like with him after.' What is learnt as a child is never forgotten, and in some curious incomprehensible manner, no matter how the tedium of these Masses may pall on the children, nor how incredible the doctrines may appear when, later on, the child comes in contact with other views, the teaching will stick to him, or else be discarded in favour of some pronounced form of unbelief. This is the invariable result in all Roman Catholic countries, and one can see no reason why England's fate should be different.

While all this is apparent to those who are engaged in defending the cause of the Reformation, there is one difficulty under which they labour, and that is that, while doctrine is the real danger, the only vulnerable point of attack which the Ritualists present to them is to be found in the apparently unimportant field of ritual. The intimate connection between ritual and doctrine is not apparent to many minds. It is through ritual that the whole ground has been gained by this party, but, in being driven to select this field of battle, the Protestant leaders have been placed at a great disadvantage. What harm, says the world, can there be in an ornate ritual, in incense, in vestments, let alone such trivialities as eastward position, mixed chalice, and lights, especially when they are indulged in by men whose lives bear witness to sanctity, devotion, and energy? So wise and broad-minded a statesman and Churchman as the late Lord Selborne, the last man in the world to have any sympathy with Romanism, could yet be found to express his view on the unimportance of ritual, in writing to Sir Arthur Gordon," in the following words:

For my own part I am entirely of one mind with you in thinking that, under present circumstances, it is much better to submit to and acquiesce in deviations (even if they seem ever so wrongheaded) from the Act of Uniformity, as interpreted by the authorised Courts, on matters of dress, posture, and forms of ritual, than either to break up the Church, or to drive out of it Bishops, clergymen, or laymen, who are otherwise good men, good Christians, and doing good work. . . . Perhaps it may also be true that, independently even of our present circumstances, the Act of Uniformity is more rigid about these formal matters than it ought to have been; they are all, in comparison with spiritual and organic unity (at least in my judgment) inexpressibly trivial and unimportant, and it might be well if some distinction had been drawn by the law between great things and small, and if dispensing power had been lodged somewhere.

And yet it is through these same inexpressibly trivial and unimportant' details that we have been brought to the present state of things, to see in English churches all over the land services which are indistinguishable from those in Roman churches, services in which Romanists themselves can detect no difference between them and their own, whilst an angered and embittered laity is watching, with melancholy gaze, the threatened downfall of the Church at the hands of the Nonconformists and Secularists.

• Memorials, Personal and Political: Earl of Selborne. Vol. i. p. 401.

If we, then, the party of the Reformation, are justified in our contention that there is no via media between fidelity to the Scriptural position of the Church of England and complete surrender to Rome -in short, that Ritualism is but the jumping-board for Rome; if we can point to the alarming manner in which the extreme party in our Church and the Church of Rome herself are, through the education of the young, bringing near a surrender to the Church of Rome, may we not plead for two practical considerations with regard to the Reformation movement-namely, what it did for the country and what it did for the Church? Well may we ask, why does England to-day occupy the foremost position amongst the nations of the world? Why is it that the English people possess a genius for governing inferior races to such a degree that to be under British rule is synonymous with good government, even justice, and righteous laws? Why is England the cradle of philanthropy, the heart of missionary effort, the very home of individual freedom and liberty? Why have we been free from the cataclysms and revolutions that have submerged foreign nations, the frantic efforts of people striving to be free, which have let loose forces destructive of the very elements of social order and religious truth? Why has religion been a power in this country which has moulded the character of the people, and made truthfulness, honour, and industry the foundations of national life? If cause and effect are indissolubly bound together, there can be but one answer to these questions. It is to the Reformation and to the men of that time that England owes all it possesses to-day, blessings denied to the countries untouched by that event, and blessings which only a fidelity to that event can retain.

But what is the secret in the Reformation of its mighty power to regenerate, to set free, to provide that impetus to national effort which has not ceased to operate from that time till now? What is the key to the whole movement? Whence came that inspiration which enabled men to die, content if by their death they might contribute to the demolition of falsehood and add one stone to the edifice of truth? It was not primarily Papal supremacy, priestly tyranny, national or individual bondage, it was not ritual and ceremonial, which were the objects of attack; all these were the resultants, not the first causes, of the system which the Reformation doomed to extinction; but as these things were the inevitable consequences, so were they the necessary adjuncts of a faith which owed both its existence and its maintenance to the suppression of all individual thought and opinion.

The secret was the Word long buried but at last regained, that Bible which gave utterance to the Divine Voice, calling men from formalism and ceremonialism, from superstition and from darkness, from priests, Virgin, and Saints, to the faith of children at liberty in their Father's house, needing no go-between, no middleman between them and the Father, no Intercessor but the Saviour who had called

them brethren and who had completed the work of salvation. The work of the sacrificing and confessing priests was gone, the people were free; in this world they could approach the Throne without them, in the next they could attain heavenly bliss without their prayers. No wonder the priesthood struggled hard; they would not surrender without an effort the illimitable power which their system had conferred upon them. Not only power but wealth was gone. The money of the people had been poured without stint into the coffers of the Church. The entrance into Heaven was in the hands of the Church, it was not to be unlocked without money. The richer you were the sooner the door would be opened, but the poorest must contribute in order to enter. Money, from the time the Romish system was first imposed on human credulity up to the present hour, is the key to the Kingdom of Heaven for a benighted people, and to affluence for the Church and its dignitaries But those who had been touched with that Divine inspiration were able to defy the threats and fulminations and persecutions of an expiring tyranny. Henceforth England was free. No priest could control the home by bringing its womenfolk into the confessional, or dominate the State by his claim to vast and supernatural powers. England was free, and in that newborn freedom her naval heroes. went forth, with their Bible in one pocket and their military text-book in the other, to inaugurate that era of conquest which, beginning with the destruction of Philip of Spain, with the discovery and absorption of a new hemisphere, has continued with uninterrupted progress down to the present day, when it is not too much to say our country is in many respects the envy and admiration of the world.

And if we ask why the Reformation has procured for us a position of such undeniable pre-eminence, it seems clear that it is due to the effect of the Reformed Faith on the character of men. With the disappearance of the priest as a necessary factor in salvation came a deeper sense of personal responsibility to God. The false excuses of the Confessional, by which priests could be hoodwinked and men's consciences deceived, were of no avail in the eyes of an all-seeing God, and consequently that groundwork of all national progress, absolute truthfulness and honesty of purpose, became an essential and marked characteristic of the English people. And as with truthfulness, so with self-reliance and courage. Men found that they must lean on God, and trust to their own right arm and their own resources, and in that personal communion with Him they formed that character of grit and endurance which has enabled Englishmen to accomplish the deeds by which the Empire was won.

And if the Reformation did so much for the nation, what did it do for the Church? It made the Church the exponent of the nation's highest life and thought. It was the Church itself that gave expression to the pent-up feelings of two hundred years that were welling up in the nation, ideas of freedom and expansion and purity of faith. It

was the Church itself that threw off the fetters that were holding the country down, cramping its powers and arresting its development. There was no attempt on the part of the Church to curb and check the new forces that were coming into operation, or to restrict education in some narrow channel. The Church led the way in the path of liberty, and consequently became interwoven with the life and history of the country. We have but to look to Roman Catholic countries to see the opposite of this picture, to see national development only effected in the teeth of the opposition of the Church, to see the Church looked upon as the greatest foe to progress, to education, and to all that conduces to national greatness, and consequently to witness all the irrepressible aspirations of a country forced into antagonism to the power upon which depends the religious life of the people.

It will be a sad day for England if our Church ceases to express the religious convictions of the country. When that day arrives the Church is doomed. There is no fear for the Protestantism of England; the day is past and gone when priestcraft can govern in the land. The fear is that the Church of England, or that any large portion of it, should be so altered in its character as to be utterly out of harmony with England herself, should fall from its high estate as the Church of the people and become the Church of a small and insignificant minority, whose latter days will be spent in an ignominious surrender to the Church of Rome. The moment for decision, then, has come. It must be either Rome or the Reformation. There is no other alternative. Either we must be true to the Reformers, protesting for the supremacy of Scripture, rejecting all doctrines which cannot be proved from that Book, or we must submit to the authority of the Church of Rome, and blindly place ourselves in the hands of a power which, however much it may protest to the contrary, must for ever, as the very essence of its faith, as the very condition of its existence, as the very object of its aspirations, set itself against all freedom of thought, all intellectual advance, and, as a consequence, against all progress and development of national life, all spiritual power in the hearts of men. The choice must be made. We are now in a condition of religious thought which cannot long continue. However much statesmen and lawyers may argue on the legal aspects of ritual, on their relation to Acts of Uniformity, or on the importance of an Ornaments Rubric, the question will in the end be decided by none of these things. The question which men must answer is, Are we going to take the authority of the Church or that of the Bible? And on the answer which Church people make to this question will depend, not perhaps the Protestantism of England, but certainly the question as to whether this Church of ours is to remain a power for God, not only in this country, but in those vast dominions beyond the seas over which, in the Providence of God, we are called upon to rule.

CORNELIA WIMBORNE.

1904

THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST

CONGRESS

THE International Socialist Congress of 1904 will be remembered as that at which a new phase of Socialist activity was definitely entered upon. The one question which was discussed with any degree of fulness was the tactics to be pursued by Socialist politicians, the controversy mainly raging round the point at which the Revolutionist should abdicate in favour of the Statesman. Revolution has always been maintained as an essential part of Socialist propaganda, although of late there has been a tendency to give the term an esoteric or philosophic rather than a popular meaning, or at least to qualify it with a mental reservation,' as Scotch Presbyterian ministers do when swearing allegiance to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Revolution is no longer meant to connote the barricade-and-bullet method of propagating Socialism, but simply the change in the social order which the introduction of Socialism implies. In its political sense Revolution is meant to express the view that, since Socialist propaganda is based upon an irreconcilable and ever-increasing antagonism of interests between the property-less and the propertied classes, the conflict being waged is really in the nature of warfare, and admits of no participation by the representatives of labour in any system of government which does not aim at the overthrow of the existing order of society and methods of wealth production and distribution. It was the tactics based on this theory which was assailed at Amsterdam. Revolution by force having dropped out of sight, the further stage has now been reached of considering whether the political method is to remain revolutionary in spirit and action or become frankly evolutionary. The marvellous growth of the movement in recent years and its success at the polls has forced the question into the arena for discussion, and the result is already a foregone conclusion. Socialist human nature is, after all, but a slice from the common stock, and is not cast in any ultra-heroic mould.

The personnel of the Congress was, as usual, full of interest. Amnestied French Communards from New Caledonia, escaped Russian Nihilists from Siberia, tortured and pardoned Spanish Anarchists from the dark dungeons of Montjuich, Saxon and Dane, the inflammable