Slight those who say, amongst their sickly healths,
"Thou liv'st by rule." What doth not so but man?
Houses were built by rule, and commonwealths.
Entice the trusty sun, if that you can,

From his ecliptic line; beckon the sky.
Who lives by rule, then, keeps good company.
Thus quaintly did old George Herbert, the sweet singer of
Bemerton, nearly three hundred years ago, defend the Re-
ligious Life, which his friend Nicholas Ferrar was seeking to

falsified this statement and removed this reproach would be well worth the telling, "Lest we forget"; here we can only briefly note its most striking points.

As early as 1839, Newman, Keble, Fusey and Hook were tak ing counsel together as to the possibility of establishing societies of Sururs de Charité. But it was not till 1845 that the first trial was made by the establishment of Dr. Pusey's Sisterhood in Regent's Park, London. Two years later the appeal of Bishop Phillpots of Exeter for workers in the densely populated seaport of Plymouth resulted in the establishment by Miss Sellon of what was called the "Devonport Sisterhood," whose members did splendid work in the Plymouth parish of St. Peter, under the Rev. G. R. Prynne, in whose bitter and unreasoning persecution they were sharers. This Sisterhood has long ceased to exist as such, the aged Mother Superior of the Benedictine nuns at St. Mary's Abbey, West Malling, being, we believe, the sole survivor of the band of brave women who at such tremendous cost yielded allegiance to Miss Sellon, under circumstances of almost inconceivable difficulty and perplexity, nigh sixty years ago. The events which led to an attempt at founding a Sisterhood at Wantage, in Sussex, were nearly coincident with those which led to the founding of Miss Sellon's community; and so among the Religious Communities in England premier place must be accorded to the Sisterhood of St. Mary-the-Virgin, which has been established in the historic old birthplace of King Alfred ever since 1847. The year mentioned was that in which William Butler, the friend and contemporary of Manning, Keble, Wilberforce and other famous divines, began his work at Wantage, and the community, humanly speaking, owed everything to this wise and faithful priest, who not only founded it, but who for forty-six years, even unto his life's end, was its revered and beloved guide and counsellor. Similarly, it is instructive to note, all the great religious communities of England are inseparably associated with some striking and saintly personality, without which it is difficult to see how the initial disappointments and trials could ever have been overcome and the permanence of the communities attained. Wantage and Butler; Clewer and Carter; East

Edward Bouverie Pusey,

Restorer of Community Life in England.

establish at Little Gidding. The plea, however, fell on prejudiced ears; and, though for nearly a century some form of religious life was preserved in that "haunt of ancient peace" the house at Little Gidding, very many and sad years of deadly sloth and torpor had to pass ere the revival of the consecrated life was accomplished within the Church of England. This revival, like so many other precious revivals for which Churchmen give thanks to-day, is one of the blessed results of the Oxford Movement. Although never entirely lost sight of by those Anglican Divines to whom the English Church is indebted for the unbroken teaching of the Catholic Faith even in darkest days, it was not until the Oxford Movement had aroused men's consciences and rekindled the Church's light in their midst that the desire for this special form of self-dedication to the service of God germinated in many hearts. Among the clergy there was a growing conviction that the terrible tide of sin, which had so rapidly gained head in London and in other large cities and towns of England, could only be stemmed by trained and devoted workers such as the Religious Life alone could supply. But the suspicion and prejudices of three centuries, the hatred and aversion which anything suggestive of monks or nuns aroused in the English mind, were sufficient to daunt the boldest enthusiast; and so it is scarcely wonderful that even ten or fifteen years after the beginning of the Oxford Revival Lacordaire felt himself free to maintain that "the English Church was no true branch of the Church Catholic, for she had not within her vigor and power sufficient to develop the Religious Life." The detailed story of how subsequent events

T. T. Carter,

Canon and Warden of the House of Mercy, Clewer.

Grinstead and Neale; Ascot and Pusey; Cowley and Bensonthe separation of place and personality is inconceivable and impossible. Vice versa, when attempts to establish community houses have failed-and the Church in England has witnessed not a few disastrous failures of the kind during the last sixty years the result may generally be traced to the misguided and unsuitable character at the head of such attempts rather than to the rank and file of the communities involved. In this direction, as in others where ill-balanced fanatics have for a time been suffered to guide or misguide-others as well as themselves, the Catholic movement in England has sustained more than one grievous blow during the last half century.

It is not easy to estimate the courage which men like Butler, Neale, and Carter needed to associate themselves with the foundation of communities in days when the mere appearance of a person in religious garb was sufficient to provoke the most unreasonable suspicion and violent hostility. To read now, in days when community life within the English Church is lovingly regarded and joyfully accepted, the account of the funeral of Sister Amy, of East Grinstead, which took place at Lewes in November, 1857, is to come across a

saddening record of "mob-law," the possibility of which seems almost inconceivable. The Sisters dashed this way and that, their veils dragged off, their dresses torn, by a hooting, yelling, and infuriated mob; Dr. Neale himself thrown down and trampled under foot, while men of good position stood

by urging

the crowd to greater violence this was the scene at Lewes Church

yard on that November day not fifty years ago. And arising out of it came the withdrawal of his episcopal support by the Bishop of Chichester, and the ostracizing of John Mason Neale, the community's founder and warden. But another bishop, Forbes of Brechin, sew further, and said to Dr. Neale: "Twenty years hence the people of Lewes will kiss the dust off the Sisters' feet." The bishop's prophecy was almost literally ful

ecclesiastical needlework in particular. It was at Wantage that Miss Street may be said to have revived the art of Church needlework in England, and the embroidery rooms of the Sisterhoods are still centres wherefrom many cunning and beautiful works go out to deck the churches of our own and other lands. Of Clewer-that marvellous outcome of the devotion and genius of Thomas Thellusson Carter-little need be said here, seeing that Miss Roberts's delightful article on the place and its founder is doubtless fresh in the minds of readers of THE CHURCHMAN.* But here, again, how strange it is nowadays to look back and find the warden of Clewer compelled to explain and defend to the bishops of that period the taking of vows in the Religious Life and the consistency of such vows with the Word of God. Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, laid down the remarkable limit that no one under sixty years of age should be permitted to take the vow of celibacy: Bishop Wilberforce would not hear of vows at any age! Clewer, with its multifarious activities for good, branching out into many lands from the stately Mother House in England, is indeed the most

filled, at that interval of time, on the occasion of the Sisters' nursing an appalling outbreak of fever in Lewes, just twenty years after he had spoken. And the experience of East Grinstead has been that of the other religious communities, the origin of which dates back to those days of Protestant fury and ignorant bigotry. When the history of the Catholic Revival is written, the restoration of the Religious Life in England will form one of its most striking chapters.

To describe the works of the several Sisterhoods in any detail is impossible. Broadly speaking, however, the Wantage sisters have devoted much of their efforts to mission work in important London and provincial parishes like those of St. Mary Magdalene's, Paddington, and St. Peter's, Plymouth, where they have labored now for more than thirty years; foreign mission work has been developed in India; and refuge and penitentiary work is carried on by them in London, Worthing and elsewhere. Like the Sisterhood of St. John the Baptist, Clewer, the Sisters at the Mother House in Wantage devote themselves largely to educational matters in general and to the making of

splendid monument of that great modern saint whose body rests in the quiet churchyard there, and to whom, under God's blessing, the revival and organization of Sisterhoods in our communion is chiefly attributable.

Passing on to speak of the Religious Life among men, we find in Richard Meux Benson, of Cowley, the pioneer of this revival. The story

of the Society of

St. John the Evangelist at Cowley will,

when it

comes to be written, be very large

ly the record of Father Benson's saintly life, the annals of his selfsacrifice and humble devotion. In spite of the trials and difficulties with which the early revival of Sisterhoods was beset-m a y we not say because of them?-the work of female communities has long been accepted and universally recognized; but, with rare exceptions, the revival of corporate life among men has so far been signally rare and unprofitable. Of the failures it is unnecessary to

speak: One colossal example is, unfortunately, still conspicuous in our midst, while others have had their day and ceased to be. Of the successes Cowley, the "elder brother" of all similar institutions in England, has stood the longest test of time, nearly forty years having elapsed since those first days in the little iron Church of St. John the Evangelist, at Cowley, Oxford, and the "Central Home for Mission Priests" adjacent to it. "As the parishioners generally know, some of us are Americans, and it is hoped that they will some day return and organize in the Western Hemisphere a Mission Society like our own." So ran the words with which, in October, 1868, Father Benson foreshadowed the foundation of the Order in Boston four years later-a foundation which has, we gladly believe, been of unspeakable value to the Church in America, which has drawn from this society three members of its episcopate, one of whom, Dr. Grafton, was among the very earliest to join

"The Beauty of Holiness." By Jean Roberts. CHURCHMAN, April 30, 1904.