Surely, in this large sphere of influence, every Christian man must be bold to take his share publicly, deliberately, and of duty. To shunt all political questions as secular is to be blind to noble opportunities of service to our Master.

Brethren of the clergy, I venture to address you; I speak not as a party man; I care not a jot for parties, but at this time of excitement of social politics I think we can be of signal use. We stand, as it were, between both classes, the rich and poor. We belong (perhaps too much so) in thoughts and habits to the former; but yet (to use a phrase of Lord Beaconsfield's) we are in some sort "the tribunes of the people." We are their servants in our daily work. We know, I am bound to say, more about them than any other class of men does. I believe we are as well trusted as any other. We owe a duty to each at this crisis. We may quicken the sympathies of the rich. If the labouring classes and the employed hold themselves apart in class alienation, do not also the rich so? We must boldly blame the rich for this; for their carelessness of the poor, for forgetting their brotherhood in Christ with the lowliest and most worthless, for a luxurious life which might be used for the well-being of others, and the display of which is often fatal to the lower classes in its example of indulgence, and (as I have said) adds a bitterness by contrast to the poverty of the poor. We must urge from our pulpits the wickedness of non-residence on great estates, and remind the rich that whatever else may give "rights of property," of Christian tenure, performance of duty is the only warrant.

I feel myself, if the upper classes of this country-and in them I include the clergy-would but use that great reserve of noble qualities which lie hid, too often, under the wretched garb of the vanities of their class life of justice, of good sense, of generosity, of kindliness— use them with self-sacrificing study and perseverance in the conduct of the difficult social politics of the day, that they have it in their power, more than any other class of men, to knit together all classes in the nation, and to advance Christ's Kingdom of Peace and Goodwill. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

And to the poor, what shall we say? "Be content with your wages," and that is all? No. Let us be eager rather to show sympathy with them; let us listen to their side of the story, though we may not always agree with it. Let us show at least that we understand them; let us acknowledge that there are evils in their social condition which are sad, grievous to be borne, and which need speedy remedying. Let us instruct them as to the causes of these, and the possibilities of cure. Let us frankly admit that in much society has wronged them; but, too, explain to them that all poverty and degradation has not arisen from the greed, or the usurpation, or even the indifference of the rich; that the perfecting of machinery taking the place of labour, the competition of new markets, the increase of population, yes, moreover (for we have no more right to flatter them than the rich), that strikes, and jealousies of labour itself, and the improvidence and self-indulgence of the poor-that all these have been elements in the circumstances we deplore. Let us tell them of the dignity of work in Christ's eyes, and of the worthlessness of wealth, of the real equality of all in God's sight. Let us warn them against the many plausible panaceas that are glibly recommended them, and bid them distrust Utopias of confiscation

where every one shall sit at ease under his neighbour's fig tree, and, wearing the soft garments he has never spun, feed on the corn and wine and oil he has never laboured to produce.

In this coming time of political excitement, one thing will be a sad spectacle for us professed Christians and churchmen. If the rich amongst us be seen struggling to protect their wealth, and the clergy to preserve their Church, and yet none of us to help the poor.

But yet, "how few of all the ills that men endure, there are that kings or Parliaments can cure." We must not think that our whole duty to the poor and the employed is to give a helping hand to any sound legislation which may ameliorate their condition. Alienation between classes cannot be really remedied by legislation, however communising. Nor can we sympathise, in the tenderest sense, collectively. Sympathy, like most holy feelings, has chiefly individual power. And so the Spirit of Christ teaches us another lesson-to get in a personal way closer to those who belong to other classes than our own. The magic contact of individuality is needed, with its subtle but effective influence. This is specially true as regards the relation of the rich to the poor. I have heard people offensively speak as if the poor had no individual characters to be touched. I think they have more individuality of character, are less under the dull stamp of uniformity than the richthan, for instance, people we meet in ordinary society, where, as Emerson says, "Everybody reminds us of somebody else." The poor may seem to lack individuality, only because we do not get close enough to them, and step out of our own notions of life to watch and understand them, and do not try to habituate ourselves to their outlook of life and notions of things. To do this requires patience, time, selfrestraint; and it is no doubt at first tedious, though ultimately full of interest. It is reflectively enlightening, too, for we have to drop conventionalities of thought and mental attitudes concerning things, and by this process we arrive at better knowledge of our own true individuality and nature. The effort at any rate is necessary to any real sympathy between rich and poor, as neglect to make it has been at the bottom of much wasted enterprise, both of benevolent and religious kinds. The only way to influence and to assimilate with others is to like them. Think of people of our own rank of life-whom do we like best? whom do we most influence? Those the individuality of whose character has been best made known to us, and ours to them. It is not otherwise with the poor. We must understand them, we must like them, and try to be liked by them, and then insensibly we become in some measure alike.

When once the excellence of this Christian spirit of seeking the poor is realised, the pernicious almsgiving which insults their poverty, and separates, rather than welds classes, will be pushed aside as noxious and degrading. The rich who approach them will find they have, like the apostles of old, nobler gifts to distribute than "silver and gold." The encouragement of our friendly counsel in secular matters which concern them; the enlightenment of our wider knowledge on many subjects about which they are ignorant, and of our more disciplined reasoning about points which may perplex them; our very companionship, lifting them out of the terrible monotony of the drudgery of their daily life; and, when the time comes (not to be hurriedly anticipated) for a modest

utterance of them. the avowal of our views of moral obligations, and of our hopes in Christ and God; yes, too, the manifestation of our sense of what we have gained from them in lessons from their example of patience and forbearance, and of simple, loving, unconscious performance of little acts of kindness; the acknowledgment of our need of their sympathy in return for ours-these are more valuable gifts to the poor than shillings and half-crowns, teas and tickets, and they leave—which material gifts without them can never do-both givers and receivers self-respecting.

In noble Christian work of the kind which I have described there are many engaged. When I think of the few so engaged twenty-three years ago, when I first had a living in the East end of London, the increase seems wonderful. The Spirit of Christ has inspired in the hearts of our generation a width and depth of self-sacrificing love our fathers knew not. It has been a new revelation of "the bearing of Christianity" to meet the new and complex condition of society in which that cruel charioteer, civilisation, carrying many gifts and blessings to the strong and pushing, crushes into misery the laggard and feeble under its onward wheels. There are hundreds-I speak of London-there are thousands of men and women to whom the thought of the poor, how to help the poor, how to bridge class differences, how to increase the material comforts and the moral and intellectual improvement of the masses, is not the interest only, but the passion of their lives. There are those excellent institutions, Oxford House and Toynbee Hall, which are gathering into them some of the most promising young men from the Universities, who live among the classes they seek to serve-institutions whose only danger is that they may give too professional a tone to philanthropyand of all professionalisms, professionalism of philanthropy is the worst. There are the many workers connected with the Church and with other denominations who mar sometimes their benevolent efforts by ear-marking them too zealously with their religious views, but whose work is persistent and amongst the lowest and poorest classes. There are the members of the Charity Organisation, who, if sometimes bewildered by their many counsels of perfection in regard to what are the methods of charitable distribution, and sometimes disciplining philanthropy to death by their rules and principles; yet, by the impulse they have given to the duty of thoughtfulness in charity, and by their education of the rich as to the responsibility of how to give, rather than what-and by helping the poor out of their poverty, rather than merely relieving them in it, are doing work of vast and growing usefulness. And then there are many, perhaps as large a class as any other, who in their own way, by such varying methods as suit their own characters and dispositions, not a few of these being of the middle rather than the higher classes, are doing good work, simply, honestly, and unrecognisedly.

The bulk of such workers of all these classes undertake their work avowedly as servants of the Saviour, as men and women who seek the guidance of His Spirit. Some, and I fear an increasing number, do not work with the same profession. What ought the attitude of the Church to be as regards these? I have known, I know, many of such. Some are the very bravest, the kindest, the most self sacrificing, the gentlest, the humblest, purest-minded, and purest-motived of men. In

a sense they are the most Christ-like. They have the Spirit of Christ, are living the life of Christ, more than many professing Christians. They have found the intellectual and theological side of Christianity hard to accept perhaps they have striven and prayed to believe in it; and then, because they could not, they have thrown themselves on man; they have said, "If our eyes are too dim to see God, we may even yet serve man." They have, some of them-I speak what I do knowgiven up the world as much as any most ascetic saints; they have sacrificed worldly position, its pleasures, prides, for the sake of the poor and the abandoned. Ill will it be if the Church rejects their aid in the difficulties of the time, for they are workers for Christ, though they know it not. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." Ah, that the Church could raise others of her own children to the sacred work these men, unrecognised by her, are engaged in. The rich, whose sumptuous indulgences shame the dignity of human nature, who care not for the poor, but openly neglect plainest duties to them; the idle, who follow each fantastic desire or capricious whim, and to whom service for others-certainly to those beneath them-would seem a mistaken waste of effort almost degrading. The cultured, who have so cultured themselves that they have the keenest sympathy for all nature but human nature, and are without interest in any one outside a narrow circle of congenial acquaintance, and who show a hard indifference to the poor, the rough, and untutored, not yielded to as a temptation, but arrived at as a theory, and adopted as a habit of life. Yet these worship in the Church's sanctuaries, and profess her creeds, and give offerings into her treasury, and she acknowledges them as her children.

"But Thou, O God,

Aid all this foolish people; let them take
Example, pattern: lead them to Thy light."

G. A. SPOTTISWOODE, Esq.

"THE Bearing of Christianity on the Mutual Relations of Rich and Poor-Employers and Employed," I take to mean the modifications in those relations during the last eighteen centuries which may be fairly attributed to its influence. To which I think may be added also the further developments which may be expected in the future in those relations, if the Spirit of Christ should hereafter more deeply impress the hearts of men, and more completely mould their actions. It is a large subject-one fit rather to fill a treatise than a paper like the present one. Yet, even within such limits, something may perhaps be said which shall stimulate thought as to what the leaven of the Faith has already accomplished, or may yet accomplish in this large department. of human life.

To obtain any fair estimate of the value of the work of Christianity herein, we must first of all realise what these "mutual relations" were in the age in which Christianity was born into the world.

Within the wide range of the Roman Empire, which in the first centuries of our era may be not incorrectly called the World, these

relations were very simple: on the one side, practically unlimited power, including that of life and death; and, on the other side, slavery.

In Palestine itself slavery was a recognised institution. When the infant Church crossed the borders of the Holy Land, at Antioch and throughout Asia Minor, the same system confronted her. And when she passed over into Europe, at Athens and Corinth and Rome, crowds of slaves must have often listened to the burning words of St. Paul and his fellow-labourers in the Gospel.

In Palestine, slavery-at any rate of a Hebrew to a Hebrew-may be said to have originated in debt: a debtor unable to pay became the slave of his creditor. But his slavery was strictly limited: it could be terminated on payment of the debt; and slaves had opportunities of acquiring property, and thus purchasing their own freedom. It would seem that no more than six years of slavery could be exacted for any debt; and that, at the year of Jubilee, all slaves of Hebrew origin were released without exception. Non-Hebrew slaves may possibly not have been treated with equal indulgence and trust; but even in their case the kindly spirit of Jewish law on this subject must have greatly alleviated their condition, and rendered it more endurable than it was in other countries.

I cannot omit pointing out, in passing, that, while slavery of foreigners, arising either directly or indirectly from capture in war, and of Hebrews, arising from debt or poverty, was allowed, an effective blow was dealt by the Jewish law against the slave trade. "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, shall surely be put to death" (Exod. xxi. 16). "If any man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him, then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you" (Deut. xxiv. 6). In making these provisions, which may seem to be applicable only to Hebrews, the Jewish Church took the sound way of trying to reform herself before she made an experiment on others.

The Greeks jealously guarded their own freedom, and among them slaves were chiefly of foreign extraction, originally captives taken in war, though debtors, even if Greeks, fell by a natural process into slavery to their creditor. In large slave households the majority of slaves were employed as artisans, working either directly for their master, or on their own account, paying a daily sum for this permission, perhaps somewhat in the way in which Russian serfs used to be employed.

Historians consider that Roman slavery was at its worst in the first century. In the earlier days of the Republic, the head of the family was absolute master of his slaves; but the smallness of their number, the simplicity of agricultural life, the necessary sharing of labour and food, must have rendered any great barbarity at least uncommon.

In time, however, the victories of Rome, especially in the East, had introduced into the city innumerable slaves and the wildest luxury. The despotic power of the master over his slave survived, while both the simple habits and the religious faith, which in a former age had softened the slave's lot, had both disappeared.

The terrible story told by Tacitus of the execution of the four hundred slaves of Pedanius Secundus, after he had been murdered by one of them, throws a sudden flash of lurid light on the "mutual