make an engagement for a week night to accompany the Bishop and the choir of his city church, St Andrew's Undershaft, to a little concert at one of the numerous out-and-out radical clubs he has visited (he would go anywhere for such a chance'), where you may hear the good Bishop asked to urge the clergy to come among them and speak to them, as they would like to know the clergy better. The Bishop of Bedford, late Rector of Spitalfields, says of his former parish:-'There is less reckless helplessness, less indifference, and very little open hostility. They are a really grateful class, and are improved by seeing that the hypocrite is not encouraged, but is the man against whom "woe" is denounced, and not the poor fellow who is the miserable victim of sin and misfortune. I am very hopeful, but there must be no relaxation of effort, or we go back at once.' The Rev. A. J. Robinson, rector of Whitechapel, who traces the beginning of improvement to the incumbency of Mr Champneys, afterwards Dean of Lichfield, writes :-'I really think it would hardly be possible to go anywhere in the world and find a more sincere and warm-hearted body of Christians than the communicants of this parish.

work are all carried on, under the clergy, by the people themselves. . . . . I have never heard a word of insult or blasphemy when preaching in the open air or working among the people.. There is not a single court where we have not had service this summer, and everywhere the people welcome us. Poor dear Whitechapel! It is terribly maligned, but I am sure there are as bright specimens of true Christian life here as in any parish in the kingdom. I only wish people who write about East London would condescend to learn the real state of things. I think our bad points are more visible, and therefore people infer we are far worse than others.'

"There is an East End in Edinburgh as well as in London; and it may be well to consider how the labours of our Presbyters in it compare or contrast with those of the Bishops in the Southern Metropolis. Three rocks bar the entrance of the clergy to the East Ends of Scotland, and these are Sabbatarianism, ultra-Calvinistic orthodoxy, and 'Boreoboolagah.' There are certain eccentricities of the left wing of the clergy, which, though amusing in themselves, seriously lessen the power which the Church might exercise in humanising the lower strata of society. These eccentricities of the left wing mar the flight of the Church. What a contrast there is between

recent deliverances of Synods and Presbyteries on the matter of Sunday observance, and the following liberal sentiments of the Bishop of Wakefield :— 'They are no great church-goers in the East, it is true. Fashion is dead against it. An astonishingly small proportion of labouring men attend any place of worship. Rather more women go. But I do not think we can gauge the real character of a people by this test. Suppose a man goes to church in the West End because it is the fashion, and another man stays away from church in the East End because it is the fashion, is there much to choose between them? If the motive characterises the action, I do not see that the one who goes has any right to boast over the one who does not go; and then, notwithstanding this absence of public profession of religion, there are some moral virtues very conspicuous among the people. They are beautifully kind and generous to one another, and there is a certain rough, honest independence among them, which has led to their being compared to Yorkshiremen.' Then in religious teaching, contrast the average Scottish sermon with these remarks of the Bishop:-'A large number of the people have got hold of a strange travesty of Christianity, which they suppose to be the teaching

of the Bible and the Church. No doubt, this is in a great measure the not unnatural result of very defective teaching on the part of the Church in the past. But it is curious enough that a hard, narrow ultra-Calvinism, which has vanished from our pulpits, should have survived in the traditional conceptions of our teaching accepted by the ignorant and unfriendly. I have known a professed atheist, a lecturer against the Bible and Christianity, after hearing a simple sermon upon the love of God in Christ, declare that he had never heard of a God of that sort before, and allow that, if what he had listened to was true, he had been all wrong. And it is quite common to hear men assert that the Bible and Christianity teach that God has made most men for eternal destruction. Nor is there a more frequent complaint against religion than that which accuses it of being concerned only with another world, which is a long way off, if it exists at all, while it leaves men in their sin and suffering in this world uncared for and unhelped. But when larger, juster, worthier ideas of God and of His truth are once recognised and laid hold of, there is a ready and sometimes a startling response.' Professor Flint will have to function for some time before he gets diffused in the Scottish Churches a

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theology so well adapted to gain an entrance to the people's hearts."

"The clerical mind in Scotland has not many opportunities of expressing itself collectively on matters of public interest.* There is only the monthly meeting of the Presbytery, or the meeting of the Synod, or the grand annual parliament of the General Assembly at which the bottled-up wisdom of the Church can get vent. It is always interesting, therefore, to sit at the feet of the clergy on these choice occasions, and watch the scintillations of wisdom that are struck out by the contact between the cut-and-dried preconceptions of the left wing aforesaid and the facts of ordinary life. The topics of discussion are not of such farreaching interest as those which engaged attention in the Church Congress at Manchester, nor are they treated with quite as much learning and ability. Their importance lies rather in the glimpse which they give of certain characteristics of the clerical mind in Scotland. In a country in which there are so many ecclesiastical subdivisions it is necessary, for the purposes of accurate scientific observation, to make careful use of the inductive method. There is always much in each Synod or * In this section my practical friend is rather sardonic.