SOCIAL SALVATION.
Social Salvation. By Washington Gladden. (J. Clarke and Co. 44.)—We have here a set of lectures delivered last March to the Divinity School of Yale on the Lyman Beecher founda- tion. Primarily they apply to conditions of life in the United States, but they may be read with profit on . this side of the Atlantic. After all, there is no essential difference. If the problem of the "submerged tenth" is more acute here than there, on the other band we have the advantage in the general integrity of our municipal government. The whole volume may be regarded as a discourse. on St. Paul's dictum that "no man lives to himself." The lecturer addresses himself to the common delusion that a Mies chief, indeed only, business is to save his own soul; he says that the individual is part of a great whole, that the habit of isolation injures himself, as it injures the community. Various social questions are treated in succession. It is painful to see how the political vice penetrates everywhere. Even the "relieving °Meer." as we should call him, is made a means of manipulating votes. This comes out in the chapter on "The Care of the Poor." In "The State and the Unemployed" the author discusses a question very, pressing with us. Mx. Gladden inclines strongly t° municieal employment. "Men cry out in alarm at the assertion of the right to work,' but they seem to be quite willing to concede to utcreasing multitudes the right to live without work." And he Pertinently asks, "Which involves the greater danger to the State?" "Our Brothers in Bends" is a striking pronouncement on the duty of society to prisoners. One of the most astonishing
proofs of the progress of opinion in this matter is the description of the State Prison of Connecticut less than a lifetime ago. It was a cavern, "unlighted and unventilated," in which" 30 to 100 prisoners wore crowded together at night, their feet fastened to bars of iron and chains about their necks attached to beams above." Fevers were constant, and there were frequent rebellions; yet President Dwight, of Yale, thought it admirable. But it must not be supposed that Mr. Gladden is a sentimentalist. In "Social Vices" our author attempts the familiar problem of the ethical wrong of gambling. "The gambler is essentially a thief." That is easily said but not easily proved. It is a Draconian utter- ance, and we might reply to it with a dilemma. Is there any distinction between gamblers ? Is the gambler who scrupulously takes no advantage of his neighbour as bad as the gambler who cheats ? This, it seems to us, is the weakest thing in the book. Commonly it is conspicuous for sound, manly sense.
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