piece of social legislation has been introduced in England, he raises the scare cry that “capital will leave the country,” which simply means that he esteems his profits more highly than he does his country. He is the author of the inspiring doctrine that “trade follows the flag”; which prostitutes national idealism to the sordid business of profiteering; and so deeply has this poison entered into our life that Christian missions to the non-Christian world are frequently commended on the ground that they do pioneering work for the trader. All this is, of course, trite and commonplace; and ever since the early part of the nineteenth century there has been a continuous and increasing note of protest against the modern commercial doctrine of competitive profit-making. It must, however, be admitted that the protest has not gained much headway against the evil; on the contrary the evil has, during this same period, grown by leaps and bounds, so that the earlier twentieth century witnessed its supreme achievements. Mr. John D. Rockefeller is the tragical culmination of the process in our generation; and there is no reason to suppose that he is the last, or greatest figure of the line of Crœsus. Nor will the subordination of life to the business of pecuniary gain be effectually stayed until we seriously take in hand the profiteering ideology which governs all our thought and conduct. The main ingredient in the social heredity of this generation is the profit-making impulse; that is the atmosphere which it has breathed and which constitutes its habitual universe of discourse. Art and religion alike have been infected with the spirit; the current repute of an artist is fixed by the prices which his pictures command; and the prosperity of a Christian congregation is judged by its statistical returns. It is required of education that it shall minister primarily to commercial efficiency; and the outcry against the study of the classics, and the demand for a more exclusively scientific and technical education reflect the essentially commercial orientation of our educational outlook. It is, perhaps, the most deplorable aspect of this latter tendency that it so often becomes vocal in persons whose academic training should have provided them with a more discriminating view of life. Even in the universities, which should be the impregnable citadels of spiritual idealism, there is an inclination to capitulate to the monstrous and deadly doctrine that the end of national life is commercial supremacy.