The discovery of a manuscript copy of “The Teachings of the Twelve
Apostles,” a Christian compilation of the second century, has created
a general expectation of new and better light by means of it, on early
Christian history. The portions of this manuscript which have been
published in this country are too brief to afford much satisfaction.
The genuineness of the document is vouched for by Professor Harnack, of
Giessen, one of the foremost patristic scholars. If there were not a
general disposition to believe the manuscript to be genuine, we might
note some circumstances as suspicious. Professor Harnack has believed
and taught that such a book probably existed in the early centuries.
If we were suspicious we should wonder whether another Saphira has
not undertaken, of his own avaricious motion, to find what a great
patristic scholar believes to exist—and to make discovery certain by
constructing the desired document himself. No breath of suspicion taints
the atmosphere, and the finding of the manuscript is regarded as a strong
proof of the rare learning and sound judgment of Professor Harnack. But
until the whole document, in the Original Greek, with a history of its
discovery, has passed under the eyes of many scholars, it will be wise
to keep our judgments in suspense respecting the genuineness and the
importance of the document.
* * * * *
The new Congregational creed has been received with a good deal of favor.
The aim of it is in the right direction; we leave others to decide
whether or not it hits its mark. Theology consists of doctrines and
explanations of doctrines. The aim of the authors of the new creed is to
make a statement of doctrines, leaving explanations of doctrines to the
field of liberty. It happens that the larger half of most creeds make
doctrines out of explanations. For example, the deity of Jesus Christ is
a doctrine; but along with it we hold a number of explanations of the
doctrine. The atonement is a doctrine; but three-fourths of the texts
of the creeds, on this subject, are explanatory theses. That Christ
_died for us_ according to the Scriptures is doctrine; but the various
theories called “Governmental,” “Substitutional,” “Moral Influence,”
etc., are explanatory. That the Bible is God’s book, revealing Him
and His law is doctrine; but the separation of the printers’ and
proof-readers’ mistakes—that is all the failure in the human making-up
of the book—proceeds by way of explanatory theology. If tolerably clear
lines can be drawn between doctrine and explanation—we are not sure such
a line can be drawn—then evangelical Christendom can have a common creed
at once. The doctrinal unity exists in fact; we are only waiting for some
one to state the doctrines clearly, leaving us to differ concerning the
explanations. The new Congregational creed may prove to be a rough first
sketch of the creed of Christendom. There is no doubt that the great body
of Christians, though ranked in distinct divisions, has a common faith.
Some symbolic expression of that faith is to be expected—is probably near
at hand.
* * * * *
A shocking piece of news is that several women were recently attacked,
and two of them killed, by wolves. That is bad enough, surely; but a
greater shock will be experienced by the general reader when we add that
the scene of this tragic incident was in southern Italy! Our habitual
associations of Italian things are music, sculpture, architecture, and
other high humanities, all overarched by beautiful sunshine. Most of us
hardly realize that there has been a wolf in Italy since the demise of
the one which suckled the boys who founded Rome. But in fact wolves and
other ferocious beasts still reign in the Italian mountains, along with
the brigands. The latter are not as numerous as when Spartacus collected
an army of them which defeated Roman armies within sight of Naples.
But the brigand is, like the wolf, an unconquerable element in Italian
life. A few months ago, an Italian nobleman was captured by brigands
who exacted and obtained fifty thousand dollars for restoring him to
the bosom of his family. Add brigands and wolves to your “pictures from
Italy.”
* * * * *
The regulation of railroad traffic has made more progress than the
general public supposes. In Massachusetts, for instance, the Board of
Railroad Commissioners say in their last report to the legislature that
“No charge of unreasonable preference or discrimination by a lower charge
for the longer haul has this year been brought before the board, except
in two cases, where the evidence wholly failed to support the charges.”
The Massachusetts system of supervision was founded twelve years ago
by C. F. Adams, and the results obtained by him and his successors in
office show clearly that an intelligent and judicious supervision by
state authority benefits both parties—the railroads and their customers.
But—and this point is the reason of the success in Massachusetts—there
has not been one ounce of demagogism in the action of the commissioners.
* * * * *
The decision of the United States Supreme Court that Congress may
issue paper money at its discretion has been received with lugubrious
prophecies by a part of the press. It is probably good for us that the
decision has been rendered now rather than a few years later—and it was
certain to come. The good of it is, we know clearly what the powers and
responsibilities of Congress are in regard to money. We can select our
Congressmen with a plain and full understanding of their functions. The
doubt which has hung over this subject for several years has had an
unwholesome effect—“unsettled questions have no mercy on the peace of
nations.” The people of this country are conservative under well defined
responsibilities. Perhaps the prophets of evil have too little faith in
the popular sense and conscience.
* * * * *
There is no sympathy in this country with the Irish dynamiters; but
we are all more or less astonished by the gravity with which English
newspapers rail at this country for not preventing the exportation of
dynamite. The London _Times_ unconsciously puts its fingers on the proper
place for the discovery of such dynamite when it calls attention to the
fact that a ninety pound package of the murderous stuff got to London
_through a British custom house_. The British custom house is the spot
where the watching should be done. If the importation of goods was as
closely supervised in England as it is in this country, no dynamite
could reach London. We do not watch exportation closely because no
export duties are allowed to be levied by the constitution. It is the
inward movement, not the outward, for which we have official machinery
of supervision. To invent and carry on machinery for watching exports
is an expensive business in which we should not engage. It is entirely
unnecessary. Let England watch at her own custom houses. If her officers
admit dynamite in ninety pound cases, let her improve that branch of her
civil service. The _Nation_ very judiciously says: “If the English custom
house can not stop the infernal machines, it is folly to ask any foreign
police to do it.”
* * * * *
Our suggestion that laws against intermarriage between races should be
repealed (April number) has “shocked” one reader. Our friend does not get
shocked at the right time and place. Intermarriage of white and colored
persons is very rare, because nature and society exercise adequate
restraint. The place for being shocked is in another part of the field.
And yet it is an astounding fact that the peoples who are most easily
shocked by the marriage of two persons of different races seem not to be
shocked by the very large number of illegitimate children of dark skinned
mothers. There is an exact parallel in the doctrine of the celibacy of
the clergy, and the intense feeling which enforced it, in the days of
Hildebrand. A recent writer says of that state of things: “The priest
who kept a harem of concubines was simply guilty of a venial sin which
did not vitiate his act as a priest; it was the act of marriage, with
its more deliberate declaration of principle, which the church could not
tolerate.” In both cases, that old case of mock celibacy and the present
case of illegitimate mingling of races, the _feeling_ on the subject
is very sincere, deep, aggressive, against _marriage_ “with its more
deliberate declaration of principle.” But in each case the real evil
evades the feeling and defeats its object with demoralizing effects.
* * * * *
They do some things better in France. The government has ordered
observations to be made on strokes of lightning and their effects, by
a bureau, using postmasters and others as observers. A report for the
first half of 1883 shows that in January there was one lightning stroke
which injured a man carrying an umbrella with metal ribs; in February
there were no strokes; in March and April, four each month; in May
twenty-eight; in June one hundred and thirteen. Seventy animals and seven
men were killed, and about forty persons were injured. Lightning rods
were treated with contempt, and the electric fluid especially attacked
the bells and bell-towers of churches, and in one case blasted the gilt
wooden figure of the Christ on a church which had a lightning rod.
The second half of the year would of course show a longer chapter of
accidents. Why can not we have in this country just such a system of
collecting the facts about lightning strokes?
* * * * *
An interesting set of experiments is reported by Mr. G. H. Darwin, son of
the great author of Darwinism, on right-leggedness and left-leggedness.
The subject is of more importance than it seems. Most readers will
remember that Charles Reade, the novelist, contended in a recent work
that right-handedness is a fruit of bad education, and that, if children
were not meddled with by nurses and teachers, both sides of the body
would be equally strong and skilful. Mr. Darwin blindfolded a group of
boys, having first ascertained whether they were right or left handed,
and set them to walking toward a mark, leading them straight for three
or four paces. All but one swung round to right or left, tending to a
circular path, and the right-handed boys turned to the left, and the
left-handed boys to the right. The one exception was a boy about equally
expert with both hands. He went tolerably straight. Mr. Darwin’s opinion
is that right-handed persons are left-legged, because every strong effort
by the right hand is attended with a corresponding effort by the left
leg. This does not, however, settle the question raised by Mr. Charles
Reade; for left-leggedness is only an effect of right-handedness.
* * * * *
We shall have to study the machine politician a good deal before we
dispense with his existence. In New York City, investigations show that
the city offices, such as County Clerk, Register and Sheriff, afford from
$50,000 to $100,000 a year of revenue to the man holding either office,
and that he buys the office, never paying less than $50,000 for it to the
bosses who control votes by arts that are as dark to respectable citizens
as the mysteries of mediæval astrology. A man on a school board was
caught selling teachers’ appointments. He was put off the board and went
to selling liquor. In due time he became an alderman. The halls could
not agree upon a president of the Board of Aldermen. Then the Republican
boss made “a deal” with the Tammany hall and turned over the Republican
aldermen’s votes to elect as president the smirched seller of teachers’
places and bad whiskey. This man is mayor of New York when Mayor Edson is
absent, and has recently acted as such. An intrigue of that sort is as
well worth studying as the farewell letter of Washington. It opens the
very heart of our political demoralization. The chief parties to this
intrigue will both be at Chicago, one in June, the other in July, with
the votes of their respective parties in New York City in their dirty
hands. They are engaged in a commercial business the staple of which is
ballots, and they amass fortunes by selling votes and offices.
* * * * *
Is there any other competitive industry which is exploited with so much
skill as politics? We write these words in early April, within sixty
days of the Republican convention, and we should hardly be able to
affirm that any prominent candidate is an _avowed_ candidate. Are there
no candidates, then? Is the nomination of the party which has ruled the
country twenty-three years going a begging at Chicago? By no means. You
are in the presence of management as a fine art. It is certain that the
work of “getting up an interest” is going on briskly, and it is not
possible that the candidates are ignorant of it. The popular pulse is
rising, and there are men who can tell why it is rising. Perhaps the
Democratic art is of a finer quality. Mr. Tilden has educated bright men
in the delicate branches of political art. That there is no prominent
candidate except Mr. Tilden, who is not a possible candidate, means that
all dangerous aspirants are kept back by the candidacy of “the Sage of
Greystone;” but the object of this suppression of candidates is out
of sight. The children of this world are very wise in this political
generation.
* * * * *
Our readers all know that the Methodist Episcopal General Conference
meets May 1st in each Presidential election year. Not all of them have
our opportunities of knowing what a wholesome effect the approaching
session is having upon the seven or eight periodicals whose editors
will be re-elected or relegated to pastoral cares by the conference.
Ordinarily we can see small faults in these papers. Now we would as soon
seek to find the proverbial “needle in a haystack” as to discover a
blemish on the face of a Methodist periodical. A cynic at our elbow says:
“What a pity the General Conference does not meet every year!” In sober
earnest we must say that all these “official editors” have been outdoing
their former selves during the last eight or ten months.
* * * * *
_Temple Bar_ for March contains a criticism of “The New School of
American Fiction”—that of James and Howells—which makes some excellent
points. Mr. Howells claims the art of fiction has become a finer art in
our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray. This reminds us of a
story, as Lincoln used to say. Once a young preacher was warmly commended
for his last sermon in the following terms: “It was a fine sermon, a
very fine sermon, in fact it was so fine there was nothing of it.” The
attenuated art of Mr. Howells spins out into a fineness which vanishes
in nothingness. _Temple Bar_ thinks this “finer art” of our new school
is a study of surface emotion and accidental types of mankind. The art
is “a photograph where no artist’s hand has grouped the figures, only
posed them before his lens.” Mr. Howells boasts that he finds “delight
in the foolish, insipid face of real life.” But the life that wears that
kind of face affords no material for art—is not _really_ real life.
The accidental types which Mr. Howells paints so carefully please us
just as a gossip’s description of a bridal dress pleases her feminine
neighbor—for a moment. Sometimes we have seen specimens—as for example,
Bartley Hubbard—of the transient creatures and recognize the photograph.
But after all such photography is the function of the newspaper. We all
know that last year’s newspaper is dull reading. The fiction produced by
the “new school” will probably be just as dull in ten years. Dickens and
Thackeray are much older than that and are still fascinating reading.
* * * * *
Is not the tone of the general newspaper press below that of the people
who read newspapers? Are our people as slangy, coarse and low-toned as
the average newspaper is? We do not believe that the people who _read_
the papers are as vulgar-minded as the average reporter supposes them to
be. We have read many defenses of the newspaper methods; but we never
heard of a newspaper which died by becoming decent and wholesome. The
reporter is trying to please a class which rarely reads anything, and is
displeasing his habitual patrons. Let the latter take courage and tell
him the simple truth and ask him to write English in future. A few talks
of this nature will do the young man good.
* * * * *
The name of Adelaide Bell Morgan, Stapleton, N. Y., should have been
among the list of C. L. S. C. graduates of the class of ’83, published in
THE CHAUTAUQUAN for February.
* * * * *
Mr. W. A. Duncan, the new secretary of the Chautauqua Assembly, requests
that all questions concerning Chautauqua matters should be addressed to
him at Syracuse, N. Y.
* * * * *
A late number of _Harper’s Weekly_ says of Mrs. P. L. Collins, the author
of the interesting article on the Dead-Letter Office which appears in
this number of THE CHAUTAUQUAN: “Mrs. Collins has for several years held
an important and responsible position in the Dead-Letter Office. Her fine
culture, varied attainments, and the skill and ability displayed in the
performance of the difficult and intricate duties of the service have won
for her high and well deserved repute. No one is better qualified than
Mrs. Collins to give our readers an insight into the workings of this
important branch of our postal service.”