Still further, it is quite clear that the well-being of society is not to be gained through an adjustment of conflicting interests. Here is the frequent mistake of both the statesman and the political economist, who look upon human society as an aggregation of individuals each of whom is to be guarded in his rights against the aggression of another. Self-interest is supposed to be the mainspring of human action, and good order is thought to be secured when men can be made to see that it is for their interest to live in peace with one another. Political science deems itself to have accomplished its task when it has shown how all social disturbances and disorders spring from ignorance of the real interests of men, and how perfect harmony can be maintained by exact adjustments.

Judged by the strictly scientific method, this is very well. It is logical. But the difficulty, when we come to apply it, is that men are not logical. In the practical conduct of life they are governed by their sentiments, and not by their understandings. And when we look closely into the sentiment from which springs every social disturbance, we find it, at bottom, to be this very self-interest, which we now seek to elevate into a source of peace. It is only because men seek their own and not another's good that there is any social ill; and while it may be quite true that their seeking has been in mistaken ways, and that they in reality have only wronged themselves in their methods of gaining their supposed rights, not only cannot they be led to avoid their mistakes merely by having these revealed to them, but the selfseeking sentiment, which is the sole source of evil, cannot, by any increasing knowledge,-by any keener sense or shrewder judgment, become a fountain of good. Honesty is, doubtless, the best policy, but no policy ever yet made an honest man. In like manner men, doubtless, in the long run, maintain their own interests best by carefully maintaining also the interests of others, but it is a very narrow reading of history, and a very superficial acquaintance with human nature, which has not seen that from such a motive thus applied no desirable results ever come. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life," said Satan; but men are destroying their lives all the while, and this none the less where the means of saving them are the largest and the most clearly known. "Whosoever would save his life shall lose it," says the Lord; "but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it." For my sake!

There is great emphasis here. To lose one's life for one's own sake is a loss without any compensation or refinding, but to lose it for another's sake, for the Lord's sake, brings it back again new born, recreated, self-sacrifice taking the place of selfseeking, and love becoming the true life. An acquaintance with mankind which has not passed beyond the Satanic point of view, does not understand this, but he who has seen what Christ has done in human souls, and has profoundly studied the changes which his life has actually wrought in the organization of society, while he may well despair of light from any other source, will find the social problem perfectly solved in the Christian principle. "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." If every man were truly Christ's disciple, all bearing one another's burdens, and so fulfilling the law of Christ, society would be consciously knit together in a true interdependence, the interdependence of an organism, wherein each part is at the same time the means and the end of all the rest,— and crime, and vice, and wrong of every sort would cease. The Son of God is the true Son of Man, and when the kingdoms of this world shall truly have become his kingdom, when he shall have become enthroned in all institutions, and laws, and movements of men, man must have then gained his true perfection, violence then can no more be heard, and wasting and destruction must disappear.

Now, the disturbances of our time constrain us, by their very dreadfulness, to look for the foundation stones of human progress. We can move in entire fearlessness when the ground does not shake; but when it is quivering beneath, and gaping all about us, we must note well where our steppings are. The first effect upon our civilization to be expected from the dire procedures which have lately excited the world is the startled vision which must behold its danger. It sees because it cannot turn away its eyes.

Our age is often called a superficial age, an age of frivolity and shams, but I confess it seems to me far otherwise. There is frivolity enough indeed, and shams enough now apparent; but it would take me long to find an age with a keener eye, or with more depth of feeling, or a greater earnestness of action than the age which has fought victoriously the battle with the slavepower in America, which has not only witnessed but secured the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, which has achieved the

triumphs of German and Italian unity, which has despoiled the Papacy of its temporal power, which has secured the British Empire in India, which has introduced so prominently the principle of arbitration in the settlement of national disputes, which has wrought such surpassing deeds of missionary enlightenment in India, in Madagascar, and the South Seas, and whose wonders of science and industry and invention have been paralleled in no age. The nineteenth century is not purblind. It has good eyes. It has a good heart also, and will not suffer itself to be hoodwinked. It is, therefore, likely to see its true defense as well as its peril. It knows better than to seek to quell its fears by force alone, and will surely learn-is beginning already to learn *- that its labor-saving inventions are not of themselves going to lighten the burden of labor; that its social science can give neither the impulse nor the ground for social progress; that its increase of wealth, its industry, its intelligence, instead of being instruments of defense, may all be turned into deadly weapons of destruction; that self-interest does not secure self-preservation; and that in the principle of self-forgetfulness, wherein each one pleases not himself but his neighbor, even as Christ pleased not himself, is the only true means of social safety and strength and growth.

It would be a very narrow intellect which should think lightly of those triumphs of invention or achievements of science which form so prominent a characteristic of the present age; but it would be a very short-sighted vision which should not see the inaptitude of these to secure social perfection. The penetrating thought will reach to the full requirements of the case; and the nineteenth century, not lacking in penetration, will see that it can only be saved, and will only be satisfied, by becoming more Christlike.

These positions do not rest upon the optimistic persuasion that there is in human nature an inherent tendency to a progressive improvement, for such a persuasion cannot be justified by facts. When we look at history comprehensively, no such tendency appears. Viewed simply in respect of extent of territory or numbers embraced, deterioration shows more prominently in the actual history of the world than progress. Arts and litera

*"It is questionable," says John Stuart Mill, "if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."— "Polit. Econ," B. 10; ch. 6.

tures and civilizations and religions have decayed far oftener than they have manifested an increasing growth.

Taking the facts as they are, without prejudging them by any theory, human nature shows a singular aptitude to slip away from its vantage-grounds, as though it was far more powerfully controlled by a proclivity to a lower state, than by an impulse to a higher one. This aptitude is just as evident today as ever. No one can look carefully at our present civilization without noting signs of evil which in other civilizations have been portents of ruin. But, in the words of the sagacious Niebuhr, "as the consideration of nature shows an inherent intelligence which may also be conceived as coherent with nature, so does history, on a hundred occasions, show an intelligence which is distinct from nature, which conducts and determines those things which may seem to us accidental; and it is not true that the study of history weakens the belief in a Divine Providence. History is, of all kinds of knowledge, the one which tends most decidedly to this belief." There is thus another factor than human agency, entering into the product of human history. The historical evidence alone, closely scrutinized, shows what can only be denominated a divine superintendence. The historical movement is a movement with a divine purpose, of whose meaning we get glimpses, with increasing clearness from increasing study of the actual procedure. The incarnation of the Son of God is the focal point to which all lines preceding it con erge, and from which radiate the most potent influences in the subsequent history of the world. These influences are still mighty. They are an exhaustless source of power. They show themselves guided by unerring wisdom. We need not therefore anticipate from them either a mistake or a failure. They preach to us courage, even while human endeavors, left to themselves, are as likely as ever to end in disaster.

JULIUS H. SEELYE.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE REBELLION.

PUBLIC attention having of late been occasionally called to some of the events that occurred in the closing scenes of the Virginia campaign, terminating at Appomattox Court-house, April 9, 1865, I feel it my duty to give to history the following facts:

When, April 4, 1865, being at the head of the cavalry, I threw across the line of General Lee's march, at Jettersville, on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, my personal escort, the First United States Cavalry, numbering about 200 men, a tall, lank man was seen coming down the road from the direction of Amelia Court-house, riding a small mule and heading toward Burkesville Junction, to which point General Crook had, early that morning, been ordered with his division of cavalry, to break the railroad and telegraph lines. The man and the mule were brought to a halt, and the mule and himself closely examined, under strong remonstrances at the indignity done to a Southern gentleman. Remonstrance, however, was without avail, and in his boots two telegrams were found from the Commissary-General of Lee's army, saying: "The army is at Amelia Courthouse, short of provisions; send 300,000 rations quickly to Burkesville Junction." One of these dispatches was for the Confederate Supply Department at Danville, the other for that at Lynchburg. It was at once presumed that, after the dispatches were written, the telegraph line had been broken by General Crook north of Burkesville, and they were on their way to some station beyond the break, to be telegraphed. They revealed where Lee was, and from them some estimate could also be formed of the number of his troops. Orders were at once given to General Crook to come up the road from Burkesville to Jettersville, and to General Merritt, who, with the other two divisions of cavalry, had followed the road from Petersburg,