The record-union., 1896-04-12

is pretty well taken up already, and
what musical training the schools give
is too often ineffective Something
might be done in the Sunday-school,
where the standard of singing is often
far too low, but the difficulty is to secure
the right sort of teaching. We nave
sometimes thought that the endowment
of musical department in our churches
would be one of the very best uses or
money, but even then the temptation
would be to spend it in securing highly
artistic effects by soloists rather than in
training the congregation to sing the
best music And back of this is the
difficulty that the congregations often
dc not wish to sing, but to be sung to by
those more richly gifted than them
selves. Let an effective plan be invent
ed to arouse a musical ambition in the
minds of the rank and file of our con-
gregations and some means would be
found to teach and get them singing.
''As long as the religious life seemed
to depend mainly on a continual war
fare between sense and soul, the prob
lens of sin and duty, as they concerned
the individual, were comparatively sim
ple," observes the Christian Register"
(Unit.) of Boston, because whatever
crushed or subjugated the one 'was
likely to advance the interests of the
other. The duty of a child who is de-
finitely told that he mustn't touch is
plain enough. It is something other
when he is older and must decide for
himself questions of how and why.
That is where man stands to-day. Cues
tionS of self-indulgence and of positive
action can no longer be met on the old
terms. The problem is no longer how
to save ones soul alone; and conduct
is touched on all sides by duty to
others, duty to worldwide principles,
duty to the future. A mans religion
depends on his sense of relation to the
universal order and his willingness to
accept his share of implied response
bility. 1t does not depend on the blind
following of certain rules and regula-
tlonS formulated for him by others, un-
approved by his own reason"
'The agnostic assures us that we
cannot know Cod" says the New York
Outlook" "And what the agnostic
means is true. God is always in the
present tense, and the future tense of
God we cannot conjugate. God always
lies beyond our knowing. We do not
know one another. The child is always
surprising the mother. He is a sue
cession of surprises God unknowable!
Every man is unknowable. Christ is
unknowable. There are as many lives
OF Christ as there are writers, because
each man sees one glimpse Of Christ
and tells what he has seen. Strauss
tells US a little, Renan a little more,
Edersheim and Geikie and Farrar
more. Brooks and Beecher and Bush
nell still more. And yet the life of
Christ is not written. However numer-
Gus are the lives, there is always some
thing beyond. If this be true Of God
come down to the earth for the very
purpose of making himself known to
us, how much more Of the Infinite and
Eternal! We know just so much of
God as we have experience Of him.
To Professor Clifford and Haeckel and
Frederic Harrison, Great Pan is dead.
They may take counsel of their aspira-
tons and seek to enter the life of
other men, but till they do enter that
life, to them God cannot be demon
strated. Tennyson looks into his own
soul, and finds there One-'closer is He
than breathing, nearer than hands or
feet. But Tennyson cannot demon
strate his vision to Matthew Arnold,
nor Arnold his to Herbert Spencer, nor
Spencer his to Frederic Harrison.
Neither can test what he has not. In
each successive stage of life the soul
has advanced into what is still an un-
known land to those he has left behind
him"