thing to turn out of an omnibus for a pretty girl at the door; but it is quite another thing to get out on a wet day for an ugly old woman, without an umbrella. But the true chivalry of manhood would tell us that the old woman in rags needs the shelter of the omnibus even more than the young lady. We cannot go too far in this respect. I do not wish to speak in any sentimental sense, but there is great truth in that which is said by the poet :—

"I believe that woman in her degradation

Holds something sacred-something undefiled,
Some pledge and keepsake of the higher nature;
Which, like the diamond in the dark, retains
Some quenchless gleam of the celestial light."

It is true that, however degraded woman may be, she still retains in her that soul and human nature-the "common bond between us "-of which the Bishop of Carlisle has spoken; the bond of our common humanity. Every time a man commits an act of fornication, he does one of two things. He either drags down some pure, modest, innocent woman, makes her the slave of his passions, and places her in a state of degradation, from which it is next to impossible for her to escape; or else he adds fresh fetters to that chain of slavery that already binds her down, and says she shall not rise. But, as I said, our duty does not end at home. Think of our sons, and where and how it is they learn the first secrets of their nature. Think, also, of our younger brothers. I remember, when I was a young man, nothing helped more to keep me straight than that some of the married officers were in the habit of asking us young men to go to their homes in the evening, to smoke a pipe, or enjoy the society of their family. If we elder men debar young men from the society of our daughters, and from our own sympathy and companionship, we are to blame if they are driven to seek their company elsewhere. To conclude, I would say that we have a duty to our neighbours, both men and women. Let us, if we feel ourselves weak and blind, do our best to follow in the footsteps of Him who is "The Way, the Truth, and the Life;" let us hold fast to Him with one hand, but in God's Name let us stretch out the other hand to our blind brother at our side, and draw him with us to our Saviour's feet.

The Very Rev. H. MONTAGU BUTLER, D.D., Dean of

Gloucester.

[Who was greeted by the question, Who is he?]

I HAVE been Dean of Gloucester but two months. For twenty-five years I have been Dr. Butler, working hard at Harrow School, where I have had 4,000 boys of the upper and wealthier classes under my charge, upon all of whom I can truly say I have endeavoured to impress this great principle that, as sons of the privileged classes, it is their distinctive duty to remember what they owe to those who have been less favoured with the gifts of fortune. My two thousand friends, if friends you are, let me begin by telling you that I have never seen such a sight as this before. I think it would have been a good thing to have placed a huge mirror in front of this platform, so that you might have seen your 2,000 selves in the glass. However, each man can look at himself, and multiply himself by 2,000, and then imagine the imposing and, will you forgive me for confessing, the somewhat formidable sight that is before me. We all of us like to know whether we have "friends at court," so let me just endeavour to say a word both of the office which I very humbly hold and of the present holder of it. It is, I believe, an axiom in the Church of England that if you look for wisdom, you look to the parochial clergy; if you look for courage in the Church, you look to the bishops; and if you have occasion to look for wisdom and courage combined, a sure instinct leads you to look to the deans. After having made this self-complaisant or rather office-complaisant avowal, I would venture, my friends, to recommend myself to your kindly notice by just mentioning the personal relations I have enjoyed with that very earnest representative of the army to whom you have just been listening, and also with that most distinguished prelate whose speech, for its wit, its earnestness, and its brotherliness we all so much enjoyed but a few minutes ago. Colonel Everitt is secretary of the

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Church of England Purity Society, and I, as chairman of its executive committee, am able here gratefully to testify with what indefatigable zeal he has worked in a cause which I think every month, every week, every day is conspiring to make more sacred. I cannot forget that it is just thirty years ago since at the University of Cambridge I had the honour of being enrolled among an earnest body of workers under Dr. H. Goodwin, now Bishop of Carlisle, in establishing what was called a Working Men's College," I believe the second that was established in the country. But I cannot help charging the Bishop of Carlisle to-day with having been guilty of one uncharacteristic and ungenerous act. You heard him quote that grand saying, which is not altogether unknown to Portsmouth, England expects every man to do his duty." I looked round at the moment as well as I could at my fellow speakers, and I fancied I saw every face pale at being robbed by such a speaker of his inevitable quotation. And yet, my friends-and let me here be serious-though the first feeling with which I, and I suppose every other Englishman, listened to that sublime message prompts me to bow my head before it as one of the immortal sayings of history, the next feeling in my mind is one of profound scepticism. I will tell you why. Some two hundred years ago, there was a very weighty preacher, known as Dr. South. He once gave out as his text, "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting." And how do you suppose he began his sermon? With these words, "That I deny." Well, my friends, when I hear that immortal saying of Nelson's, and when I think it over, I say again and again, with shame, and yet not without hope, "That I deny." It is not the fact that England expects every man to do his duty. It is not the fact that public opinion is so high at this hour that it exacts from society a full, or anything like a full, discharge of every duty. England expects every clergyman to do his duty in the pulpit, and in visiting the poor. She does not expect him, as she ought, to study carefully, with the full power of his brain, those difficult problems affecting the homes, the wages, and the health of the poor. England expects every soldier and every sailor to do his duty in fighting to the death against the enemy, and in braving hardships and disease in every clime. England does not yet fully expect that every soldier and every sailor, whether officer or private, shall live the life of a pure Christian man, showing honour to every woman and, not least, to those women who are the most degraded. If England did indeed expect every man to do his duty, a Church Congress would hardly be necessary. It would hardly then be the function of the Church of Christ to call her sons together to raise the tone of public opinion, so that at last the voice of the nation and that of the Church may form together one grand volume of exhortation to each man and to each woman, saying, "Make full proof of your ministry."

Let me say, now, a very few words as to what I think the Church of England, the National Church, says to some of you-to all of you I would hope-on this great occasion. We want your help in order to make the Church of England all that God intended her to be. We need your help to enable her to reach every part of the national life. We want you to come forward and claim, not only the right to go into our churches and listen to our words, and receive our ministrations at your homes, but also some share in the work yourselves, some definite part in parochial administration. If men are to love a great institution with something more than a sentimental love, they must have some office assigned to them which otherwise would remain unfilled, some function which will call out in them what is, after all, the noblest gift of Englishmen, a sense of responsibility. And if we ask you to come and claim privileges of this kind in the administration of the Church, we also call on you to aid us in that great crusade against moral evil which it is the aim of the Church to organise. We want you to aid in stamping out that great moral evil which makes havoc of thousands of homes-the evil of intemperance. We want you to help us--I speak feelingly here-in stamping out that other great evil which makes more than havoc of your homes-the great evil of impurity. In joining the Church of England Purity Society, and consenting to undertake an office of much difficulty in connection with it, I know that, in the first place, we shall make hundreds of blunders; and I know, secondly, that it rests with you, and with men of your class all over the country, to help us out of them. It is by speaking to one another in a right tone with respect to what is so often laughed at and spoken of as a foible and a trifle of no moment; it is by giving it its true name, by dragging it to the light, by seeing in it something utterly unworthy of manhood and of chivalry, that you will be able, under God, to bear your part in a moral reform which must not be delayed. Let me pass to one other question. The Bishop of Carlisle has not unnaturally referred to a danger which, by many, is supposed to be looming in a somewhat near

future-I mean the disestablishment of the English Church. Now, why is it that we of the clergy, or most of us, are grieved at the prospect of such a thing being possible? Do you suppose it is because we think that an Established Church contributes to our own personal comfort and worldly wealth; or, again, because we suppose that in some way it fits in with the habits of what are called the upper classes? If you think so, you do us a cruel wrong. In an old country, some thousands of years ago, there was a law that no man should propose any change of legislation without a halter being tied round his neck and a couple of men stationed-I do not know whether they belonged to different parties—one on each side, to pull the noose unless the law was approved. The consequence was that in that happy country they had but one change in the law during a period of 200 years. Well, if a law of that kind could be passed to-morrow, providing that for at least 200 years the Church of England should remain established as it is, but with this dreadful condition attached, that she should be debarred from receiving a greater measure than heretofore of loyal co-operation on the part of the working classes, it would be a cruel wrong to us to suppose that we would accept or even consider so degrading a condition. For my part, I value and reverence and love the old Church of England for many reasons, with which I will not detain you here. One reason is her venerable antiquity. She was the mother of our fathers twelve centuries back. Compared with her the House of Commons is but a mushroom institution. I reverence her, also, for the scope she gives for freedom of thought, for refinement, for learning, and for many other advantages which belong to an institution of long standing. But I declare to you that I would sacrifice every one of these advantages, grand as they are, if I thought that any one of them interfered with her being in a special manner the Church of the poor. It is because I believe in my conscience that, if the Church were disestablished, the poor would lose the best inheritance that they enjoy, that I long with all my heart that the sinister prophecies we have heard may be disappointed. Suffer me, my friends, for one minute, to read to you one sentence which I think you will feel to be forcible :-"It is, then, by a practical rather than a theoretic test that our establishments of religion should be tried. An establishment that does its work in much, and has the hope and likelihood of doing it in more; an establishment that has a broad and living way open to it into the hearts of the people; an establishment that can commend the services of the present by the recollections and traditions of a far-reaching past; an establishment able to appeal to the active zeal of the greater portion of the people, and to the respect or scruples of almost the whole, whose children dwell chiefly on her actual living work and service, and whose adversaries, if she has them, are in the main content to believe that there will be a future for them and their opinions; such an establishment should surely be maintained." I was reading, not for the first time, these eloquent words some three weeks since, that is to say about a week before I read what issued from the same pen, the late manifesto of Mr. Gladstone. They were written seventeen years ago. You shall judge whether during those seventeen years the Established Church has diminished any one those claims, on account of which that illustrious and earnest churchman then declared that an establishment should be maintained. Let us, my friends, or those of us, at all events, who are attached to the Church of England, hope and pray that it will not be his hand, not the hand of one so honoured, that shall ever lift the axe to chop off one bough, still less to cut down to the ground that noble tree under which so much of his own worth and greatness has been reared.

of

I return, in my last words, to the thought which is the most present to my heart, and that is the yearning desire of the Church of England, not that she may be established, but that she may so do her work for Christ as to win the love of the people, so that when the crisis comes they shall feel that something which is, indeed, their own is threatened, and that they will no more consent to have it taken from them than they would consent to be robbed of one of their dearest treasures. This morning, on board a man-of-war, I chanced to hear these words of Scripture read, they are the words of St. Paul-"As God is my record, I long after you all in the heart of Jesus Christ." I believe, and am sure that, without looking for any temporary aggrandisement or anything that this earth can give, it is the true saying of the mother-church of England to all her children, and not least to some who, to her sorrow, will not call themselves her children, "I long after you all in the heart of Jesus Christ." I beseech you, my friends, who

* "Gladstone, a Chapter of Autobiography, September 22, 1868."

are already members of this great historic Church, to give us your best and your systematic efforts in stemming the great tide of moral evil with which we have all to struggle, and if there are not a few among you who have not yet inscribed your names on our muster roll, I will not, indeed, call you deserters, but I will say that we long to clasp your hands as comrades in the battle; I will not say that you ought to have joined us, but I will say that we cannot bear to win the day without you.

The Very Rev. JOHN OAKLEY, D.D., Dean of Manchester.

My Lord Bishop; Christian men-At this time of the evening the position of a new speaker is not altogether one to be envied, and yet the privilege of addressing such a meeting as this, even for a few minutes, is not one that any man of large sympathies could decline. I stand forward, therefore, at once with thankfulness and alacrity, although I see the necessity of re-casting in some measure what I had formed the idea of saying to you. I have been led to wonder as I listened and watched how it has come to pass that, I believe for the first time, two deans of cathedrals have been asked to address a working men's meeting at a Church Congress. And I have come to the conclusion that it is not without a certain fitness that they should do so. Those who arranged the meeting had, I think, some real apprehension of the relation of cathedrals and their clergy to the sentiments and the needs of the people. I will try in the briefest manner to make my words good. I will be egotistic enough to ask, What is a dean? and to answer it. We who stand here to-night, as almost the junior deans of the Church of England, represent institutions which are based upon the most entirely and strictly popular principles. A dean is the head of one of the most essentially democratic institutions in the world. In the first place, the dean of a cathedral is the president or chairman of the bishop's senate. You might call him the diocesan speaker or the spokesman of the clerical house of canons in every diocese. The Dean of Gloucester has referred to the origin of the relations between Church and Parliament. I do not say that the Church created Parliamentary institutions, for there were Senates in older civilisations; but it was the Church which filled and inspired the nations of the modern world with the spirit-if not the very form-of the popular institutions under which we live. Historians tell us truly that synods and chapters were the model of Parliament. There is another respect in which the cathedrals are in harmony with the popular ideas of our own time. The clergy who administer them are a living and acting brotherhood or community. The dean is only the senior brother of a religious association or brotherhood which represents the diocese, and is its only undying representative. If the minds of any of you have been filled with the ideas of common life, common work, common funds, and common energy and effort, I put it to you that the cathedrals characteristically and specially represen those ideas. If again, and I speak to you as churchmen, although I know that what I say will find an echo in hearts which do not own allegiance to the Church—if your desire is to see the Christian institutions of your country shed a light upon, and raise men's hopes for the development of those ideas of freedom and fellowship and equal rights, do not part with your cathedrals. Keep them, and make us do our duty and help us to do it. No one, I think, will contradict me if I say that the most popular presentment of Christian ideas and influences to-day is to be found in some of our ancient cathedrals. I could gladly say much more on this subject, but I forbear. Something has been said about a new era of legislation, and a new day that is dawning in our country. God grant it. No heart welcomes the rising tide of popular liberties and popular authority, and the elevation of the people with less fear and with more enthusiasm than does that of at least one dear. And I might speak not only as I do for two, but for a dozen of us. But I want to point out to you that you must not claim all the credit of these sympathies for the future or even for the present. I do not think that the new era of social legislation, in which you and I will together take a hearty and active part, is only going to begin to-morrow, or that it only began yesterday, or the day before. I am not going back into the remote past, although I believe the elevation of the people has been co-eval and co-extensive with the life of the Christian Church; but I will say that even in its modern form the movement has been at work amongst us during the last fifty years at all events. It has been with us since and before the date of Mr. Tennyson's first singing of his hymn of welcome to the coming time, "Ring out the old; ring in the new." This era of

beneficent social legislation and determined claim of more attention to the people's needs, surely began more nearly with the life-work of that noble Christian gentleman whom England mourns to-day, and whom she will bury to-morrow. It is forty years, and more, since the House of Lords and the House of Commons-for Lord Shaftesbury was then in the Commons-wrung from capital and the employers of labour the Ten Hours Act, which has changed the face of Lancashire and the north. I hope that you will forgive me for pointing out that the leader and spokesman in that great enterprise of deliverance of white slaves and redemption of English bondsmen and bondswomen was actually a Conservative politician; nay, even a great peer; nay, if you will believe it, a large landowner. And what is more, all will admit to-day that this motive was the idea and the impulse of Christian faith and Christian fellowship. And in the course of that great campaign, which resulted in so magnificent a victory, it was necessary to fight and even to coerce some of those great capitalists and manufacturers and employers of labour who have now, forsooth, discovered, or at all events claimed by some of their modern spokesmen, that they are the monopolists of political wisdom, of true Liberalism, and Christian socialism! My brother of Gloucester has already "magnified our office humourously." I have ventured to do so, quite seriously and conscientiously. I claim it as a witness

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for popular rights, and for its bearers the right to speak in the name of Christian ideas, which really dominate the mind of the people to-day. And while I am pointing out to you that, without any joking at all, a dean is bound by the facts of the case to be of all men-a democrat. I think I need hardly tell you after the brilliant speech, at once philosophical and popular, which has charmed us all, that the Bishop of Carlisle was once a dean! I cannot help adding a few words to the emphatic appeal which came from the layman-a soldier of his country and a soldier of his Church-who stood here just now, and spoke so bravely and truly on the progress of social purity. What I have to say shall be spoken in the fewest words, and shall be as strictly as possible to the point. Colonel Everitt did but glance at my point, but it has often been borne in upon me as a father of boys. How are we to speak to them, and what are we to say to them to caution them in time, and with wise words against the perils they will have to face on going into the world? I think this by far the most delicate and anxious point in the whole of this difficult question. I want to offer to you fathers two ideas, which, I think you may quite fairly and usefully and fearlessly urge upon them. I would say to you, say to them, do not be betrayed by popular language, which has a right side to it, but which is very easily carried too far; and do not indiscriminately and rashly speak of all the natural relations and intercourse of the sexes and all that belongs to them as unclean. God in heaven forbid! I believe that harm is often done in the minds of boys by too indiscriminate application of such terms as filthy" and "beastly" and "foul" and "dirty" to that which belongs after all to the highest and noblest and most sacred relations of mankind. Do not consign one vast territory of human life, and that on its noblest side, to the devil. Reclaim it, and proclaim it as God's. Glorify it, and glorify God in it, as in every other department of your life. The second thought I wish to give you may seem to occupy a somewhat lower-or a secondary-level, but it has its roots in the deepest of all we know of God and man. Tell the young that the honest, lawful, chaste, pure, God-given joys of Holy marriage outweigh absolutely and incomparably, and beyond the reach of the very liveliest, evil imagination, all the pleasures, real and imaginary, of lust and sin; warn them of the pricks and stings of conscience that wait on pleasant sin; tell them that God made them what they are; tell them of the unconscious innocence and peace of which God has made them capable; tell them that their whole life can be lived according to His will; tell them that self is sin, and that there is no other sin; that the sins, the actual wrong doings we encounter and resist, or else, alas! give way to, are but symptoms of the one and central sin-the pleasing of self, the gratifying of self, the declining and refusing of the law, which is also love; tell them that to the pure and chaste and modest all things are pure. All that belongs to the intercourse of the sexes is neither sin nor uncleanness. God forbid ! Marriage was in Paradise where all was good, where the great good God of all placed the man and his wife, whom He had made-" male and female created He them "and where "He saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good”.