(To the Editor.)

Sir,—ln your leader in Thursday's STtR on the Presbyterian Genera! Assembly you have tho following sentence : — " The attack of the German Emperor upon the classics only shows the trend of modern thought, and the desire to substitute the practical for the cob webbed element in training men for the duties of citizenship." To a ruler like the German who tries in his .great.display* to put himself .above restrfiinVrio Wonder that mod«fttfei«JWfaieh' yet bears the motto " the King can do no wrong," should be dearer than the classics of Greece and Home, which proclaim the law to be above all. Amongst these nations in their beat days the law, not men, ruled. Obedience not to archon or consul, but to the law, was their real and ideal liberty. They borrowed these notions from the Egyptians, who usually revered their kinga because good, yet made them submit to laws even so far as to regulate what went to the royal table. To some extent the German Emperor is now in Berlin sub ject to this custom. It is very irksome, and while the Germans ure permitted to learn from the classics that splendid leseon that liberty consists in obedience, not to man but to the law, that the law is above all—emperor and ecclesiastic—this irksome yet salutary state must continue. The classics teach another lesson which no where else is taught to well. This lesson contains three subdivisions. First, that citizenship demands that; private be ever subordinated to public interest. Secondly, that the encroachments of power on the liberty of bhe humblest subject are to be resisted to the death. Thirdly, that those whose whole devotion to the common wealth is doubted, ehould retire from the conduct of public affairs. It would be tedious and deemed perhaps affectation, if not pedantry, to cite historical instances from both ancient and modern history in each, or under each of these subdivisions. This classic leaching caused the Robes spierres and the Cromwells to rise, and Charles and Louis to fall. Nor was the pul pit tyrant secure. The supremacy of just laws drives back to their just places Cajears and Cardinals, corrupt courts and corrupt creeds. There is this difference, however, thab it is far easier to upset a bad king than a bad creed. 