made them swoon for fear." For, says the author, "fear is nothing else than a betraying of the succours that reason offers."

We have pretty generally risen above the primitive forms of this superstition. We do not fear that a rock or tree will go out of its way to harm us. We are not troubled by the suspicion that some busybody of a planet is only waiting its chance to do us an ill turn. We are inclined to take the dark of the moon with equanimity.

But when it comes to moral questions we are still dominated by the idea of the fatalistic power of inanimate things. We cannot think it possible to be just or good, not to speak of being cheerful, without looking at some physical fact and saying humbly "By your leave." We personify our tools and machines, and the occult symbols of trade, and then as abject idolaters we bow down before the work of our own hands. We are awe-struck at their power, and magnify the mystery of their existence. We only pray that they may not turn us out of house and home, because of some blunder in our ritual observance. That they will make it very uncomfortable for us, we take for granted. We have resigned ourselves to that long ago. They are so very complicated that they will make no allowance for us, and will not permit us to live simply as we would like. We are really very plain people, and easily flurried and worried by superfluities. We could get along very nicely and, we are sure, quite healthfully, if it were not for our Things. They set the pace for us, and we have to keep up.

We long for peace on earth, but of course we can't have it. Look at our warships and our forts and our great guns. They are getting bigger every year. No sooner do we begin to have an amiable feeling toward our neighbors than some one invents a more ingenious way by which we may slaughter them. The march of invention is irresistible, and we are being swept along toward a great catastrophe.

We should like very much to do business according to the Golden Rule. It strikes us as being the only decent method of procedure. We have no ill feeling toward our competitors. We should be pleased to see them prosper. We have a strong preference for fair play. But of course we can't have it, because the corporations, those impersonal products of modern civilization, won't allow it. We must not meddle with them, for if we do we might break some of the laws of political economy, and in that case nobody knows what might happen.

We have a great desire for good government. We should be gratified if we could believe that the men who pave our streets, and build our school-houses, and administer our public funds, are well qualified for their several positions. But we cannot, in a democracy, expect to have expert service. The tendency of politics is to develop a Machine. The Machine is not constructed to serve us. Its purpose is simply to keep itself going. When it once begins to move, it is only prudent in us to keep out of the way. It would be tragical to have it run over us.

So, in certain moods, we sit and grumble over our formidable fetiches. Like all idolaters, we sometimes turn iconoclasts. In a short-lived fit of anger we smash the Machine. Having accomplished this feat, we feel a little foolish, for we don't know what to do next.

Fortunately for the world there are those who are neither idolaters nor iconoclasts. They do not worship Things, nor fear them, nor despise them,—they simply use them.

In the Book of Baruch there is inserted a letter purporting to be from Jeremiah to the Hebrew captives in Babylon. The prophet discourses on the absurdity of the worship of inanimate things, and incidentally draws on his experience in gardening. An idol, he says, is "like to a white thorn in an orchard, that every bird sitteth upon." It is as powerless, he says, to take the initiative "as a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers that keepeth nothing." In his opinion, one wide-awake man in the cucumber patch is worth all the scarecrows that were ever constructed. "Better therefore is the just man that hath none idols."

What brave air we breathe when we join the company of the just men who have freed themselves from idolatry! Listen to Governor Bradford as he enumerates the threatening facts which the Pilgrims to New England faced. He mentions all the difficulties which they foresaw, and then adds, "It was answered that all great and honorable actions were accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprised with answerable courages."

What fine spiritual audacity! Not courage, if you please, but courages. There is much virtue in the plural. It was as much as to say, "All our eggs are not in one basket. We are likely to meet more than one kind of danger. What of it? We have more than one kind of courage. It is well to be prepared for emergencies."

It was the same spirit which made William Penn speak of his colony on the banks of the Delaware as the "Holy Experiment." In his testimony to George Fox, he says, "He was an original and no man's copy. He had not learned what he said by study. Nor were they notional nor speculative, but sensible and practical, the setting up of the Kingdom of God in men's hearts, and the way of it was his work. His authority was inward and not outward, and he got it and kept it by the love of God. He was a divine and a naturalist, and all of God Almighty's making."

In the presence of men of such moral originality, ethical problems take on a new and exciting aspect. What is to happen next? You cannot find out by noting the trend of events. A peep into a resourceful mind would be more to the purpose. That mind perceives possibilities beyond the ken of a duller intelligence.

I should like to have some competent person give us a History of Moral Progress as a part of the History of Invention. I know there is a distrust of Invention on the part of many good people who are so enamored of the ideal of a simple life that they are suspicious of civilization. The text from Ecclesiastes, "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions," has been used to discourage any budding Edisons of the spiritual realm. Dear old Alexander Cruden inserted in his Concordance a delicious definition of invention as here used: "Inventions: New ways of making one's self more wise and happy than God made us."

It is astonishing how many people share this fear that, if they exert their minds too much, they may become better than the Lord intended them to be. A new way of being good, or of doing good, terrifies them. Nevertheless moral progress follows the same lines as all other progress. First there is a conscious need. Necessity is the mother of invention. Then comes the patient search for the ways and means through which the want may be satisfied. Ages may elapse before an ideal may be realized. Numberless attempts must be made, the lessons of the successive failures must be learned. It is in the ability to draw the right inference from failure that inventive genius is seen.

"It would be madness and inconsistency," said Lord Bacon, "to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without using some hitherto untried means." The inventor is not discouraged by past failures, but he is careful not to repeat them slavishly. He may be compelled to use the same elements, but he is always trying some new combination. If he must fail once