and no present business for the Assembly, but still "prayers for the Lords and Commons," at four shillings a day. February 8, "Mr. Carter, of London (he is an Independent), to pray;" there being, by vote of the Commons, no House of Lords since two days past, their lordships need no chaplain. The Assembly is now small enough "to adjourn to the scribe's chamber."

February 15, "Mr. Hardwick to pray next week.”

February 22, 1649, " Mr. Johnson to pray."

This is session 1163, the last one numbered, and the Assembly thenceforth disappears in a committee for examining ministers. Zealous and accurate calculations have shown that it sat five years, six months, twenty-two days.

When the curtain again rises, there is neither crown nor crosier, House of Commons nor Assembly of Divines-but a soldier booted and spurred, and leaning heavily on his sabreOLIVER CROMWELL, afterward Lord Protector.

Such then was the Westminster Assembly. A body of noble. learned, courageous, and God-fear ingmen-not inspired, and, neither by themselves nor others, regarded as infallible-wide differences, and, at times, sad divisions being among them. Moreover, they labored under certain grave disabilities. The State had called them, not to propound, but to advise, and necessarily sought to use them for political ends, and these feudal fetters limited them on all questions of church and state, questions of a most precarious nature, because of the perilous times -when the church was without a bishop, and the state without a king, and that in an age when kings, no less than bishops, were God's anointed, and royalists and prelatists constituted the mass of the people. But in all ideas of government, there was becoming manifest a drift toward freedom, at least away from authority. In polity, it looked toward Independency, and in theology, toward Arminianism; and along both lines toward a larger liberty of conscience and conduct.

The creed of the Assembly was, of course, retrospective and not prospective, since they had taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which were most surely believed among them. Confessions are necessarily conservative, because they are human, and not divine; the spirit of tolerance is all that we can expect, never the spirit of prophesy. Conser

vatism, therefore, prevailed in their formulas, as it always does, and, as in historical movements, it always must, but it prevailed by concession, which is the cöefficient of progress. To prevail in any other way, would be to stand still, when God's word is that the people "go forward." Such victories end in death.

Their work was a grand one in its aim and result, and yet was, in some sense, a failure. It was done on English soil, and by English hands, and yet was not an English product; nor was it ever accepted by the English people. In fact, it was an exotic. It did not take kindly to the climate then, nor has it since. Scotland is its habitat, as it was its home. Old England and New England, and all their descendants, have cast out high Calvinism and high Presbyterianism. But these men faithfully did their work. Per aspera, they attained ad astra. Because of these perils, caution and precaution-which are something of wisdom,--and charity—which is well-nigh all of wisdom —had the fuller sway, and by them, God gave the work of the Westminster divines a wider dominion than he has been pleased to give to any other Protestant Symbol, save the Confessio Augustana.

Art. II. THEORIES OF LABOR REFORM AND SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT.

By REV. Wм. A. HOLLIDAY, Belvidere, N. J.

SOCIETY may be regarded as distributed into three main classes. At one extreme we have all those who live upon their fellow men in a sense not creditable to themselves. The idle, the vicious, the criminal belong here. They are not in direct relation with the great branches of honest production. Their lot, consequently, is not so immediately affected by the fluctuations to which these are subject. The thrift of the community, of the country, is not their thrift, and its reverses are not their reverses. So far is this from being the case, that it may be most plausibly maintained that a bad year, as respects the general prosperity, is a good year for all who live and prey upon

the public for all particularly, who work the vein of public charity.*

At the other extreme are those who possess some property, -the rich, the well-to-do. Having some store against an evil time, provided as the bees are for the winter, they, too, are not affected so distressfully by present straits. The question, what to eat, what to drink, what to put on, is not the immediate and pressing one in their lives.

Between these two classes is, however, one greater than either. It comprises all those who, not having accumulated means, are dependent for support upon the product of their labor from day to day. Not only must it be at once apparent how many are embraced by such a definition, but also how various and how immediate are the influences of the general condition of the times upon their condition. This great class-which for convenience we call the working-class, and the lower strata of which are composed of the honest and industrious poor-stands in immediate relation with the general prosperity or adversity. The index of the steam-gauge does not more truly or quickly show the increasing or lessening pressure, than does the situation of the working class indicate the favorable or unfavorable state of affairs at large. In a good year work is abundant and well paid. All trades have occupation, and in the home of the workman there is plenty; his table is sufficiently supplied, he and his children are well clothed and lodged. But in a bad year work is slack. Those who minister to the luxuries of society first find themselves in enforced idleness, and afterward even those who supply the necessities of life have less than usual to do. At once the home condition reveals the pressure. It is felt first and most severely by the lower strata, and then by those higher, until, in an unhappy progression, it has affected all. Comforts are curtailed, clothing scanty, food poorer and less abundant. Want, increasing want, follows.

*The unworthy take advantage of the larger provision which, at such times, the charitable, individuals and associations, make for the poor. We remember a report of a case occurring in New York in the winter of 1874-75. A gentleman asked a man, who had applied to him for aid, where he came from? He was from Pennsylvania, and had been in the city but a few days. "What brought you he was asked. The naive reply was: "My brother wrote me there was a good deal being done here for the poor, and I had better come and get my share."

here ?

Starvation and death may ensue. This, alas, is no fancy sketch. Owing to special causes, it is one not often, or in its extreme details, realized in our own land. But it has been realized again and again elsewhere. And there is every reason to believe, that what has often occurred in the great centres of population and of labor in the Old World will some time become an experience more and more common and distressing in the New. The special causes disappearing which have operated here in favor of labor, the truth will be better recognized and become more practical, that the condition of the working-man is one liable to vicissitude. For he lives upon his wages and has nothing else to live upon. These, at least, as things now are, are affected by the labor market-by considerations respecting the kind and amount of labor demanded and offered. Wages are often small and insufficient. They are liable to reduction. They may entirely cease. How then can the situation of the receiver of wages be anything but precarious? It is, it must be so. In view of this fact emerges a question-one of the great questions of social science: Is there any prospect of improvement in the situation of the working-class? Or (since, as we have seen, this great class comprises them as its lower strata), may we hope for the bettering of the condition of the honest and industrious poor? To this question, alike in the broader and less comprehensive form, an affirmative reply is almost universally returned. There are some croaking spirits whose foresight, going to and fro like the raven over the watery waste, finds no resting place in the future. So far from holding out hopes of a better day, some of these-quite like the physical philosophers who rise from time to time to point out causes, the operation of which must inevitably one day produce the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds-demonstrate the existence of social forces, of principles and elements in the problem of existence, that can result only in social ruin, complete and terrible.

There is nothing hopeful, for instance, in those teachings which assume to demonstrate an inequality in the rate of increase respectively of population and food. Malthus held that population increased in geometrical, while food increased only in an arithmetical ratio. A quadruple population would have only a double supply of food. Ricardo elaborated the matter

still further. He assumed that the best lands are always first occupied, and hence, that the yield is always greatest at first. The poorer soils successively taken up for cultivation must give less and less returns. Inevitably, then, a day must be anticipated when population shall be in excess of food. It may be delayed. Late marriages, the wise regulation of reproduction, war, and pestilence, which thus become blessings in disguise, may postpone, but they cannot prevent. It is a dark picture, this progress of the world toward a day of universal famine. The fact that men shrink back, as they do,* from its principles and from the direct inferences from them is at least worth something in the way of presumption against the truth of such a scheme as this. It also shows that this is the last place to look for light, positive and cheering, on the subject of our discussion.

Nor can we say anything very different of the doctrine of evolution. It, of course, has its important bearings, according to its advocates, upon the future, as it has had in shaping the past. It should seem, at first sight, as if a principle which has operated as it is claimed to have done in the ages hitherto, the workings of which are seen in the ascending series of existence, beginning with the atom or cell and crowned with man, must be a beneficent one. Here is something beyond the old and vague doctrine of human progress, something more than the mere possibility of improvement. Here is a certain aspiration upward, a sort of " earnest expectation of the creature," a longing for and reaching out after a higher existence; and here, too, is an actual onward movement. This accounts not only for the phenomena of life in general, but especially for all that is useful and valuable in society. All has been produced by development. What then of good may not this mighty and fruitful principle yet have in reserve for the world in ages to come? We find, as a matter of fact, that the advocates of evoution do proclaim the regeneration of the world. It is to be brought about by the laws of life. Mr. Darwin has much to say of the improvement of human welfare; and it is a central idea in the thought of Herbert Spencer.

*It is interesting to know how working people themselves regard such views. A writer, of whom we shall make further mention, speaking of the French workmen, says: "Malthus recurs several times in these reports. He is one of the greatest terrors to the workmen."