SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 1902.

Too Many Seminaries.

We have spoken with some degree of frankness in regard to our seminary system as a system, and have made some criticisms of the methods and instruction in the seminaries themselves. What we said applied more or less to all of our seminaries. We have made direct criticisms of the General Seminary and have further endeavored to make constructive suggestions as to the kind of men needed there. We spoke more unreservedly of this general institution of the Church, because it educates a very large proportion of the candidates for the ministry, and because we believe it ought to educate, and eventually will educate, a larger proportion. If the General Seminary is to supply a greater need, it must be equipped not only with great endowments, but with great men.

The Church is burdened with seminaries. There would appear to be about eighteen in all, while perhaps a dozen of these appeal for students to the general Church. Not to mention the waste of money, waste of effort, waste of men, there is an enormous waste of opportunities for real scholarship. It is easy to say that this iseminary and that should be merged, or that six or eight should concentrate upon the General Seminary all that they possess in men and money. But as things are at present the various sections are bound up by local traditions, and by local Interests in their particular seminary; a diocese feels the need of training its own men; a school of theology or a school of thought feels it necessary to develop its jown defenders and propagandists, so that Epropositions to combine would probably be indignantly resented. But there is a way in which progress can be made, and perhaps it is the best way. It is possible, by making the General Seminary so real and so practical in its capacity for producing scholars and thinkers, so influenEtial in the production of disciplined and holy lives, that gradually the diocesan, the merely local seminary, and the seminary that exists simply to defend party interests, will realize that each is standing in the way of the development of a true priesthood, manly, aggressive and

learned.

genius, and the best genius of our age,. whether it be in the handling of labor or capital, is to be found in the economic utilization of all opportunities, and this can be accomplished only by concentration and perfect organization. In this way the Church would not only increase the efficiency of her ministry, but she would have a more representative priesthood. For these reasons we have watched with anxiety the filling of chairs at the General Seminary. We believe in the future of this general institution of the Church, and therefore we have called upon the board of trustees and those in administrative control to build largely, to build fearlessly, and with a view to all the needs of all the people of this great nation to which the Church is sent by her Master.

The Training of the Priesthood.

There is nothing more vital to the welfare of the Church than the training of her priests. It is important that seminaries should be not only catholic in temper and inspiring in example; it is important also that they should bring the young men who are to be the future leaders of Church thought and the inspirers of Christian life into touch with the broadest and deepest currents of theological study and of its practical application to the moral problems of the individual and the social problems of the day and the nation. We cannot do all that we would at the best. The field is large, the Church in many sections of the country numerically weak, but we ought not to be satisfied until we have done all that we can; and we shall not do all that we can unless we husband our resources and direct our energies to the best possible advantage. It is right, therefore, that our system of clerical education should be regarded always as on trial, and those who have it in charge ought to welcome frank criticism and loyally-minded suggestions. The system may be capable of improvement, it may be itself defective and in need of amendment. These are questions not of local or individual interest; they vitally concern us all. The whole Church looks to the General Seminary to set the standards of education. It has the largest means, the most generous provision of educational apparatus. It trains a very large proportion of the candidates for the ministry. It is not slighting the services or the worth of any other to recognize the rank which the Church herself has given it as the general training school of her ministry, or to realize that with our present resources, whether of money or in men of the first rank, concentration of effort

There is no value in criticism for criticism's sake or in mere destructive criticism, but there is a value in the effort to make those institutions, which by reason of their history and representative character must remain, of such power that gradually the efforts of the whole is a counsel of wisdom and almost of Church will be economized by concentrating them on these institutions. The

necessity. Large as is the proportion of theological students which the General

Seminary now educates, we believe it ought to educate and influence many more, and that it will do so when it realizes, and other seminaries realize with it, what its place and theirs is, relative to one another in a fitly co-ordinated plan of training for the priesthood.

The problem here is not unlike that which is being solved, and to a very great extent has been solved, in the American college and university. These, a generation ago, were all trying to do approximately the same thing, and the result was waste. Some four hundred colleges were trying to do what a few with great endowments and secular traditions of learning were also trying to do, to furnish what was known as a liberal education. There was an effort at university work in the colleges, while collegiate work interfered with the functions of the university. To some extent, that is so still, but gradually the small college is coming to realize that it is nobler to do well what it can do well, and so to relieve the university from doing what it can do no better than the small college, and cannot do at all without interfering with the work that it is peculiarly fitted to do and that it alone can do. Nobody finds the colleges that have recognized this situation superfluous. They are as necessary as they ever were, as prosperous, as loyally revered by their graduates. One would not merge them in the universities if one could, for they have been co-ordinated with the universities, and the whole plane of academic education has been raised, and the interests of real scholarship served everywhere.

Some such co-ordination is needed in our seminary system. It may be best that in the formative years of preparation for the priesthood candidates should be trained near home in schools of thought with which they have been familiar from their confirmation, and there are types of mind whose services the Church can ill afford to spare for whom this training may suffice. And yet it is possible to make the General Seminary so strong that the diocesan and the local seminaries will be glad to send to it of their best, while its own spirit shall be so catholic that it shall be able to receive men of every school of thought and of every type of Churchmanship, and develop each, in the presence of all the rest, to a stronger and firmer holding of the truth as each perceives it. Men of every school if they knew one another better would esteem one another more, while having no less clear and confident a vision of their own aspect of catholic truth. Tradition, local interest, associations of loyalty to some great founder and pioneer, are all precious.

Some dioceses feel there is absolute need of training their own men, placing their stamp upon them. Schools of theology and schools of thought feel it necessary, and therefore right, to develop a succeeding generation of defenders and propagandists. But no seminary ought to exist simply to defend party interests, and no man should be such a partisan of his opinion as not to realize that to take that attitude is to stand in the way of the development of a manly, aggressive, intelligent and catholic-spirited priesthood.

IT HAS BEEN QUITE IMPOSSIBLE TO SEcure reports of the Triennial Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement in Toronto for this issue. This great assembly of students and our own Church Students' Missionary Association Convention at Annandale demand the thoughtful attention of our people, and we propose in our next issue to deal at some length with them. In this issue Warden Cole, of St. Stephen's, Annandale, and Deaconess Knapp, of St. Faith's, New York, give their impressions of the C. S. M. A. meeting.

Chronicle and Comment.

Last Monday was the ninety-second birthday of Pope Leo, and on it was celebrated the postponed festival of the Papal Jubilee throughout the Roman Catholic world. On the preceding Sunday the Pope received deputations from many pilgrimages that had made the Jubilee an occasion of a visit to Rome, and is said to have amazed those who saw him by his vigor and keen interest in what was done for his honor. At the services in St. Peter's there are said to have been 50,000 present, whom the Pope watched from a window of his palace as they dispersed. Leo counts himself the 257th occupant of the Chair of Peter. Only Pius IX. and, according to Papal annals, the Founder of the See, have occupied it longer than he. Should the Pope live another year, he will enjoy the absolutely unique distinction of having celebrated in addition to this Jubilee the semi-centennial of his cardinalate and the sixtieth anniversary of his episcopate. Unfortunately, he is not likely to live to celebrate the peace of his Church with the Government and people of Italy.

Prince Henry, after the successful launching of the "Meteor," and a genial interchange of courtesies with the official authorities on Tuesday afternoon and evening, met on Thursday, at luncheon, 132 of the most prominent business men and financiers of the United States, themselves the guests of thirteen men prominent in New York affairs, among whom Mr. Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller, Wm. K. Vanderbilt, Morris K. Jesup and exMayor Hewitt were perhaps the most conspicuous. In the evening a banquet in honor of Prince Henry was given to 1,200 representatives of the American Press by the New York Staats-Zeitung. This is probably the first time that the "Fourth Estate" has entertained German royalty. It could hardly have happened elsewhere than in America, nor is there anywhere in the world a newspaper published in a foreign language that would attempt an undertaking of this magni

tude, or carry it to such felicitous execution. The fact of this dinner was even more significant than the speeches there, though these were full of cordial friendship and dignified courtesy. The Prince is indeed winning all hearts by the manly sincerity of his utterances, and if he misses the ceremonial of European courts no one would guess that it was not rather a relief than a deprivation. In the evening the German Societies, 6,000 strong, paraded before the Prince, who stood on the balcony of the Arion Club House. He left that night for Washington to attend the McKinley Memorial Services. Here he visited Mt. Vernon, laid a wreath on Washington's tomb and planted a tree near by. He dined unofficially with the President, and with tactful thoughtfulness visited the President's convalescent son. On Friday there was an official dinner given at the German Embassy, followed by a German parade, accompanied by a vocal serenade. That evening the Prince left for the Southwest. Everywhere on the journey he was enthusiastically greeted, not without some democratic bonhommie, to which he made tactful response. He visited the battlefields around Chattanooga and was officially welcomed also at Nashville, Louisville, Bowling Green and Indianapolis. Perhaps the most memorable experience of his journey thus far will be the trip that he took, at sixty miles an hour, in a locomotive cab down the western slope of the Alleghanies.

Justice for Cuba is being slowly ground out of the legislative machine at Washington. The House Republican conference-the protest of a large number of members from the Western sugarbeet districts prevented it from being a caucus-has agreed upon a resolution which reduces the duties on Cuban products by 20 per cent. This can probably be passed in the House, and will be amended in the Senate. The net result will settle to some figure close to the rebate of a third, which Governor Wood has declared to be the minimum needed relief. This will give Cuban sugar an advantage in the markets of the United States as compared with other sugars, equal to a little over half a cent a pound, which is more than the one-third of a cent a pound approximately given by the export bounties of the countries producing beet-root sugar, and leaves beet-root itself with a protection of over half a cent a pound, as compared with most foreign sugars, and a cent as compared with Cuban. There is a possibility that this may lead to a general reduction of the tariff, but that is not at present probable. The opposition within the Republican party will fight its way out to some compromise, and the final outcome, as in Porto Rico, will be that after much delay and concessions on both sides the object originally demanded will be attained.

The temporary Philippine tariff has passed the Senate and will probably receive the consent of the House without serious change. It provides for a reduction of 25 per cent. in duties on imports of the Philippines to the United States, gives a rebate on this duty where an export duty is levied by the Philippine tariff enacted by the commission, which is re-enacted by Congress, and pays all receipts in the United States Treasury on Philippine products into the treasury of the Islands. The only material change made by the Senate is the reduction of one-fourth of the United States tariff on Philippine products. A reduction of this

kind is familiar in European tariffs dealing with colonial products, but the payment of the revenue from a tariff on colonial products into the colonial treas ury is without precedent. The United States supports its own army and navy in the Philippines, which in most colonies is a charge on the local budget, polices the waters of the islands with its gunboats, provides a large part of its public service, pays all military pensions earned in the islands, though these also are usually a colonial charge in European and English colonial systems, and has provided free transportation for the teaching force sent to the Islands. This relief of the Philippine treasury from military expenditures which under the Spanish regime absorbed 40 per cent. of the revenue of the islands, has enabled the Philippine Government to increase its budget for education to a sum which compares favorably with the total sum set apart for education in India. The total expenditure on education in India, including provincial revenues and local or municipal funds, is $12,575,000, of which $3,895,000 come from fees. The Philippine budget for 6,000,000 of population, against the one just mentioned for 221,000,000 of population, is about onethird of that in India. Nothing comparable with this expenditure for education has ever been seen in colonial administration. The number of Americans teaching in the Philippines at the public's expense is larger than the number of English persons teaching in all India drawing public salary.

Partisan feeling, joined to constitutional scruples, has prevented any suitable punishment for the gross offence of which Senator Tillman and, in next degree, Senator McLaurin were guilty against the peace and decorum necessary for the maintenance of legislative functions. As a result a resolution of censure upon both Senators was introduced and passed without objection, except by a few Senators who asked a heavier punishment. The result is a very serious miscarriage of justice. The framework of representative government rests upon order and security in the representative chamber, which in modern civilization during the last twenty years has lost most seriously by violent disorders in many countries. For the first time in the history of the Senate a blow has been struck during its sessions. The offence has failed of adequate punishment. The serious loss of moral dignity through the failure of the Senate to display and use its power to punish a gross insult to its order, must affect the maintenance of decorum in both Federal chambers in the future, and invites disorder whenever either body has a member ready to court notoriety in some cause by violence. Unless Congress by statute establishes suitable provisions for the punishment of such offences in the future, by a law disqualifying a man who is guilty of violence on the floor of either house from ever again sitting in it when declared guilty by either house, or by providing for suspension on such terms as a majority shall direct, the absence of a suitable penalty will invite future infraction. The experience of Continental and European legislators, as well as the behavior of Irish members in Parliament, leaves no question that the very serious peril to which the representative principle is exposed comes from the possibility of violence interfering with order, the very atmosphere in which deliberation must live.

Russia is passing through a serious - physical and industrial crisis. The crops failed over a large area of the Empire last autumn, the fall in sugar, the decrease in iron quotations and the general collapse in Central Europe which has reduced the consumption of the great food products which Russia exports, have all united to bring Russia to a very serious condition. To this must be added the expenses of the Chinese war and the enormous sums which have been transferred from fluid to fixed capital in the building of the Siberian railroad, met in part from revenue and in part from new issues in bonds. In Russia the only

bodies which can make themselves felt in expressing public opinion are the students in the universities. Joined to a small group of professors, thinkers, authors and professional men, smaller in proportion to the population in Russia than in any other European country, they constitute a minute, self-conscious island of agitation in the midst of a vast inert mass of uneducated persons who outnumber the educated in Russia by something like eighty to one. Whenever any national emotion is felt therefore in Russia, the only point at which it makes - itself manifest is in riots among university students. This was the case in the Pan-Slavic agitation which preceded the Russian war in the demand at the accession of the present Czar for local government and at present in the stress produced by widespread economic disaster. From Russia to Spain the European system is in a state of unstable, economic equilibrium which may produce any result in the course of the next year or two. A precisely similiar situation preceded the revolutionary period from 1848 to 1859.

The centenary of Victor Hugo's birth, celebrated last week in Paris as a national holiday, found its echo in America also. It was marked, too, by the pubFlication of the last of the portentously -numerous volumes of gleanings from the poet's posthumous papers, or, as it has sometimes seemed, from the emptyings of his scrap basket, "The Last Sheaf." The fact that these posthumous papers have come to an end will alone be a cause of some rejoicing, for it is difficult to contemplate without some impatience the extravagant hero worship, and almost apotheosis of one of whom it might be said, as justly as of another, that he was, in the words of the Latin proverb, Vox et praeterea nihil. He was astonishing, phenomenal as a rhetorician; his command of language and poetic imagery was palmost unsurpassed in literature; but his contribution to the national thought was very small, and his contribution to French political life a negative quantity. Intellectually and ethically Hugo was an average man, with the rancor and the vanity of the typical French bourgeois, fatuous in his self-complacency, which extended even to the expression of an naive desire that he and his Maker should come to a better understanding for the benefit of the human race. He felt his social and political apostleship with a seriousness which is comic, when we realize his protean inconsistency. But his glittering generalities exactly suited the age of romantic enthusiasm, more apt in France than elsewhere to take words for deeds, and France of to-day, in need of a hero, recalls gladly the enthusiasm of the ancestors for work that it seems impossible to believe would to-day hold or even catch the popular ear. But the celebration has been made a State affair, conducted with that spectacular splendor of which the

French are masters, not in Paris alone but throughout all France. In New York there were commemorative exercises in the Horace Mann School connected with Columbia University, in which Professor Mabillieau, of the institute of France; Professor Cohn, of Columbia; Professor VanDyke, of Princeton, and Mr. Hamilton Mabie took part.

Colombia has sharply interfered to prevent the sale of the Panama Canal by the present Panama Canal Compny. The disposal of the route across the Isthmus of Panama to the United States is to-day practically the only asset which the bankrupt government of Colombia, its resources overburdened with insurrection, has. It is also the only tangible means by which those who control this government can provide for their own private fortunes. There will probably be for some time to come much sharp practice in the endeavor on the part of Panama and those who hold its Government to get any possible return for this asset. Fortunately the United States is not confined to this one route, and the wisdom of keeping both routes open and leaving the final decision to the President is made strong by what is known of the terms asked by Colombia, which are considered in Washington as exorbitant.

The Grand Jury has taken quite a different view of the disaster in the New York Central Tunnel from that indicated by the Coroner's verdict which, as our readers will remember, laid the chief blame upon the officials of the Company, and extenuated the responsibility of the locomotive engineer. The Grand Jury thought there was nothing in the evidence to warrant an indictment of the railroad, not holding the president or other officials responsible for the conditions revealed in the testimony, and refusing to consider the complaint made against the directors for maintaining a public nuisance. The engineer was held alone responsible, and indicted on two counts for manslaughter. He was immediately rearrested. District Attorney Jerome, when asked his opinion of the verdict, said that the jury was of unusual intelligence, and had doubtless satisfied themselves beyond any reasonable doubt before giving their verdict, which comes to the public as a source of surprise, and in many quarters of indignation: Influential and conservative newspapers have not hesitated to describe it editorially as a travesty of justice.

Bishop Potter, addressing The Outlook Club at Montclair, N. J., last Friday, said he thought the matter of Sunday opening a secondary question in the regulation of the liquor traffic. The man to punish was the person who abused liquor, rather than the man who sold it. He was the nuisance and the blot. He thought many of the existing laws for the suppression of drinking were worse in their results than the drinking, and adduced instances from Maine and Vermont in support of his assertion that these laws tended to produce fraud and hypocrisy. Proper regulation of the saloons and the punishment of men who abused the use of liquor was, he thought, more sensible than were efforts to stop drinking, and though wide divergence of view as to methods still must prevail, the bishop looked forward to a practical solution within measurable time of this vexed question.

Henry G. Marquand, who died in New York on Feb. 26, has so identified himself with the wider public aspects of ar

tistic life in the city with which his family has been identified for generations, that his loss will be deeply felt. All visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art will have been reminded of his beneficence but will perhaps hardly have appreciated how much thought and judgment, as well as money, went into his gifts. Every picture that he gave was chosen to fill a definite place in a welldefined scheme to illustrate the history of art, and his work as trustee of the Museum showed the same trained discrimination. He is said to have been the most persistent benefactor that the Metropolitan Museum ever had. Others may have given more money, no one gave more judiciously.

Those interested in the development of municipal activities as they affect the laboring classes in our great cities, will rejoice that President Cantor, of Manhattan, has asked for an immediate appropriation of $300,000 to erect three additional public baths. The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor has long urged this step, and has by its own experience proved its need. It thinks, however, that this need will not be fully met by less than sixteen such houses, which it thinks would cost something less than $1,000,000 to build and equip, and about $330,000 a year to run. That seems a large sum, but every doctor knows that it would be a good investment, for whatever contributes to the health of a worker contributes to the amount of work that he can do, and to his value to the community. If this were a mere question of profit and loss, there could be no doubt that President Cantor's request should be granted, but it is more than that; questions of public hygiene merge inevitably into questions of public safety and social morals.

The latest performances of wireless telegraphy are not the least remarkable. From Marconi's transmitting apparatus at Poldhu messages were sent to him day by day and almost hour by hour during his trip across the Atlantic, and were recorded on the tape, as witnessed by the ship's officers, to a distance of nearly 2,100 miles-definite messages of sufficient length to convey practical information were received for 1,500 miles. At the same time, other ships on the course with similar telegraphic receivers open got no message, showing that the system as now modified is practically secret. He was able to send messages from the ship to the shore for two days, after which the sending instruments on board had not sufficient power. These well authenticated facts seem to herald a new era in communication, and to promise a time not far distant when there need be no isolation for man even in what Germans call the Silent Ocean.

The prohibition of shooting live pigeons at tournaments, which has just been secured in both Houses of the State Legislature of New York and approved by the Governor, will be gratifying not alone to the tender-hearted friends of dumb animals, but to all lovers of genuine sport. It was indeed barbarous business. This shooting, killing and maiming of dazed birds by the thousands served no good purpose, and has long been a growing offence to the moral sense and sentiment of the community, so that all over the State, among the reputable press, there is hardly an exception to the hearty expression of rejoicing and relief which the passage of this measure has brought. This in itself is a significant evidence of

the growing tenderness of the public conscience, and of the social responsibility of the individual.

the-Hudson, from Feb. 22 to 25. Warden Cole welcomed the delegates on Saturday, and Mr. Silas McBee spoke that evening on "The Spiritual Life." On Sunday there was a Corporate Communion; a sermon by the Rev. Chas. H. Evans, of Tokyo, in

had pressed upon him, by experience in small country parishes, the fact that our Church is in most places either unknown or mistakenly known. One of his fellow-clergymen in the diocese, the Rev. Wm. M. Purce, is earnestly interested in

Bishop Doane's seventieth birthday was made the occasion of a visit to his house by 100 representative citizens of Albany in whose name the venerable bishop was addressed by Mr. Marcus T. Hun, and presented with a purse containing more than $1,500 in gold, as a token, said Mr. Hun, of the general appreciation of his constant devotion to the public good. The presentation was made in this way to accentuate the fact that the donors were in no way confined to worshippers in All Saints' cathedral, where it had been first intended to make the gift. The Roman Catholic bishop, Dr. Burke, is said to have expressed particular desire that the programme might be so modified that he could be present, and Rabbi Schlessinger took part also.

The Bishop of Georgia has issued an address to his clergy on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his consecration, in which he rehearses the progress In 1891 the diocese of of the decade. Georgia had 21 priests and deacons, ministering in 27 parishes and 46 missions. Now, there are 50 clergymen, with 26 parishes and 105 missions, so that while the clergy have increased 38 per cent., the stations have more than doubled. The apparent decrease of one in the number of parishes really represents an increase, for several that had for years been in reality missions have been relegated to their true position. The increase in church buildings is still more marked than that in stations. There were 67 in 1891; now there are 142, and of these 6 represent buildings destroyed by fire and 3 new buildings that replaced old

ones.

The Church has spread from 37 counties till it now has stations in 52; while 85 are left still virgin fields for the missionary. The missions have shown a noteworthy advance in self-help. Four of them are already self-supporting parishes in all but name. Baptisms have increased 25 per cent. in the decade, and confirmations are 17 per cent. greater now than in 1891. It is interesting to notice that a little over one-half of the persons that have been confirmed in the ten years were baptized in the Church; while the remainder (2,124) have come from 20 different communions. More than onethird of all the confirmations have been in the mission stations. Pupils in parochial schools have increased from 195 to 950. The increase in the Sunday-schools is less marked, from 3,165 to 4,406. The bishop feels that here there is need for special effort, and that the pupils in the Sundayschools should equal at least the number of communicants. In the larger parishes. he says, they are usually in excess. One hundred and four of the churches are free, and the average insurance is over 50 per cent., but many chapels remain uninsured. The 26 rectors receive $38,000 a yearno princely salaries; while 22 missionaries and 16 teachers share between them $19,000. Their lives, says the bishop, "show more sacrifice in a month than most of ours do in a year." That is a good deal for a bishop to say who has travelled in these ten years 230,000 miles

for his diocese.

The Church Students Missionary Association held its 15th annual convention at St. Stephen's College, Annandale-on

by Bishop Rowe, of Alaska. Monday and Tuesday were opened also by corporate Communion.

On Monday afternoon Bishop Brent spoke of "The Church and The Nation in the Philippines," and in the evening Mr. Speer, of the Presbyterian Board, on "The Missionary Obligation and the Peculiar Opportunity of This Generation."

On Tuesday the Rev. R. L. Paddock, formerly of the pro-cathedral, conducted a farewell meeting, and two addresses were made by Secretary Lloyd;

one

in the morning on "Missionary Machinery," the other in the afternoon on "Missions and Civilization." The meeting was noteworthy for its attendance, its enthusiasm, the amount of money pledged to carry on the work of the society, the clearing away of the deficit, and, most of all, by the number of striking and effective addresses.

What various missions are doing for the Cubans is the subject of a very interesting and obviously well-informed letter in The Evening Post of last week. The independent efforts seem to outnumber, if not to outweigh, the organized

ones.

Many Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, even Presbyterians, content themselves with a ground-floor room, the court or carriage house of some residence, a few chairs, two blackboards and a piece of chalk, a table, a glass of water and a Bible. The natives are a little shy about coming in, says this correspondent, but if you have a good voice they will gather at the windows, and good music the threshold. will bring them across

Free English lessons attract, too, and help to build up the Sunday-school. Plentiful assistance comes from the wives of clerks, contractors and the like, who in small towns at home "have grown to have a real dependence, social as well as spiritual, upon Church work." They welcome it not as a duty but as a privilege. Of some of these individual efforts, "bits of New England under the palms," this correspondent gives delightful glimpsesas when the Puritan conscience warns little Mercedes that sweet things must be unhealthy-because they are sweet-telling her how "I used to know a girl, Mercedes, who when she was young was allowed to have all the sweets she wanted, and when she grew up her health was gone, and she was a wreck-a perfect wreck-and died when still a young woman." Whereat wide-eyed Mercedes lets the saucer fall on the tiled floor, and has a moral lecture for luncheon. The correspondent thinks that those who have accused Americans in Cuba of being a hindrance, byword and offence to our mission work there have been unjust, though of course there was color of truth in the criticism.

be an excellent calling for such a priest, as it is found to be in the foreign mission field. A plea for something of this kind, though not exactly in this form, has come before the General Convention from one or another of the Middle Western dioceses on several occasions. It seems doubtful, however, whether the priesthood as an avocation would satisfy either the mission or the Church. The need for such ministrations is certainly wide and urgent, but unless in the case of men of very exceptional energy and ability, as well as persevering devotion, it will hardly be met in this way.

English Church News.

The opinion of the Lord Chief-Justice in the case of Canon Gore is printed in full in The London Times, where it occupies more than four broad and closely printed columns. No one, says The Times, who reads the arguments with any care, can doubt that the judges have come to the only possible decision. The case as argued in the Court of King's Bench "failed to give any life to this outworn ceremony," though it did reveal the true motives of the Tudors-"to keep the bishops from danger" of Roman influence "and the fees for home consumption." The result of the judgment leaves the King, acting under the advice of the Premier, solely responsible for the fitness of a bishop-elect. The issue "emphasizes the Erastian principles under which the Anglican Church is necessarily administered." The Chief-Justice does not admit the plea that the opposer might be allowed to commence criminal proceedings, or that it is the duty of the archbishop to "inform his mind." As an obiter dictum, the Court added that the form of citation should be modified to make it accord with the real meaning of the ceremony. The Times thinks it ought to be abolished altogether. The bishops are said to have this under consideration. It is likely to be submitted to the Convocations in the spring, and their recommendations will need only to be confirmed by the King in Council.

The scene in court is described as animated. Each of the three judges brought a written opinion; that of the Lord ChiefJustice was the most elaborate, and took fifty-three minutes in delivery. The public gallery was well filled, the body of the court room crowded, ladies being conspicuous in the gallery. Silence was called punctually to the minute, at eleven. The judges were in their bob-wigs and black ermine-trimmed robes. The array of barristers was most unusual. After the judges had taken their seats, Lord Alberstone unrolled what is described as a huge manuscript, which he read at what was to the reporters "an alarming pace," making corrections in it as he went along, explaining at an occasional pause that he was sorry, but his writing was bad. Every point was examined with the greatest care, and the whole matter thoroughly thrashed out. After he had finished, Justice Wright showed how it was possible to reach the same conclusions from different arguments in seven minutes. Justice Ridley took fifteen. Both read feebly

and without animation, to a dispersing auditory. The appeal was "discharged the Court." This led to a protest on the part of the Church Association counsel, and it was agreed that the bishop-elect could not have costs allowed. The right

of the Crown to costs was also challenged, and decision reserved. At this point Mr. Davis, Counsel for the C. A., reminded the Court that though there had been but one argument, there were two rulings. "Very well, then," said the Lord ChiefJustice, "there will be two set of costs," and solventur risu tabulae.

The Guardian thinks "the Church can never regard any solution of the problem as satisfactory which does not provide the clergy and faithful laity with some real and effective voice, if not in the selection of bishops, at least by way of protest against improper appointments." The present system has worked well in the main, but it is unsafe to trust it, nor would it be wise, it thinks, to abolish confirmation altogether, even though it be only a form, for if the time should ever come for reconstructing the Church on an independent basis, election and confirmation could be widened and revivified and used as a foundation for a system based on true canonical principles, which these dead forms still serve to perpetuate. "Lifeless as they are pronounced to be, mere skeletons of what in earlier days was flesh and blood, they stand there to shame the Crown out of an improper exercise of its legal powers, if such an unhappy contingency should ever arise. They stand there as witnesses for something older and higher and holier than Tudor tyranny and Whig Erastianism. Let us keep them in faith and hope for better days."

- This is almost exactly the position of The Church Times. The Record, commenting on the judgment, assumes that the ceremony, if not abolished, will be revised, and would favor its continuance to "keep before the public mind our Church's long struggle against the encroachments of Rome," and to "serve as a useful reminder of the lay power in the Church, a precedent which may some day be valuable, if disestablishment or effective autonomy should ever come." In any case, "things can no longer be left unaltered. It does the Church no good to be made the laughing-stock of the general public, or to attach the sanction of a service of prayer to a ceremony which in parts is grotesque in its folly."

The English Churchman, in an editorial of unwonted sobriety, observes that the decision leaves the laity of the Church with no means of objecting "to the selection of an unsound or otherwise unsuitable clergyman when nominated to a bishopric by the Prime Minister and appointed by the Sovereign." The archbishop has as little discretion, and the Vicar-General none at all. "So that after all the Prime Minister of the day, who may be a disguised Roman Catholic or practically an infidel, is the primal judge of the doctrinal as well as other qualifications of the clergymen whom he recommends to the Crown to fill the office of chief pastor in a Church whose sole claim to be established by law is that it teach and maintain 'the true Protestant religion.' The sooner this disastrous state of things is legislatively terminated, the better for the Church and the nation. It is more than a mere abuse of antiquated forms. It is nothing less than a eligious scandal." The English Churchman, however, does not agree with The London Times that Convocation should

take the initiative, but thinks the necessary reform should be carried out by Parliament.

The Record notes with dissatisfaction the growth of a disposition to speak of Dr. Gore as Bishop Gore, not, it thinks by inadvertence, but as an expression of the view that nomination and not consecration makes a bishop. This designation is used persistently by The Standard, and has latterly been adopted by the Westminster Gazette.

The Bishop of Liverpool spoke some very plain words, at the tenth annual meeting of the Clergy Sustentation Fund of his diocese, as to the danger that lurked behind endowments, and the corresponding danger that was involved in support of the clergy wholly by voluntary contributions. He said if the Church were supported entirely by endowments the laity were apt to forget their duty to the clergy; while if voluntary contributions were the only income, the clergy were apt to lack independence; at least they were tempted to be what the people liked. Everybody had great commiseration for a priest-ridden laity, but he had even more for a laity-ridden priesthood, and he thought they were passing into that stage at Liverpool, now that pewrents seemed doomed. As a result of this, churches that had been supported by wealthy congregations were now left entirely to the poor. The clergy were doing more than ever, but they were starving. It was becoming more and more a custom for people to attend church without taking any sittings; but no clergyman could do his work properly if he had to lie awake at night thinking how he could make ends meet.

"An Old Friend," writing to The Tablet, says that the statements as to the consecration of the late Dr. F. G. Lee "unquestionably are correct." The following details are extremely interesting, particularly those in regard to Dr. Lee's use of his powers as a bishop: "Dr. Lee, in the early summer of 1877, went to Venice, where, or in its neighborhood, his consecration-by whomsoever performed-took place. On his return Dr. Lee consecrated as bishops the late Dr. Mossman ('Bishop of Selby') and Dr. Seecombe ('Bishop of Caerleon'), the ceremonies taking place in the little chapel in All Saints' vicarage, Lambeth, where also all, or almost all, the subsequent re-ordinations, confirmations, etc., of a number of the Anglican clergy and others were effected." "An Old Friend" also alludes, with a good deal of gusto, to the coarse but instructive way in which Dr. Lee was pleased to express his contempt for the persons and offices of the two English archbishops. Mr. T. W. B. Lamb, another correspondent of The Tablet, says that "at all Synods of the O[rder of] C[orporate] R[eunion] the Holy Father was always prayed for as the Primate of Christendom; and when I joined, in 1883, I well remember having to make a profession of belief according to the Seven General Councils received by East and West, thereby admitting the headship of Rome."

The Archbishop of Canterbury has sent, through his chaplain, the following answer to a correspondent in regard to prayers for the dead: "The Church of England neither forbids nor recommends prayer for the dead. Very little is revealed to us about the intermediate state, and the Church of England follows the Bible, and does not claim as knowledge what is not bestowed."

The

Church Abroad.

Protestantism in France was the subject of a study in the Contemporary Review last November, and we gave an abstract of it at the time. Some of its statistics are now called in question in the same journal by Professor D'Aubigne, one who speaks with authority. He says, far from declining in numbers, as the former article affirmed, though it recognized the increased power of French Protestantism, that as a matter of fact it has increased; not indeed everywhere -in the south in country districts and in small towns there has been some falling off, but that has been much more than counterbalanced by increase in the north, where, in the last half century, Protestants have increased three to four fold. In 1835 he says there were but 10 French Protestant churches in Paris, now there are 105. Several of the most active missionary societies did not then exist. They are

now spending $800,000 a year, with results to justify the outlay. The organized Protestantism of France has also a political daily, four large religious weeklies and three monthly reviews. This takes no account of 162 parochial journals. Professor D'Aubigne knows of whole villages that have come over to the Protestant faith in recent years, and have persevered in it. "So strong is the current that is carrying the peasants in certain parts of France toward Protestantism that our difficulty is to respond to all the calls which are made upon us." But the surest witness of vigorous life is reserved for the last. This Church, which cannot supply the demands made on it at home, sent in two years 40 missionaries to Madagascar, and 18 to the Zambesi. It has doubled its contributions for foreign missions in three years, and, Professor D'Aubigne assures us, expects to keep up that rate. It has never had so many candidates for the ministry, and its per capita contribution to religious and charitable organizations is greater than that of any Church in America. There is no need, concludes this descendant of the militant historian of the Huguenots, to fear for the future of their Church.

The Bishop of Uganda, at the twentysixth annual Breakfast in the Town Hall, Oxford, said Africa was a continent not simply to be explored and exploited, but to be pitied and redeemed. He reviewed the marvellous success of the last twelve years, with its hundredfold increase of baptized Christians, who afforded "the almost unique spectacle of a self-supporting Church and almost entirely a selfgoverned Church" in the missionary field. All this had not been done by the forces of so-called civilization, trade, commerce, science, art. These had scarcely touched the country. It had been done by the Spirit of God working through His Word and servants. He stood there as a living witness to testify to this glorious fact, that, so far as Central Africa was concerned, the Gospel message was not an effete message; it was instinct with vitalizing energy, which told on all with whom it came in contact.

Christian Science has reached Germany and the Reichstag, where, however, the Minister of the Interior announced the eminently sane, but for Germany somewhat novel, conclusion that State interference would do more harm than good. It was useless, he said, to attempt to deal with psychological error by physical force, but he thought the healers could be proceeded against for obtaining money