exactly where one is, or what one can afford. The money troubles of the rich, if less severe, are more unlimited than those of the poor, and a servant is very apt to think her mistress 'mean' when in fact she is suffering from a nervous panic about the impending financial statement. Ladies also often have scruples about spending money, as a mere matter of principle, which are almost sure to be misunderstood by their servants. The only remedy for misunderstanding is freedom of intercourse, and frankness and patience in explanation.

I believe mistresses would often find that they would do more to keep the bills down by frankly explaining as much as is necessary of their own money matters to their upper servants, than by any amount of fault-finding. Of course the degree of frankness on these subjects which is possible must depend on many circumstances which differ in different families; I can only say that I believe the more that can be used the better. If you want to carry people along with you, and enlist them on your side, there is nothing like trusting them.

In all that I have said, I have of course been thinking chiefly of the relation of mistress and maid. I own that I should not be sorry to see the employment of men in indoor service altogether abolished. It might certainly be done with advantage in many houses, only employing occasional porters for certain heavy kinds of work. The difficulty of penetrating a household with personal influence of the right kind is, of course, greatly increased when some of its members are men; but it certainly is not thereby rendered less important. Even menservants are, in their measure, amenable to the wisely adjusted influence of an honoured mistress. But the smaller and the more unpretending the scale of the household, the easier it is to make it truly a home. It is scarcely possible to carry out the domestic ideal on the scale on which some large houses are arranged. When the servants are too numerous for it to be possible for the mistress to know much about them, the only chance of proper guardianship being secured for the younger maids is, of course, in delegating the charge of them to a good housekeeper, who may be a real link between them and the mistress, and who is probably better able and more likely to exercise a really motherly influence than the mistress. herself, whose time is sure to be otherwise engrossed. Indeed, in all but the very smallest households, it seems to me the most natural and the best arrangement that there should be one thoroughly trusted servant through whom a great part of the mistress's dealings with the rest may be carried on. So many questions of detail arise on which a sensible housekeeper will be really a better judge than her mistress, and so much may turn upon observations which can be made only by one who is living and working amongst the rest, that a wise mistress will rarely venture far without having taken counsel with the natural leader of the kitchen. Especially does this apply to the planning of any innovation, or of downstairs entertainments

and hospitalities. Such things never really answer unless they grow up in full harmony with the popular feeling below. Next to trustworthiness, the most essential gift for the leader of the kitchen to possess is sufficient natural affinity of character with her mistress to make her a good conductor of influence between parlour and kitchen. No house is satisfactorily organised in which there is not one such trusted counsellor.

Of course the mistress's own family circumstances and occupations have a great deal to do with the amount of attention which she can bestow upon perfecting her household relations. It is no wonder if mothers of large families sometimes feel their hands too full to allow of their undertaking any avoidable cares; yet their own experience and the many subjects of common interest naturally springing up in a large household, especially where there is a nursery, make it in many ways most natural and easy for them to extend motherly care and influence to all under their roof. On the other hand, lone women are much more thrown upon their servants' companionship, and have their hands much more free for many of the works in which servants will most readily join. We cannot give what we have not got; but good influences are always tending to spread outwards, and in proportion as a mistress's own personal and family life is rightly ordered, wholesome and happy, she will be able to make her servants partakers in this right order. Where a spring of wholesome life exists, all varieties of external circumstances may be turned to good account.

Whether we are rich or poor in relations of our own, we all have a natural though little used link with our servants' families. I think nothing but habit could prevent our feeling wonder and dismay at the degree in which these ties are ignored by many of us. If a friend of our own class were spending but a week or two with us, and did not mention such an event as the marriage or death of a near relation, we should think it showed an extraordinary want either of feeling or of confidence in us. Yet how many people are content to live with their servants for years upon terms which make such silence almost a matter of course! There is no surer or safer bond of union with our servants than lies in making ourselves acquainted, personally if possible, but at least by friendly inquiry, with those who are near and dear to them. We might often do more towards keeping a girl in the right path by (for instance) inviting her mother to spend a day or two with her, or helping her to put a young brother to school, or to provide comforts for a sick sister, than by any amount of strictness. If we have not the means of doing such things (and yet how little they cost, and how pleasant they are!), we may at least encourage the girl to tell us about her parents and her home, and seize any opportunities that do occur of helping her to do them little kindnesses. Servants' families afford a rich but neglected field of pleasant, if sometimes troublesome, common interest.

In one form or another, the great root of all natural unforced intercourse is a common object. For this among many other reasons we must often regret the complete abandonment of all household work by women of the upper classes. It would be, in many

ways, good for our girls to be brought up to take, under the direction of efficient and trusted servants, a real share in housework, washing and cooking-good for their muscles, their spirits, their future usefulness, and not least for their relations with their future servants. But if it should not be thought wise or practicable for us ever to resume the share we have lost in household work, the time may be coming when we shall see our way to giving our servants a larger share in our own more special work; the attempt to help the poor, the sick, and the erring, which is of all womanly offices perhaps the best fitted to call out and to reward the united efforts of mistress and maids.

Indeed, most ladies who give themselves seriously to such works as these must at times have felt themselves maimed for want of the peculiar kind of help which can be given by a thoroughly sensible and good woman in the position of a servant, and by no one else. I do not believe that any lady's work can have its full value unless combined with such assistance: and invaluable as mission women, Bible women, and other such agents have proved themselves, their relations with their employers and superintendents cannot be of quite the same kind as that which may subsist between a really likeminded' mistress and maid, living under one roof, knowing each other's weak and strong points as they can only be known in the intimacy of family life; bound together not only as mistress and servant, but in a common service in which the first may be last and the last first, and whosoever will be the chiefest shall be servant of all.'

The best loved, the best served, the most deeply reverenced mistresses I have known have been some mothers of families who counted not their time their own, whose care and affections were not limited to their own children or their own households, but whose lives were spent in daily ministering to the wants and the sorrows of all who were in need. They never shrank from trouble or from inconvenience if they could be of use, nor from rebuking wrong-doing when it came before them, but their joy was to spread joy around them; their children and servants gradually grew up into the privilege of sharing in their labours of love, their very names bring tears to the eyes of many whose hearts they never knew that they had won, and their memories remain as an inheritance of light and of hope for succeeding generations.

CAROLINE E. STEPHEN.

REASONS FOR DOUBT IN THE

CHURCH OF ROME.

IN a recent number of this Review1 there was an article entitled Apology for Doubt in the Church of England,' which many may have read with interest. When doubts as to some of the doctrines of any Church are felt, a calm consideration of them must be useful, as a conviction of their erroneous teaching may lead to their abandonment, and through it to more general Christian unity in that which is alone of importance-namely, unity of faith.

If

In treating such a question it is desirable to avoid diffuseness. A short article on such a subject will be read attentively by far more persons than a long one. If the points submitted to consideration on which doubts are felt are sufficiently strong to support the case, more are not required for a satisfactory opening of the question. the necessity for some change is admitted, the extent of it will be afterwards determined. It is proposed, therefore, in this paper to establish reasons for doubt in the Church of Rome in regard to the three following points:

First, That she sets up her own teaching in direct opposition to Christ's own words.

Secondly, That she continues to invent new articles of faith unknown to the Apostles.

Thirdly, That she heretically refuses to accept what the Church has decreed, and that so long as she continues to do so, Christian unity is impossible.

First, That she sets up her own teaching in direct opposition to Christ's own words. When Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist, "He took bread and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat, this is my body; and he took the cup, and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it, for this is my blood of the new testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins' (Matt. xxvi.). In like manner as the bread was given by Him, so was the cup, and His injunction to take both was the same, and with both the Holy Sacrament was administered by the Apostles, and continued to be so in the Church for ages in the gatherings of the faithful

1 July, 1879.

in direct obedience to Christ's commands and institution. By degrees irregularity broke in, in some cases of necessity, as, for instance, when communion could be administered to a Christian in person through bread only, and it came to be held by many that it was sufficient if given in one kind. For some time this doctrine was condemned as heretical; but in 1414 at the Council of Constance the Church of Rome decreed that the sacred supper was to be from thenceforth administered to the laity in bread only, prohibiting communion to them in both elements, thus declaring that Christ's direct ordinance as recorded in the Gospels, and which had been taught and observed by the apostles and their successors in the Church for fourteen centuries, was to be no longer obeyed, and that the decrees of Rome are superior to Christ's words. From that time no lay member of the Church of Rome has been allowed to receive the cup, and every one who secedes from another Christian Church to that of Rome is from thenceforth deprived of receiving through the cup that remission of sin through the blood of Christ and the other promises Christ made in connection with it, saying, Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him' (John vi. 56). It is, moreover, to be carefully borne in mind that the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the only services in the Christian Church ordained by Christ Himself, and that whatever He commanded to be done in them cannot be omitted without sinful disobedience.

Is there not, therefore, in the doctrine so insisted on, reason for doubt in the Church of Rome ?

Secondly, That the Church of Rome continues to invent articles of faith unknown to the Apostles. Without travelling over the inventions of more distant times, within the last thirty years that Church has declared the immaculate conception of the Virgin and Papal infallibility to be articles of faith.

No one can pretend to assert that either of these doctrines were known to or taught by the Apostles. It savours of the ridiculous for the followers of Rome to call theirs the old religion, when they know that some articles of their faith have only been made so within their own memory, and that they may be ordered to-morrow to accept others perhaps not more generally acceptable than the last. To preach a new article of faith is to preach a new gospel, and St. Paul, in Gal. i. 8, says, 'If we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.'

Is there not in the doctrine so insisted on reason for doubt in the Church of Rome?

Thirdly, That the Church of Rome refuses to accept what the Church has decreed, and that, so long as she continues to do so, renders Christian unity impossible. By the 28th Canon of the Fourth General VOL. VI.-No. 34.

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