stones Aladdin himself could not replace. For eight wide bays the delicately chiselled shafts with their soaring arches march toward the great and lofty arches of the tower, and beyond they begin again and continue for nine more bays, three hundred and eighty feet in clear length, the whole wrought of the pale stone that here has softened to the hues of old ivory. The great vault branches and curves above, the natural color of the stone almost hidden by an embroidery of color and gold, from the midst of which glow proud heraldic achievements, gules and azure and or. Down the triforium arcade are ranged countless figures of saints and prophets, painted, all of them, and bright with burnished gilding, while the color of the vault creeps down over arch and wall until the whole church is one wonder of ivory stone and all the hues of the blossoming fields, the metallic iridescence of butterflies' wings.

Brilliant though it is—no half tones, no timorous tertiaries -the eighty-six windows of clerestory and aisle with the four vast openings in nave, choir and transepts, all filled with painted glass smouldering with ardent fire on the south and west, cool with the myriad hues of sunrise mists on the north and east, throw ten thousand pencils of living light across the still air where smoke films of incense still curl and linger, blending all in one resonant chord of full color that is like music in its poignancy.

Enter the south aisle and, footing the pavement of brilliant tiles, go down to the transept. Here to the south the sun pours full through the great window forty feet in clear height, a tide of living light that breaks against the fretted screen of the monks' choir. To the left opens out all the wonder and mystery of the crossing, the Titan shafts like sheaves of giant spears rising to the four huge arches wrought into subtle curves and hollows, the shadowy transept stretching far away into silvery mist dyed with the carmine and silver and ultramarine of the storied windows. To the east, under two of the arches, are little chapels, each with its altar decked with rich. est needlework, each with its golden candlesticks, its fresh cut flowers, its reredos of chiselled stone or gilded wood, thick with statues of vested saints, and voiceful with emblems and symbols of the Redemption.

The third arch gives on the processional aisle stretching far away to the east, and here, as also in the transept, are myriad tombs and shrines, and memorial brasses in the tiled floor. Here is a bishop's tomb wrought of alabaster, the effigy of my lord himself stretched on the top, mitre on head, cope decently folded by his side, a jewelled crozier prone along his arm. Here lies a cardinal, his tomb thick set with glimmering mosaic, his red hat hanging from the vault above, the silken tassels waving slightly in some breath that strays in from an open door. Here a knight and his lady sleep in a common tomb, a great sword and an helmet, black now with years, suspended above.

You must walk justly here, for the tombs are very many and each is as beautiful as it is given to man to fashion. Farther to the east we find altars against the terminal wall, every one some masterpiece of art, with votive candles and flickering lamps burning always before them. The north aisle is as the south, and the north transept as well, except that here is the altar of Our Lady, most beautiful, most marvellous of all. Enter the doorway in the screen of the choir. Thus far all has been in a way without the pale, here we approach the centre of all things. The slender shafts, the curling arches, arcade, triforium, clerestory and vault, are the same; ivory, gold and pulsating color; but here all is enclosed by the choir stalls of oak, each shaded by its canopy, a miracle of marvellous fashioning, carven, inlaid, picked out with color and gold, an ordered jungle of intricate foliation that balks the imagination with its revelation of the powers of man when these are used in the service of God. Side by side, scores of them in all, they stand ranged in order away to the east, where they give place to fellows of finely wrought marble, spired, pinnacled, charged with bright coats of arms and the deceitful semblance of all the flowers of the field. Here the stalls are backed and cushioned with silk brocade; blazing banners of rich needlework, banners both martial and ecclesiastical, hang above and cast long shadows over the tombs of bishops, abbots and the great of earth, tombs that are set thick with little statues, each in its canopied niche, proud with the martial array of ancient escutcheons, or draped, some of them, with splendid palls of wonderful needlework that cost the labor of twenty hands for half that number of years.

And what shall we say of the high altar and its reredos? Go to Winchester; look on what is there, rising forty feet and more sheer from the pavement and reaching from wall to wall, then imagine this flickering with burnished gold and blazing with pigments, fronted with great gold candlesticks, flanked by others of bronze and ivory, with silver lamps hanging in front like so many flame-bearing angels, and you may have some idea of what once was in this place.

We may go into the cathedrals still left us and from their bare stone shafts and vaults, their few defaced tombs, dusty and faded, their tall windows, where spaces of wonderful color still remain surrounded by dead fields of plain glass, their few and cheerless altars shorn of all color save that of a frontal, it may be, gain some pale, inadequate idea of what

once was before the days of Henry the Scourge of England, but nowhere can we find a hint of the unspeakable glory that once characterized cathedral and abbey, when color, apotheo. sized, covered them like the vesture of kings, and the oblations and memorials of a thousand years filled them with the wonders of art and with haunting memories.

But the real glory of York Abbey lay, not in its accessories of glass and sculpture and carving, tapestry, brocade and needlework and all the artifice of the goldsmith, the jeweller and the scribe, but in the singular and quite consummate nature of its architecture. Founded just after the Conquest, by the monks of Evesham under the protection of Earl Percy, the abbey was altogether rebuilt in its final form by the great Abbot Simon of Warwick, who ruled for forty years, viz., from 1259 until 1299. During these years the first epoch of Gothic mounted to its zenith, and York Abbey stood as the crowning achievement of the style. From this wonderful work every hint of Norman and every trace of French influence had disappeared. Of the hard mechanism of Salisbury no suggestion is visible, while the grave and almost ponderous majesty of Whitby and Rievaulx had given place to a wonderful lightness and spaciousness. It may almost be called transitional, for it shows the first movings of the spirit of the fourteenth century and so may claim kin not only with the "Nine Altars" of Fountains and Durham, but with Gisburgh as well. If it failed at any point it was in its west front, the remains of which, except for the greater arches, indicate a certain hardness and mechanical quality curiously suggestive of Salisbury and strongly out of harmony with all that is within. I am almost inclined to assign to this west front a date fifty years earlier than that given to Abbot Warwick's work, as though a new front had been built for the ancient church before the great rebuilding of 1270 was begun, and that this front when overtaken later by Warwick's masterpiece was incorporated therein and only partially changed, chiefly by the insertion of new windows and doors.

In spite of minor criticisms, however, the fact remains that the destruction of York Abbey meant the elimination not only of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, but also the obliteration of a page in English architectural history we can ill spare. Sure, serene, competent, perfect in its proportions, exquisitely organized, marked by subtleties of design in the sections of piers, the arrangement of mouldings, the placing and modelling of ornament, a perfect type of sound, strong and sensitive English Gothic, York Abbey was a national monument, the aesthetic and historical value of which was beyond computation. It is with feelings of horror and unutterable dismay that, as we stand beside the few existing fragments, realizing the irreparable loss they make so clear, we call into mind Henry's sacrilege in the sixteenth century and his silly palace doomed to instant destruction, the crass ignorance and stolidity of the eighteenth century with its grants of building material, and the mercenary savagery of the nineteenth cenutry, when from smoking limekilns rose into the air the vanishing ghosts of the noblest creations that owe their existence to the hands of man.

The tale of St. Mary's Abbey ends on Nov. 26, 1539, when William Dent, twenty-ninth and last abbot, surrendered the glory of Yorkshire into the hands of Crumwell, at which time there were fifty monks on the rolls, one hundred and fifty lay brothers and servants, and a great number of families dependent on the abbey for their maintenance. At this time the annual revenues amounted to something over $100,000.

The addition made by American farmers to the national wealth during the past fiscal year breaks all records for all countries, says The Outlook. The wealth production on farms in that twelvemonth reaches no less than $6,415,000,000-a stupendous aggregate of the results of brain, muscle and machine. Corn-our greatest crop-is the only one to reach both largest production and highest value; three others, hay, wheat and rice, attained their highest value. It may surprise some to know that no crop but corn produces as large an income as does the dairy cow; milk and butter form the item of value next to corn in making up the total, followed by hay, cotton and wheat. With the last named, however, the farmer's hen competes for precedence, poultry products aggregating almost as much in value, even though the value obtained by our wheat last year overtopped the highest ever before reached. "And yet," says Secretary Wilson, of the Department of Agriculture, in his annual report, from which we take the above-mentioned facts, "the story is not done." The wealth produced on farms in 1905 exceeds that of 1904 by four per cent., that of 1903 by eight per cent., and that shown by the census figures for 1899 by thirty-six per cent.

Farmers and fruit-growers have been able greatly to dimin ish their losses from plant diseases by the success of the work of the Bureau of Plant Industry, and the Forest Service Bureau is administering our forest reserves at a cost of less than one-third of one per cent. of their value, which is increas ing at a yearly rate of ten per cent.

Calendar for February.

4.

9.

11.

16.

18.

23.

24.

25.

28.

sentence has become a commonplace. If

any.

Friday-Fast.

Septuagesima Sunday.

Friday-Fast.

Sexagesima Sunday.

Friday-Fast.

St. Matthias's Day. Quinquagesima Sunday. Ash Wednesday.

Our Ignorance of the

Life after Death.*

We know nothing whatever about the

next world. Even those who accept the Christian Revelation most heartily and most completely must admit, with St. John, that "it doth not yet appear what we shall be.". Christ taught, and His Dis

ciples believed, that the soul of man is eternal, and does not die with the body. St. Paul summed up Christ's teaching on the subject of immortality when he said that He had "abolished death." Against this ignorance man has forever chafed. Upon the dark background of the future, the religious imagination, helped by the inner light of conscience, throws beautiful and terrible pictures. But with each succeeding age the pictures dissolve and change. Knowledge cannot pierce the visible darkness which divides this world from the next. .

Our forefathers looked forward in some

moods to everlasting rest and never-ending worship, in others to a happy and prosperous life in a perfectly governed and perfectly healthy city. At times, inspired by the love of nature, they Christianized the classic picture of the Elysian Fields. To-day the normal man does not desire rest when he asks himself what life he would choose. Rest suggests death, and we desire more abundant life. To most healthy bodies and healthy minds effort is in itself delightful. If men do not need to make an effort for their living. they will do it for their pleasure. Successful effort brings more happiness than anything else, taking life as a whole. The thought of everlasting worship satisfies fewer and fewer people to-day. It belongs to an age when men thought of God as a kind of King, who took perpetual pleasure in homage. We still sing of "sweet fields beyond the swelling flood," and find refreshment in the thought, but no one desires to live forever wandering amid the beauties of nature. The thought of an ideal civic life is still attractive, but the heavenly Jerusalem brings thoughts of Utopia now rather than of the life everlasting. We still pray against "everlasting damnation."

We smile reverently as we look back. Crowns and cities, feasts and sweet fields, all melt away together. Still, the words of Christ, which cannot pass away while human nature remains, sound in our

hearts: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." But how shall these things be? Again, there comes back upon us the baffling realization of our ignorance. Why, why, have we been told so little? Yet, if we cease to strive,

and begin to think the matter out, are we very sure what it is for which we are asking? How could any revelation have come to us? In what words, by what similitudes, could the continued life of the spirit have been described? "Heaven is not a place,

but a state of mind," we say. *From "The Spectator."

The

"beareth witness." "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," said Christ; and who can deny that the life of the spirit is nourished by all goodness, or assert dogmatically that it cannot survive the flesh? It is easy enough to prove that hell is not a place of torment beneath our feet, easy enough to prove that heaven is not a cloudland over our heads; but it is impossible to prove that soul and body cannot exist apart, otherwise there would be no difference between a man and a corpse. However truly Christ, or our own reason, or our own divine intuitions have convinced us of the possibility of a disembodied or a re-embodied life, we still

cannot conceive, or, at any rate, cannot put into words, the mode of such an existence. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the exact nature of the eternal life of the spirit could be revealed to us, so that

we could believe in it exactly as we believe in this present world. What would be the effect of this knowledge upon the human mind? It would mean, we believe, the death of religion. What place would remain for faith in God? We should calculate upon heaven as we calculate upon old age. The man who did not do his best to secure a comfortable situation in the land to which illness or accident might any day, and the years must some day, take him, would be an improvident fool, that would be all. There would be no such thing as repentance. The moral sense would die. A man might curse his folly in forgetting his interest, he would not hate the act which set him wrong with God. The innate desire to go on living would no longer act as a moral and religious spur. Men would not try to deepen their spiritual lives, to increase, that is, their spiritual vitality by the understand ing and keeping of Christ's two commandments. The effort to obtain life by contact with the source of life would be meaningless.

The whole spiritual horizon would close in. Aspiration hemmed in by certainty would lose all power to soar. Men would no longer try to purify their hearts that they might recognize the presence of God everywhere. Such certainty as we are supposing would be a prelude to the descent of man. Hitherto his road has always led upwards. As we look back we can trace it by the light of learning, more or less clearly, right down into an

abyss. In front we can see nothing tangible, nothing but those ideals which belong to a kingdom "not from hence." Forward, upward, we can only move by

One of the ablest, if not the very ablest among the editorial writers of the Church press, declared, or seemed to declare, a few months ago, that no heretic, so long as he taught what he believed to be true. If that definition be true, then there can be no certain evidence that such a thing as heresy in the Church has ever existed; no reasonable evidence that Simon, Cerinthus, Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, Pelagius, and the rest, were heretics. Yet they were cast out, cut off from the communion of the Church, for heresy. Now, then, there must be something wrong, either with this strange, modern definition of heresy and heretics, both, and cast them out. There is not a

or else with the Church which condemned

scintilla of evidence that these men, or

any of them, did not believe what they taught to be true; yet for all that, they

were condemned for it and cast out. And not only that, but if this modern definition of heresy be true, then St. Paul also seems strangely wrong. He wrote to St. Titus: "A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject, knowing that he that is such is subverted, being condemned of himself." If a man be not a heretic so long as he believes what he teaches, there was never a possibility of proving any one a heretic, or, per consequence, of rejecting or casting him out for even the wildest errors of doctrine. If sincerity in error can acquit a man of heresy, it can also acquit him of moral offence against the truth the Church holds. If that be true of faith, as it would seem to be, then why is it not equally true of conduct? So long as a priest believes, or says he believes, that it is not wrong to have two wives, why ought he to be deposed for having two wives for himself,

It pro

or for teaching others to have them? But it will be said that that is very different. But is it? Before any man can be commissioned a priest he is sworn equally to teach pure doctrine, and pure morals, and the test of purity in each is not what the man himself holds, but what the Church, which gives him his commission, holds. No avowal of sincerity can acquit a man of heresy when he knowingly perverts that body of sound doctrine, in faith and morals, which the Church holds. The essence of heresy rests in the will. ceeds from the will. It is a sin of the will, of choosing for one's self a doctrine, whether of faith or morals, which the man himself holds to be true, yet knows it to be contrary to the teaching of the To wish or ask for God's help without Church. "Heresy," says St. Jerome, "is His government shows a total misunder- so called from the Greek, because it is that standing of the position in which we which any man chooses for himself, which stand toward Him: just as to think of seems to him to be better." It is very Him as our governor without thinking of true, that so long as a man sincerely beHim also as our helper betrays a sad ig- lieves that he is teaching what the Church norance of the love and zeal for our wel- teaches, he cannot be rightly called a brethren, God our Saviour and Preserver fare which inspires all His doings. No, heretic, however gravely in error. But

faith.

is also the Lord our Governor. When either soul or body gets into bad ways, it is almost always for want of His govin the right way. So when we pray that

then, it is the Church's duty to inform

him of his error, and to require him to desist. If he will not, the duty of the

Church is plain enough, if it is to avoid

ernment, for want of being taken and led becoming a partaker of the error of the

our hearts and bodies may be rightly governed, we ask that so they may be kept safe and whole and unblemished. And

when we pray that our hearts and bodies may be preserved, we ask that they may not be left to themselves but guided into doing God's will concerning them.-F. J. A. Hort.

self-willed priest who refuses to keep his

VOW. A Church that will suffer heresy to be taught by her priests becomes herself responsible for the heresy, however pure

its official Creed may be. That was the sin for which the bishops of the Church, of Pergamos and of Thyatira were condemned; even while they were orthodox enough themselves.

But now, many of us have become so broad and liberal, or so faithless, as the case may be, that we frown upon the requiring of any man to keep faith with the Church, if only he believes, himself, what he teaches, however diametrically opposed his teaching may be to the teaching of the Church, whose doctrine, at his ordination, he freely vowed to teach. The Creed of the Church must be cast into the crucible of every man's own mind, to be subjected to the alchemy of his own private judgment. What he finds to be true is truth. What he thinks to be untrue, he rejects and denies. Manifestly if this spirit is to be suffered, the Church, this Church, can no longer be regarded as the witness, or keeper, or the interpreter, of the truth. Even now it is flouted! Because, forsooth, it is not "seeking the truth!" Of course the Church is not seeking the truth, inasmuch as it already possesses it, keeps it, guards it, unless it has become apostate. The faith was once for all delivered to the saints, and the Church is not now in quest of it. Least of all can it be expected to seek it in the persons of men who have repudiated its authority, and broken their solemn vows of obedience; and who yet persist in the assertion of their right to stand at her altars, and to preach from her pulpits. Even though the Church, in this twentieth century of its divine life, were not yet in possession of the truth; even though it were yet in quest of it, surely it could not hope to find it in the hands of the Jannes and Jambres, who seem to be ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. Surely, sir, the truth is not to be obtained in or from the motley crowd of empirical pre

and beloved brethren in the ministry has denied the Deity of our Lord; because that supreme fact is the chief corner-stone of all our faith. Without it, as is shown in the biography of Unitarianism every where, the Church is a disintegrating structure, with no abiding foundation.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of a Divine Person who saves men from their sins. This fact is established as the heart of all our creeds, if anything is established. Robert Browning is only reiterating the testimony of the ages when he writes:

"I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ,

Accepted by the reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has, so far, advanced thee to be

wise."

The case in question, however, has already been determined by the legally constituted tribunal and the charges have been declared not proven. Nevertheless, the latest news which comes to us is, that

the authorities of the diocese to whom this gentleman is responsible are still considering the possibility of instituting a trial for heresy. It would seem that this could be done under the circumstances only on the supposition that new and deflnite evidence has been found based upon later utterances. If such is the case, recognizing as we do the accompanying evils of such trials, that frequently we only scatter the sparks in trying to stamp them out, I do not see (and I speak as the broadest kind of a broad Churchman, but a Churchman) how they could do otherwise.

I want to say, however, that there is something worse than heresy; something

say at the altar that Christ is very God of very God, that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary; that He was crucified, dead and buried, and that He rose again the third day; and then from the pulpit deny these things?

You are true at the altar, and false in the pulpit; or else you are false at the altar and true in the pulpit. In either alternative, where is your honor? Where your truth? Where the moral rectitude which

can make you a fit guide of men? If you cannot be true to the vows you made freely, in the flush of your manhood, when you prayed the Church to give you your commission to minister in her name, be at least true to your own soul now, and go out. Go out from an untenable posttion, which you can no longer hold with honor without unfitting you to be the moral guide of any one, whether your intellectual conceptions of Christ be true or false. Go out and be free. Go out and be at least true to honor, to your own soul. JOHN WILLIAMS.

Omaha, Neb.

Something Worse than Heresy.

To the Editor of THE CHURCHMAN:

Surely no true Churchman, with whatever school of thought he may camp, can feel anything but profound sorrow when it is suggested that one of our most useful

con

Let us remember that one of the hardest duties which conscientious men have to perform is to think straight. And it is harder to do that to-day than ever before in the history of the world, because there are more things to think about. We are told that once the disciples "feared when they entered into the cloud." And yet, they were nearer heaven than ever before or after in their lives. It was a cloud of glory; they were standing in the very vestibule of the throne room; they were on the summit of the Transfiguration Mount.

our custom to appoint a disciplining com. mittee, and I shall never forget the remark of a brother clergyman, that in his judgment many a disciplining committee needed to be disciplined. And the teaching of Jesus and His apostles vibrates with this thought. The Pharisees were orthodox-as orthodox as the devil, for he is orthodox, too. "The devils also be lieve and tremble," and yet their orthodoxy does not interfere with their deviltry any more than it did, or does, with thumb-screw inquisitors, ancient or mod

ern.

St. Paul speaks of certain ones who "hold the truth in unrighteousness," and how frequently he emphasizes the need of "speaking the truth in love," or, as it is in the original, “truthing it in love." Better is it for a man to hold error in rightcousness than the truth in unrighteousness. There is more hope for him and for the cause which he represents. At certain stages of their spiritual and intellectual development not one of the apostles could

have found admittance to the modern

Christian Church. But they lived near Christ, so that, ultimately, they not only joined the Church, but, with the help of the Master, founded it.

How often has it been discovered, after long discussion, perhaps concussion, between equally good men, that truth is spherical; that sometimes we may be standing face to face, and yet looking at the same truth, only different sides of it. How often has it been discovered, after the smoke of the battle has been swept away, that our differences have been not absolute, but only relative; differences not of essence, but of emphasis. The truth is, that very much of what we suspect of being heresy is simply emphasis misplaced, and honestly misplaced.

On June 24, 1770, John Wesley wrote to Mr. Merryweather, at Yarm:

"Mr. Augustus Toplady I know well; but I do not fight with chimney sweepers. He is too dirty a writer for me to meddle with; I should only foul my fingers. "Your affectionate brother, "JOHN WESLEY." Toplady styled Wesley, "Pope John"; spoke of his "hatching blasphemy," and declared that he was guilty of "a known, wilful, palpable lie to the public." And yet, it was Augustus Toplady who wrote:

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me! Let me hide myself in Thee!" It was he who, when the gates were swinging open before him at the last, and the physician standing by assured him that he might recover, answered, "No, no; I shall die, for no mortal could endure such manifestations of God's glory and live"; and then, with a song of triumph upon his lips, joined the company of the ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands.

And it was John Wesley who interpreted for us

"Give to the winds thy fears;

Hope and be undismayed; God hears thy sighs, and counts thy tears; God shall lift up thy head"; he who, when he had reached his last day upon earth, tried to sing

"To Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Who sweetly all agree";

That may be the case with men to-day. They may be blinded, not by lack of light, but by excess of light. The effulgence of modern knowledge may have burst on them so suddenly that for a time they cease clearly to see. If we can induce them to abide by the Master, we may be pretty well assured that, like the apostles, they will ultimately see "Jesus only." Their blindness is temporary. I think in saying this that I am voicing the secret personal experience of many a man who shall read these words, once perplexed and in deep doubt, but now clear of vision, concerning the few, the very few, essentials of our faith. If he had been viciousThey are together now, in the country ly attacked in a certain psychological mo- where we, too, shall soon see face to face, ment of his experience, he would have and know even as also we are known. stumbled and fallen, perhaps never to rise How pitiful now must seem to them again. both all their bitter accusations, how inWhen I was a Baptist clergyman it was finitely little, how very, very, sad.

and then for lack of breath could sing no further, but passed out upon the tide, his voice still floating faintly back from the darkening mists of the river, "I'll praise I'll praise-Farewell."

.

taken up the matter of assisting the Clerks' Union in obtaining shorter hours on Saturday nights for the clerks in the uptown department and drygoods stores in New York. In this work a committee from C. A. I. L. is visiting the employers and securing from them pledges to close their stores at a certain hour if the movement becomes general. a mass meeting to arouse the interest of the public has been arranged in Madison Hall, 1,941 Madison avenue, near One-hundred- and - twenty-fifth street, New York, on Feb. 6, at eight o'clock. The Rev. Thomas Henry Sill will preside and the following speakers are expected: The Rev. Messrs. C. L. Goodell, Chas. H. Scholey and Frederick Lynch, Dr. Harris of Temple Israel, the Rev. Dr. L. P. Gravel, chaplain of the Knights of Columbus, and the Rev. H. M. Barbour. The public will be urged by these ministers of various Christian bodies to do their purchasing before 9:30 on Saturday night.

ish, but to the work of the Church in the entire city. When St. Paul's was so greatly damaged by fire in 1888 it was repaired at an expense of $60,000 beyond what the insurance companies paid, and at that time the spirit was plainly evident that it should remain a downtown parish in the very centre of the city's business. In 1895 the rectory on Johnson's Park was purchased and in the next year a parish house across the street from the church was built at a cost of $27,000, on the site of the old rectory so long occupied by the late Rev. Dr. Shelton, rector for fifty years. In 1901 a mortgage and floating indebtedness of $28,000 was paid off, and, meanwhile, an Endowment Fund of $25,000 has been accumulated. It will be seen that the parish retains that vigorous life which, under the promising conditions of a full endowment and the present conservative and wise administration of its devoted rector and vestry, will make it a

At a meeting of the vestry, on Jan.

Episcopal Club.

an equal sum is raised for the same purpose by the parish; and a further sum of $50,000 for this purpose, on condition that the parish provides a further sum of $25,000; so that with the sum of $25,000 already in hand the total Endowment Fund would be $200,000. At the meeting of the vestry $25,000 was at once subscribed, and confidence is expressed that the parish will rise equal to the conditions imposed. Thus fresh impetus will be given to the efforts not only of this "downtown" par

Speaking on "The Public Conscience" before the annual meeting of the Episcopalian Club, in Boston, on Jan. 22, Dr. Wright defined the pessimist as one "who having to choose between two evils, takes them both." We were apt to think, he went on to say, that we, in this country, are the worst people in the world. Corruption is everywhere, we believe. All public officers "graft,' nobody who can be trusted survives. When we so spoke we forgot what had happened in other countries and indeed in our own country in the past. The

reason for the greater outcry to-day lay in the fact that the public conscience had become more sensitive with regard to the evils brought to light. He showed a chart of statistics on the percentage of the increase of crime to that of population, and proved that if drunkenness, which was not reckoned a crime in the earlier days, were omitted, the rate of increase was not at all alarming. In the whole matter Dr. Wright felt there was great danger of speakers and writers becoming guilty of exaggeration.

T. Dennie

The following officers of the Club were elected: President, John H. Storer, Christ church, Waltham; vice-presidents, Thomson, Christ church, Andover; Frederick H. Warner, Emmanuel church, Boston; secretary, Henry C. Stetson, St. John's chapel, Cambridge; treasurer, Henry M. Upham, Church of the Messiah, Boston. The secretary reported 218 members as against 223 last year.

Preaching Discussed by the Rhode
Island Churchmen's Club.

At the meeting of the Churchmen's Club, in Providence, on Jan. 23, the president, Professor W. H. Munro, of Brown University, introduced the subject of the evening, "Preaching from the Point of View of the Pulpit and the Pew." The first speaker, the Rev. Dr. Rousmaniere, declared that laymen could make their clergyman a preacher by creating a proper atmosphere for him to preach in-a physical atmosphere of fresh, pure air in church; a social atmosphere, of hospitable welcome to strangers; a spiritual atmosphere, gained by personal spiritual preparation. The management of many parish guilds and the need of continually begging for parish charities he thought were incompatible with the duty of a preacher. The Rev. W. F. B. Jackson, who followed, agreed with Dr. Rousmaniere in feeling that the clergyman's sphere was not in building parish houses nor in caring for parish finances, but in preaching the Gospel. When the Church has held strongly to the truths of Christ she has been a preaching Church, and never were men more hungry for divine truth then now. Professor W. C. Bronson, of Brown; Judge S. A. Cooke and Mr. John P. Farnsworth dealt with preaching from the laymen's point of view. Professor Bronson thought the sermon should be short enough to harmonize with the rest of the service, and that therefore it was too short to admit of finished argument, though it should have in the background a suggestion of keenness and fairness of thought. In the modern sermon the personality of the preacher was a great factor; to carry conviction he should have moral courage and a personal experience of the things dealt with. Bishop McVickar closed the discussion with a plea for the clergy of the diocese, who, he said, would be greatly aided in preaching if the laity would see to it that they were freed from anxiety about the support of their families.

A Seabury Society in Springfield,
Mass.

A Seabury society has been formed in Springfield (Western Massachusetts), similar to the New York society of the same name, but wholly under local control, and with its work adapted to local some fifty men of St. Peter's parish, needs. Its membership is made up of

but it is hoped that it may eventually include men of parishes in all towns of the diocese within the Connecticut valley. The chaplain is the Rev. W. T. Dakin; all other officers are laymen. The society expects to have charge of noonday meetings in downtown Springfield during Lent, and to furnish men to conduct Sunday-schools in the suburbs of the city. It will also aim to lead the missionary spirit of its own parish, in