of the 'truth' in Geneva or Scotland, has sometimes been spoken of with derision as if it necessarily showed cowardice or indifference. It is a sufficient and somewhat terrible reply, that the definite new 'truths,' embraced by the Puritan Reformation which followed ours, are by now immeasurably more obsolete than Rome, while the indefinite modification of old ideas effected by the Church of England endures, proceeds, and is the possession now of the whole Protestant world.

The Church of England has gone through its periods of degradation. It has often, like other Churches, been guilty of harshness and of arrogance; it has been no more exempt than they from that subtle taint of dishonesty which makes ecclesiastical history so far more revolting to the reader than civil. The adherence of the Church of England to the State that is to the natural unsanctified community of human kind-has been a temptation to much worldliness. Its efforts after the fullest comprehension consistent with loyalty to tradition have incurred the reproach, sometimes true and more often false and cheap, of illogicality and base compromise.

Nevertheless, not to dwell on the beauty of spiritual life which has been found within it as within many another Church, all its apparent lukewarmness, and inconsistency, its retention of consecrated formulas which its own members disbelieve, its repeated refusal to accept new formulas which many of them at the time have believed, in short, its unauthoritative but traditional character, have signified, and up to date do signify, a great principle. Briefly, that principle (I am not saying that all members of the Church of England will accept it) may be thus expressed: the life of Christianity depends not on any doctrine

whatsoever, not on any disciplinary system whatsoever, but on community in mere love and veneration for the person and the spirit, however vaguely and however erroneously conceived, of Jesus Christ.

Church life, which has been largely, at any rate, based on some such sentiment or principle as this, could not be maintained without a perpetual recurrence of great internal tension. The present article is, of course, itself the expression of a tendency within the Church which many friends of the writer probably like and understand as little as he likes and understands their tendencies. But of the strong habitual leaning of the Church of England toward comprehensiveness, and of its general aversion to prematurely making new doctrinal declarations, and of its caution, even in reaffirming positions which have been stated of old in another intellectual atmosphere than ours, and against other antagonists of all this there can be no doubt.

Matthew Arnold's great little book, Saint Paul and Protestantism, is the classical exposition of this fact by a detached critic. There can be equally little doubt that from this fact the Church of England has exercised a peculiarly far-reaching influence on life and thought, and has been the community in whose ministrations earnest men and women who cannot honestly adhere to the creeds of any Church, have found on the whole most help.

To-day there seems to be fresh reason for questioning whether the Church, as it has been and is, can much longer survive the tension between different schools within it upon matters latterly in dispute. Perhaps there is no longer need for a special organization preserving in the world that free view of religion to which it is

Our little systems have their day. It may be that the purpose secured in the past by a single Church broader and more comprehensive and what is called more 'lax' than others, will be served in the future by some other agency.

Perhaps it merely requires greater mutual appreciation between bodies (the Church of England being one), which are sects rather than Churches, and each of which enjoys to the full the irresponsibility and the up-to-date liveliness of a separate self-governing society within the State- like a Trade Union, the example which the leaders of the 'Life and Liberty' movement have used to illustrate their ideal. But the school which at the time is dominant in the Church of England would themselves assuredly not wish to bring about this consummation without considering it seriously first.

Certain difficult questions, involving more fundamental principles than have been raised in former controversies within the Church, tend increasingly to create a fresh party controversy; on the other hand, it may be that they present the opportunity for enlarging the Church's life and work. Before indicating them it may be well to ask, without affecting to decide, whether the 'Enabling Bill,' now seemingly on its way to become law, tends rather toward pettier partisan agitation or toward robuster and more vigorous life. It is not in dispute that the bill aims primarily at removing a real evil- the exceeding difficulty of procuring needful legislation in Church matters. It is, however, contended that certain features of the bill are unnecessary for its purpose and are in principle objectionable.

The main thing impressed on the

nection, is that the group of men who are responsible for the actual shape of the bill have shown an ominous attachment to whatever in the bill was of a partisan character, and have totally neglected their opportunity of securing unanimous and lasting contentment with its provisions. Whether wise or not, their course is in no way dishonorable. dishonorable. Anyone who regrets their triumph must chiefly blame the indifference of persons like himself, which has left the 'good, sound Churchmen' in a position of overwhelming and perhaps slightly intoxicating predominance. But looking to the future it must be observed that, for causes already indicated, the representative system introduced by the bill is unlikely to have that truly representative character which is no doubt desired for it, and that a feeble representative system affords splendid scope for the wall-eyed partisan of illconsidered causes.

We need not conjecture anything as to the sort of causes which most promoters of the bill have further at heart, or point in a manner which might be unfair to the past action of any zealot among them. But there will certainly be endeavors to use the new 'Life and Liberty' for the purpose of narrowing the principles actually obeyed by many Churchmen to-day in two directions. Resistance will be made to the efforts to secure greater concord and coöperation between Christians of different denominations. And it will be sought to erect new barriers against the flood of New Testament criticism. On both these matters the writer may possibly be allowed to say more later. But the second cannot be left without a few further words here.

We live in a time of new knowledge and new ideas, which the cleverest of

us cannot flatter himself that he will in his lifetime digest. The slow pondering of successive generations will put them in their real place. In particular most earnest readers of the New Testament inevitably encounter new perplexities which our fathers could not have imagined if they admitted any element of truth in Christianity at all. Will it be well to tell them that to be really in the Church they must hastily adopt some unreal solution of their perplexities, or well to silence any preacher who can bring them real help in their need? This is one of the questions which the new governing body of the Church will almost certainly have to face.

Again there are the faint adherents of our own and other Churches, and there are multitudes whom a traditional 'enlightenment' has in the past kept aloof from all Churches. Upon their minds it ought now to be dawning that there is only one really foolish attitude about religion, and that is indifference; that a life without private prayer or association with others in worship is after all a maimed life for man or woman. Such people have a religious duty.

The Anglo-French Review

In practice our new Church rulers will have to consider whether the Church of England has not a duty toward them. If it has, it must lay its emphasis on what is most sure and most weighty.

One thing (it has been said] remains unaltered and unalterable. It is the approach of God to the spirit of man, and the answer of man to the Spirit of God. Of that high and ineffable intercourse the visible sacrament and the eternal symbol is the historic Jesus.

This is no doubt not all that is worth saying about God and man and their Mediator; to set bounds to the orthodox theorizing would be as bad as to set bounds to the unorthodox; and to obtrude immaterial doubts upon the unperplexed Christian is an outrage, till the unperplexed Christian turns persecutor, when it becomes a duty. Yet it should be considered whether the essence of faith be really more than the blind love, devoid of theory, which the presence of the Saviour as a person awakened in the original disciples. Doctrine may be used for the sustenance of that faith; but it may quite easily be used to quench it.

THE Schools were closed for measles; and because a boy about the house all day was a nuisance, Roy Vanner's aunt came into his bedroom at the top of the house as he was preparing for bed, put down half a sovereign on the corner of the dressing table, and told him to be off in the morning and not to come back again till it was spent. She had one of her mysterious 'Conferences' on the morrow, that always filled every hook and hatpeg in the hall, lengthened the dining table by three leaves, and meant improvised beds and shakedowns for such of the conferrers as came from a distance. Roy did n't know what they conferred about, except that it had to do with Welfare or Rescue or Missions or something equally joyless, and that the last time they had come he had had to sleep on the floor.

'Go right away,' his aunt said. 'You can cut yourself some sandwiches in the kitchen if you like. And don't read in bed, because we 've all got to be up early to-morrow.'

And she went out, leaving the boy staring wide-eyed at the coin she had put down.

He was in his stockings, shirt, and knickers, and had stood with one bracestrap over his shoulder as his aunt had talked. Half a sovereign! He doubted his eyes. Once, one Christmas, he had possessed three separate half-crowns all at the same moment, but never, never a whole gold coin all in one piece. He moved softly to where it lay, as if half afraid to touch it.

Then he became all action. From a

drawer he took a piece of paper, wrapped the coin up in it, and put it into the pouch of his belt. Then he undressed hurriedly, put on his sleeping suit, fastened the belt two holes tighter than usual about it, slipped on his jacket again, and dashed barefooted downstairs to the kitchen.

'Aunt says I may wiches,' he said.

have some sand

Roast beef was cooking, to be cut cold in the morning, and there were hams and pies and oven-trays of hot tarts about. They told him they could n't be bothered to cut sandwiches at that time of night.

'But I'm going off early-five o'clock.'

"Then cut them yourself. No, no, not that new loaf! Dear, oh, dear! Ellen, is there any of that cold mutton left? Sit you down on that chair while I cut them, the bother you are - I don't suppose there's any measles at all

The sandwiches were cut, but Roy demanded more than they gave him. His hands were tightly clenched about his belt. He wasn't going to spend golden money on sandwiches. Golden money was for golden things.

Ten minutes later he was in bed, with the light out, excitedly running over the list of his most cherished possessions and regretting that his knapsack was so small. There were no end of things he wanted to take. Finally, he had cut down the list to his map, his water-color box and sketching block, his folding stool, Shakespeare, a spare pair of stockings, the heels of which he would soap in the morning,

and as many other odds and ends, including the Morte d' Arthur, as could be crammed into his pockets.

Then he fell, not so much asleep, as into a sort of intermittent sub-trance from which he half woke from time to time to ease the tightened belt that contained the gold coin.

No doubt his aunt had intended that he should take a half-crown excursion ticket somewhere, sleep that night at a farmhouse, and return the next day, when the business of Missions or Rescue or whatever it was was over. But that was by no means the idea of the boy, who at half-past five the next morning, closed the door of the house softly behind him, glanced up at the drawn blinds from the end of the short laureled drive, and began to drop down a broad road to the heart of the factory town. He wore a white jersey under his jacket - his folding sketching stool was thrust through the straps of his bulging knapsack, he had a spare stocking in either jacket pocket, and his sandwiches were distributed in small parcels over half his slender person. About him hooters and 'whews' sounded, calling the shawled girls and wood-clogged men to their work; the sun made brown velvet of the smoke on his right hand, but flashed like gold on the windows on his left. His face was set north. He could have taken tram or train out of the town, but Lancelot or the Knight with the fetterlock and shacklebolt azure Iwould not have taken train or tram. Besides, he had decided that that halfsovereign was to last him, not a day, but as near a week as he could spin it

out.

He was a noisy and bright boy among the other lads of the Upper Fifth at his school, but just as happy when he was alone. Painting pictures, when you came to think of it, meant being a good deal alone, for the other

.

fellow could n't be expected to hang round doing nothing while he worked, and he wanted to be a painter of pictures. He wanted to paint pictures like the cavaliers, signed 'Coleman (Roma),' that he saw in the dealers' windows in the Arcade, or those others, of moors and streams and hayfields, signed with the initials M. R. J.' For these things, and for the glowing lines in Shakespeare and the magic of Endymion and the Morte d Arthur, his mind was unfolding like a tree that bursts its silky sheaths in the spring, renewing the miracle of the spring before, and the one before that, and all the springs that ever were. He was just turned fourteen.

He intended to walk a mere trifle of thirty miles, or perhaps thirty-two, that day. It was, perhaps, just a little more than he had ever walked before, but he was a good walker, and had all sorts of thoughts to wile away the time. His ordinary walk was twenty miles, which meant ten miles out, a tantalizing glimpse of country yet. untrodden, and, therefore, fairer than all the rest, and so home again. But this time it was not going to be like that. He had ten shillings.

He had only one light regret. He lived in the middle of the country, and the sea was out of the question. He must wait for the sea until the summer holidays came round, and even then he would be more or less attached to people who held stuffy conferences and the like.

By eight o'clock he was ascending the street of a village that was partly a country village but partly also a residential suburb of the town he had left; but by half-past nine he was breakfasting, a little late it was true, but where he had planned to breakfast -in a good grouse-butt on the rise of a well-trodden moor. He reckoned that another hour and a half's walking