For ten long days the work continued, so slowly and so laboriously that it was sometimes hard to see the end of our labors. Hampered by the weight and bulk of the helmets, and panting when our exertions caused our lungs to demand more air than the regulating valves could supply, we erected six stoppings, of matched boards and canvas, over the mouths of the various tunnels which led off from B entry; and with our bare hands mixed plaster and smeared the cracks and edges until the stoppings were tight. Then came the last and hardest stopping of all, for one had to be built across the entry just beyond the air-shaft, for which it was necessary to carry all the material lumber, saws, hammers, metal lath, and sacks of plaster-up the entry to the up the entry to the fall, and then over the hazardous pass and down into the smoke and water on the other side.

Day and night the work continued, and after a week of terrible labor the stopping was completed. I remember one of the last trips we made, when nerves and muscles, worn and exhausted, almost refused to continue their work. We had crawled through the pass down into the smoke and water on the other side. The day before, two coils of hose had been dragged over the fall and, with the greatest difficulty, connected with the water-main in the air-shaft, and the streams directed against the fall beyond the air-shaft, where fire might still exist beneath the tons of fallen rock. The muffled roar of the water filled the black smokepacked tunnel with sound, and every few minutes the tall, four-hundred-foot column in the pipe would break, and there would be a roar and crash as though the whole roof were giving way above us.

We had left a little opening in the

and plaster the opposite side, and as I crawled back from doing this work, my helmet struck sharply and twisted sideways on my head for a second, allowing a little gas to leak in beneath the washers. A minute later, as I rose to my feet, a dizziness seized me, and calling to my two helpers, we started for the hoisting-shaft. We all realized that should a man become unconscious through a leak in his helmet, it would be impossible to get the dead weight of his body up and over the fall. With that one thought in each mind, we slowly crawled up and over the masses of rock, through which many journeys had worn a hazardous path, and down on the other side. And now flashes of light, like electric sparks, seemed to play before my eyes, sliding down across the front of my helmet. My knees began to sway, and it suddenly occurred to me that they must be bending in both directions as I walked. It was a hard trip to the shaft, and I realized how bright was the cold sunshine on top, and how clean and crisp was the open air, when they helped me off with my helmet.

On Christmas Eve we lost a man under very similar circumstances. Either by striking his head or in some other way, he had loosened his helmet and been overcome by the gas which had leaked in. His body lay on the far side of a battice, and his weight and the helmets which his companions wore so hampered them that death came before he was finally brought to the surface.

With the completion of this last stopping, the end of our terrible work seemed near, and it was with the spirit of a holiday that the men tore off the seal from the air-shaft and opened the doors of the house at the top of the man-hoist. Slowly the great fan once more turned, and after two hours, when the safety-lamps no longer detected the

presence of gas in the air which came out of the air-shaft, we cautiously descended. With our helmets laid aside and with the comparatively bright light of our safety-lamps, the mine took on a more familiar and homelike aspect. In a few hours, no longer hampered by helmets or conditions of smoke and gas, we tore down a wide passage through the fall, an operation that would have taken days to accomplish under the former conditions, with the helmets. That evening in the Superintendent's room in the office-building, those who were in charge, with the maps of the mine spread before them, planned the next move in the fight and determined which entries should next be opened and how the air-currents should be led into them in order that the mine, tunnel by tunnel and section by section, might be cleared of the smoke and gas.

Meanwhile, a dozen men, under the leadership of Boar, had remained in the mine and were tightening the stoppings and preparing for the work of the coming day. It was about eleven o'clock that night when Boar heard a slight explosion beyond the stopping by the airshaft. Without alarming his men, he began an investigation, when two more violent explosions threatened to blow down the stopping. The unexpected had again happened. Stoppings once more had leaked, air had passed into the gas-filled tunnels, and fire still existed.

Without a second's delay the men were hoisted from the mine, and fifteen minutes after the last man stepped from the cage there came a sudden explosion in the mine. From the hoisting shafts a huge white cloud of vapor shot up into the night; but at the airshaft the force of the explosion was more violent, and the great dome of reinforced concrete above it fell in a mass of crumbled wreckage, swept back clean from the edge of the shaft.

It was one o'clock when I reached the fan-house, and a great full moon was standing high in the cold winter sky. Up from the square, black mouth of the air-shaft, a tall white column of vapor rose into the night, and then, when the mine began to breathe, disappeared; and with our hands held above the black hole, we could feel the rush of air sucked back into the abyss.

At an interval of about an hour following the first explosion there had come a second but less violent one; and again two hours later, when the mine had sucked back sufficient air to form another explosive mixture, a sudden hissing puff again shot out from the shaft, breaking into three pieces two twelve by fourteen green oak beams that we had laid across its mouth as the foundation for a seal. So sudden was the explosion that Peter Dawson, a powerful Negro who was crawling out over one of the beams when it occurred, was blown a distance of over fifty feet. We found him lying beside the track beyond a string of box-cars, with the blood running from a bad scalp-wound. His first words were that he had been tossed completely over the cars. 'I seen the roofs all white with frost an' moonlight,' he muttered; and the doctor later affirmed that Pete would have been killed when he landed on the rail if he had not hit on his head. A hundred men were now working in the moonlight, and in half an hour two more of the great beams were placed across the shaft-mouth, and planks and canvas, packed down with clay, above them.

The damage at the top of the manhoist had been slight, and only the doors on the house above it had been blown from their fastenings. For the third time the shafts were sealed.

[In the January number Mr. Husband will describe the culmination of the disaster.-THE EDITORS.]

Would we move the world, not earth but heaven must be our fulcrum.

In the prevailing social unrest the clergy have received their share of the general criticism and condemnation. This criticism is not personal. There is little fault found with the average minister's moral earnestness; he is not accused of laziness, selfishness, or ignorance. But there is a widespread belief that the minister has lost a large measure of his former influence, and is no longer the recognized leader in ethical advance. His attitude toward life seems to many lacking in moral purchase; he appears to fall short of real achievement; he apparently fails to meet the exigencies of the religious situation of to-day. For the manifest decline in church attendance, and more particularly the absence of men from the average congregation, he is held ultimately responsible; and he is criticised in general for the place he occupies in the world of men. There is a growing opinion that he is surpassed in moral and spiritual achievement by others who make no direct profession of ethical leadership, but who, free from the traditions and dogmas which shackle the clergyman, are the better able to direct the awakened national conscience into those channels of social righteousness through which the best spiritual energy of to-day flows.

That such criticism of the influence of the minister is largely justified, any candid observer must admit. Our age is one of great moral earnestness; books on ethics and religion are widely read,

VOL. 106 - NO. 6

reform movements find enthusiastic support, philanthropy is becoming a science, missions, domestic and foreign, arouse an enthusiasm and are supported with a conviction of their supreme value unknown to the Christian Church since the apostolic age. But in the midst of this ethical and religious revival the minister has been steadily losing ground. Church attendance has fallen off, and the lack of candidates for the ministry has caused serious

concern.

Where does the fault lie? Is it in the man, or in his environment, or in the way he has been trained for his work?

An explanation frequently advanced is that the education of the minister fails to fit him for his work. His training leads him too far from the ordinary life of men, leaving him unacquainted with their daily struggles and temptations. He is, therefore, unable to meet his congregation upon a common plane of experience, so that his admonitions fall short of the mark in quibbling over unessentials, or pass over the heads of his hearers in an aerial flight of speculative discussion. Thus a writer in a recent number of the Atlantic1 traces the minister's declining influence to the fact that there is no point of sympathetic contact between the two parties,' and suggests that the minister's theological training be supplemented by several years of practical business experience. Let the young man preparing to study for the ministry first

Francis E. Leupp: 'The Minister and the Men.' July, 1910.

769

presence of gas in the air which came out of the air-shaft, we cautiously descended. With our helmets laid aside and with the comparatively bright light of our safety-lamps, the mine took on a more familiar and homelike aspect. In a few hours, no longer hampered by helmets or conditions of smoke and gas, we tore down a wide passage through the fall, an operation that would have taken days to accomplish under the former conditions, with the helmets. That evening in the Superintendent's room in the office-building, those who were in charge, with the maps of the mine spread before them, planned the next move in the fight and determined which entries should next be opened and how the air-currents should be led into them in order that the mine, tunnel by tunnel and section by section, might be cleared of the smoke and gas.

Meanwhile, a dozen men, under the leadership of Boar, had remained in the mine and were tightening the stoppings and preparing for the work of the coming day. It was about eleven o'clock that night when Boar heard a slight explosion beyond the stopping by the airshaft. Without alarming his men, he began an investigation, when two more violent explosions threatened to blow down the stopping. The unexpected had again happened. Stoppings once more had leaked, air had passed into the gas-filled tunnels, and fire still existed.

Without a second's delay the men were hoisted from the mine, and fifteen minutes after the last man stepped from the cage there came a sudden explosion in the mine. From the hoistingshafts a huge white cloud of vapor shot up into the night; but at the airshaft the force of the explosion was more violent, and the great dome of reinforced concrete above it fell in a mass of crumbled wreckage, swept back clean from the edge of the shaft.

It was one o'clock when I reached the fan-house, and a great full moon was standing high in the cold winter sky. Up from the square, black mouth of the air-shaft, a tall white column of vapor rose into the night, and then, when the mine began to breathe, disappeared; and with our hands held above the black hole, we could feel the rush of air sucked back into the abyss.

At an interval of about an hour following the first explosion there had come a second but less violent one; and again two hours later, when the mine had sucked back sufficient air to form another explosive mixture, a sudden hissing puff again shot out from the shaft, breaking into three pieces two twelve by fourteen green oak beams that we had laid across its mouth as the foundation for a seal. So sudden was the explosion that Peter Dawson, a powerful Negro who was crawling out over one of the beams when it occurred, was blown a distance of over fifty feet. We found him lying beside the track beyond a string of box-cars, with the blood running from a bad scalp-wound. His first words were that he had been tossed completely over the cars. 'I seen the roofs all white with frost an' moonlight,' he muttered; and the doctor later affirmed that Pete would have been killed when he landed on the rail if he had not hit on his head. A hundred men were now working in the moonlight, and in half an hour two more of the great beams were placed across the shaft-mouth, and planks and canvas, packed down with clay, above them.

The damage at the top of the manhoist had been slight, and only the doors on the house above it had been blown from their fastenings. For the third time the shafts were sealed.

[In the January number Mr. Husband will describe the culmination of the disaster.-THE EDITORS.]

ledge which may grow less as well as greater as practical experience is acquired?

As a matter of fact, the minister is already in touch with the world to a degree quite unknown to the past generation. He cannot help it, for, from all sides, the practical aspects of his work are emphasized. The institutional church has, in the opinion of many, become a necessity as the only kind of church that will live in our larger cities; and the minister is fortunate who does not find the greater part of his time devoted to the various phases of applied Christianity. A clergyman who recently resigned from the charge of a large parish in Chicago explained his action by announcing his desire to devote himself to religion, declaring that it was quite impossible to be a religious teacher while preoccupied with efforts to run banks and employment bureaus, with the direction of clubs and athletics, and an endless chain of social engagements.

A man's powers develop along the line of his tasks, and the modern institutional church is a poor school for prophets. It is not thus that the great preachers of the past have been made. The faces at a clerical gathering are an interesting commentary on the change of emphasis which modern conditions have forced upon the Christian ministry. One sees there the faces of men of action rather than of thought, types of the engineer or banker, the lawyer or promoter, rather than the mystic or philosopher, or even the teacher. They have been made by their tasks. The first work of a minister is still to preach; he is the interpreter of the will of God to men. In theory, at least, it is his task to comfort and inspire, to guide, strengthen, and warn. But he has been forced by the pressure of circumstances to place the emphasis in his work elsewhere. He must make it go; he must

interest everybody by devising something for each to do, and each shortlived activity must be quickly followed by another, lest the members drift away. Instead of studying the will of God, he is forever prodding the wills of men. All this he does often in the face of his own conviction that these are not the things that count.

The difficulty with the minister of to-day is not that he lives too far from the common experiences of other men. Never before was he so close to them. But he is too far from God. His influence has declined because he speaks with less conviction of God's will, and his hold upon the consciences of men has slackened because he is not himself able to draw clearly the line between right and wrong. He knows the problems that puzzle and distress his congregation, but he is in doubt as to what advice to give. He resorts, therefore, to what are called simple, practical sermons, but which are too often 'tacks across a sea of pious platitudes,' without any serious attempt to reach port. He knows at heart that every moral act is the result of antecedent thought, and that there can be no noble living without high thinking; yet he is unable to present Christian truth in a way that awakens that ‘admiration, hope, and love' by which men live.

In all this the minister is largely a product of his age, but this factthough exonerating him from blame

should not obscure the reason for his declining influence. It is not that the clergy of to-day are less eager to do God's will, or less devoted in their search for truth. The uncertain note which characterizes their utterance is due rather to the breaking-down of the older sources of authority, and the consequent necessity for reliance upon personal experience. The preacher, finding that the statements of the creeds do not of themselves bring assurance,