The discovery of a manuscript copy of “The Teachings of the Twelve Apostles,” a Christian compilation of the second century, has created a general expectation of new and better light by means of it, on early Christian history. The portions of this manuscript which have been published in this country are too brief to afford much satisfaction. The genuineness of the document is vouched for by Professor Harnack, of Giessen, one of the foremost patristic scholars. If there were not a general disposition to believe the manuscript to be genuine, we might note some circumstances as suspicious. Professor Harnack has believed and taught that such a book probably existed in the early centuries. If we were suspicious we should wonder whether another Saphira has not undertaken, of his own avaricious motion, to find what a great patristic scholar believes to exist—and to make discovery certain by constructing the desired document himself. No breath of suspicion taints the atmosphere, and the finding of the manuscript is regarded as a strong proof of the rare learning and sound judgment of Professor Harnack. But until the whole document, in the Original Greek, with a history of its discovery, has passed under the eyes of many scholars, it will be wise to keep our judgments in suspense respecting the genuineness and the importance of the document.

The new Congregational creed has been received with a good deal of favor. The aim of it is in the right direction; we leave others to decide whether or not it hits its mark. Theology consists of doctrines and explanations of doctrines. The aim of the authors of the new creed is to make a statement of doctrines, leaving explanations of doctrines to the field of liberty. It happens that the larger half of most creeds make doctrines out of explanations. For example, the deity of Jesus Christ is a doctrine; but along with it we hold a number of explanations of the doctrine. The atonement is a doctrine; but three-fourths of the texts of the creeds, on this subject, are explanatory theses. That Christ died for us according to the Scriptures is doctrine; but the various theories called “Governmental,” “Substitutional,” “Moral Influence,” etc., are explanatory. That the Bible is God’s book, revealing Him and His law is doctrine; but the separation of the printers’ and proof-readers’ mistakes—that is all the failure in the human making-up of the book—proceeds by way of explanatory theology. If tolerably clear lines can be drawn between doctrine and explanation—we are not sure such a line can be drawn—then evangelical Christendom can have a common creed at once. The doctrinal unity exists in fact; we are only waiting for some one to state the doctrines clearly, leaving us to differ concerning the explanations. The new Congregational creed may prove to be a rough first sketch of the creed of Christendom. There is no doubt that the great body of Christians, though ranked in distinct divisions, has a common faith. Some symbolic expression of that faith is to be expected—is probably near at hand.

A shocking piece of news is that several women were recently attacked, and two of them killed, by wolves. That is bad enough, surely; but a greater shock will be experienced by the general reader when we add that the scene of this tragic incident was in southern Italy! Our habitual associations of Italian things are music, sculpture, architecture, and other high humanities, all overarched by beautiful sunshine. Most of us hardly realize that there has been a wolf in Italy since the demise of the one which suckled the boys who founded Rome. But in fact wolves and other ferocious beasts still reign in the Italian mountains, along with the brigands. The latter are not as numerous as when Spartacus collected an army of them which defeated Roman armies within sight of Naples. But the brigand is, like the wolf, an unconquerable element in Italian life. A few months ago, an Italian nobleman was captured by brigands who exacted and obtained fifty thousand dollars for restoring him to the bosom of his family. Add brigands and wolves to your “pictures from Italy.”

The regulation of railroad traffic has made more progress than the general public supposes. In Massachusetts, for instance, the Board of Railroad Commissioners say in their last report to the legislature that “No charge of unreasonable preference or discrimination by a lower charge for the longer haul has this year been brought before the board, except in two cases, where the evidence wholly failed to support the charges.” The Massachusetts system of supervision was founded twelve years ago by C. F. Adams, and the results obtained by him and his successors in office show clearly that an intelligent and judicious supervision by state authority benefits both parties—the railroads and their customers. But—and this point is the reason of the success in Massachusetts—there has not been one ounce of demagogism in the action of the commissioners.

The decision of the United States Supreme Court that Congress may issue paper money at its discretion has been received with lugubrious prophecies by a part of the press. It is probably good for us that the decision has been rendered now rather than a few years later—and it was certain to come. The good of it is, we know clearly what the powers and responsibilities of Congress are in regard to money. We can select our Congressmen with a plain and full understanding of their functions. The doubt which has hung over this subject for several years has had an unwholesome effect—“unsettled questions have no mercy on the peace of nations.” The people of this country are conservative under well defined responsibilities. Perhaps the prophets of evil have too little faith in the popular sense and conscience.

There is no sympathy in this country with the Irish dynamiters; but we are all more or less astonished by the gravity with which English newspapers rail at this country for not preventing the exportation of dynamite. The London Times unconsciously puts its fingers on the proper place for the discovery of such dynamite when it calls attention to the fact that a ninety pound package of the murderous stuff got to London through a British custom house. The British custom house is the spot where the watching should be done. If the importation of goods was as closely supervised in England as it is in this country, no dynamite could reach London. We do not watch exportation closely because no export duties are allowed to be levied by the constitution. It is the inward movement, not the outward, for which we have official machinery of supervision. To invent and carry on machinery for watching exports is an expensive business in which we should not engage. It is entirely unnecessary. Let England watch at her own custom houses. If her officers admit dynamite in ninety pound cases, let her improve that branch of her civil service. The Nation very judiciously says: “If the English custom house can not stop the infernal machines, it is folly to ask any foreign police to do it.”

Our suggestion that laws against intermarriage between races should be repealed (April number) has “shocked” one reader. Our friend does not get shocked at the right time and place. Intermarriage of white and colored persons is very rare, because nature and society exercise adequate restraint. The place for being shocked is in another part of the field. And yet it is an astounding fact that the peoples who are most easily shocked by the marriage of two persons of different races seem not to be shocked by the very large number of illegitimate children of dark skinned mothers. There is an exact parallel in the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy, and the intense feeling which enforced it, in the days of Hildebrand. A recent writer says of that state of things: “The priest who kept a harem of concubines was simply guilty of a venial sin which did not vitiate his act as a priest; it was the act of marriage, with its more deliberate declaration of principle, which the church could not tolerate.” In both cases, that old case of mock celibacy and the present case of illegitimate mingling of races, the feeling on the subject is very sincere, deep, aggressive, against marriage “with its more deliberate declaration of principle.” But in each case the real evil evades the feeling and defeats its object with demoralizing effects.

They do some things better in France. The government has ordered observations to be made on strokes of lightning and their effects, by a bureau, using postmasters and others as observers. A report for the first half of 1883 shows that in January there was one lightning stroke which injured a man carrying an umbrella with metal ribs; in February there were no strokes; in March and April, four each month; in May twenty-eight; in June one hundred and thirteen. Seventy animals and seven men were killed, and about forty persons were injured. Lightning rods were treated with contempt, and the electric fluid especially attacked the bells and bell-towers of churches, and in one case blasted the gilt wooden figure of the Christ on a church which had a lightning rod. The second half of the year would of course show a longer chapter of accidents. Why can not we have in this country just such a system of collecting the facts about lightning strokes?

An interesting set of experiments is reported by Mr. G. H. Darwin, son of the great author of Darwinism, on right-leggedness and left-leggedness. The subject is of more importance than it seems. Most readers will remember that Charles Reade, the novelist, contended in a recent work that right-handedness is a fruit of bad education, and that, if children were not meddled with by nurses and teachers, both sides of the body would be equally strong and skilful. Mr. Darwin blindfolded a group of boys, having first ascertained whether they were right or left handed, and set them to walking toward a mark, leading them straight for three or four paces. All but one swung round to right or left, tending to a circular path, and the right-handed boys turned to the left, and the left-handed boys to the right. The one exception was a boy about equally expert with both hands. He went tolerably straight. Mr. Darwin’s opinion is that right-handed persons are left-legged, because every strong effort by the right hand is attended with a corresponding effort by the left leg. This does not, however, settle the question raised by Mr. Charles Reade; for left-leggedness is only an effect of right-handedness.

We shall have to study the machine politician a good deal before we dispense with his existence. In New York City, investigations show that the city offices, such as County Clerk, Register and Sheriff, afford from $50,000 to $100,000 a year of revenue to the man holding either office, and that he buys the office, never paying less than $50,000 for it to the bosses who control votes by arts that are as dark to respectable citizens as the mysteries of mediÆval astrology. A man on a school board was caught selling teachers’ appointments. He was put off the board and went to selling liquor. In due time he became an alderman. The halls could not agree upon a president of the Board of Aldermen. Then the Republican boss made “a deal” with the Tammany hall and turned over the Republican aldermen’s votes to elect as president the smirched seller of teachers’ places and bad whiskey. This man is mayor of New York when Mayor Edson is absent, and has recently acted as such. An intrigue of that sort is as well worth studying as the farewell letter of Washington. It opens the very heart of our political demoralization. The chief parties to this intrigue will both be at Chicago, one in June, the other in July, with the votes of their respective parties in New York City in their dirty hands. They are engaged in a commercial business the staple of which is ballots, and they amass fortunes by selling votes and offices.

Is there any other competitive industry which is exploited with so much skill as politics? We write these words in early April, within sixty days of the Republican convention, and we should hardly be able to affirm that any prominent candidate is an avowed candidate. Are there no candidates, then? Is the nomination of the party which has ruled the country twenty-three years going a begging at Chicago? By no means. You are in the presence of management as a fine art. It is certain that the work of “getting up an interest” is going on briskly, and it is not possible that the candidates are ignorant of it. The popular pulse is rising, and there are men who can tell why it is rising. Perhaps the Democratic art is of a finer quality. Mr. Tilden has educated bright men in the delicate branches of political art. That there is no prominent candidate except Mr. Tilden, who is not a possible candidate, means that all dangerous aspirants are kept back by the candidacy of “the Sage of Greystone;” but the object of this suppression of candidates is out of sight. The children of this world are very wise in this political generation.

Our readers all know that the Methodist Episcopal General Conference meets May 1st in each Presidential election year. Not all of them have our opportunities of knowing what a wholesome effect the approaching session is having upon the seven or eight periodicals whose editors will be re-elected or relegated to pastoral cares by the conference. Ordinarily we can see small faults in these papers. Now we would as soon seek to find the proverbial “needle in a haystack” as to discover a blemish on the face of a Methodist periodical. A cynic at our elbow says: “What a pity the General Conference does not meet every year!” In sober earnest we must say that all these “official editors” have been outdoing their former selves during the last eight or ten months.

Temple Bar for March contains a criticism of “The New School of American Fiction”—that of James and Howells—which makes some excellent points. Mr. Howells claims the art of fiction has become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray. This reminds us of a story, as Lincoln used to say. Once a young preacher was warmly commended for his last sermon in the following terms: “It was a fine sermon, a very fine sermon, in fact it was so fine there was nothing of it.” The attenuated art of Mr. Howells spins out into a fineness which vanishes in nothingness. Temple Bar thinks this “finer art” of our new school is a study of surface emotion and accidental types of mankind. The art is “a photograph where no artist’s hand has grouped the figures, only posed them before his lens.” Mr. Howells boasts that he finds “delight in the foolish, insipid face of real life.” But the life that wears that kind of face affords no material for art—is not really real life. The accidental types which Mr. Howells paints so carefully please us just as a gossip’s description of a bridal dress pleases her feminine neighbor—for a moment. Sometimes we have seen specimens—as for example, Bartley Hubbard—of the transient creatures and recognize the photograph. But after all such photography is the function of the newspaper. We all know that last year’s newspaper is dull reading. The fiction produced by the “new school” will probably be just as dull in ten years. Dickens and Thackeray are much older than that and are still fascinating reading.

Is not the tone of the general newspaper press below that of the people who read newspapers? Are our people as slangy, coarse and low-toned as the average newspaper is? We do not believe that the people who read the papers are as vulgar-minded as the average reporter supposes them to be. We have read many defenses of the newspaper methods; but we never heard of a newspaper which died by becoming decent and wholesome. The reporter is trying to please a class which rarely reads anything, and is displeasing his habitual patrons. Let the latter take courage and tell him the simple truth and ask him to write English in future. A few talks of this nature will do the young man good.

The name of Adelaide Bell Morgan, Stapleton, N. Y., should have been among the list of C. L. S. C. graduates of the class of ’83, published in The Chautauquan for February.

Mr. W. A. Duncan, the new secretary of the Chautauqua Assembly, requests that all questions concerning Chautauqua matters should be addressed to him at Syracuse, N. Y.

A late number of Harper’s Weekly says of Mrs. P. L. Collins, the author of the interesting article on the Dead-Letter Office which appears in this number of The Chautauquan: “Mrs. Collins has for several years held an important and responsible position in the Dead-Letter Office. Her fine culture, varied attainments, and the skill and ability displayed in the performance of the difficult and intricate duties of the service have won for her high and well deserved repute. No one is better qualified than Mrs. Collins to give our readers an insight into the workings of this important branch of our postal service.”