before me, I saw my old companions and all the young people, and I saw myself addressing them. I shook my head impatiently, and strove to drive away this vision, but it always came back. And I heard a voice in my inward ear as plain as anything saying, 'Go and speak to these people.' And for a long time I would not. But the pressure became greater and greater, and I could hear nothing of the sermon. Then at last I could resist no longer, and I said, 'Well, Lord, if it is Thy will, I will go.' Then instantly the vision vanished, and the whole chapel became filled with light so dazzling that I could faintly see the minister in the pulpit, and between him and me the glory as the light of the sun in Heaven." And then you went home?" "No; I went to my tutor and told him all things, and asked him if he believed that it was of God or of the devil? And he said the devil does not put good thoughts into the mind. I must go and obey the heavenly vision. So I went back to Loughor, and I saw my own minister, and him also I told. And he said that I might try and see what I could do, but that the ground was stony and the task would be hard." people sat as I had seen them sitting, altogether in rows before me, and I was speaking to them even as it had been shown to me. At first they did not seem inclined to listen; but I went on, and at last the power of the Spirit came down and six came out for Jesus. But I was not satisfied. 'Oh, Lord,' I said, 'give me six more-I must have six more!' And we prayed together. At last the seventh came, and then the eighth and the ninth together, and after a time the tenth, and then the eleventh, and last of all came the twelfth also. But no more. And they saw that the Lord had given me the second six, and they began to believe in the power of prayer." 66 Then after that you went on?" "First I tried to speak to some other young people in another church, and asked them to come. But the news had gone out, and the old people said, ' May we not come too?' And I could not refuse them. So they came, and they kept on coming. Now here, now there all the time, and I have never had time to go back to college." Not much chance, indeed, at present. Three meetings every day, lasting, with breaks for meals, from ten A.M. till twelve P.M., and sometimes later, leave scant leisure for studying elsewhere than in the hearts and souls of men. If only his body will hold out and his nervous system not give way, he will have time to study hereafter. At present he has other work in hand. II. A YEAR ON THE CONGO: MRS. FRENCH-SHELDON. MRS. FRENCH-SHELDON has returned to London after breaking her own record-and very nearly breaking her back-as the lady traveller of Central Africa. Her first journey started from the East Coast, her latest from the West, but in both she displayed the same signal qualities of intrepidity, endurance, energy, and resolution which distinguish her. Her mission on this last journey was to see the state of things in the Congo Free State with her own eyes, and to ascertain so far as she could what was the actual position of affairs in that vast empire at the present moment. She left England in the autumn of 1903, and she has spent twelve months in travelling to and fro across the whole length and breadth of that vast region. Never since the State was founded has any independent traveller been accorded such facilities for going everywhere and seeing everything. And Mrs. Sheldon appears to have availed herself of her opportunities to the full. Whether on the river, where all steamers were at her disposal, or in the interior, where she organised the caravans and travelled hundreds of miles with no. escort but her trusty native boys, she was treated as if she had been a semi-divine plenipotentiary-a cross between a queen and a fetich. "Now, Mrs. Sheldon," I said, after the first wel come and congratulation was over, "out with it in one electric phrase what is the sum of your impressions?' "The Congo Free State needs reconstruction. The enterprise in hand is too vast to be adequately discharged by any power that has not unlimited resources at its disposal. The attempt to reform, to regenerate, I may say, half a continent on rubber profits after dividends have been paid-is magnificent, but it is not practical." "Then you are against the Concession system?" "Yes. I do not think it commends itself to the best men of the Administration. It introduces an element of conflict. The native cannot understand a Government that speaks with two voices, and that offers the spectacle of two different if not actually opposing principles of administration. The Abir Concession, I think, will have to go. The system of free trade that prevails in the Kasai-the southern— province should be introduced in other regions." "And what is your net conclusion?" "I am for Reform. I am against Destruction. Pull down the Congo Free State, what will you put in its place? Give it to France? I do not think that the natives would second that proposition. You cannot adopt a policy of scuttle. But if you did, you would have anarchy instead of order, war instead of peace, slave raids and all the horrors from which the Administration protects its subjects." "And you think the Congo State, minus the Concessions, can be reformed?" "Yes. If you have money and men you can do anything. And it is amazing what has been done in the way of material progress. The Matadi railway is the most magnificent piece of railway construction I have ever seen anywhere, and I have seen most of the great railways of the world. It is a marvel, and its administration is perfect. The Administration is making roads, building hospitals, and introducing the male native to habits of industry." "Hum!" said I, "the phrase is familiar. It is a euphuism for slavery." "Well," said Mrs. Sheldon, "the African women are slaves, bought and sold by the men, and made to do all the work. If the Administration treats the African man as the African man treats the woman, as a woman I don't complain. What is so good for the goose cannot be so bad for the gander. But, joking apart, your decision on that question must be governed by the conclusion you come to as to the advantage, or otherwise, of forcing your white civilisation upon a native population which does not want it, but which must be made to pay for it in one way or the other. If you say it is all a mistake from the beginning, that the black man is best left alone, I am not inclined to quarrel with you. I like the black man, and his pantheism appeals to me. But the Arab slave-traders were eating him up at the rate of 100,000 a year, and white civilisation has at least stopped that. Rightly or wrongly, civilisation has decided that the black man shall no longer be left to do as he pleases in the heart of Africa, and it has also decided that he must contribute something to the cost of being civilised against his will. Government by consent it is not, and never will be. Government by compulsion, supported by contributions exacted by force, is the logical result. And there is no way of escaping from it. You achieve the same end in your English African colonies by your hut-tax. But that is only a roundabout way of achieving the same end." "Which is another way of saying that you are for forced labour, the Chicotte, cannibal levies, and all the rest of the apparatus of enforced civilisation?" "I did not say that," said Mrs. Sheldon. "I only wished to indicate the bottom fact of the positionviz., that if you persist first in whitewashing your Ethiopian-a process which he detests-and secondly in demanding that he must pay the bill for the whitewash, you must go on to the third proposition and apply compulsion to a man who hates you, and who hates your civilisation, and who hates labour, to make him labour to pay for your civilisation and save your pocket." "But surely the process of compulsion need not be brutal and murderous?" "I entirely agree, and I have spent many weary months hunting down cases of alleged cruelty. Yes, and I think," said Mrs. Sheldon, "that in not a few cases I have been successful in preventing cruel wrongs, in securing the punishment of bad officials, and of introducing valuable improvements. think there can be no doubt that in the past there have been many grievous errors committed. Yes, and in some cases crimes and atrocities. But the pressure of the enlightened opinion of the civilised world is felt. to the remote recesses of the Dark Continent. I can certainly affirm that never did I bring wrong or abuse before the heads of the Administration without securing their immediate attention and the prompt punishment of the offender." "Then our agitation has done some good after all ?" "Yes, but it has also done harm. It has tended to disgust the many brave heroic souls who are wearing their hearts out in distant stations far from all the comforts and solaces of civilisation in order that they may carry out the humanitarian conception of the Founders of the State. There are such men among the officials-not all Belgians, by any means— Norwegians, Swiss, Italians, pure enthusiasts and administrators of the best type, who deserve better of mankind than to be confounded with the failures, the black sheep of the old unreformed system. If you sicken these men, and drive them out of the country, then the last state of the Congo will be worse than the first." "I am afraid," I said, "that in this world no good can ever be done without evil dogging it, as the shadow dogs the light." "No doubt; but don't forget the shadow. And until you are ready to provide something better, don't break the hearts of good men who are spending their lives in doing their level best to make the Administration correspond to the lofty aspirations of its founder. Punish the evildoers, reform the system, see that the State has funds adequate for its duties; but don't confound everybody, good and bad, under one sweeping condemnation." "I think the best thing the King and the Congo Reform Association could do," I said, laughing, "would be to join forces and send you out to be a permanent Inspector-General of the Administration. You would at least be a holy terror to the evil. doers." MR. WILL CROOKS, M.P., introduced last session the Women's Enfranchisement Bill. This he did on behalf of the Independent Labour Party in the absence of its representative, Mr. Keir Hardie. The Bill provides that in all Acts relating to the right to vote at Parliamentary elections words importing the masculine gender shall be held to include women. It was in order to ascertain Mr. Crooks's views in regard to the prospects of the Bill that I called upon him at his house in Poplar. "I know, Mr. Crooks, that you strongly support the enfranchisement of women." "Yes; because in all my work I aim at making the people self-reliant, able to think and act for themselves. Therefore, I want the women to have the power and responsibility which the possession of the vote gives. It is by this rather than by any consideration of how their votes will be used that I am moved to demand the enfranchisement of women. At the same time I believe that the cause of progress has nothing to fear from the reform in question. We entrust to women, as teachers and as mothers, the allimportant work of educating the future citizens. How absurd, then, to hesitate to give to those same women the rights of a citizen. As regards the women of the working class, speaking from my experience in Poplar, I have the deepest admiration of the heroic struggle which they make with poverty and the many difficulties which poverty brings in its train. I point out constantly that all the many social questions which are pressing for settlement affect these women as much as, if not more than, they affect the men. We must give the women a share in settling them." Speaking of the outlook for women's franchise, Mr. Crooks laid great stress on the importance of organisation and of agitation-to be carried on by local workers in every constituency. Every member of the House of Commons must have strong pressure brought to bear upon him by those from whom he seeks support. No woman, says Mr. Crooks, should work for any man who is not a supporter of her enfranchisement, and if the candidate put forward by her own political party is not satisfactory from this point of view, she should work for the candidate-to whatever party he belongs-who is in favour of women's suffrage. If women are in earnest on this question they must prove it, Mr. Crooks declares, by putting principle before party, and making the enfranchisement of their sex the first object of all their political work. "What are the prospects of the Women's Enfranchisement Bill next Session?" "As large a number of members as possible must use. be induced to ballot for a place for its discussion, for only one of the first seven or eight places is of any Before the Session begins the Labour Group will meet to decide upon certain measures which are to form its programme for the Session, and are to be actively pressed forward. As far as I personally am concerned, I wish the Women's Enfranchisement Bill to be one of these measures, and I shall strongly urge its inclusion in the labour programme for the coming Session." "The enfranchisement of the women of Australia is due chiefly to the efforts of the Labour Party there. Are the women of this country to receive similar assistance from the Labour Party in England?" "The members of the Independent Labour Group in the House of Commons all support the enfranchisement of women, and I am convinced that the workingmen electors desire it too." "Various Liberal leaders have pronounced in favour of electoral reform, but so far they are silent as to whether women are to have votes. It is feared that the Liberal party, when it comes into power, may establish manhood suffrage, leaving the disqualification of sex still standing. What do you think likely?” "I cannot speak as to what the Liberal party may or may not do, but this I do know-namely, that the Labour men in the House will protest with all their force against the exclusion of women from any measure of electoral reform which may be brought forward by the present or any government." Even "One is, indeed, glad of this assurance, Mr. Crooks. By bringing forward the Women's Enfranchisement Bill, which raises the issue with regard to women's franchise so neatly, the Labour Party will define its attitude clearly and unmistakably. failing the complete success of the Bill next Session, the work done by the Labour members in its support will serve to show the leaders of the other two parties that labour demands equal justice for women as an essential part of electoral reform." Mr. Crooks has been addressing meetings in Scotland and the North of England, and finds that everywhere the movement for labour representation is growing and strengthening amongst the working-men TH TWO HIGH CHURCHMEN.* CANON LIDDON AND REV. HUGH PRICE HUGHES. HE simultaneous appearance of the lives of Canon Liddon and Hugh Price Hughes reminds me that I have never yet made either of my deceased friends the subject of a character sketch in these pages. For they were both my friends-very good friends and fellow-workers with me in some of the most stirring episodes in my public life. And the appearance of these portly volumes stimulates grateful reminiscences of both men, and urges me to put down in print, before the impression grows fainter, some memorials of men who each in his own way played a leading part in the religious. and political life of the nation in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. That was their period. Liddon died in 1890. Hughes, less happy than his Anglican brother, lived to see the war against the South African Republics. The effective part of their life work, so far as the greater public was concerned, lay between 1875 and 1900. They were the foremost High Churchmen of that time. It may astonish some people to hear Hugh Price Hughes classed as a High Churchman along with Liddon. Those who knew him, and those who read the account of his religious convictions, to be found in his daughter's biography, will recognise the justice of the classification. Hugh Price Hughes was as ardent a High Churchman as Canon Liddon, and, if possible, more of an ecclesiastic, and much more of a Pope. The only difference between them was that one was an Anglican High Churchman, the other a High Churchman of the Methodist brand. But there was no difference between them on fundamentals. Both believed implicitly in what are called sacramentarian doctrines. Both believed with a whole heart in the Divine institution of the Church, of which the sacraments were the binding links, without which no Church could be imagined. Both believed in the Episcopate, both believed in the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord in Holy Communion, both believed and practised Retreats, both believed in semi-monastic Sisterhoods, both believed in Confession the one practising it through the inquiry-room, the other approving of it in the Confessional. Both believed in choral services, and both detested the "The Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon, D.D." By the Rev. baldness of the conventicle. Both were in more or less violent opposition to the Pope of Rome. But both invoked the authority of the Church with the same absolute confidence in their right to speak on her behalf as if they themselves wore the triple crown. Contrasted with sucn men, for instance, as Dean Stanley, to whom the Church was a society for doing good, or Professor Seeley, who found the modern club dinner the nearest approximation to the Lord's Supper as it was originally instituted, the differences between the beliefs of Liddon and Price Hughes are almost imperceptible to the naked eye. One was a member of an Established Church, the other was a member of a Free Church; but that was about all. They both believed equally with a full heart fervently that they were the ordained ministers of Christ, in direct apostolical succession appointed to teach a mystical doctrine involving the direct personal grafting of the life of the individual soul upon the living body of Christ, whose union with the believer was miraculously sustained by the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. As such ministers they belonged to a sacred order, clerical, not lay, with an authority not given to any layman to administer the affairs and interpret the doctrine of the supernatural body of the Church. Often as I used to hear them talk-separately, for they never met-I used to feel that Price Hughes was higher" than Liddon. The one based his authority upon the Word of God interpreted by tradition and the usages of the Eastern and Western Churches. The other rested also upon the written Word, but he interpreted it by the witness of the Spirit whose testimony was to be found in the life of the Christian Churches of the English-speaking world-and notably of the Methodist Churches, whose adherents vastly outnumber the numerically insignificant minority of Anglicans. But whether they justified their oracular decisions by appeals to tradition or to count of heads, their note was the same. And as I wish to silence any cavillers before proceeding further with these reminiscences, I will quote two or three passages from the biography of Price Hughes. There is no more pronounced High Church Sacramentarian than Lord Halifax. After meeting Lord Halifax Mr. Hughes told his family, "We agree, you know, in essentials" (page 390). How far that agreement went appears in frequent passages. His daughter says:-" Ever since Oxford days, when he had felt the strength and attractiveness of much that belonged to the High Church ideal, he had been led to criticise not only the attitude of Methodism, but the other Protestant communities."-(Page 387.) At Grindelwald Dr. Berry and Mr. Hughes were delighted to discover that each was a High Churchman. (Page 396.) The Episcopacy he recognised as having existed as a fact, not as a doctrine, since the days of St. John (page 391). He admitted that the Episcopate was useful for aggressive purposes (page 390), and he was quite willing to have accepted a reunion of Christendom on an Episcopal basis (footnote, page 391). - Although the great line of demarcation was the Anglican interpretation of the apostolicai succession, he was as stout a defender of the validity of his own orders and the reality of his successorship to the Apostles as any Anglican (page 390). He was willing to accept Confirmation. Confirmation, or something corresponding to it, he held, was necessary in all Churches but the Baptist. He was willing to accept the Apostles' and the Nicene. Creed. His daughter notes that when I lunched with him at Grindelwald I always called him Bishop-not without. cause. He himself occasionally used an even higher title in sport. When he wrote to the late Bishop Temple, adjuring him to come and preside over a meeting in St. James's Hall in support of Mr. (now Sir John) McDougall's work for the purification of the music halls, he began his epistle thus: "One Primate in Christ's Church did most heartily implore his brother of London, in remembrance of their evervictorious Head," etc. (page 343). His daughter, speaking of his action on the Committee of the . Free Church Federation, says, "He might really have been a bishop himself by the way he went on. In the intervals there was a distinct suggestion of mitre and crosier" (page 437). Mrs. Price Hughes. I came into sharp collision with him on the question whether the Free Church Federation should allow Unitarian Churches to affiliate themselves to its local councils. I was for the open door; Price Hughes closed it with a slam. His daughter, defending his action, says, "My father was most passionately a Catholic Churchman, and would have felt quite at home with Anselm and Augustine in some ways" (page 458). He raged against my idea of a Civic Church as wide as the Church invisible, composed of all men and women of every creed and of none, who were willing to co-operate in achieving certain definite social and moral benefits for mankind involved in Christ's Gospel, without exacting from them any other subscription beyond that of a willingness to do something to achieve the Christian ideal. "The idea was beautiful," he said, "but it was not a Church." No doubt, not in his sense. But neither is the Free Church Federation a Church in Canon Liddon's sense. Nor is the Anglican Church a Church in the Pope's sense. Hughes was as absolute in insisting upon subscription to his conception of the relation between God and Man through his conception of the Atonement as any Hildebrand or Loyola. On the subject of the Real Presence, while Hughes would have repudiated the phrase, he affirmed the doctrine. In the Catechism, which he was largely instrumental in drawing up, he repudiated again and |