books of the Bible are kept in mind, it is not surprising that the moral standard should be found to vary. Any such variation, however, is inconsistent with the doctrine of infallibility and of verbal inspiration. It is characteristic of man to develop and change; but to suppose that God was once cruel and coarse, though now loving and holy, is a conception which must prove abhorrent to a pious mind. The stories of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt contain intimations that it is right to lie and steal, with the sanction apparently of God himself. Jael is called "blessed above women" for an act of the basest treachery and cruelty, she having enticed Sisera into her house under the plea of friendship, and then, when he was asleep, crept softly up to him, and drove a nail through his head, and killed him (Judges iv. 18-22, v. 24). The abominable massacre of men, women, and children, recorded in Joshua x. 28-41, with the divine sanction, is as bad in its way as the horrors perpetrated in Armenia in the year 1896 by the sultan of Turkey and his bloodthirsty emissaries. The shocking butcheries corded of Jehu in 2 Kings ix. and x. are sickening to read; and yet this black, cruelhearted hypocrite and murderer did what was "right in God's eyes." It is laid down in Exodus xxii. 18 that a witch shall not be suffered to live; and the crimes committed against unfortunate or innocent women in consequence of this command in comparatively modern times are revolting. Polygamy is approved of on the part of many Old Testament heroes; and slavery is commended as a righteous institution in the Old Testament (Leviticus xxv. 44-46), and is nowhere forbidden as immoral and wrong in the New Testament. Refractory children, according to Deuteronomy xxi. 18-21, are to be stoned to death. The author of Psalm cix. prays not only for the dire destruction of his enemy, but that his children may be vagabonds, with none to show them mercy. Those who take the little children of an enemy and dash them against stones are commended by the writer of Psalm cxxxvii.

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It is not possible to explain away these moral blemishes in the books of the Bible; and it can only bewilder men's minds and stultify their consciences to pretend that

such utterances are words of God. Those who persist in teaching children that the moral teaching of the Bible is all perfect are most certainly undermining the foundations of true morality. The narratives to which reference has been made, if inculcated as containing just and right conceptions of character and conduct, can only confuse and pervert the moral ideas and feelings of teachers and scholars alike.

(6) Evolution of religion in the Bible.— The only escape from the untenable position of Orthodoxy, on the one hand, and the casting of the Bible aside altogether, on the other, is to accept the books of the Old and the New Testament as human books, and in their interpretation to exercise freely our powers of reason and conscience. Regarded as a text-book of the evolution of religion, the Bible becomes most interesting and valuable to the general reader as well as to the student. We can trace the gradual ascent of man toward God and goodness, from the coarse, crude, and cruel conceptions of the books of Joshua and Judges to the beautiful, noble, and loving conceptions of the prophets and of the Sermon on the Mount. We can see the Hebrew mind in various stages of religious development, passing from fetichism into polytheism, and then, after a great struggle and with many lapses, reaching a sublime monotheism, and culminating in the gospel of love to God the Father and love to man the brother, revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus. The story of Jael's treachery toward Sisera, the butcheries of the Canaanites, the offering up of human and other sacrifices, these represent a moral and religious standard in direct opposition to that upheld by Jesus in the beatitudes and in the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son; but it should be remembered that a period of a thousand years separated the Gospels from Judges. Jesus distinctly indicated that his purer and nobler views were in contradiction to, and an improvement upon, the religious opinions of earlier Jewish teachers.

(7) The place and power of the Bible.That the Bible contains many words of God-that is, many true, noble, inspiring utterances-no one will deny. But not all its words are divine; and there are words of God contained in other books besides, while

lovers of truth and right may still hear the voice of the Eternal speaking to them in nature and in humanity. Placed in the hands of parents and teachers who make wise and careful selections, and who do not hesitate to allow the free play of reason and imagination in interpreting what the writers say, the Bible is the most instructive and helpful book in the world; but used, as so many still profess to say it ought to be used, as the infallible and unerring word of God, in which every statement is true and every judgment right, it can only bring confusion and harm to thoughtful minds and sensitive hearts.

The power and influence of the Bible will be increased, not lessened, by the rejection of the doctrine of infallibility and verbal inspiration. As literature, the Bible has woven itself into the very fabric of our thought and feeling its finer and more familiar passages can never lose their charm for thoughtful minds. Its stern words of warning and reproof have struck terror and remorse into the souls of tyrants and wrongdoers. Its calls to a life of loving, duteous service have found quick and willing response among men, its tender, touching appeals have melted hard hearts into pity and softest sympathy, and its words of hope and comfort have brought peace to the dying and consolation to the bereaved and sorrowing. Mr. Gladstone, in his treatment of the Bible, has frequently taken up what may be called an "orthodox" attitude. But those who accept the most rationalistic position will agree with him when he says: "Who doubts that, times without number, particular portions of Scripture find their way to the human soul as if embassies from on high, each with its own commission of comfort, of guidance, or of warning? What crisis, what trouble, what perplexity of life, has failed or can fail to draw from this inexhaustible treasure house its proper supply? What profession, what position, is not daily and hourly enriched by these words which repetition never weakens, which carry with them now, as in the days of their first utterance, the freshness of youth and immortality?

Things which never could have made a man happy develop a power to make him strong.- Phillips Brooks.

OUR CHURCHES.

II. FIRST CHURCH, ELIOT SQUARE, ROXBURY, MASS.

There stands in the middle of Eliot Square, Roxbury, a venerable edifice, perhaps the finest specimen of the Puritan meeting-house remaining in New England. All the religious associations of this colony from 1631 to 1773 cluster around this spot: and for a long time it was the place of worship for the inhabitants included in what is now Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury, together with many of the settlers in Brookline.

The first house of worship, like so many of its kind in the new colonies, was built of logs, with a thatched roof and a clay floor. It was about twenty by thirty feet, and twelve feet high; and the settlers at Brookline paid one-fifth of its cost. The first houses were built along the street now bearing the name of the town, and there was a regulation that every one must build within half a mile of the meeting-house. This building stood from 1632 until 1674. The second house of worship was much larger, and answered its purposes until 1741.

A new and larger one was then erected. but it was destroyed by fire in 1746. The fire caught, the records say, from a footstove; and some thought it was a divine judgment upon the love of ease and luxury which was creeping into the settlement. For until this time the fire of devotion was the only warmth the old meeting-house had through the long services, although some of the worshippers would take their dogs to lie on the floor, while they put their feet upon them, the better to endure the winter's cold. Many of the customs of these early days seem very strange to our generation. As there was no fire, the church was regarded as the safest place to keep the powder of the settlement, and sometimes it was stored in the steeple, sometimes on the beams of the roof; and occasionally, if a thunder-storm came on during the time of public worship, the congregation would leave the altar, and take shelter in the neighboring woods for fear of an explosion. Sometimes, in seasons of abundant harvest, the farmers were allowed to store their grain in the loft of the meeting-house; while notices of every kind

of meeting, orders, and resolutions of the town, summonses to town meetings, intentions of marriage, copies of the law against Sabbath-breaking, announcements of vendues and sales, lists of the town officers, rules about the Indians, were posted on the house, sometimes covering it well over, while it was no unusual thing for the freshly severed head or heads of wolves to be nailed under the windows to attest the skill of the hunter or prove the reward due him. Close in the rear of the meeting-house were those guardians of the peace and terrors of evil doers, the stocks and pillory,-where the offenders were placed within full view of the innocent. There was no bell, but the willing congregation gathered at the call of a drum or shell. As an old verse has it :

"New England's Sabbath day
Is heaven-like, still, and pure,
When Israel walks the way
Up to the temple's door.
The time we tell

When there to come
By beat of drum

Or sounding shell."

The prayers were frequently an hour long the sermons of even greater length, measured by an hour-glass, when clocks and timepieces were rare; and it is told of one of the ministers of New England that, when the sands were run out, he would look over his sleepy congregation, and say, "Come, friends, let's take another glass."

The fourth house of worship was built in 1746. Of this we have a plan; and, as it was like the preceding one, we know the precise style of the meeting-house in which our fathers worshipped a hundred years ago. The entrance was from the south side, and the pulpit opposite upon the north. Directly in front of the pulpit was a goodly number of free seats; and among the names of the occupants of the square pews we read these, still frequently met with among our citizens or perpetuated by our streets: Curtis, May, Seaver, Bowles, Crafts, Williams, Heath (of Revolutionary fame), Ruggles, Dudley, and Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill.

The population had so increased that it was thought the time had come to provide meeting-houses in the more remote parts of the town, so that in 1712 a second church was gathered in what is now West Roxbury; and in 1773 was erected the present old

church, now standing on Centre Street, near South, although partly destroyed by fire a few years since. This is the church that was made famous by the ministry of Theodore Parker. From this, as well as from the mother church, still another parish was formed in 1769, which is now the First Congregational Society of Jamaica Plain, quite near to the soldiers' monument.

It may be some reassurance to those who think that the interest in public worship is declining that a record in 1820 says, "The interest in religion had so far declined that, although there are in the first parish in Roxbury, completed and building, three churches within the compass of a few rods, those who prefer to spend their Sabbaths in regular worship to lounging about taverns and pilfering in the fields but half fill a single one."

The fourth house of worship of the First Church, from 1746 to 1804, saw the stormy days of the Revolutionary War. The lawn was the camping-ground of our forces. Here Washington came to review the troops. Gen. Thomas had his headquarters in the house long occupied by the eminent teacher, Mr. Dillaway, the gambrel-roofed building still standing on Roxbury Street. The steeple was shattered by British cannonballs. And Whitefield preached to one of his immense congregations in front of the church.

Early in the present century a movement was begun to build a new church, the fifth on the historical spot. The records tell us that the committee was to consult the plans of the church in Newburyport, then just finished; and the tradition is that Bulfinch, the architect of the State House, had something to do with them. Whoever were the architect, the builders, and the committee, the result was one of the most satisfactory, commodious, and beautiful of all the old meeting-houses in New England; and with its massive timbers it gives good promise of fulfilling the purposes of worship for another century, Its fine proportions deceive one as to its great size; while its large, roomy, and comfortable pews, its most gracefully hung and spacious galleries,— above all, its perfect acoustic properties, in such marked contrast with almost all modern churches,-and the simplicity of its whole finish, together with the associations

of devotion for almost a hundred years, make every one feel at once that this is no hall, no lecture platform, but a church of the living God, fragrant with sentiment of worship for generations. The house was dedicated on the 7th of June, 1804; and the first Sunday services were held on the 10th of June. Fortunately, all schemes of remodelling, by which many old churches have been defaced, if not ruined, have always been defeated here by a wiser judgment. There was a good deal of objection on the part of some to so costly and elegant a structure, as is shown by a note in a private journal, which, under date of April 18, 1803, says: "This day the meeting-house in the first parish of this town was begun to be pulled down. It was not half worn out, and might have been repaired with a saving of $10,000 to the parish. It has been sold for $600. Whether every generation grows wiser or not, it is evident they grow more fashionable and extravagant."

But the church knew what it was about; and when the sale of pews took place in the new house, after all the building expenses were settled, there was a surplus of nearly $8,000, which was divided pro rata among the tax-payers of the parish, and from that time until the present the church has not had a cent of debt.

At this time the population was increas ing, so there was a demand for churches of other sects; and on Nov. 1, 1820, the Baptist church in Roxbury, which is now called the Dudley Street Baptist Church, was dedicated. This was quickly followed by the dedication of the Universalist church on Jan. 4, 1821; and so, one after another, as adherents of the various faiths settled here, churches have been built to meet the needs of a hundred thousand inhabitants. In 1846 a second Unitarian church was gathered on Mount Pleasant, which is now the flourishing All Souls' Church on the corner of Warren Street and Elm Hill Avenue.

When the first settlers came to this neighborhood, they found their way for a few months to the church which had already been gathered in Dorchester; but in 1631 they formed their own church, under the lead of William Pinchon, of whom the record says, in 1630, "He was one of the first foundation of the church at Rockesborough"; and perhaps the church was

gathered in that year, for Eliot came in 1631, and before he left England he had promised friends who had preceded him to be their minister in Roxbury. However, we have not been accustomed to speak of our church as established at an earlier date than 1631. In July, 1632. Thomas Welde was invested with the pastoral care of the church in Roxbury. In November of the same year John Eliot was ordained as teacher with him. No matter how small the parish, it was customary to have pastor and teacher; but very often it was hard to separate their offices and duties. Mr. Welde was the first minister of this church, and remained until 1639. He was very prominent in all the ecclesiastical affairs of this and the surrounding colonies, a stern Puritan, a good fighter for his own views, and an uncompromising antagonist of those who differed from him, and, as he thought, threatened the faith, peace, and purity of the church. It was the spirit of the age to enforce by every argument or legal enactment the religion which the reigning party regarded as true. There was but one true religion, and the true one for those days was extreme Puritanism.

The ministry of John Eliot from 1632 to 1690 so overshadowed that of Welde that, while the latter was no inconspicuous figure in the early history of New England, the former is often spoken of as our first minister, almost to the entire neglect of the able, faithful, scholarly, but extremely bitter and dogmatic Welde.

John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, is the most commanding figure among all the nonconformists of England who came to this country for freedom of worship. His name and ministry are the glory of our church, as they would be of any church in Christendom; and his life is one about which every young person should know something. He was born in 1604, at Widford-upon-Ware, a typical English village not far from London, educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and for a time was an inmate of the house of Thomas Hooker, afterward the founder of the State of Connecticut. His early years were, as he says, "seasoned with the fear of God, the Word, and prayer"; and in the family of the pious Hooker he "saw, as never before, the power of godli ness in its lovely vigor and efficacy." The

struggle between the Puritans and the English church was growing so bitter that Eliot made up his mind to come to this country; and in November, 1631, he arrived at Boston. In spite of the earnest desire of the church in Boston, which had been gathered in 1630, to settle him as its minister, he determined to keep his promise to his friends at Roxbury; and here he began in 1632 his long, eventful, and remarkable ministry.

He watched over his flock, small indeed, but rapidly increasing, like a faithful shepherd. The atmosphere of every home was well known, and any lapsing brother or sister was brought to the open confessional or banished from the settlement. No papal inquisition was ever keener than the Puri tan's watch for heresy or for sin, but a tender love was mingled with the careful scrutiny. If you read between the lines of his records, you see what a yearning sympathy breathed in all his official or private ministry. Here was a man to whom the unseen things of the Spirit were more real than all that could be handled or touched. In homes where he was a familiar and welcome guest, he would say: "Come, let us not have a visit without prayer. Let us pray down the blessing of Heaven upon your family before we part." Finding a merchant with only books of business upon his table and books of devotion upon a shelf, he said: "Sir, here is earth on the table and heaven on the shelf. Pray don't sit so much at the table as altogether to forget the shelf. Let not earth, by any means, thrust heaven out of your mind." Mather says he heard him utter these words upon the text, "Our conversation is in heaven": "In the morning, if we ask, Where am I to be to-day? our souls must answer, In heaven; in the evening, if we ask, Where have I been to-day? our souls may answer, In heaven. If thou art a believer, thou art no stranger to heaven while thou livest; and, when thou diest, heaven will be no stranger to thee. No, thou hast been there a thousand times before." Here comes out in his record the stern hope of the church about erring brethren who publicly confess their wrong in the church: "And we have come to hope that the full proceeding of discipline will doe more good than theire sin hath hurt." And here is his watchfulness over the morals of trade: "The wife of William Webb, she

followed baking, and through her covetuous mind she made light waight, after many admonishions flatly denying that after she had weighed her dough, she never nimed off bitts from each loaf, which yet was four witnesses testified to be a comon, if not a practis, for all which grose sins she was excommunicated. But afterward she was reconciled to the church, lived Christianly, and dyed comfortably." He had also the first Sunday-school in the New World; and his interest in education led to his founding our Latin School, now for two centuries and a half one of the best fitting schools for our neighboring university.

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It was, however, as the apostle to the Indians that he has honor throughout the Christian world. Eliot had hardly begun his work in the ministry here, and mingled with the red men whom he saw every day in the village streets or skulking behind the trees as he walked along the paths, when the thought came to him that these men, as well as the English, were children of God, and to them also the gospel should be preached. He believed-and it was not uncommon opinion in his day-that these Indians belonged to the lost tribes of Israel; and he also believed that in their language he would find some traces of the Hebrew, which Eliot believed was the language of heaven by which God had spoken to Israel. We cannot here trace that wonderful missionary life; but no human labors were ever more earnest, devoted, and selfsacrificing. In his house, a modest mansion which stood just back of where the People's Bank now stands, he had an evening school for the Indians; and during the week, or when he could have a spare Sunday for longer journeys, wherever the Indians could be gathered in wigwams, or under the spreading trees, down along the Cape, all through Western Massachusetts and up to the borders of New Hampshire, there Eliot was to be found. In journeyings, in perils, in fastings, no difficulties seemed too great, no thought of self came to the surface, every personal comfort was surrendered, every sacrifice gladly borne. And then he would come back, and through the long night, by his tallow candle, give himself to the translation of the Scriptures into their language with a diligence which shames almost all records of scholarship. His