part of the total number of voters, are distributed so evenly among the congressional districts as to be rendered absolutely helpless. They have no more hope of being represented in the Congress at Washington than if they had no vote at all; they have but the shadow of political liberty, the substance being denied them as much as it is the Russian peasant or the Indian ryot. The evil results of such a political system extend in two directions. In most of the congressional districts, one party or the other has such a clear majority that the minority parties have absolutely no hope of defeating it, and their members take little interest in elections. Conscious of the fact that the election was decided when the district was laid out, the legally disfranchised voters are soon thrown into that state of mind which bodes no good to the permanency of our political institutions, the conviction that might makes right. The certainty of success, when long continued, no less than foregone defeat, is a cause of apathy; and the carelessness of election day soon extends to the primaries, where the real elections are now decided. Having crushed the spirit of political activity by certain defeat on the one hand, and lulled it to sleep by assured success on the other, the present system offers golden opportunities for the professional politicians, of which they are not slow to avail themselves. Not only may these delectable public servants so construct congressional districts that the minority party of the time shall be disfranchised, but they may make them up in such a way that the two principal parties shall be evenly divided, and thus the balance of power be thrown into the hands of a small number of voters, bound together, it may be, by fanaticism or a mutual desire for plunder. In such a case, the tyranny of the majority makes way for that of a small minority.

Legal disfranchisement is equally bad in its effects upon the representatives. NO. 414.

VOL. LXIX.

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They are seldom men who appeal to the better judgment of the public for approval, but rather such as can manipulate the majority party in any given district. Public apathy leaving, as it does, the nominations of candidates in the control of the "rings" and "machines," these conscienceless mechanical contrivances naturally name such as will best serve their interests. Moral and intellectual worth are useless as political factors, unless coupled with the power to crush the "machine" or the willingness to bow to its dictation. A premium is put upon mediocrity; a reward is offered for dishonesty.

Suppose now the introduction of the system of proportional representation, as suggested. To begin with, the districts are abolished, leaving the voter in any part of the State free to combine with his fellows in all other parts of the State. Every man votes for Congressmen, and every vote counts; there are no permanently disfranchised voters; there are none even temporarily disfranchised. Every citizen is conscious of the fact that the last representative on the list may be chosen by a single vote, and will make it a point to see that all his friends vote. There will be no despair from foreordained defeat; there will be no overconfidence from the certainty of victory. The state delegations will represent the parties and the people in the exact proportion of the votes cast. As the voter is freed from the necessity of voting for a certain man and party, or "throwing away" his vote, and may pick and choose in the political field, better men will be named as candidates for his approval. If one party does not present men of character, another may; if none of the old parties do, an independent one will. We shall not then witness the spectacle of a body of men deeply imbued with principle leading the forlorn hope, and voting year after year without avail, simply because their numbers are scattered about the State in a dozen or twenty congres

sional districts. They will have representation as soon as they have votes enough to fill one quota. The very fact that an independent ticket can so easily be put in the field, and with such hopes of success, will have a tendency to purify the dominant parties, and render such action largely unnecessary.

Upon Independence Day, and upon all national fête days, the air is laden with appeals for purer patriotism, for greater public spirit. But of what avail are such words when addressed to the permanently and legally disfranchised voters of whom Garfield spoke, and who are to be found in hundreds of districts throughout the country? What does it matter to the Democrats of Minnesota or the Republicans of Texas how patriotic and public-spirited they may be? They have absolutely no means of giving expression to their ideas of national polity; as for having any part in the choice of members of Congress, they might as well be in equatorial Africa. Few men have the moral stamina to maintain a protracted fight for principle; practical results must be forthcoming, or they will turn their attention in other directions. When the voter has been supplied with the best possible tools, and fails to use them well, he may be censured; but so long as he must use tools which, from their very nature, render it utterly impossible for him to perform his work, no matter what his will and in

telligence may be, he is not responsible for the failure. In 1888, the Democrats polled in the thirteen States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska forty-one per cent of the vote, but secured only 13.8 per cent of the representatives: they got but thirteen Congressmen when their vote entitled them to forty-one. In 1890, the Republicans of the thirteen States of New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin polled forty-one per cent of the vote, and got ten per cent of the representatives: they got twelve Congressmen when their vote entitled them to forty-eight. In 1888, the Democrats of the seven States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Kansas, and Nebraska polled 38.5 per cent of the total vote for Congressmen without electing one: they got no representatives at all, though their vote entitled them to ten.

This is not representation; it is the grossest misrepresentation. It is a flat denial of the very rights guaranteed us in the Constitution; it is an outrage upon simple justice and common sense; and to permit its continuance, when so complete and perfect a remedy as proportional representation is at hand, is nothing less than a crime.

As the ministerial vocation lies mainly within its borders, we should naturally expect that literature would occupy a prominent place in the curriculum of theological schools. Yet, so far from setting any particular value upon it for their purposes, these schools not only fail

to include it in their own schemes of study, but they manifest little interest or concern in regard to the previous literary training of their students. Perhaps there is no better illustration of the spirit and policy dominant among them than the professional uses to which they put the

Bible. By general consent, it contains some of the most extraordinary prose and poetry in the world; but for all that, ignoring the man of letters, they practically give the book over into the hands of the historian, the philologist, and the theologian.

This discrimination against literature is certainly a matter which requires explanation. In the case of the Bible certain theories of inspiration may be partly responsible for it, though it is difficult to see how even the most conservative of them necessitate anything of the sort. Cardinal Newman, for example, held that the divine afflatus sometimes took such complete possession of the sacred writers as to convert them into mere passive channels of communication. Occasional passages, of which the first chapter in the gospel of St. John furnishes an instance, he did indeed refuse to call literature. He put them into the category of science, because they were supposed to deal with facts rather than with ideas. Yet, notwithstanding the presence of these so-called scientific elements, he never dreamed of considering the Bible anything else than literature, and that "in as real and true a sense, as personal, as rich in emotion and reflection, as Demosthenes and Euripides." But the hostile influences that may be fairly attributed to old-school doctrines of inspiration affect only the Scriptures, and do not account for the neglect of literature in general as an instrument of ministerial training. What is the distrust for distrust there must have been —which has thrust it so completely into the background?

John Locke, to whom the cause of education is under lasting obligations, expresses the opinion, in one of his posthumous essays, that converse with books "is not the principal part of study." While he does not explain his views so fully and clearly as we could wish, he seems to question the relative efficiency of literature in educational work. Per

haps his position is not essentially different from that of Professor Freeman, of Oxford, who contends that it should not form any part at all of university study, unless pursued in connection with philology and history. He does not leave us in doubt concerning his reasons for this harsh judgment. They all take their rise in his favorite doctrine that sentiment, not fact, is the province of literature. The inference is not far to seek, that in subjects of this character, which are chiefly matters of taste, and hence involve endless differences of opinion, the student may successfully teach himself.

This conception of literature, as I shall hope to show in the sequel, is inadequate and misleading. "Sentiment" is altogether too scant a word to embrace its total contents. The whole history of books discredits the supposition that it is self-interpretative to a degree which renders exposition and illustration superfluous. The delays, the indifference and positive hostility which genius has encountered are an old and familiar story. Even the spacious times of the great Elizabeth mistook writers of the first rank for "unlearned idiots . . . who endeavor continually to publish their folly," and sent them for shrift to St. Fool's. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were in no haste to appreciate men who have since become their chief glory. It is a mistake to suppose that the critic has no vocation other than carrying coals to Newcastle. The present drift of opinion in educational circles, instead of confirming the opinion that instruction is of little consequence in literature, sets strongly toward the conviction that in no other subject is it of more importance. At all events, the outcome of laissezfaire theories has been sufficiently unsatisfactory.

Another explanation of the indifference with which professional schools of theology have regarded the study of literature is that it tends to create a

visionary habit and temper of mind; that it blunts the practical energies, and consequently disqualifies men for taking their proper place in a bustling, workaday world. This phase of the indictment, although it has had considerable Vogue of late, is by no means new. John Lyly states it after his peculiar fashion when old Cassander gravely tells Euphues that those "who give themselves to be bookish are often so blockish that they forget thrift." The operations of the Society for the Extension of University Teaching in England have shown that this apprehension exists among the middle and the laboring classes. In the work of this society, literary courses have commonly suffered when brought into competition with others which are thought to have immediate connection with bread-winning. These men and women readily appreciate the relation of science to practical affairs, nor is it difficult for them to see that history, political economy, and sociology have direct and helpful relations to their personal welfare. Literature stands, in their judgment, upon a quite different footing. They not only regard it as a luxury rather than a utility, but they have a suspicion that, if meddled with very much, it might unfit them for their craft.

The questions that have been raised are doubtless questions of fact, and some may think that they can be readily settled by a little scientific investigation. Four or five years ago, John Morley met the charge that the study of literature makes men unpractical by insisting that it was "ludicrously untrue" in reference to the existing government of England. "Some of the most sagacious men in the country," he continued, "are the most accomplished bookmen."

By examining the published sermons of successful preachers we should doubtless be able to determine with more or less confidence whether literature had been a chief nourisher of their genius. Take Jeremy Taylor, sometimes called

the Shakespeare of the pulpit. The sources of his inspiration are not doubtful. In spite of the vicissitudes of his troubled career, he managed to read all the important publications of the day. If he did not neglect the soberer writers, neither was he indifferent to Robert Greene or Mademoiselle de Scudéri. Like Petrarch, he might have fitly died with his head on a book. Scarcely less were the obligations to literature of another great preacher, Robertson of BrighSo conscious was he of its beneficent power in his own experience that he urged the reading of poetry upon the workingmen of his parish, as at once a powerful nepenthe,

ton.

"Which can commute a sentence of sore pain For one of softer sadness,"

and an inspiration which could lift them into the higher moods of living. No one who is familiar with the remarkable sermons of the late Canon Liddon will have failed to observe that only a man of letters could have written them. If there should be appeal from the discourses of clergymen to the testimony of laymen, I should be inclined to quote the opinion of Thomas Nash, which deserves whatever attention the conclusions of a keen, observant Elizabethan may happen to be worth. "How admirably shine those divines above the common mediocrity," he exclaims, "that have tasted the sweet springs of Parnassus!"

We cannot expect, however, that this line of inquiry will lead to decisive results, since, as we have seen, literature has never been a substantial factor in the process of ministerial training. Inasmuch as satisfactory data of this sort do not exist, we are compelled to resort to a priori methods, to attempt some analysis of its principal constituents, before we can speak very definitely or confidently.

The question What is literature? does not involve any serious difficulties. It is a matter upon which scholars are in

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the main agreed. They would hardly quarrel with a recent writer who says that it "consists of all the books—and they are not so many - where moral truth and human passion are touched by a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form." Shelley's description of poetry, as the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best men," strikes the same key, and fits prose, especially of the imaginative sort which Walter Pater calls "the special and opportune art of the modern world," quite as happily as it fits poetry. Now if clergymen should happen to be "hard sitters" at those greater books which contain the noblest thought, emotion, and speech of men worthy to represent their kind, and which we call literature, what then?

It is plain at the outset that the study of these books involves a consideration of the gravest problems of theology. No theories of the Bible and of its relations to the church which promise to have much currency in our day will diminish the importance of this investigation. If literature is, in any adequate sense, a definition of man, — and such is the import of the descriptions of it which have been quoted, it cannot pass by, that very perplexing subject, the philosophy of life. The most casual examination shows that it does not pass by this question. On the contrary, ethical and religious problems largely furnish its materials of perennial interest. In our own literature, the ebb and flow of spiritual forces are distinctly traceable from the times of Chaucer onwards. Taine does not hesitate to say that it is impossible to consider religion and poetry separately, and speaks of that serious poem which in England is called religion. Doubtless our bards often sing as the linnet sings, but their prevailing strain is of another type. No theme appears to attract them so strongly and so constantly as that ancient matter of justifying the ways of God to men. In

the present century, not to speak of other times, they have given much attention to contemporary religious problems. The poetry of Browning wrestles with questions like the origin of evil, the relation of knowledge to morality, and the immortality of the soul. A deep, comprehensive optimism pervades it, - an optimism which dared to look on

"Brow - furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek,

Diseased in body, sick in soul, Pinched poverty, satiated wealth, whole

Array of despairs,"

your

and which survived the tremendous ordeal. Tennyson's In Memoriam, his Palace of Art, and Two Voices cover large tracts of modern doubt and perplexity. Clough shows an almost morbid eagerness to tear off disguises and break through conventionalities, in order to reach the simple, unalloyed truth. Shelley flew in the face of the church and theology, yet he did not always escape from the control of some higher and mysterious inspiration which overmastered his avowed purposes, so that, like the baffled prophet from Pethor, he spoke a message that the Lord put into his mouth.

But elaborate details are unnecessary, since "the pale cast of thought" is on the verse of our century. The services of the poetic intuition as a medium for the discovery and illustration of truth are so obvious as to save us the necessity of appeal to argument. These services have been conspicuous not only in the genesis of all the great religions, but also in the interpretation of nature and history. This intuition disclosed to Wordsworth the spiritual aspects of the external world; to Scott a fascinating and forgotten world buried beneath the rubbish of medieval chronicles; to the Hebrew prophets the vision of God as all and in all. For our present purposes it is only necessary to call attention to these extraordinary achievements of the