least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellows trying by some dim candlelight to set our workshop ready against tomorrow's daylight." Here is an octogenarian observer who does not depress his courage with Tennyson's chilly doctrine that The course of time will swerve,

Crook, and turn upon itself in many a backward-streaming curve. Such prediction, as he says, knocks the heart out of all manly endeavor, and is not worthy of resolute and noble natures which believe in their own high capacities, in their fellow-men, and in the presence of God with mankind. He affirms that faith and hope have characterized in all ages the generous souls who have led the great onward march of redeemed humanity. And he records. his conviction that, amid the countless evils of English life, elements of strong and saving virtue are mightily at work. Some of the facts on which he builds his hopes for the future of his country are these:

We are officially informed that the supply of clergy is falling off; but though the young men at Oxford and Cambridge who are now seeking holy orders may be fewer than they were twenty years ago, I am convinced that their quality is better. There is nothing epicene or nambypamby about them. They are fine, manly, active fellows, keen in mind and strong in body; men who have rowed for their colleges or played "rugger" for the university, and ready to consecrate all their splendid gifts of health and skill and trained endurance to the service of religion and humanity. Even the army furnishes concrete instances of religious devotion. Here is one: A few years ago a lieutenant in a smart cavalry regiment, the son of a great nobleman, and himself the inheritor of a large fortune, was killed by a fall from his horse. The day before the fatal accident he had spent an hour in the hospital, reading to and religiously comforting a sick soldier of his troop; and this occupation, so unlike what is supposed to be characteristic of a lancer, was all of a piece with the rest of his short life. In his case beauty was the sacrament of goodness, for he was one of the handsomest lads in the army and his character was as lovely as his appearance. Even while he was at Eton he had been deeply impressed with the need of creating a public opinion among schoolboys in favor of virtue. A boy who was known to have told a lie was disgraced. He believed it possible to make schoolboys feel that a violation of moral purity was equally disgraceful. After he had left Eton and while he was preparing for the army he took definite steps toward the fulfillment of his ideal. Those unhappy people who know nothing of the nobler side of human nature associate purity with unmanliness. This young lord was as brave and manly as he was chaste and loving; a fine horseman, a keen polo player, excelling in athletic sports and physical exercises. Another of his traits was a thoughtful

generosity. Shortly before his death he went to an older friend and broached a scheme which had long been maturing in his mind. Ever since he had received a regular allowance from his father he had always put aside a tenth as belonging to God, and now he begged his friend to take this tithe and administer it for him, without disclosing his name. "Perhaps it might help some poor fellow through the university, or be useful in some other way," he said, and added, "When I come of age the tenth of my income will be worth a good deal." Had he lived a few months longer he would have become possessed of a great estate. His brief life stands as a brilliant example of what a chivalrous young Englishman can be. This instance does not stand alone, and I am well assured that among young Englishmen of all grades and classes there is a vein of manly self-control and self-devotion which may yet prove the salvation of England. Oxford House at Bethnal Green set an example which has been widely followed. Nearly all our universities, colleges, and public schools have now their "missions" and "settlements" in the poorest and most populous parts of London and other great towns; and the whole of the social, athletic, and educational work which they do is done by young laymen in the leisure hours of exacting employments and professions. At one you may find the prime minister's son handing around hymn books for a mission service. At another a young member of Parliament is conducting a Bible class. At a third a captain of hussars is instructing the gutter boys in athletics. The young physicians labor hard for the moral well-being of medical students. The young barristers of the Temple and Lincoln's Inn run a mission there of excellent quality. I know an association of young business men who bind themselves together to give some time and labor regularly to the service of the poor and of the Church. I know a suburban mission conducted entirely by young men employed in great drapers' establishments; and I frequently stumble on smart young gentlemen whose appearance suggests fashion and frivolity, but who really conduct Bible classes and teach the poor in night schools, and manage boys' clubs, and visit hospitals. The lay readers of London are mainly young men engaged in shops or professions, who give their hard-earned leisure to work among the ignorant, the needy, and the depraved. The Church Army gathers its evangelists from the pit and the factory. Often the liveliest and brightest element in parish work is the young clerks. They sing in the choir, and work in the missions, and teach in the schools, and run the clubs. They look after their muscles as well as their souls; and as a strapping curate who was lately an Oxford Blue vigorously expressed it, "You simply can't make them funk if you try."

This spirit of virile, self-sacrificing devotion to high ends, spreading more and more through the young manhood of England, gives promise of a nobler citizenship and a loftier patriotism than we see to-day. Of this spirit the present Bishop of London has been the indefatigable apostle. To a class of Oxford graduates he said: "You are coming up to London to make your careers and follow your professions. Stick to them like men. I am not asking you all to be parsons. But put in a bit of spare time with us in the slums. Come and work with us in the missions and live with us in the settlements. It's jollier to dine on a leg of mutton with a dozen Oxford men at Oxford House than to munch your solitary chop in lodgings at Hampstead. Come and try it." And they came and tried it and found it true, and gave themselves and all they

could do to social and religious service in the East End. Such things ought to make the gloomiest pessimist admit that England is moving in the right direction.

Our venerable statesman is aghast at the bold ways of the "emancipated" young women of society. He tells of a girl who said of a notorious and risky novel, "Of course, it's not the sort of book one would give one's mother to read;" and of a boy who, when his mother counseled him, as he left home for boarding school, never to listen to anything he would not like his sisters to hear, replied with a horrified look, "I should think not, indeed, mother. If Polly and Kitty couldn't hear it, it must be awful;" and quotes the saying that "in Belgravia all the women are brave and all the men are modest." Yet he says that many a Belgravian matron gives one day a week to her "mothers' meeting" in poor parts of the city, while some of the prettiest damsels in London toil like galley slaves at clubs and classes for the benefit of factory girls and shop girls and domestic servants. Although inebriety, which has decreased among men, has increased among women, yet the most active temperance work is being performed by women. One large committee of ladies devotes itself to the inmates of the women's prisons. The members of another volunteer association visit all the hospitals, cheering the patients with reading and singing and various entertainments, and befriending discharged convalescents. All over London are refuges and agencies for reclaiming fallen women, all carried on by Christian ladies. Nearly all the settlements run by colleges have women's associations attached to them, and women go from homes of refinement to take up their abode in missions where they toil for the degraded and povertystricken with an heroic self-sacrifice which puts the brawniest curates to shame. F. W. Faber, who ministered largely to fashionable women in London, once wrote: "The heroic things of Christian attainment are far more difficult in pleasant gardens and by lovely riversides than even in ballrooms and scenes of dissipation. There is a poison in the even lapse of a merely comfortable and self-indulgent life which is fatal to sanctity." Yet this long-time observer of the fashionable world tells us he has often seen devotion to unselfish ideals spring up and come forth to noble service from circles of society supposed to be wholly given over to worldliness, frivolity, and irreligion. He

tells how a few years ago some young girls, all belonging to the same fashionable "set," joined the Church together. Not long after one of them was married, and as soon as she was settled in her new home her first thought was to establish in her house a Bible class, gathering in girls from the neighborhood as her guests, and to teach them the word of God. Our statesman adds: "Her husband, a jovial young man of the world, began by cracking jokes at his girl-wife's endeavor, and used to say to his friends, 'If you're coming to call on my missis, don't choose Wednesday, for that's the day she has her revival.' But he was, in fact, secretly proud of the character and courage and moral earnestness which the 'revival' showed. And, truly, if the young wives of to-day begin their domestic life in this spirit of practical religion the nobler citizenship of the next generation will rise up and call them blessed."

One chief element of hope in the national outlook which cheers this aged statesman is that so many of the good are young. He quotes Lord Beaconsfield's saying that "it is a holy thing to see a nation saved by its youth;" and declares that just now it is the young men and young women who are keeping the soul of England alive and exercising those qualities which make a nation really great. The sight of young military officers working to elevate the men under them, and public-school boys banding themselves together to discourage wrongdoing, and the universities sending the pick of their athletes to mission work in the slums, and young lawyers and members of Parliament sacrificing their leisure for similar work, and young ladies forsaking their amusements to labor for mill hands and factory girls and servants-such sights as these warrant an optimism as reasonable as it is cheerful.

Our veteran statesman belongs to the Church of England, and finds in its condition and prospects his final warrant for hopefulness toward his country's future. He rejoices in the gradual taking away of its unjust and exclusive immunities, quoting the statement of Dr. Woodford, late Bishop of Ely, that disestablishment has been proceeding during the last fifty years. He says that by this dissolution of the union between Church and State, proceeding under a gracious Providence through half a century, the spiritual energies of the national Church have been quickened and "she has been learning under the Divine Hand

to stand alone. Cast more and more upon her own resources, she has displayed increasing fullness of life and of creative vigor. . . . Life, energetic and almost boisterous life, is the characteristic of the Church of England to-day. She has established courteous and amicable relations with the other great bodies of Christians. Throughout a world-wide empire she is carrying on her mission with zeal worthy of apostolic times. There is extraordinary ardor and liberality in missionary enterprise. Our yearly contribution to the literature of biblical research, of ecclesiastical history, of theology, and of homiletics is eminently worthy of a Church which has always known how to combine progressive learning with loyalty to the faith once for all delivered. Of all the events of Victoria's long reign, the spiritual revival of the Church is the most marvelous." This aged statesman's sober enthusiasm for his own Church and its future is creditable to him. But we may add that the vigor of the Nonconformist bodies, and the victories they have won and are winning, one of which is the gradual dissolution of the union between Church and State, all give the surest promise of that brightening future for England which Hon. G. W. E. Russell expects.

"STUDIES OF THE SOUL."*

PERHAPS no essays published within the last decade lie up so close to, lap over so far upon, and penetrate so deeply into the minister's world and work as those of Brierley. They are yeasty, spermatic, pollenizing. They feed with relishable nutriment. They illumine and clarify many a subject. They are easy and delightful reading for almost anybody, but the minister who assimilates them will experience no little intellectual ferment, and be a richer, brighter, and more convincing preacher, as well as a happier man. Frankly the purpose of this writing is to give such a taste of the flavor of Brierley's essays as may induce men to procure them. They are fine enough for the highest, yet near to the ordinary man; not too deep, yet deep and high enough. They illumine such subjects as "The Soul's Receptiveness," "The Soul's 'I Will," " "The Soul's Music," "Well

Studies of the Soul. By J. Brierley, B.A. 12mo, pp. 303. London: James Clarke & Co., 14 Fleet Street. Obtainable through Eaton & Mains, or Jennings & Pye. Price, cloth, $1.50.