growing, and must continue to grow. While it is not a finality, it is in the right direction, and hence a blessing which all Christian people must hail with pleasure. BUCHAREST, ROUMANIA, October 7, 1884. THE INNER CHAUTAUQUA. BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D. Chautauqua is a place and an idea. The idea was before the place; although it must be confessed that the embodiment of the thought in a physical frame-work of soil and forest had a most wholesome effect on the idea itself, giving it a chance to draw strength from its external conditions; to “ultimate” its conceptions in action; to experiment with raw material; to command the attention and elicit the commendation on which good things thrive, and to adapt its aim and energy to the variety of people and conditions with which it proposed to deal. The place is beautiful, and grows more beautiful with the passing years. Nature has not suspended her beneficent ministries since Art pitched her pavilion by the side of these waters. Trees still put forth branches and clothe them with foliage. The old trees stand like venerable giants, with as much of hope as of memory in their hearts, and in their annual robe of verdure forget that for so many years they have watched the coming and the going of the seasons. Young trees that have grown a dozen years older since the first Chautauqua song broke the silence are now stately and beautiful, ready to be witnesses for a hundred years, of the strange things to be done here, and of which we who are looking about for graves only dream of now. The lake—who shall tell of its moods, its smiles and frowns, its loud murmurings of unrest when the fierce winds come down in power upon it; its low sobbings after the storm, trying to forgive and forget; its sweet answers to the toying breeze; its splendor when the moon flings a robe of silver over it; and when the sun, making it a mirror, rejoices in it (as Christ in the true saints) because it faithfully reflects his own glorious image? Art has not altogether been useless, although more than once unwise. Penuriousness has sometimes spoiled lines and angles, and mixed bad colors. Stupidity has blundered into sad combinations and contrasts; but on the whole Art has clasped hands with Nature, and made the place Chautauqua a lovely and fitting tabernacle for the Chautauqua Idea. There is a Chautauqua within Chautauqua. To see this other Chautauqua, one must have eyes—eyes that look into the innermost things. He must see beyond groves and crowds, beyond lake and sky, beyond buildings and programs. He must be able to see necessities, intellectual and spiritual, in the individual and in society, tendencies of thought, forces of conviction, pressures of desire and ambition, the conflict of new and old civilizations in the personal life, as circumstances bring a man face to face with the new, while yet from habit and feeling he is held half-slave by the old.