the notions that are put forward in defense of the practices which blot out the votes of a great class of the community in one State are defensible there, they are equally defensible in every other State. - Senator George F. Edmunds in the Forum for June, pp. 483-485.

The political control of the United States is now in the hands of a Southern oligarchy as persistent and unrelenting as was that which plunged the nation into the slaveholders' rebellion. Its members own President Cleveland, constitute the majority in the national House of Representatives, and include twenty-four of the thirty-seven Democrats of the Senate, where thirty-eight Northern Republicans, aided by one from the South, precariously hold nominal control. This complete Southern domination of the government is as evidently founded on the colored people of the South as it was when the cries and groans of the bondmen invoked the vengeance of Heaven on their oppressors. Then, as now, the negroes entered into the basis of representation in Congress and the electoral colleges. Now, as then, the negroes have no voice or vote in the elections; but the white men vote for them and wield their power, and thereby rule the North and the nation.

The

The North is supposed to have conquered. The Union is saved in form. The terms of peace, reunion, and reconciliation were the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery; the Fourteenth, omitting the colored people from the basis of representation in States where they are not allowed to vote; and the Fifteenth, giving to colored citizens the ballot in all elections, state or national. Thirteenth Amendment alone is in force; the Fourteenth and Fifteenth are a dead letter, openly and flagrantly disobeyed. Suffrage at the South for the black man does not exist; for the white man even it is almost a farce. A few leaders in each State, combining with similar coteries in other States, form an oligarchy which wields the whole political power of the solid South. United with the Democratic party of the North, who expect to control by corruption or fraud a few Northern States, their "plan of campaign" is exactly what it was before 1860. Our later Southern masters are not different from those of former years. They are able, always alert, and whenever not opposed are plausible, courteous, and full of kind and patriotic professions; resisted, their gentleness proves like that of tigers; they become fierce and defiant, sometimes brutal.

66

The North needs to undeceive itself. The South is in the saddle, and it means to stay there. It has the executive branch of the government, it almost controls the legislative, it is reaching forward to the judicial branch. It threatens the manufacturing and all other industries of the North. It means to hold in its hands the decision of all our national questions, those of foreign policy, tariff, finance, internal improvements, and all expenditures. and to get even " with the North on account of the temporary ascendency of the latter during the era of rebellion and reconstruction. The South will not again make the mistake of secession. It is easier and safer to rule the nation from the inside. The power which the election of 1884 gave will not be relinquished if murder and fraud at the South, and unlimited corruption and fraud in New York city, can retain it. If another Democratic administration is elected, the Northern people will soon realize what the new Southern control involves, and will be loaded to the full with the burdens of which our Southern masters during the last three years have imposed only a small part.

Although in the coming contest the votes of the negro will be unconstitutionally suppressed, and the South perhaps solidly Democratic, our Southern masters can be defeated if the commercial interests of the country are sufficiently aroused.

They will do well to take the alarm. The indifference of the business men of the North to the encroachments of slavery made the war possible, and compelled the expenditure of six thousand millions to preserve the Union. It is better to protect our industries by a contest now, when they are yet undestroyed, than to fight to restore them after they have been stricken down and chains are riveted upon our limbs.

If victory is achieved, the conditions of reconstruction enforced, obedience to the constitution in all its parts compelled, and the vote of the Northern man, white or black, made equal to that of the Southern man, white or black, neither the North nor the South need fear negro supremacy. Senator William E. Chandler in the Forum for June, pp. 507–520.

NEVER before in history has cosmopolitan Christianity been so impressively symbolized as by the World's Missionary Conference at London from June 9 to 19, and yet only Protestantism was represented. There were some fifteen hundred delegates. The unity of sentiment exhibited was the most noteworthy feature of the discussions. The demand for greater unity among Protestant denominations in the work of missions was undoubtedly the most emphatic and significant of all the suggested reforms. Three millions of converts have been added to the church from pagan lands within the last hundred years. And yet the most careful statisticians estimate that there are now two hundred millions more heathen in the world than there were when Protestant missions began a hundred years ago.

THE Rev. Dr. William Hayes Ward of the "Independent" appears in a new character, as author of "An Invocation," a poem written during his recent period of enforced rest in Chambers Street hospital, and in many ways so remarkable and significant that we republish it as striking a most timely key-note in literary reform. The power and beauty of this production will cause many of Dr. Ward's friends to wish that he may not, like Bayard Taylor, sacrifice himself in his higher work as a poet too much to his relatively lower work as an editor.

OUR DAY:

A RECORD AND REVIEW OF CURRENT REFORM.

VOL. II. AUGUST, 1888.- No. 8.

AGGRESSIVE COÖPERATION OF EVANGELICAL
CHURCHES.

THE question of method is one of strategic importance. The triumphs of inventive genius which have wrought such miracles in the mechanical world are all triumphs of method. No man has ever created a principle or an ounce of power. New inventions are only new applications of old principles or new methods of applying power already existing. Yet method has made all the difference between ox-cart and railroad civilization.

There are many men living who have seen radical changes in the methods of transportation, of manufacture, of business. A man who should content himself with the methods of a generation ago would speedily be driven to the wall. New conditions make new methods necessary. Certainly the church in the

United States is surrounded with new conditions. The habits of the people as to Sabbath observance and church attendance have undergone important changes. Unbelief has been popularized. New customs have obtained. Classes have become more distinct. Population has become more heterogeneous; and in our cities the foreign elements largely preponderate. And yet the methods of the church remain substantially unchanged. May we not thus account for the fact that the church has so largely lost its hold on the multitude?

But is not church membership gaining on the population? We are reminded that at the beginning of the century only one in fourteen of the population was in some evangelical church, while now there is one in five. It is true that in the country at large the church is gaining on the population; and it is also true that upon large classes it is losing its hold, while in our great cities rapidly advancing populations are leaving the church behind. But even though the church in the whole country is gaining on the population, the number of the unsaved is steadily and rapidly increasing. In 1800 there were less than 5,000,000 people outside the evangelical churches; now there are 48,000,000 not included in that membership. While that membership increased less than 12,000,000, the population not included in it increased 43,000,000. Can it be supposed that Christ is satisfied with such travail of his soul? And if the Master is not satisfied, his disciples have no right to be.

Of course it is not implied that all outside of evangelical churches are unsaved, but it is fair to infer that the increase of the one class marks a corresponding increase of the other. There are, then, more than nine times as many unsaved souls in the United States now as there were at the beginning of the century.

The question is not whether the progress of the church affords occasion for rejoicing, but whether the results are equal to what might be reasonably expected from the use of the best practical methods.

If all the labor and love and self-sacrifice of the church for a year resulted in the salvation of but one soul, it would be worth while, and the angels in heaven would rejoice. It would be paying a finite price for an infinite value. But if, on the other hand, one man should win a thousand souls to Christ in a single year, whereas by a wiser use of time and money and effort he might have won two thousand, there is an important sense in which his labor did not pay, a sense in which the return was small and unsatisfying.

The annual additions to the churches are large in the aggregate, but compared with what they might be, and therefore ought to be, they are painfully and humiliatingly small. In

one of our large denominations it takes thirteen church-members a year to convert one sinner; in another it takes fifteen; in another seventeen. And these thirteen or fifteen or seventeen church-members have all professed to give themselves, body and soul, time and substance, to God and his service. What if fifteen politicians pledged themselves for a year to the service of a political favorite. The great object of these men every day in the year and every hour in the day is to win adherents to their candidate. To this end they have consecrated not only their time and energies, but their money also. After a twelve-month they meet to sum up results, and find that in one year they have together made one proselyte! What occasion for mutual congratulation? Supposing the candidate to be unexceptionable, we should say there was some radical defect either in his advocates or in their methods.

There are as great possibilities in spiritual as in natural husbandry. Christ used the one to illustrate the other, and talked of thirty and sixty and a hundred fold in a single year. In these great denominations the growth by conversions, which is the only growth of the kingdom, is one thirteenth or fifteenth or seventeenth part of one fold. Is this normal? Does it not mean that there is something radically wrong with Christ's servants or with their methods, or with both?

Let us confine ourselves to two points where radical changes are required:

1. A lack of coöperation among churches and denominations. One of the most marked tendencies of the times is toward organization, combination, and coöperation; illustrations of which are afforded in the consolidation of petty states and principalities into empires, the organization of immense standing armies, the growth of powerful corporations, the formation of new political parties, the rise of numerous trusts, the unprecedented growth of cities. A tendency so universal, and which finds such various expression in statecraft, in military science, in commerce, in popular reforms, in almost every branch of business and in the distribution of population, cannot be accidental. It is the result of definite causes, and will continue while they remain operative. Organization and coöperation