, and mean something from the point of view of our history. It will be said that it is hardly worth while to oppose this dislike and prejudice by the effort to introduce customs and imitate ways that are unsuited to "the genius of our denomination," as it is called.

The reply is, that such dislike and prejudice have not availed to keep our churches from the observance of Christmas and Easter, and that so far as they exist they are a hindrance to us and we should endeavor to remove them. Our churches and ministers will be broader, more catholic, more effective, and more disposed to act a useful part in Christian unity if they do not hold themselves aloof from a movement which is affecting all classes, and of which the disposition to observe the Christian year is a significant exponent.

2. It will be said that this observance, history shows, makes formal and unspiritual Christians, who stay themselves much upon times, seasons, and services, but lack moral earnestness and vital religion. No doubt there is some force in the objection; but it proves too much, and applies equally to all forms and fixed appointments of worship, to the Week of Prayer, to the international system of Sunday-school lessons, to the week-day prayer-meeting, to the Sunday service. Carried to its extreme, it would make us all Quakers, who without forms are in many cases the greatest formalists. Absence of regular times and methods of worship does not necessarily produce piety, nor does their presence necessarily hinder it. On the contrary, all life presupposes form and method, and as the Christian life of the community becomes richer and more varied, form and method become more essential. Our only care should be that they are kept subordinate, that they minister, and are not ministered unto.

3. A more serious objection is that the temper of the times is towards superficiality and show rather than towards substance, that there is a passion for æsthetic effects rather than serious thoughtfulness, and that there is an insatiate and debasing lust for entertainment, which constantly seeks to make even religion and religious services tributary to it.

The reply is that the spirit of which these things is a manifestation is not in itself essentially vicious; that it comes as a perfectly natural and healthy reaction from the austerity of the fathers; that it is not to be crushed by direct opposition; that it will have some channel; that we need for it a larger vessel than the old barnlike meeting-house, cold, and shut all the week, with its dry, frigid, and dolorous services; and that the reasonable observance of the great seasons and festivals of the Christian year, with its varied and richer outlook and worship, furnishes the best reasons for training and conserving to the highest ends this vigorous spirit, and tends to save it from landing our youth in a lot of vanities miscalled religious and Christian, but really essentially vain, worldly, and unspiritual.

It is worth while to make a few practical suggestions respecting the observance of the Christian year in our churches:

1. Let the minister prepare the people for it by a clear statement of its meaning, of the spirit with which it should be entered upon, and the results to be hoped from it.

2. Let the spiritual aspects of the whole observance be constantly kept uppermost, and the people be made to feel that it affords a great opportunity and means for repentance, for revival, for amendment of life, for growth in grace, for active and consecrated service of Christ.

3. To this end let the preaching be of the most direct, pungent, and vital character, care being taken to map out the subjects beforehand in such a manner as to bring the great and perennially attractive events and aspects of the life of Christ and the work of redemption into the strongest light, and to apply them directly and spiritually, so as to secure clear and helpful results in conduct and character. The sincere effort to do this will lead preacher and people into fresh fields, with a great wealth of new material, close to life and thought, will touch incidentally the most vital questions of the hour, will relieve the pulpit from its incessant perils to be on the one hand dry and on the other sensational, and will keep the people constantly in a revived state.

4. Do not undertake too much at first. To the observance of

Christmas and Easter, as now established in most of our churches, add Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and Whitsunday, with an effort through the whole of Lent to make the Sunday services and the week-day meeting tell upon the great themes of repentance and faith. Passion Week might well be observed by a daily service. Yet care should be taken not to overwork, or run too far ahead of the people, but to keep their interest at every step. The first efforts will probably result in disclosing the indifference of the people to any sustained spiritual exercises. This discovery is itself salutary.

5. So far as possible, get some neighboring church to unite with you, one of your own order, if convenient, but, better still, a liberal-minded Methodist, Baptist, or Episcopal flock, and if you can succeed thus in getting one or two other denominations to combine in a few services only, you will find out some new and blessed things as to the power of Christ in human hearts, and the meaning of the phrase, "Communion of Saints." And if the partial development of this hitherto undeveloped function of our Congregational churches in the observance of the Christian year does no more than enable you sympathetically to look over the fences that hedge in your little denomination, into the folds of your brethren, and feel the pulses of their love for the same Christ, it will be worth all it costs.

WORCESTER, MASS.

Daniel Merriman.

THE SOCIAL BODY.

WHAT is man? Mankind, wherein does it essentially consist? The question has been asked and answered thousands of times,1 yet seems, if possible, actually farther from recognized solution now than when, at Paris, in the morning of the twelfth century, Abelard wrangled over it with his old master, William of Champeaux. The popular anthropology of our time is extremely individualistic, more so than would have pleased the hardiest Nominalist of the Middle Age. To most people "Man" means simply a man, Oakes or Noakes or Stiles or Brown or Thompson. "The human race" signifies these and other individuals viewed collec1 For the latest words, see Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, and Jevons's Posthumous Treatise, edited by Foxwell.