than the caricature of a real commonwealth so long as it contains any miserable and wicked members, or until Christ Jesus is so owned and obeyed as its King, that all in it are made whole. "Be it known unto you all "-ye rulers of the people and elders of Israel" and to all the people of Israel, that by the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Whom ye crucified" -ye prime ministers and chancellors by your sinister party-policy, and ye majority of the people by your blind ungodly votes-"Whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man. -a mere beggar in your streets, the characteristic product of your kind of ruling and of voting—"stand here before you whole. This is the Stone Which was set at nought of you builders"—of a shoddy Babylon-"Which is become the Head-stone of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Possibly these politicians of Jewry would have told the man, as our rich placemongers and politicians have lately been telling the poor parish priests of Christ in Wales, that a beggarly condition is helpful to "spirituality," and that a man may travel more quickly to their Elysium if he be made "impotent," whether by the sins of society or its parliaments.

It is perhaps worth observing that St. Peter's political sermon to the rulers and citizens of Jewry is cited in the eighteenth Article of Religion, "Of obtaining eternal salvation only by the Name of Christ." Now, St. Peter uses one and the same verb (ows) for the making whole of the lame beggar and for the salvation of the entire human race. But whilst our translators have rendered it as "made whole" in Acts iv. 9, where the Apostle applies it to the personal salvation of his wretched fellow-citizen from lameness, they have rendered it as "saved" in ver. 12,

where the Apostle applies it to the social entirety of mankind "under heaven "-that is, to every man in every nook and corner of every polity on the earth. So that our English Bible has omitted that very point which St. Peter emphasizes in his political sermon to the politicians and people of his city. For the Apostle preached the inseparable oneness of secular and "eternal salvation" in the one Saviour of body, soul, and spirit.

THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

BY THE

REV. R. R. DOLLING,

Winchester College Mission.

"THERE is a Church question to-day. Something wants doing." I would thus venture to translate Prince Bismarck's famous words. The very fact that I am asked to speak upon the question of Town Missions, and that one of the Church papers has for the last six or seven weeks delivered itself over to the discussion of the question, "Why don't working men come to Church?" surely proves conclusively that something wants doing.

For the last eighteen years of my life I have lived amongst working men, the vast majority of whom are altogether untouched by the Church of England. Working as a layman, I saw this more plainly than I do to-day, though I have tried, even after I was ordained, to preserve my common sense. When I was ordained, I was sent by Bishop How to a district containing seven thousand people in the East End of London. I don't believe that twenty-five of these were influenced by the Church of England. Nine years ago I took charge of my present district in Landport. It contains between five and six thousand people. Dr. Linklater had had charge of it for two years. When he came there were not five communicants living in it. Nor is this

to be wondered at. The parish from which it is taken contained twenty-three thousand people, and was worked by a vicar and a curate. I thank God there were five active centres of Dissenting worship in my own district alone. In the county of Hampshire there are practically three great towns. Winchester, with a population of over nineteen thousand, has twelve beneficed clergy, dean, archdeacons, canons, minor canons, etc.; Southampton, with a population over sixty-five thousand, has fifteen beneficed clergy; Portsmouth, with a population of over one hundred and fifty-nine thousand, has sixteen beneficed clergy. Canon Jacob in Portsmouth, with splendid self-denial, keeps nine curates; but there are few Canon Jacobs in the Church of England. The real difficulty is that those in authority know nothing about it. Bishops give timely notice before they visit parishes, and generally see things through the spectacles of the clergyman or of the ecclesiastical layman generally a much more ecclesiastical person than the clergyman himself. If they want to know the real truth, let them get a census made of the male communicants. It is far wiser to know your weakness than to know your strength.

Many believe that increase of population will explain our present failure. But did you ever know a new district springing up without some Dissenting worship being offered to the people? I don't believe it is a want of liberality on the part of Churchpeople that prevents the Church of England doing the same. It is the red tape of the ecclesiastical commissioners, and the freehold of the parochial clergy. But even in places where there has been no increase of population-the large mother parishes of London, and little village churches where for the last thousand years there have been priests and sacraments-what is the proportion of regular

communicants?

Don't think for a moment that I mean to say that the working man of England has lost his respect for religion. I read in a French author once, "You in England have two sacraments, the Bible and Sunday. You retain them both. We had seven, and have well-nigh lost them all." I would to God that I could impress upon you how much the maintenance of this respect for religion has depended on our English Bible and our English Sunday. Let us be very cautious before we dare, by act or word, to weaken their influence. Don't let us be ashamed to confess what we owe to the splendid work of the Dissenters. It makes me oftentimes sick at heart to hear the way in which the newly ordained, strong in the orthodoxy of his High-Church collar, and of his grasp of doctrine, speaks of these class-leaders at whose feet he is unworthy to sit. And yet, thankful as we are to God for the self-denying and consistent witness that they have borne to Jesus, a present Saviour, we cannot but recognize that without the Church men cannot be perfected. The Church has lost its hold on them, and they have lost their hold on the supernatural. The Reformation in England, the work of the king and the aristocracy, never really touched the common people; and because it lacked a popular element, lost its democratic side, the chief power in the Catholic Church for revolutionizing the world. The parish became the property of the incumbent, the diocese of the bishop. You remember the story of the wife of an established minister in Scotland remonstrating with her husband when she saw all the people crowding into the Free Church, and his answer, "He, my dear, may get the people, but I have got the tithes in my pocket." The incomes given in pre-Reformation times partly for services now discontinued, or only now just being gradually restored, and partly for the good of the poor, their

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