ch wantonly destroys all in which the community
is interested; which on the prairies exterminates the buffalo, in the
mountains and forests destroys the timber, bringing on as a consequence
the drouth, floods, and desolate barrenness, under which a large part of
the old world is suffering; which would exterminate the seals if
government did not interfere, and would infect every city with
pestilential odors of offensive manufactories; which would destroy the
people's national money for the benefit of private bankers, and pervert
all the powers of government for the benefit of monopoly and organized
speculation.

May we not look to that struggle for justice which to-day assumes the
forms of Nationalism, Farmers' Alliance, People's Party, Knights of
Labor, and Land Nationalization, to accomplish this purpose and
emancipate the present from the barbarian ideas of the past?

(_To be concluded in July Arena._)

HAS SPENCER'S DOCTRINE OF INCONCEIVABILITY DRIVEN RELIGION INTO THE
UNKNOWABLE?

BY REV. T. ERNEST ALLEN.

[Illustration: (signed) Cordially yours, Ernest Allen]

The service rendered to humanity by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the
elaboration of the Synthetic Philosophy, should command the admiration
and gratitude of all broad-minded men. There are certain fallacies in
the argument by which Religion is relegated into the "Unknowable,"
however, to which it will be the purpose of this essay to call the
reader's attention. If Religion really be, by its very nature,
unknowable, it follows that as man grows in intelligence, the extent to
which it occupies his thought will tend to diminish towards final
extinction. It is a thoroughly wholesome state of affairs that, like all
things which claim our consideration, Religion should again and again be
compelled to step into the arena to vindicate its right to hold sway
over humanity. Nor is the attitude of many minds which places Religion
upon the defensive, unreasonable, or the outgrowth of a perverse spirit,
but, on the contrary, it results from the questionings of those eager to
find the truth and anxious to "prove all things" and cast error aside.
Let us see if Religion can withstand the fierce onslaught, threatening
its very life, which Mr. Spencer makes in his "First Principles" (pp.
3-123).

Our author's first attempt is to "form something like a general theory
of current opinions," so as neither to "over-estimate nor under-estimate
their worth." As a special c