govern India with greater ease by seeking to prevent the conversion of the natives to the faith of Christ. We closed our eyes in days gone by to cruel treatment of native races by English traders. These are some of the stern facts which mark the spiritual apathy of our people in the past. And every such fact is a cause which involves a consequence. We have good cause to know, from home experience, how the spiritual apathy of one age produces the political problems of the next. The burning questions of to-day which exercise the minds of our statesmen are but the outcome of the spiritual failure of the Church of the English people to realize in days gone by her high vocation. Can we wonder if, in the face of facts like these, colonial problems seem difficult of solution? Should we have a right to complain if those young communities repaid our past neglect with a growing indifference and selfishness? That such is happily not the case to any large extent, is due to the great awakening of the conscience of England during the past fifty years to a sense of the spiritual responsibility which rests upon her. Much, indeed, has been done to roll away the reproach. Eight years ago we kept the centenary of our colonial episcopate. And now, in little more than a century, we have nearly one hundred colonial and missionary bishops. This fact is one index of the extent to which the Churchmen of England have been roused to learn, if tardily, the force of the Apostle's question, "How shall they hear without a preacher? how shall they preach except they be sent ?" But even now can we profess that our responsibilities are at all adequately discharged? Our oldest missionary society, which makes the welfare of our colonies its special charge-nay, which has given us our colonial Churches-is supported with a paltry sum of £80,000 a year. How many business men, with direct or indirect colonial interests, think it their duty to be subscribers to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel? Or, again, to turn to more direct responsibilities, any one who has had experience of colonial work knows that the circumstance which most hampers every scheme of colonial Church extension (and remember the furtherance of religion is that which the scientist now points to as the essential condition of future progress and prosperity) arises from the fact that owners of property are to a large extent non-resident. Our colonies suffer from absenteeism. They are largely worked by English capital. And while the poor of England pour forth in a steady stream to the colonies to seek new homes beyond the sea, where no adequate provision is made for their spiritual needs, the wealth of those colonies, which should enable such provision to be made, to a large extent comes home to England to enrich the shareholders in colonial companies. Its results are seen on Scotch moors and in our London parks. And the mass of those whose economic connection with the colonies lays upon them a moral responsibility to the distant land from which their income is in part derived, find too many reasons to repudiate the claim. The majority of individual shareholders are not prepared to make the discharge of this moral claim a first charge upon their dividends. They have many calls at home. They give liberally, it may be, to religious objects. They cannot concern themselves with the needs of colonial Churches. The public companies plead their inability to give in support of Church work because of the tenor of their articles of association. These things ought not to be. And each can do a very little to insure a more frank and liberal acknowledgment of this moral and spiritual claim. Will not individual shareholders learn to regard this as a debt of honour, due to the colony from which their income comes; due to England and to the empire which depends for its prosperity upon vocation faithfully fulfilled; due to Christ, Who has laid it upon us above all people to be His faithful witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth? If once a healthier public opinion be formed through the force of individual example, the good leaven will spread, and the great investment companies which own colonial property will eliminate from their articles any clause which forbids the recognition of spiritual claims. It will be a sad day for England if "the multitude of nations" which have sprung from her become dominated by secularism and selfishness through our neglect. It has already proved in many cases, if I mistake not, a sad day for shareholders in colonial companies. And while I almost shrink from seeming to base an appeal upon sordid and secondary motives, my task will not be complete without the expression of my own strong conviction that the discharge of these spiritual responsibilities has a very real economic value. In our economic dealings with our colonies we shall find a very literal fulfilment of the Master's words, "With what measure ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.' In the flowing tide of colonial life there are strong currents which set with increasing force in the direction of social and financial disorganization. Industrial problems, racial problems which are closely connected with them, a dishonest mental habit which finds expression in reckless speculation with all its disastrous results,these are some of the dangers which give to colonial prosperity a sense of insecurity which quickly makes itself apparent in the money market. One force alone can give the true solution to these problems— that which comes from the application of Christian teaching to the facts of life. And if that force is found too weak to stem the tide of selfishness, it is because our niggardliness withholds the means which can make the Church of Jesus Christ the informing power of the life of those great and growing communities. The noble task is ours by right. The special genius of the colonies demands an inspiration of a special kind, which the Church alone has inherited the power to give. Strong with the force of Catholic tradition and the authority of an Apostolic mission, and quickened by the free spirit of selfreliance drawn from the Reformation, she can bring forth out of her treasures things new and old. No other Christian community, however zealous, can supply the spiritual force adapted to impress the Christian character upon colonial life. The golden opportunity is ours still. It remains for all who realize the urgency of the call, and the greatness of the issues which are involved, to strive, by liberal offerings and earnest self-denying efforts, so to fulfil our national vocation that the " multitude of nations" may become "the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." COUNTRY LIFE. BY THE REV. J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S.A. "Desire a better country."-HEB. xi. 16. IT has been suggested to me, as the half-century of my life has been spent almost exclusively amid the fair surroundings of England's rural scenery, that a suitable theme for this brief city talk would be "Country Life." But keen as may be my appreciation of nature's rustic charm-and yours may be keener still just because of your rarer opportunities of enjoying them-we meet not here to "babble of green fields," nor to pause on every charm,— The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill, We meet here in God's A sterner task is ours. house to remind ourselves that there is a social question in our thinly populated country districts just as much as in our crowded towns; that the urgency of its demands is the most pressing question of the day; and that "the intolerable situation into which the lower grades of our industrial population now find themselves driven" (I quote the words of |