ith the United States and Spain, placing
himself and placing us in danger of war for the Carolines, has been to
break poor unlucky Emin Pasha's backbone, and to barter the
protectorate of Zanzibar for the sponge known as Heligoland. And may
thanks be given to William II. and to Caprivi for having, at such
small cost, got over the difficulties of the Socialist laws of his
home policy, and the colonial entanglements of his foreign policy.
Bismarck may believe an old admirer of his personality and of his
genius, though an adversary of his policy, and of the government
dependent on that policy. Society, like nature, devours everything
that it does not need. The death of William I., the Caesar; the death
of Roon, the organizer; the death of Moltke, the strategist, all say
to him that the species of men to which he belongs is fading out and
becoming extinct. Modern science teaches that extinct species do not
re-appear. Bossuet would say that the Eternal has destroyed the
instrument of His providential work, because it is already useless.
Remain, then, Bismarck, in retirement, and await, without neurotic
impatience, the final judgment of God and of history.

THE DOUBTERS AND THE DOGMATISTS.

BY PROF. JAMES T. BIXBY, PH.D.

An eminent ecclesiastic of the Church of England not long ago
characterized the present age as pre-eminently the age of _doubt_, and
lamented that whether he took up book, or magazine, or sermon, he was
confronted with some form of it.

This picture of our age is not an unjust one. The modern mind is
thoroughly wide awake and has quite thrown off the leading-strings of
ancient timidity. It looks all questions in the face and demands to be
shown the real facts in every realm. All the traditions of history,
the laws of science, the principles of morals are overhauled, and the
foundations on which they rest relentlessly probed. And our modern
curiosity can see no reason why it should cease its investigations
when it comes to the frontiers of religion. It deems no dogma too old
to be summoned before its bar; no council nor conclave too sacred to
be asked for its credentials; no pope or Scripture too venerable to be
put in the witness-box and cross-examined as to its accuracy or
authority. In all the churches there is a spirit of inquiry abroad;
almost every morning breeze brings us some new report of heresy, or
the baying of the sleuth-hounds of orthodoxy, as they scent some new
trail of infidelity;