independent search and
judgment of truth. True faith consists not in any special theory of
God or His ways, but in the uplifting of our spirit to touch His
spirit, and the diffusing of whatever grace or gift we have received
from Him in generous good-will amongst our fellows.

If the Christian Church is to go forward successfully again in the
power and spirit of that Master whom it constantly invokes as "the
way, the truth, and the life," it must make that way and life its
guiding truth. It must aim constantly at greater simplicity in its
teaching, and a broader, more fraternal co-operation in Christian
work. Its motto should be the motto of the early Church, "In
essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things,
charity." Then shall a new and grander career open before its upward
footsteps.

THE SIOUX FALLS DIVORCE COLONY AND SOME NOTED COLONISTS.

BY JAMES REALF, JR.

The thriving city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has recently been
pitchforked into unjust notoriety by certain irresponsible
correspondents of certain sensational and habitually inveracious
newspapers that infest New York and Chicago. It has been represented
as having an easy divorce mill that constantly grinds out divorces of
a more or less bogus nature. This is fundamentally false. The laws of
South Dakota are liberal, but they are strictly interpreted. These
unscrupulous newspapers, whom it is unnecessary to name, have gone
still further in their distortion of truth, dissemination of error and
attempted degradation of the high and noble calling of journalism.
They have made false and unwarranted statements about the laws of the
Dakotas and of the United States generally on the subject of divorce.
Nor is this all in their race for a temporary and unsubstantial
circulation,--they have maligned certain unfortunate and meritorious
women and men, and added insult to injury by publishing bogus
portraits of beautiful ladies whose misfortunes should have provoked
respectful sympathy rather than coarse insinuation and vulgar
ridicule. Because these women were prominent in what has been termed
the Divorce Colony of Sioux Falls, either from social rank in their
former spheres, or by reason of the legal peculiarities enmeshing
their cases, they are legitimate subjects for honest journalistic
treatment, and some of them, triumphing over the natural shrinkingness
of their sex, for the sake of truth and for the sake of other women
who may n