be any friction in its movements. The tremendous pressure which is borne by a few men at the missionary rooms will be shared by the entire Congregational body, and this Society, earliest in its organization of the entire sisterhood, and richest in its traditions, will firmly hold the churches to itself, not merely as its nominal but as its real constituents.

At this point, I am asked, were not the fathers who founded these societies intelligent Congregationalists? Why then did they, with comparatively so few dissentants, act with such utter disregard of the principles of their polity in the matter? Several sufficient answers can be given to this question. In the first place, outside missionary work was a new thing to them and the application of Congregational principles to associations organized for doing this work had not been thought out and tested by experience. And the very fact, that, as I have shown, they struck so wide of the mark in two opposite directions in organizing our two leading societies proves that the form of organization was largely a matter of accident or of experiment. 2. There was then in existence among Congregationalists, no good ecclesiastical machinery, through which the churches could have elected a representative body to take the responsible management of these societies. We had no State Associations or Conferences, with a single exception, composed of delegates of the churches. Such bodies, all but one, were made up of the ministerial element. 3. The churches, as such, were apathetic on the subject of missions. Any appeal to them to organize societies for outside mission work would probably have met with no favorable response. Hence, if anything was to be done, it must be done by individuals alive with the zeal of missions and 4, In organizing our earlier societies, we were partners with Presbyterians, and, in one of them, with members of both the Dutch and German Reformed Churches. Of course in such a partnership, all peculiarities of church polity were held in abeyance.

At the present time, however, not one of the four specified reasons exist, nor any other respectable one, for the continuance of our anomalous individualistic methods. Our two-faced, selfcontradictory system has been fully tested and has proved its inconsistency in both directions, with our polity. Ecclesiastical

bodies fully representing the churches are now at the flood-tide of their life and activity. The churches are wide awake to the claims of mission work. And lastly, our brethren of other names have bidden us an affectionate good-bye, to do churchwise what they unsatisfactorily did in partnership with us outside of their respective churches.

Here let us take note of the fact, that we are, at the present time, just where we were when these Presbyterian and Reformed brethren went out from us,-left by the receding tide stranded high and dry, constitution-wise, upon the neutral shore of the old Union basis. They have been wise enough to mould their charitable agencies in conformity with their respective principles of church-order. We, on the other hand, have neglected to adjust our benevolent work to the new conditions, and thus to make it accordingly fit into our church-life. For this reason, it is not brought so close to us that it is distinctly recognized as our own proper work. The impression produced is, that the work belongs to the societies more especially than it does to the churches. And hence it is prosecuted at great disadvantage. We count the State, the Family, and the Church as divine institutions, each filling a distinct and important place in our complex social life, and each competent to meet its peculiar obligations. We cannot, therefore, see why the Church, any more than the State or the Family, needs the intermediary aid of independent voluntary associations for the fulfilling of its proper mission. To assert that it does, is it not to hold it in disparagement as an example of a divine failure?

But I am reminded, that these societies receive many donations from individuals outside of the churches; and I am asked, whether, as a matter of equity, these givers should not have a share in the administration? I ask in reply would the Baptist Churches, or the Methodist Church, or the Episcopal Church, regard it as a demand of equity, that they give to individual donors to the treasury of their respective Boards of Missions, without regard to their church relation, the rights of membership in matters pertaining to the election or action of those Boards? Is it to be supposed, that the Centurion of whom the Jews in Capernaum said, "he loveth our nation and hath built us a synagogue" was

rewarded, or expected to be rewarded, with a voice in the management of the business of the synagogue? If some liberal man aids a feeble church, does he by that gift buy the privilege of taking part in the direction of the affairs of that church? If individuals, apart from the proper church collections, give to one of our benevolent societies, out of love to the cause which the society is aiming to promote, is it not a secular degradation of the gift to offer to pay them with official position, or even with the prerogatives of a voting membership? They may, if they so choose, designate the particular object to which they would have the money applied. But I do not believe that any intelligent giver would ask any surer guarantee of fidelity in the use of his money, than that the management is entrusted to the elect representatives of our churches.

Should we wake up to-morrow morning and find that, by some Vesuvian catastrophe, all our existing benevolent societies, the American Board, the American Home Missionary Society, and all the rest, had sunk irrecoverably out of sight, please tell me, how we should go to work to replace them? Would it be done by one little company of men, gathering, on their own individual responsibility, at the pastor's study in Farmington and organizing one society; another, gathering at the Bible House-in New York, and organizing a second; and still another, gathering at the Missionary Rooms in Boston, and organizing a third? By no manner of means! There is but one possible way in which it could be done rightly and satisfactorily, and that is through the authorized action of the State Ecclesiastical bodies which represent the churches, or of the National Council. Is it wise to wait for a catastrophe to compel us to do what should be done voluntarily and with a cheerful harmony?

Professor Alexander Johnston of Princeton College, in his recent "History of Connecticut," in speaking of our National Federal Constitution, thus expresses himself: "It is hardly too much to say, that the birth of the Constitution was mainly the grafting the Connecticut system of government on the stock of the old Confederation." The self-government and equality of each town, in the Connecticut system, was the pattern after which the United States Senate was constituted, each State

being in that body equally represented. If now in 1787, Connecticut presented a model worthy to be copied in the framing of our National government, Connecticut in 1888 can show as good a model for the reconstruction of our National Benevolent Societies. "The Missionary Society of Connecticut," whose beginnings date back nearly a century, is that model. The churches represented in this General Conference manage it through Directors chosen by the Conference. I need not tell you with what wisdom, efficiency and economy its work has been done, nor how dear it is to the churches. If now, by the application of the same principle, we can manage our National Benevolent Societies, through men chosen by our several State Conferences or by the National Council, we shall achieve a result quite as important to our churches, as was the change of the old "Articles of Confederation" for the "Federal Constitution," to these United States.

In conclusion: The result towards which this discussion has been aiming, and to which the truth and Providence of God seem to conduct us, may be comprehensively expressed in the following terms: While we render all due honor to the Christian foresight, faith, and courage manifested in the founding of our National Benevolent Societies, and while we gratefully recognize the rare fidelity with which their affairs have been administered, the time has come, when they should, by the requisite changes in their structure, be brought into organic connection with the churches, and so become the appropriate and responsible agencies, through which the churches, as being Congregational in form, may do their appointed work for the world's evangelization.

Saybrook, Conn.

A. S. CHESEBROUGH.

ARTICLE III.-SUGGESTIVENESS IN ART.

THOSE people who go out into the roadways of art crying Haro! Haro! in the name of realism would certainly gain their cause could numbers alone give them a verdict. For to say that the present tendency of the masses is toward the realistic side of life and art is but to state a trite axiom. We have about us on every hand the evidence of its truth. The age in which we live, dubbed Positive by Comte, has lost none of its positivism with his followers, but on the contrary has added to itself some latter-day exactness. So to-day we hear of innumerable exact sciences established by exact thinkers whose one aim is to get at the truth. This is quite as it should be; for the proper aim of science is to discover and establish truth. But outside of the exact thinkers are a great many people who, burdening their minds with no great problems of moment, fancy they like truths and realities because these are en rapport with the time, and for the further reason that whatever is true must necessarily be good for one's mental digestion. Truth being a very convenient pair of scales wherein things may be weighed one is not surprised to find it used for many things outside of the sciences. The arts are put in the balances and we hear great talk of realistic painting, life-like sculpture, and scientific poetry. Doubtless when the exact thinkers have time to turn their minds upon it we shall hear somewhat of an exact music and a positive drama. The inclination is that way. This is not quite as it should be; for the expressive arts have to do with the realm of the imagination, and their province is to please by stimulating the imagination of the beholder. They are not in any sense simple statements of truths or facts.

But it is not strange that people of to-day should demand an art of facts. The age, as already observed, is prosaic, scientific, realistic. The idealist is scouted at as a relic of speculative days; the romantique has received his death wound at the hands of Mr. Howells; and the old-time poet-well he is considered quite a good joke all around. The populace, always