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bring this about. But I say it may come about in a day-occur like the birth of a child. And the time is at hand. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight." The new era is in sight. The present condition of things cannot be much longer borne. The time for reconstruction is now.

What will the people say? They will declare that a few millionaires and billionaires shall not own the United States. The greatest good of the greatest number is the law. It will be enforced.

YE 200TH LESSON.

Christianity Crystalized.

When once the "rights of property" are understood and enforced there will be no want. The first and essential right of property is now tacitly recognized by all. It is the right of each to a portion "according as he has need" of the common product. This that I speak is not theory, but it is fact. It is conceded by all that each has a right out of the common stock to the necessaries of life. All things in Christendom are common to the extent that each be fed, clothed and sheltered. Society guarantees to each member thereof subsistence. It has assured to each food, raiment and shelter. It is horrible, and mankind shudder at the barbarity of starving even prisoners of war. Society guarantees against this barbarity. Civilization forbids it. Christian civilization guarantees food to the hungry, clothes to the naked and shelter to the stranger.

This is the essential idea, hence the necessity of its repetition and amplification. It should be talked over at length and emphasized and hammered into the brains of every voter. Each has a rightful claim on Christian society, no difference how bad a man he is to food, clothing and shelter. Infants are not exposed as they often were in Pagandom of old. When I was a boy I heard it said that one bitten by a mad dog might be smothered to death under a feathertick. But I believe this is no longer permissible, if it ever was. No, each must be let live, no matter how deformed, lame or afflicted, and no matter how wicked he may be; and if destitute and dependent must be cared for in every essential want by society, hence our homes for the feeble-minded, insane, etc., and our prisons and penitentiaries for criminals. There are they fed, clothed and sheltered at the public charge. So every one has a right to as much of the common product as is essential to life and health. To that extent all things in Christendom are common.

Well, when that is conceded all is conceded. What do I mean by this? I mean that in so far as nature is concerned all share equally, and herein there are no rich and no poor, all are equal. All that any human being ever had in this world, according to nature, was his clothes and board. When each has guaranteed to him life's essentials he has all there is or can be to his natural share. Talk of the labor question; that is all there is of it. The toil and struggle of ten hours a day in the mines underground, in the shops and factories and on the farms above ground of ninety per cent of the inhabitants of this planet has no other end than food, clothing, shelter and bed. I would dwell on this thought. Paul said when he had food and raiment he had learned therewith to be content. And well he might be; for that was his natural portion of earth's product. He had in food and raiment his whole share. That was all he could have. And no one ever had more. No one possesses more of water than he makes use of--what he drinks and what he befouls by bathing in it. Indeed, if the truth be told few use as much as they ought for bath purposes, cheap as water is. Why not more? Because ungodly greed has not in this respect taken hold of their perverted minds. If the plutocrat could

monopolize the water he would bathe in the ocean and let nobody else bathe in it. How rich he would be if he could prevent everybody from bathing in the ocean but himself! oceans. That is wealth; it is to keep all other of what you cannot use yourself.

He would own the people out of the use

What do I care how
You have as good a

You can use very little of any essential thing. many stars in the milky-way you claim to own? right to own the stars as the ocean and the ocean as the land. A few hundred Americans own all the tillable lands in Hawaii. They have as good a right to own the sun, moon and stars as the lands of Hawaii.

Now no man has a right to more than will supply his necessities. That much he has an inalienable right to. What then are the rights of man? Perverted they are legally the right to monopolize earth, air, water, oil, coal, sun, moon, stars of the heavens and all the food and clothing and houses in this world. The individual may have allman have everything, and the millions of mankind nothing. That is the so-called "rights of property"-the rights of "business men." Don't disturb business interests by disputing these rights!

one

But there is an irrepressible conflict between the rights according to God's law and according to man's law. What is reform? It is to abrogate man's law and enforce God's law. It is God's law that the essentials of life are common property to be distributed in a Christian way "according as every one has need.' The four simple words "in a Christian way" mean more for good than any other four words put together of all languages.

But is the distribution to "every man according as he has need" made, as yet, "in a Christian way?" No.

Now all ye "Lessons of Ye old Schoolmaster of Ye olden time have but this one purpose, viz.: to see fulfilled the distribution in a Christian way (after the manner of the Pentecostal church) of life's essentials "to all according as every one has need" (Acts IV.:35) and beyond that no one control more-all things common. And is this not to re-establish Christianity? Is it not Christianity itself crystalized?

YE 201ST LESSON.

Our Own Self and Others.

While working for self we may also be working for others. Des Moines, Iowa, boasts the most superbly equipped street railway in America, if not in the world. Now the means to this end financially have not been advanced by capitalists excepting upon a calculation of profits from fares. This great improvement has been made by "passing the hat" for nickels. The street railway is a common blessing. How much does the president of it (whose brains have made it) get out of it? He gets his "clothes and board." That is all. No man can, according to nature, get more out of any business or enterprise. "Clothes and board" are the ultimate of all effort. Who would like to take his place and be tied to a desk as he is? I would not. But he enjoys it because his great heart is in the work.

We must not think him a bad man because he has a city franchise that has proven a bonanza in his hands. He is building for others. He may leave to his sons a means of livelihood-a work to do. No man can do more and none less; for every one must have a work, if a normal man. A change is coming in the ideas of men. The time is almost here when no man will have a thought except to serve his age and country, as did Wendell Phillips; as does Booker T. Washington; as does Andrew Carnegie and as does Mr. Polk in so far as the street railway is a factor.

And men do harm rather than good and in so doing pile up riches for themselves. The man that builds solely to make money, houses to be

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occupied as liquor hells and gambling dens and houses of shame is a moral leper. Public opinion should be so intense in disapproval of this kind of wrong-doing that the guilty one would seek to hide himself from God and his kind in some dark and damp cave-reptile that he is. But for such creatures we would today have literally God's kingdom come down to earth. And only it is Christian to have no thought and do no act but for the common good. That is my contention. Robbing poor girls by employing them in factories, stores and in domestic employments at wages inadequate for self-respecting maidenhood is unchristian. a business cannot be conducted and pay wages that render the lives of employes worth living the business should be wound up at once by the mandate of a court. The employer should have no other purpose in the conduct of business than the welfare of all those dependent on it and, too, the common welfare.

If

Our Puritan forefathers studied the Old Testament more than the New. And they were more Jew than Christian. The non-church member was to them a gentile and beyond the pale. Nor did church membership forbid owning stock in a slave ship. How short a time it has been since men, women and children were sold on the auction block like cattle by "Christian men" (so-called) in America. The thought uppermost in my mind is that self-abnegation is the essential element of the Christian religion. Of course, the wish to be remembered as a benefactor belonged to the character of Washington. But no financial consideration could have tempted him to come short of duty to his country. He rode into the midst of a hailstorm of bullets at Princeton and his aide hid his face expecting Washington to fall as did General Mercer fall.

Reader, look into your heart and see what motive is at its core in all you do. Is it selfishness or is it to "lend a hand" and to "never lose an opportunity of doing a favor?" Do you think it "more blessed to give than to receive?" He alone occupies a plane above the beastial that thinks of giving rather than of receiving, who says, "I am the servant of all" and who cannot rest his head upon his pillow if he know that any that he can help "have not place whereon to lay their heads."

Public opinion should close up every business that does not promote the general good-saloons, tobacconist dens, pool halls, gambling hells, redlight establishments, public dance-halls, etc., and distilleries and breweries that produce intoxicating drinks, and it should convert all department stores,-(and all other business that monopolizes what was once the source of the income of many supporting large families), into co-operative institutions owned by the public at large, as are the public schoolhouses, and conduct them for the public good and not to enable individuals to become millionaires and billionaires. That is what Christian socialism means to bring about-that state of public opinion.

YE 202D LESSON.

Popular Ideas and Government.

Popular ideas in America are as far in advance of the American government as are popular ideas in Russia in advance of the Russian government, and as were popular ideas in France just prior to the French revolution in advance of the government of Louis XVI. What is termed "popular ideas" here is public opinion, and what is termed "government" includes customs and institutions, as well as the lawmaking power. Now public opinion may be compared to the world of waters, including the oceans, the seas, the lakes, the rivers, etc., and the advance of public opinion may be compared to the rise of waters. The doctrine of Plato was that ideas are self-existent, "eternal substantive realities, existing separate from the objects of sense, not discernable by sense, but only by reason or understanding, and things

observable are only pictures or representatives of ideas.” (Grote.) This doctrine is manifestly true in respect to governments, customs and institutions, which are only pictures or photographs of pre-existing ideas, the American governments, etc., especially. And comparing public opinion with bodies of water, or shores holding the waters in place, as in the Conemaugh valley, Pennsylvania, years ago, and, public opinion, rising above these shores sweeps all before it, as Johnstown was swept away by the flood from the reservoir. That is what Russia is experiencing now, and what France experienced in 1789, and what the United States is sure to experience soon if the federal and state constitutions, and all our incorporated, money-making institutions. trusts and combines be not changed and shaped to accord with the advance of public opinion before the flood of ideas reaches its maximum height.

The changes that have taken place within the recollection of elderly people in the means of production and locomotion, in machinery, transportation on land, navigation on oceans, seas, lakes and rivers, and the systematization of all movements have resulted from the advance of ideas. Our social system, in whatever respect it has fallen behind the advance spoken of above, and remaining in the old ruts of the eighteenth and previous centuries, will be advanced. Old ways of farming-mowing, reaping, plowing, etc.-and old ways of manufacturing, weaving, shoemaking, bridge building, etc., etc., have no more "fallen into the sere and yellow leaf" than has the old in every respect.

Greed stands in the way of advance. The lesson of the Civil war in America ought to suffice. Nothing can long delay the progress of ideas. The time has arrived when popular control of all things must come in and corporate greed be put down. There must be set up a universally systematized movement of all the machinery of the common weal. Intelligence has become so general and all interests so unified and amalgamated, that all interests are common. Every person in America has the same interest in the railroads, in the oil wells, in the coal mines, etc., and in all productive machinery and their management as has every other person. So too, of insurance. So all movements must become, as of a timepiece or of an Ocean steamer, every wheel and piston acting automatically and to one end. So the wheels of society will move, the end being the common welfare.

Any social system that promotes the welfare of a class or of individuals, one above another, and any business that does not add to the common good and well being of society is wrong. The environment should be promotive of the welfare of all. Every individual is a brick in the temple wall, a unit of the social order. Whatever artifice lessens the likeness of the individual units will be put an end to, and all continue from the cradle to the grave, as alike as nature has ordained. And our religion, too, is destined to become suited to our advanced state, as, when first introduced, it was suited to the maximum of Grecian and Roman civilization. It deteriorated as barbarism rolled, a tidal wave, over Europe with the incoming of the Goths, Vandals, etc. As partially reformed 400 years ago, with its mediaeval creed uneliminated, it is unsuited to the present age. The ideas of the dark ages are outgrown. Any attempt to bind and fetter present day thought (putting into the old bottles the new wine) is sure to fail.

But the extent to which tradition may control one man today the following press-despatch of an occurrence of the year 1907 goes to show: "Dr. Patterson was one of the speakers at the regular weekly meeting of the Presbyterian ministers of Philadelphia not long ago, and his subject was John Calvin." He said:

"If I had my way about it I would have an executioner called to deal with heretics and blasphemers. Burning at the stake would be too good for those who revile religion and take the Lord's name in

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vain. The growth of heresy is such today that nothing but measures like this can stop it."

Comment is unnecessary. Of course, if the power to do so remained, heretics would still suffer from fire and faggot. If God punishes by eternal burning, why not a foretaste of the hereafter be administered here? And God is love!

YE 203D LESSON.

The Problem of the Hour.

We must protect the homes. We must make homes possible. What is the cause of the decadence of the homes? What stands in the way of their re-establishment? Why is there so much misery in the homes already established? What is the matter with society? The hills of the city are covered with beautiful homes-the bottoms with homes of squalor and destitution. And those of squalor and destitution outnumber those of beauty and plenty. Why is this so? And oh, the misery of the squalid homes on the bottoms, the homes of the many toilers! Why is it so?

Poor men who depended upon their labor for subsistence, when I was a boy, were at the head of homes of happiness. Many children played about the door. The wife sang her songs of joy. The wheel hummed and the yarn skeins hung from the cross timbers of the ceiling of the "best room in the house." All were employed at home. Whither are we drifting and what is to be the end?

I will tell you reader what is the matter. Will you harken and if you can do anything with your ballot to remedy the evil, will you do it? There is a problem being solved by the speculative bosses the employers of labor. What is that problem? It is everything to them. Its solution in their favor is their only hope. They must solve it in a satisfactory manner to themselves if they would "make money" on investments, secure high dividends on watered stocks in factories, mines, etc. All production is now carried on by great concerns. The farm is the only exception and the "bonanza farm" will become the rule after the problem has been solved satisfactorily to the capitalists. Then will the agricultural lands become the property of syndicates as the coal lands and all the mining properties now are. The owners of the farms living in the great cities, as the mine owners and the factory kings now do, and farming will be carried on like shoemaking and other productive business is now, that once was carried on by individuals in small shops. All that now stands in the way of "bonanza" farming is that the problem is not yet fully solved -not settled for good.

You see this problem mentioned frequently in the papers; but you do not stop to reflect upon its meaning. The paragrapher is paid to mention it so that the public may become familiar with it and not surprised at its solution. Here is a specimen paragraph:

"When the problem of cheap labor has been solved in the United States, then business will boom and a wave of prosperity will sweep over the nation, unheard of in our country in the past." A cottonmill owner of the South, an employer of child-labor, said to the philanthropist, Edgar Gardner Murphy, "My business is a low-wages business."

Reader, must we have "low wages" to be prosperous? This is a serious question. Who is it that demands "cheap labor?" The men that rule America-corporation kings, the railroad kings, mining kings, and the factory kings-the employers of labor. It is to accomplish this end that the regular army has been increased from twenty-five thousand to one hundred thousand. It is to this end that the pay of soldiers is to be increased. It was the end had in view when the national guard was built up in every state. But it was found that the guards could not be depended on to shoot strikers. The regulars are more reliable. They will,