The change which is going on is mainly the work of the enterprising managers of periodicals. Most good literary work in our day first reaches the public in periodicals. Much excellent work is found only in periodicals. The editors have discovered that there is valuable matter to be had by encouraging public men to write. Our articles by General Logan, for example, contain a view of a great question which is best seen in all its aspects by a public man who has seen all sides of it in a Congressional committee. Many similar articles have in recent years appeared in literary periodicals. An invitation to present his views to the public through such a periodical as THE CHAUTAUQUAN is a challenge to candor and a stimulus to thoroughness. The work done educates the statesman while it informs the people. It creates an intelligent sympathy between public servants and those whom they serve. It carries on that form of education in which light and wisdom are put into the first place, while turgid bombast and self-seeking buncombe are rendered odious to the people whom they have deceived. THE DECLINE OF SPIRITUALITY IN THE CHURCH. Among the unpleasant reflections which the reading of Bishop Hurst’s “History of the Reformation” will be apt to awaken in many minds is that there has been a great decline in the spirituality of the church. In those days religious earnestness was at its maximum; we seem to be passing through a period when it is at a minimum. How far the seeming is accurate, it may not be easy to determine; but appearances are against the modern church. All our religious services lack in spirituality. The lack is in the sermon, the song, the prayer. Family religion has _apparently_ little of the intense power of the former days. The conversation of Christians is less frequently on religious subjects. We are carefully weeding out of familiar speech the old references to Providence, Death and Judgment. We fall into silence when one among us introduces such themes. Religious feeling and expression have disappeared _from the surface_ of our life in a most astonishing way. We are not made, the unconverted are not made, to feel the force and warmth of religious conviction. The sermons are logical, literary and cold; if there be warmth, it seems to be rather intellectual than religious. The more able religious editors complain that they can not get written for them articles which are at once readable and spiritual; while other editors condemn any articles of that type as savoring of a “dreary religiosity;” and others say that the expression of religious experience has “hopelessly gone into the keeping of cranks and weak-headed and morally-unsound persons.” One man says: “I can imagine nothing sweeter to hear than religious experience ought to be; but when I listen to it I hear either out-worn phrases or senseless fanaticism; and these have been driven from the respectable churches and are monopolized by ignorant