and has ever mortal exhibited the qualities that truly belong to us all?. It does not stand to reason, for we have all grades in hypocrisy. Artemis Ward mistook for a common preacher (though a hypocrite likely) and who appealed to the humorist with eyes cast heavenward—as a sign-manual. Meeting with no response, the good man said, "This is a cold world.” A. W., sizing the man up, and having no Bible at hand, blurted out, "You'll get into a hotter one by and bye; hot as hell."

No fault attaches to Bible accounts, so valuable for reference; written from hearsay, these records can be construed as most valuable for study-conceptions of earliest traditional times. You must not take Jacob and his wives and concubines as a holy example now, for life today if examples of Scriptures mean for "instruction" (example) would indicate no progress through the ages. Jesus surely fought and opposed the holy ideas in olden scriptures. An eye for an eye—and saying not anything of reproof in the scriptures about holiness of holy wars-"but I say unto you, love one another.”

I am not psychoanalytic nor of the pious-the very elect, but observe from all past experience, we do not get to the full understanding of life from our human nature. Experience of religion teaches that it has much of impulsive goodness, formal ceremonies or actions soon forgotten. Jesus no doubt had reference to this, religion too full of animal magnetism, for when speaking of a church (his was the open-air kind) when two or three in serious mood are met together. Then the higher light and life are manifest,

a spirit arises that will with the morning stars sing in utmost joy. A church should surely have the educational feature, for at this ripe age of the world we may drop notions of altars, offerings to gods (burnt or otherwise).

Rather too much of human nature is exhibited by school authorities in selecting teachers (a hint also to church authorities), the employed expecting a good time, to spend between the movies and mental concerns, as the "duties." In selecting help for churches or charities, the teachers should be given not any notions of ease, soft snaps, or time for selfish uses; but select the most competent of Good Samaritans, and not from mere scholarly or pious pretensions.

This is an age of action, and those coming in a rebirth to take again some part in human affairs must hustle. No more of the loafing, hold-up dispositions “need apply," must go as the scoffer says, to hell— where the dark of polarity belongs. Times change and we with the times. Now great shake-ups from calamities recently, endured from prominence of hatred and war.

Our President, since the devil dance of others, has been wise, careful and patriotic. With our Republic has always seemed the light of progress, or we would now, as at first, be in chains of slavery and under dictation of lazy autocrats or plutocrats.

As showing the new trend, in America, I copy from James Oppenheim's late Times essay:

"When its meaning is revealed, we see that the unconscious wisdom is trying to tell us of ourselves, to reveal our real trouble, and even to lead us to a solu

tion of the difficulties. What does one know of oneself? Human nature is a rich mystery, for not only is it compounded of our experience and our gifts, it is also inherited from the remote past. In each of us is the collective unconscious, the racial mind, which contains the wisdom, the power, the greatness of the entire past: the very source of inspiration, the spring from which have risen all our arts, inventions, religions and sciences. . . .

"One may wonder how by any psychological process one may come to this deeper insight. One cannot do it alone. Maeder, in his little book on the subject, likens the analytic process to Dante's 'Divine Comedy.' The analyst is the guide, Virgil, who leads the patient, Dante, first down through the inferno of his hidden abysses of nature, then up through Purgatory, the great overcoming. But at the peak of the Mountain of Purgatory, Virgil gives up his guidance, and Beatrice appears, Dante's own soul, now to lead him. up through the paradise."

III

When Tolstoy was excommunicated in 1901, he addressed the Orthodox Russian Church very candid letters as to his belief in Jesus and the Father of us all. Said, "Truth more than all else in the world he loved, and had greatest veneration for Jesus." His later years were spent amidst spies of the church, and very many pressing offers he had to die with church prospects for salvation at last. The wife of Tolstoy was evidently sent to spy on him, and take him from his prized last writings,—to burn such has long been the fashion of the pious vs. infidels.

From a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly I copy a Tolstoy letter of October 23, 1910: "I am a very sinful person, and my only occupation consists in mending myself, in the measure of my power and ability, from my numerous sins and sinful habits. I beseech God to help me in this cause, and He helps me. Though at the pace of a turtle, still I advance with His help. In this advancing I find that the sole sense purpose and benefit of my life. The kingdom of God is within us and the kingdom has to be won by force (that is, by effort). I believe in this, and exert all possible efforts for this; and here you come to offer me the performance of certain rites and the utterance of certain words, which would show that I consider as infallible truth all that which men who call themselves Church consider truth, and in consequence of which all my sins would be pardoned-pardoned somehow and by someone; and that I shall not only

be exempt from the inner hard-but at the same time joyous, spiritual work of self-improvement, but that I shall be somehow saved from something, and shall receive some kind of an eternal bliss.

"Why, dear Brother Dimitri, do you address me with such a strange proposal? Have I tried to convert you, have I counseled you to rid yourself of that, in my opinion, pernicious delusion which you profess, and into which you painstakingly lure thousands and thousands of unfortunate children and common people, perverting their minds? Then why do you not leave me in peace, a man who, by his age, stands with one foot in the grave, and who calmly awaits his death? My conversion to the church faith might have had sense were I a boy, or a grown-up atheist, or an illiterate yakout who had never heard about the church-faith. But I am 82 years old, was brought up in the very same deception which still dominates you, to which you are inviting me, and from which, with greatest suffering and efforts I freed myself many years ago, adopting a Christian-not ecclesiasticalpoint of view, which gives me the possibility of a peaceful, joyous life directed toward self-perfection, and the readiness for as peaceful and joyous a death, in which I see a return to God of love, out of whom I issued forth. With brotherly love, Leo Tolstoy."

Orthodox church, as we know, has ever been foremost in spreading evil reports. If hatred as so often did not stop short of cruelest forms of murder, for its "enemies," independent thinkers. Our own lover of liberty, Thomas Payne, died, as evil report gave out, a drunkard, who wanted to confess his errors in