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A person so eminent in the discussion of these questions as Mr. Edward Atkinson has recently stated, in substance, that, increase the volume of the currency as we may, still it would not be adequate to certain exigencies of regular recurrence, like the annual moving of the crops. He thus practically concedes the justice of the farmers' demand, as formulated in their "sub-treasury project," but he would supply this want through private banking institutions organized expressly to loan money for this purpose.

Such institutions would, however, naturally take advantage of the necessities of the farmers by obtaining the highest rates of interest possible, while the underlying purpose of the other plan would be that of making the loans at the lowest rates consistent with the expense of the transactions. Is it not better, it may be asked, and more in accordance with the principles of true self-help, for the people thus to supply their own financial needs in the cheapest way possible through the instrumentality of their governmental organization, rather than depend upon "private enterprise organized to take advantage of their necessities for its own profit?

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At first glance there might seem to be an objection in the fact that, while the government was lending money at two per cent. it was paying on savings deposits interest possibly as high as 2.4 per cent., which would appear to be an unbusiness-like and unprofitable proceeding. But on striking an average between the sums on which it was paying that rate and the large amounts on which it was paying no interest, but receiving two per cent., it would probably be found that it was getting the whole at a rate considerable less than two per cent.

A more valid objection to the lending of money by the government at a fixed low rate of interest, instead of at whatever rates it might obtain according to the state of the money market, as private banking institutions would do, might be found in the liability that the parties to whom it was loaned might reloan it at higher rates, and thus use the good offices of the government as a means of personal profit. The measure could hardly fail, however, to lower very greatly the general rate of interest in the business world. It would be important, of course, to keep this large sum in circulation, and thus avoid the evils arising

from hoarding. Its utilization for the regular expenditures of the government would be likely to do this, and the consequent reduction of taxation would be a great public advantage. Although the idea of loaning money at fixed low rates upon certain securities, such as land and staple products, might prove impracticable from various considerations such, for instance, as the injustice of discriminating in favor of any particular classes in the community, as such a scheme would appear to do there should be no difficulty in devising some practicable system for using to the advantage of the entire public the extensive funds which thus would be placed at the disposal of the government.

The postal banks would doubtless very largely take the place of present institutions of deposit. To what extent this would be the case, it is, of course, impossible to say. For all ordinary purposes, and for the needs of the average business man, their advantages could not fail to be great. Their effect would probably be to withdraw from the market large sums now available for speculative purposes, and divert them to legitimate uses. The speculative tendency would, therefore, be likely to be discouraged by so much. Necessary limitations might make the postal banks unavailable for those whose financial transactions are conducted on a great scale, and their wants would continue to be met by private institutions, which would offer special inducements to large depositors, just as the trust companies now offer special inducements over the present national banks by paying interest on deposits.

ANOTHER VIEW OF NEWMAN.

BY WM. M. SALTER.

I SUPPOSE I should never have felt toward Cardinal John Henry Newman as I do, had I not been once in a certain state of mind. It was my lot, as a divinity student, to feel under the necessity of examining into the grounds of my religious belief. I could not accept what my teachers gave me, simply because it was taught, much as I revered some of them. I had to test, examine, and conclude for myself. I evidently felt the difficulties of belief, as most of my fellowstudents did not. At New Haven the main outlines of evangelical orthodoxy, at Cambridge the fundamental ideas of theism, were accepted, as a rule, without serious question. I envied my fellows their assurance; I, too, craved assurance, but I had to get it in my own way, and I was plunged into investigations, and beset by doubts that did not seem to occupy or perplex them. The question was, where could I find a point to start from; not what was the whole truth, but what was the truth I could be immediately sure of,- what was light that I could not question (or, at least, reasonably question)? For, once in possession of that, other things might naturally and logically follow. It seemed to me, that if there was any sure ground for the Christian believer, it was to be found in Christ himself; that if ever a voice from another world had spoken to this, it had been through him. The fundamental problem was, Was his consciousness to be trusted? It was after three years of examination into the origin and trustworthiness of the gospel records, of effort to form a faithful picture of Jesus' mind, of weighing of probabilities as to whether he could have been mistaken, and a decision that he could not have been, and that he, was, under God, my appointed Lord, and Saviour, and Judge, as he was that of all it was at this time that I fell in with the writings of Newman, and that he began to exercise a charm over me,

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which, amid all my subsequent changes of thought, I have never been willing to disown.

I felt in the first place that he had a profound sense of the difficulties of faith. There was no evidence that certain questions had ever been open questions to him (such as the being of God and the reality of a revelation), but he seemed to be as keenly aware of the difficulties attending them as if they had been. He believed and yet he knew the other side. Few are the apologists who have dared to say what he has said; few are the unbelievers who could state their case more strongly than he has stated it for them. It was this width of imagination that, for one thing, separated him from the ordinary theologian. One of his precepts to a zealous follower was, "Be sure you grasp fully any view which you seek to combat." Let me illustrate. Newman admitted in so many words that it was a great question whether atheism was not as philosophically consistent with the phenomena of the physical world as the doctrine of a creative and governing power. He allowed Hume's argument against miracles to be valid from a purely scientific aspect of things, and doubted the conclusiveness of the design argument (though not the argument from order) for the being of God. He knew to the full how hard it was to hold one's faith in God in face of all that seems amiss and awry, purposeless, blind, and cruel in the world. He held this faith, he believed there were reasons for it (chiefly in man's conscience), it was the starting-point of his religious system, and yet when he looked out of himself into the world of men, the lie seemed to be given to it and the effect was as confusing, he said, as if it were denied that he was in existence himself. "If I looked into a mirror [these are his words] and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me when I look into this living, busy world and see no reflex of its Creator. . . . Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an Atheist, or a Pantheist, or a Polytheist. To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship, their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken

of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths; the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity; the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, Having no hope and without God in this world'; all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon the mind a sense of profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution." To have one's doubts, one's misgivings, one's own blank confusion portrayed with such appreciation and in such vivid detail by another-how could it fail to powerfully affect me? Surely, I said to myself, whether this man's faith was true or not, he did not hold it because the tremendous obstacles in the way of it had not been brought home to him. Similarly he appreciated the difficulties in connection with revelation itself, as when he said that God "has given us doctrines which are but obscurely gathered from scripture, and a scripture which is but obscurely gathered from history," as when he admitted the real obstacles in the way of the Jews admitting that Jesus was their Messiah.

But I will not linger over this point, and pass on to say that Newman impressed me as one of those few men, in any age, who have an intellectual life of their own. His was no

hereditary belief; he had faced the problems of religion for himself. What looks like faith in many cases, he himself said, was a mere hereditary persuasion, not a personal principle, a habit learned in the nursery, which is scattered and disappears like a mist before the light of reason. His own admiration went out evidently to the "bold unworldliness and vigorous independence of mind" shown by one of his early teachers, Thos. Scott; to the type of mind illustrated by an Oxford associate, who had an intellect, he says, "as critical and logical as it was speculative and bold." Whately, he records, had taught him to see with his own eyes and to walk with his own feet; he thought of dedicating his first book to him, in words to the effect that he had not only taught him to think, but to think for himself. It was a first hand dealing with almost all the problems he took up, that

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