other States, and it can only be a short time until the time! question will be a common subject of legislation. The operation of the law referred to, in Connecticut, has been watched by the Board of Railroad Commissioners, and at the close of the first and second years of its working they speak of it with commendation. They say in their report for 1881:

"The importance of accuracy and uniformity, both as a means of preventing accidents and of determining responsibility, when one occurs, needs no argument.

"In the case of one accident during the year, the evidence was conflicting, whether it occurred at a certain time or four minutes later, and upon that difference of four minutes depended the determination of the question whether a rule of the company had been violated or not. If the accident occurred at the later time the rule was violated, while a compliance with it would have prevented the accident.

"In another instance, which, like the former, was a rear collision, had this system been in use, and the time-pieces of the conductors and engineers corrected by a standard time on starting out, a half hour before the accident, in all probability it would not have occurred, but if it had, there would have been no question as to where the entire responsibility rested,

"Not only is there no absolute uniformity of time among all our roads, but there is no attempt at it, except among those named, and approximately on some connecting lines. East of the Connecticut River there are three standards, and two west of the river

"Did the advantages and profit of this uniformity accrue solely, or even chiefly, to the railroad companies, then the expense of determining and distributing the standard time would properly be charged to them, but its advantages extend to all classes, and the distribution of the cost should be co-extensive."

The merchants, manufacturers, and railroad people unite in their favorable opinion of the law, and the consequent cessation of vexatious time differences in the State. The time is furnished, transmitted, and displayed throughout the State with precision and regularity, and no opinion has yet been expressed that the State is otherwise than a gainer by its contracts for furnishing the time. The experiment is referred to here as affording an example of what may be done elsewhere to the mutual advantage of the States and observatories within their borders.`

Connected with the time question for a single country like ours is that of international time, to which the new name has been given of Cosmopolitan time. President Barnard has ex

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plained and supported this system, and an International Commission has been proposed to consider it. In this system the prime meridian is one hundred and eighty degrees, or twelve hours, from Greenwich, passes near Behring Strait, and lies almost wholly in the ocean. The day begins at midnight, and the hours are counted up to twenty-four. At intervals of an hour from the prime meridian occur the secondary meridians. These meridians are designated by the consecutive letters of the alphabet omitting J and V. The minutes and seconds would be the same the world over in Cosmopolitan time, and the local time at any place would be found by subtracting the number of hours corresponding to the standard meridian from which the local time is reckoned, local time signifying the time of the nearest hourly standard meridian. This is very convenient for navigators, since the "change of count" takes place near the prime meridian, and events recorded in Cosmopolitan time are comparable, without considering differences in longitude.

The necessity of uniformity in time is so generally recognized that projects for its display are already enlisting capital in a new branch of industry. In Paris, Berlin, Vienna, London, and more recently in New Haven and New York, stock companies have been formed for the purpose of regularly selling time to whoever wants to buy. These companies, which are financially quite successful abroad, where the results of the experiment have already accumulated, receive the time from the astronomical observatories, and by means of systems of pneumatic tubes, or telegraph lines, or both combined, they transmit the time to clock-dial indicators in the houses or places of business of their subscribers. Instead of buying a clock, the coming householder pays a new tax in addition to that for gas and water, and new monopolies for furnishing time to streets and city houses will in the not distant future plague the city fathers.

* Preamble and resolution submitted to the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, at their meeting in August, 1881, at Cologne, in Rhine-Prussia, by President F. A. P. Barnard, of Columbia College.

LEONARD Waldo.

MORALITY AND RELIGION.

MR. KIDDER.

THE man who does not accept the doctrines laid down by the authorities of the Christian Church is set down as an "unbeliever," and the Church has heretofore so dominated the sentiment of society as to make it a term of reproach. It is ceasing to be so. The most intelligent, the most cultivated, and the most conscientious members of the community are coming more and more to reject the doctrines still deemed essential in the Church, while their character for virtue and respectability has to be recognized. Doubt very naturally arises as to whether religious belief has any necessary connection with moral conduct, whether, in fact, the so-called believer is any better than the so-called unbeliever.

In the first place, the difference between them is not that one believes and the other does not believe, but that they do not believe alike, and that their belief has not the same foundation. We dispute the right of the Church believer any longer to cast reproach on the believer outside of the Church, or to thank God that he is either better or safer than other men. But what do "unbelievers" believe? They believe as much in virtue and good morals as Christians of the "straitest sect." They believe in uprightness-righteousness, if you please-as best for mankind in this life and in any life to which they may be destined, and they believe in promoting virtue and uprightness by every means. But they believe that what is called the Old Testament Scriptures is simply a mass of Hebrew literature, subject to the same canons of criticism that apply to any other collection of books. They believe that the judgment which selected these particular books and called them sacred was a fallible human judgment. They believe the Pentateuch to contain a purely mythical account of the creation of the world and the origin of

the human race. They believe that the account of the origin and history of the Jewish people is mixed up with legend, much of it incredible. They believe the Mosaic law in all its details to be a human production, applicable to a particular people in a rude age, though it contains some moral precepts universally accepted. They believe the early Jewish idea of the Deity to be a monstrous combination of the attributes of the heathen gods and the Oriental despots of the time, exalted by the genius of Moses, and varied from time to time by the priests and prophets of the Jewish people. They believe that the annals of the Hebrews contain a good deal of rubbish and some absolutely disgusting incidents, and that the whole mass is to be treated like any other literature of an ancient people. The prophets and psalmists, like the philosophers and singers of other nations, produced many things worthy of preservation and admiration, but nothing that should be exempt from a discriminating criticism. The people for whom the present writer speaks have their belief about the Old Testament, as clear and positive as that of the Church.

So have they of the New Testament. They regard that as a peculiarly interesting collection of literature, pertaining to the life and teachings of a singularly pure and enthusiastic preacher who sacrificed his life to the intolerant spirit of the established theology of his time and who has exercised a wonderful influence over human history. They admire his character and his teachings, but believe that both have been amazingly distorted. The record written up from tradition long after his death is, of course, imperfect. Superstition and credulity added much that would be rejected in any other old record and should be in this. "Unbelievers" believe the gospels to be a crude and imperfect record, containing many errors of fact and much coloring of belief derived from writers who were not cognizant of the facts. They regard Paul and the apostles as the real founders of Christianity as a system, but they believe that Christianity as it now exists has been a growth, like every other system, whether of religion, politics, or philosophy,—the work of man in the same sense in which government and the theories and methods of public administration are the work of man.

Those whom the Church calls unbelievers found their belief on the study of nature and of man. It is made up of the best conclusions of human experience, human knowledge, and

human study up to this point in the world's development. Those conclusions contradict most of the belief based on what is called revelation; consequently they cannot accept that revelation as Divine or authoritative. Do they believe in a God, in immor tality, and in a future state of man? That depends on the def nition of these terms and on the mental constitution of the believer. Few pretend to have any positive answer to make to unanswerable questions. They go as far in their conclusions as human knowledge and human reasoning can carry them, and there they stop. They have no right to assume, save each for himself. They do not, like the Church, claim a peculiar conclu siveness or a peculiar sacredness for their assumptions, or try to impose them on others.

It makes no difference what men believe upon the doctrinal points of religion; they are no better or worse for believing or not believing. In other words, there is no connection between morality and dogmatic belief. A man may reject the doctrines of the Church entirely and be just as virtuous, just as upright, just as good, and just as safe for all the chances of eternity as the most devout believer in them. The moral teachings of Christianity do not differ, in the main, from the moral teachings of philosophy. Unbelievers accept them, not as the result of revelation or the offspring of religion, but as the best deductions of human experience and thought. They are apart entirely from matters of doctrinal belief or religious worship, and just as good coming from Zoroaster as from Solomon, from Buddha as from Jesus, from Socrates as from Paul, from Shakespeare as from Augustine. The question does not directly concern what the Church has done or is doing as an organization for the good of humanity. If our position is sound, it could do just as much without its dogmas, and its power to do it is not dependent on its system of doctrinal belief; or the same good could be done by a human organization otherwise founded. Moreover, the unbe liever in Christian doctrines, as we have defined his position, must not be confounded with the class which does not think at all and which has no belief of any kind. This class, being ignorant and unintelligent, is apt to be vicious, but it is not usually graced with the epithet of infidel. It is subject to superstition and given to credulity; it is moved by appeals to the hopes and fears, and it may be that the Church in the eculiar character of its teachings still serves a useful purpose improving the lives and conduct of the lower ranks of