"But few Englishmen will read these two letters without the reflection that the British and the German empires are not so very different or so differently circumstanced, as regards the matter of this remarkable correspondence, that we can afford to dismiss it from our thoughts. The Rome which molests Germany and menaces its disruption, is the same Rome as that which in these isles fraternises with every form of sedition, and affiliates every movement against the peace and union of the realm. 'Rome has spoken,' and at once her bishops and clergy throw themselves by crowds into the ranks of any confederacy which has but the power to discredit authority, interrupt peace, and hinder legislation. Let no power whatever; no class, however strong; no interest, however vital and self-assured, suppose that it can always and actively resist the attacks of an agency which aims first and foremost to be destructive, in order that it may build on the wreck it has made with the materials it has disintegrated. Is it certain that the powers of Europe will have to act together against a common foe? They are acting together, and it is this concert which has helped to bring on this correspondence. Insular as we are, we are too close to the neighbouring continent not to have at least our share of the common danger."

To return once more to the behaviour of Christ's representatives in England, it is worth while to record, as a sign of the times, the miserable squabble about the right of a Wesleyan minister to be styled "Reverend" upon a tombstone. This pettifogging question was actually deemed of sufficient importance to be submitted, on appeal from the decision of two lower Courts, to the judgment of the Judicial Commitee of the Privy Council, which decided the matter in favour of the Wesleyan minister, whereupon several clergymen of the Church of England actually wrote to the most important and respectable of religious newspapers-the Guardian-to beg that, in consequence of this legal decision, they themselves might in future no longer be addressed by a desecrated title! The World, commenting on this, remarks,

"There are men capable of unreasonable conduct in all professions and all classes, and the circumstance of a few clergymen having written the letters we have alluded to would not of itself have called for comment. The really ugly fact is that the editor of so high class a religious journal should have thought fit to

publish such letters; and we are accordingly driven to the conclusion that this almost childish display of intolerance does not appear so ridiculous to the clergymen who read the Guardian as it does to nine lay members out of ten of the Church of England."

To the credit of the Church be it said, however, that there was at least one man capable of seeing the gross inconsistency of such childish vanity in a Christian minister. His letter puts the question in its true light, and is worth quoting. The writer, the Rev. W. R. Arrowsmith, vicar of Old St. Pancras, in a letter to the Daily News, thus expresses himself,

"AN OUTCOME OF RITUALISM.-As a gentleman, a beneficed clergyman in the Reformed and Established Church of England, as a genuine Protestant, as a minister in the Church of God, suffer me, I pray you, to enter my indignant protest against the miserable, the offensive, the churlish, the mischievous bigotry which disallows the adoption of the term Reverend by the father on the gravestone of a Wesleyan minister's daughter; and let me ask whether the Rev. Henry Keet, incumbent of Oroston Ferry, and the Right Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, be faithful disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus, the immortal friend of many, who forbade his followers to be called Rabbi."

One of the most distinguished characteristics of the present day is the increased interest which religious questions now excite; whilst, on the other hand, it is no less remarkable that there is also wide-spread infidelity. The Bishop of Gloucester made some remarks in one of his speeches which very truly express this. He told his hearers that "dread forces and influences were arrayed against the Church. Two influences were ever working against her, and which, by their own antagonisms, became year by year more defined and developed. These were free thought, infidelity, on the one side; and enslaved thought and superstition on the other. In reference to some of the most vital and cardinal questions, doubt had disclosed itself to an extent that those who took the gloomiest views nine or ten years ago never could have anticipated."

A recent Bampton lecturer, Mr. Curtis, in speaking of the

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present state of Christianity amongst us, asked, “Can any man, of any sect or of any school of opinions, say he is satisfied with things as they are? . . And the simple facts are these: first of all, that nearly one-third of the adult population of this country rejects the ministrations of all the sects and of all the Christian organisations alike."

The present attitude of the Christian religion towards the masses is thus expressed in one of the leading London papers :

"The temper of the educated mind in England towards religious sectarianism, the propaganda of parties, and the war of creeds might be best described as one of intelligent indifference. There is a general agreement to recognise the moral truths which underlie the various protestations of ghostly faith, and to ignore the fanatical and generally artificial zeal with which they are disseminated under the veil of celestial revelations exclusively deposited in one or other of contending cliques or mutually embittered factions. Bland clergymen in spotless bands mount the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, and fail to rouse the echoes with their decorous platitudes; the congregation of old people and babies slumber morally, if not physically; and the sturdy young men play bowls in the back-garden or drink beer or smoke pipes in the taproom of the public-house. Good persons think this sad and shocking, and ask, Who is to blame? A Sabbath

day religion is worth no more than the gaudy floral decorations which scarcely outlive the commemorative service; but a morality of every-day life and the knowledge of a love and a sympathy which surpass our finite hopes and eclipse our feeble desiresthese are things which may beautify and cheer the poor man's life. It is the complicated edifice with which we have overlaid the simple sacrifice of faith, the gilded fetters with which we seek to enchain men's consciences, that drive away willing but reasoning minds. They cannot accept everything, and so they believe nothing. If 'old faiths crumble and fall,' we must build up new ones; where the law of development in physical things is known and universally accepted, why should we refuse to recognise the same divine order in spiritual things? More life, more heart, more depth, love for the beautiful, forgetfulness of self—this is the creed we want; let us have it."

All this goes to confirm what I have urged in the preceding pages, that the Christianity of to-day is not the

religion of Christ. It is built on an entirely false foundation. The assumption throughout is, that Christianity is a collection of doctrines, and that upon a belief in these, salvation depends. The sermons I have quoted, as also the whole of the various creeds I have analysed, all point to the same conclusion. As the writer in the last extract observes: "there is a general agreement to recognise the moral truths which underlie the various protestations of ghostly faith," or, in other words, all sects, as I have before pointed out, agree upon the moral teachings of Christ, but differ upon his doctrinal teachings. As long, therefore, as the clergy fail to see what true Christianity is, and as long as they persist in preaching the false, so surely will they drive men into infidelity. What is wanted, above all things, is a religion of every-day life: not a Sabbath-day religion; and it is the duty of the clergy to follow the glorious example of their Lord and Master and his Apostles-as witness the extracts ante pp. 36 and 46-and preach a practical every-day religion. Whenever men do this they are gladly listened to. When they drone out such lifeless discourses as those I have quoted from, ante p. 202, it is hardly to be wondered at, if they drive away earnest men and bore the indifferent.

One of our magazines, in an article upon unpractical sermons, writes as follows:

"The preacher dees not deal with the faults and failings which every thinking man sees on all sides, but he preaches over the heads of his hearers at the vices which flourished in a past age. It is absurd to suppose that a man of real ability is compelled in consequence to fall back upon a few worn-out ideas, or that he will be heard with impatience if he ventures to discuss the great questions of the day. Is it not a fact that, whenever a man of vigorous thought ventures to attack the special vices of the age, he fills his church and makes his voice heard beyond the bounds of the parish? The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is a man of this stamp; he deals fearlessly with the sins of the nineteenth century, and his voice is heard on both sides of the Atlantic. Even an indifferent orator can excite the sympathies of his audience if he

deals with the daily difficulties which men constantly encounter in life; but Burke or Demosthenes would fail to make the trials and temptations of heroes who lived in a remote age anything but mere abstractions.

"When Ward Beecher speaks of 'Wall Street' and its doings, all the world stops to listen; there is a field for such sermons, and they will sell whether they be bound in pasteboard or vellum. Men are not unwilling to hear the truth, even if it be rugged and harsh; and if they stay away from public worship, it is not from any fear of censure, but because they dislike platitudes. The majority of the printed sermons which are so actively advertised, seem to be written by the Honey-bun school for the special needs of women, who appear to be born for an innate love for platitude and kid-glove propriety."

By way of a practical illustration of the kind of sermon that is wanted now-a-days, I may quote the following clever article from the Boston Christian:

"We want a religion that bears heavily, not only on the 'exceeding sinfulness of sin,' but on the exceeding rascality of lying and stealing-a religion that banishes small measures from the counter, small baskets from the stall, pebbles from the cottonbags, clay from the paper, sand from sugar, chicory from coffee, alum from bread, and water from the milk-cans. The religion that is to save the world will not put all the big strawberries at the top and all little ones at the bottom. It will not make one half pair of shoes of good leather, and the other half of poor leather, so that the first shall redound to the maker's credit, and the second to his cash. It will not put Jouvin's stamp on Jenkins's kid gloves, nor make Paris bonnets in the back-room of a Boston milliner's shop; nor let a piece of velvet that professes to measure twelve yards come to an untimely end in the tenth, or a spool of sewing-silk that vouches for twenty yards be nipped in the bud at fourteen and a-half; nor all-wool delaines and all-linen handkerchiefs be amalgamated with clandestine cotton; nor coats made of old rags, pressed together, to be sold to the unsuspecting public for legal broadcloth. It does not put bricks at five dollars per thousand into chimneys at contracts to build of seven dollar material; nor smuggle white pine into floors that have paid for hard pines; nor leave yawning cracks in closets where boards ought to join; nor daub the ceilings that ought to be smoothly plastered; nor make window-blinds with slats that cannot stand the wind; and paint that cannot stand the sun; and fastenings that are to be looked at, but are on no account to be touched. The religion that is going to sanctify the world pays its debts. It