most unworthy motives, the recognition of which has paralyzed much longing toward practical work and has driven out of all associated labor many an earnest, honest, active philanthropist.

That which does stagger our faith in even the best and wisest efforts is the manifestly poor results and the entirely unforeseen complications which grow out of charities even where the managers are sincere, devoted, and conscientious and where the recipients are really needy and honestly appreciative, for even in the shilling bestowed upon the worthy poor still lurks that baneful eight pence. Much, it is true, is said about recent improvements in methods of distribution, but when analyzed the alterations are found to be the elimination of one or two objections instead of the entire reconstruction of root principles which alone can adequately meet the popular demand. We have discontinued the giving of alms to street beggars, it is true, but only because the City government cleared our streets and left no mendicant exhibition of misery to move us and awaken sympathy. We no longer feed tramps, but we never abandoned this evil until the law banished it from the country roads and removed from us the constant temptation to lapse from sense to sentimentality. These sewers are now closed, but on a larger scale and less directly we still promote kindred evils, and although it is done unconsciously and unintentionally that does not mitigate the offence since it does not lessen the insidious consequences.

To make confusion even worse confounded we are at this juncture instructed to follow various lines of action so contradictory that if any one of them be true all the others must be false. Tracts are poured out upon us, each one suggesting new improved schemes of work, each a soverign cure for every ill, or an antidote for each mistake, the consequence of which is to leave us in a mood of doubt, in a state of mere inactivity where the old charities seem worse than useless, while the new ones are still too nebulous to lay hold of. Our last charity fad was prevention. For some years it was counted the magical word, but now since the new census and statistics

have disclosed to view increased herds of paupers and since the power of heredity has been revealed to us we begin to comprehend that when we trusted to so feeble a power as prevention we "thought to hold a running river with the hand."

Judge French, the scientist, says our work has been founded. on erroneous principles and deteriorating theories; that the ills that we have sought to reach have thereby been aggravated rather than alleviated. The trend of the present social and economic education has led us away from old methods of philanthropic work and it leads us we know not where. Charity that follows scientific methods is not yet born. The needy no longer come to us as annual beggars; they beseige us en masse, in mobs, in strikes, in riots and in masses of political and social unity. We are now forced to treat with them. Even before the benevolent recognize the inefficiency of their petty doles the recipients scorn the gifts and hate the givers. To accomplish any permanent good we at last realize that we must abandon our conventional charities and go back to the consideration of causes. We have so far made unreasoning and indiscriminate attempts to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, and to visit those sick or in prison only to discover that we were thereby multiplying evil to such an extent that it threatened to overwhelm not only us but also the objects of our misplaced charity.

While the Divine approval, as manifested in rewarding good results, failed to crown our efforts we were compelled to conclude that these efforts were out of harmony with the Divine law. With all our good impulse and earnest effort there has been bare failure in enterprise after enterprise. The maternal heart seeks to save, or hopes to save, at least, the children of the depraved from contamination. As a result orphan homes are multiplied; foundling asylums established, and all the intricate machinery of a popular charity set in motion in behalf of these waifs. In New York City alone over $300,000 is annually expended by benevolent societies for destitute children.

With what results? In those cities where foundling societies are richest the ratio of illegitimate children is increased out of all proportion to the population, while everywhere the orphan asylum proves a temptation to the struggling poor to desert their children. The mother, ever fearful for the future conquers the natural instincts of her heart in order to secure for her offspring the physical necessities. Our range of vision is wider and we ought to face frankly the bad results which overbalance the good.

Not only have we misapplied the injunction to consider special objects of mercy, but we have misinterpreted the whole of the Scripture. We read "The greatest of these is Charity"; for "Charity covers a multitude of sins;" "Be thou an example in Charity," and under the inspiration of these words placing our dollar in the first outstretched hand we have trusted that the gold which was greatest would eventually save us.

In fact we have practically limited out charity to almsgiving, and this despite the correction of the translation, in the New Version and the not infrequent scholarly interpretation of the meaning of the original Greek. The only hint of almsgiving which might be suggested by a wise philanthropy is one among its many ultimate out-growers. Charity in its broader sense includes a life that is Christ-like and a wisdom that shall aim to be scientific. When our work is Christian in motive and scientific in method we may surely go without cavil to our Bibles for inspiration for effort and to our scientific teachers for a guide to good results. The mistake has been that we have deemed a noble impulse to be sufficient, and have blindly trusted to Heaven to take care of results. Our failure has been Heaven's answering word. It is written "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God with all thy mind" as well as "with all thy heart." The method should be worthy of the impulse. But if the recent efforts to prevent the increase of evil have been as futile as previous ones to cure these ills what are the methods dictated by science which are sure of safe results?

Let us first look at the problem whose solution is demanded. Look at it as it is in all its fearful length, breadth and depth, and we shall realize that none can yet answer our interrogation, and none but the ignorant and careless expect a quick solution. We know that sin and suffering are as old as the race. Science and Scripture indicate that they must coexist with man in the future as in the past. Even the attempt to mitigate evil is much older than Christianity. We in our time are confronting this problem upon which every great teacher and sage throughout all time has used his brain and tested his heart. The contemplation of this tremendous truth should not discourage us. Wisdom will not die with us nor is the work of generations laid on our puny frames. We may put from off our hearts the burden and the infinite misery if we assumed a weighty rssponsibility not laid upon us, but we must feel the humbler duty distinctly ours. Each generation may contract its quota of truth and demolish its fraction of error. No individual is without power to aid or retard the general result, but the development of a race is not dependent upon human agency. The creator did not inaugurate chaos nor has he left things to chance. Through all runs an order of development. Because we have not recognized this fundamental fact that God works not by caprice or variableness but by immutable natural laws we have run about like children trying this test and that, working with Him by accident and against Him by chance like toy boats. To each does the old problem turn a new face. He must recast his old opinions and remodel his former methods. He must be alive to his increased responsibility. He must not ignore this new element of power.

But scientific methods as applied to charity require long consideration, a slow creeping towards any gleam of light. Much time and more brains than any one generation can furnish will be needed to develop sound principles. We cannot

do all, but we may accomplish much if we will but grasp the central scientific truth that the development of society depends upon obedience to certain laws, unknown many of them, but

ascertainable, and that their violation entails more suffering than our combined efforts can ever remedy. By a natural development it is not meant that the depraved man will inevitably tend towards improvement nor a corrupt nation grow prosperous of necessity, but only that science reveals narrow limits within which men or nations may improve, outside of which they are doomed to extermination. Nor is this a new

heresy. The ancient poet sang "I once was young but now am old, yet have I never seen the righteous man forsaken nor his seed begging bread?" "Yet a little while and the wicked shall not be. Yes, they shall diligently consider his place and it shall not be." "The perverseness of the transgressors shall destroy them. Righteousness tendeth to life, but he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death." From this are we not to infer that crime and pauperism, sickness and insanity are the results of violated law? Our violations have come from dealing with them as if they had no root and no fruit and could cast no seed to propagate their kind. Even as Christ said of the blind "Neither this man nor his parents have sinned; but that the works of God should be manifest in him." Somewhere, somehow, known or unknown, the cause of each and every ill flesh is heir to is a violation of a sanitary, industrial or moral law. Ignorant or careless of this fundamental truth, we, in our ill advised efforts have not only omitted to take into account the initial transgression, but by unscientific methods of charity work have ourselves violated these principles, thus making the poor victims of an accumulation of mistakes. The inadequacy of our remedies is pitiable; our blundering hardly less than criminal. Upon the prisoner to whom is due at least justice we bestow flowers; to the hospital patient we distribute a tear; for the poor struggling toward self-respecting independence we have the dangerous dollar; upon the heathen who asks for nothing we confer eternal damnation and the diseases of civil zation. What consolation are flowers to him whom we send out of our prison tenfold the child of hell? What comfort are tears to the invalid who