THE NEW PHILANTHROPY.

"Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up; and he arose."- ST. MARK ix. 27.

THERE he lay upon the ground, the victim of the devil. What could be done with him? All remedies had failed. The physicians had prescribed for him; the apostles had prayed for him, but to no purpose. Then came the Master, holding out his friendly hand; and he

arose.

It is a parable touching our own problems. What to do with the man who is down — who can tell us? We stand about, as they stood that morning at the foot of the Transfiguration Hill, curious, sympathetic, desirous to help; some with theories, some with medicines, some with prayers. In the midst is the possessed of the devil. And the devil continues to possess him. What shall we do? We must give him our fraternal hand.

The new philanthropy is older than the church. It began with the beginning of the

ministry of Jesus Christ. All that is new about it is the application of his teaching and example to our present needs. It is not easy to practise, but the preaching of it is simple enough. One does not need to be deeply versed in political economy to be able to understand it. Friendship is the heart of it. The symbol is the extended hand.

One characteristic of the new philanthropy is the definition which it gives to the word "betterment."

For a long time the concern of the church in the progress of mankind was thought to be only with the soul. It was of great interest to the church that men should be helped spiritually. They must be converted; they must be led to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and to confess that faith openly before men; they must be drawn into the allegiance of the church; they must be taught to pray; their feet must be set in the road that leads to heaven. It was forgotten that man is not all soul.

The consequence was that a false distinction was set up between the sacred and the secular. The church set much more emphasis upon the behavior of men on Sunday than upon their

conduct between Sundays. A thousand misleading conventionalities confused the vision of Christian thinkers.

Faith, for example, was given an ecclesiastical definition, and was made synonymous with theology. The true believer was he who assented to the pronouncements of the theological doctors. Faith was set apart from reason; believing was made a substitute for thinking. Still wider was the distance between creed and character. No man's sense of religion was affronted by the account given of the French cardinal, who was declared to be mean, cruel, avaricious, and dishonorable, but very religious! Benvenuto Cellini broke all the commandments, but attended the services of the church with regularity and devotion, and believed that his steps were guarded by the blessed angels. An honest, pure-hearted, God-fearing heretic, no matter how upright his life, would go to hell. But a loyal son of the true church, who recited the creed and knelt at the sacrament, might live most basely, and yet have place hereafter with patriarchs and saints among the saved. Faith was shown not by works but by words.

Inspiration had reference, men imagined, only to the composition of the books of the

Old and New Testaments. The Holy Spirit ceased to speak when the last apostle died. Isaiah was helped to write his sermons by the dictation of the Lord God Almighty; but Chrysostom and Augustine, Francis and Bernard, had to get along by themselves as best they might. The men who wrote the Hebrew Psalms heard the melodies of heaven; but the writers of the Christian hymns looked into the silent sky. A very different conception from that of the good people of the elder time, who held that even the architects of the new church which was built in the wilderness were inspired of God. Different, too, from the belief of the apostles and brethren who met in convention at Jerusalem, and claimed that the Holy Ghost was with them as he had been with their fathers. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the God of Peter, James, and John, they held. They set no narrow limits to God's assisting benediction.

By the same mistaken interpretation a picture, if it had a religious name written on the frame, was accounted to be sacred. If there were some other name, the picture was held to belong to the secular side of art. If the artist painted a mother and a child, and set halos