complex conditions--conditions more nearly identical with those of the
modern world and the future. One would like to be able to see, through
the eyes of his biographers, his genius applied to more and more
difficult questions. Yet one can hardly go wrong in inference of his
thought and act. In many of the complexities and entanglements of
modern affairs it is no easy matter to find an answer off-hand to the
question,"What is it right to do?" But put it in another way: "What
would Christ have done?" and lo! there is light. I Doubt spreads her
bat-like wings and is away; the sun of truth springs into the sky,
splendoring the path of right and marking that of error with a deeper
shade.

II.

Gentlemen of the secular press dealt with the Rev. Mr. Sheldon not
altogether fairly. To some very relevant considerations they gave no
weight. It was not fair, for example, to say, as the distinguished
editor of the "North American Review" did, that in professing to conduct
a daily newspaper for a week as he conceived that Christ would have
conducted it, Mr. Sheldon acted the part of "a notoriety seeking
mountebank." It seldom is fair to go into the question of motive, for
that is something upon which one has the least light, even when the
motive is one's own. The motives that we think dominale us seem simple
and obvious; they are in most instances exceedingly complex and obscure.
Complacently surveying the wreck and ruin that he has wrought, even that
great anarch, the "well meaning person," can not have entire assurance
that he meant as well as the disastrous results appear to him to show.

The trouble with Mr. Harvey of the "Review" was inability to put himself
in another's place if that happened to be at any considerable distance
from his own place. He made no allowance for the difference in the point
of view--for the difference, that is, between his mind and the mind
of Mr. Sheldon. If Mr. Harvey had undertaken to conduct that Kansas
newspaper as Christ would have done he would indeed have been "a
notoriety seeking mountebank," or some similarly unenviable thing, for
only a selfish purpose could persuade him to an obviously resultless
work. But Mr. Sheldon was different--his was the religious mind--a mind
having faith in an "overruling" Providence who can, and frequently does,
interfere with the orderly relation of cause and effect, accomplishing
an end by means otherwise inadequate to its production. Believing
himself