Again, though we should be very sorry to have 'Moody and Sankey' or 'Salvation Songs' introduced, on any occasion, into our consecrated churches, where the presence of much balderdash in the most popular of our hymnals is already trying enough, yet Church versifiers might well purvey, for use at irregular meetings, simple verses with a good doctrinal tone which might be sung to taking airs with good choruses. If S. Augustine could condescend to write a Psalmus Abecedarius against the Donatists, with a lively chorus, the work cannot be beneath us.

It

But there are three special points on which we should like to dwell a little. The first is the advisability of doing more work in the open air than has been common lately in the Church. The Salvationists have taught us to see once more how much may be done there. The people will not come to church, nor to any other of our buildings, yet awhile. They have to be shown the way in by our first going to them, Street preaching is almost sure to win attention, and more than ever when Churchmen take to it. Long habit has made the people think that Churchmen can only 'pray from a form,' that they know of no religion except within the four walls of the church, that the parsons are paid to go through a certain routine of services, and care for nothing more. comes home to them with surprise when they see the clergyman take his stand in the alley or by the roadside, accompanied by a band of faithful men, and after singing a hymn begin to preach a simple extempore sermon. We have known cases where the parish clergyman has long laboured in vain to bring rough miners or fishermen to the church; but directly he has gone to the hedge or the beach where they lounge, they have flocked from every side, and have listened with the deepest attention and respect. We cannot but think that it would be a point gained if some regular outdoor preaching-stations were appointed in various places, like Old Paul's Cross, where sermons might be regularly delivered. But preaching is not the only thing which the Salvationists have shown to be useful out of doors. Has not the Church lost much by so seldom appearing out of doors in her majesty and beauty? The sight of a great procession, whether silent or singing, has always a profound effect upon English spectators. Would it not be well, at special seasons, like the Rogation Days or Holy Week, and at some great festivals, to let those who never see the inside of a church have a chance of watching choir and clergy in their robes, together with as many of the faithful laity as can come, and members of the

guilds with their badges, file slowly through the streets, singing the solemn strains of the Litany, or of the Psalms, or of suitable hymns? The impression produced upon the War Cry, and upon the secular press of Newcastle as well, by the sight of the procession in which Archdeacon Watkins walked appears to have been very great. One of the Newcastle papers cailed it as 'sensational' a coup as anything done by the Salvationists themselves, and expressed its conviction that the display was most salutary. And if in some towns the Church procession should suffer some of the same treatment that the Salvationists have suffered, we are not prepared to say that the Church would lose anything by it.

The second point which we notice is this. The great aim of the Salvation Army is to make all their converts begin at once to give testimony to what God has done for them, in public meetings. There are great and obvious dangers connected with this course. We ourselves should strongly deprecate it, at least without much modification. But the time seems to be come when on all hands it is recognized that a large development of lay preaching is necessary. It is quite impossible that the clergy-so few in number as they are in proportion to the population-should do all the preaching work that is required. Many of the most excellent among them have no trace of a gift that way; it is clear that God never intended them for preachers, but for other (perhaps far higher) functions of the ministry. Among the laity there are many thousands, who at present are only listeners, who have latent within themselves the power to become most effective preachers. It is not our proposal that the laity should preach in church-though, under proper sanctions, we can believe this innovation might in some cases be found as useful as that which startled Africa when Bishop Valerius commanded the priest Augustine to preach in his presence. But at no period of Church history that we are aware of have the laity been debarred from giving religious addresses extra ecclesiam. It is there, in the mission-room, the town-hall, the market-place, the back slums-anywhere and everywhere if a congregation can be gathered-that we should wish to hear the laity taking their turn along with the clergy. But it is not only the cultured laity, such as might well be admitted to the order of Readers, whose voices we should wish to hear on those occasions. There is no reason why every sincere Churchman should not speak. The Salvationists have proved to demonstration that upon the masses of our population not educated eloquence nor long sermons produce the greatest effect. It is the

simple personal witness of men of their own class whose hearts God has touched, and who do not mind rising up one after another and saying, in a couple of ungrammatical sentences, that they are the happier and better for knowing the saving truth. There are great numbers of illiterate men who never would make 'local preachers,' or anything of the kind, who could be safely trusted to say that they never knew what joy was till they found it in prayer, or in reading the Bible, or at the altar, or even in the confessional; and such testimonies would tell upon their hearers more than the clearest expositions of scriptural texts, or the sermons of our most powerful missioners. It would of course be necessary that these men should go under the charge of some wise person, who would be able to stop any utterances that might be unedifying. But in this way the masses can be reached when perhaps nothing else can reach them :—

'Are there not teeming thousands round about you who never heard the Name of Jesus, and who care nothing for Him, who live every day trampling His law under their feet? For Christ's sake send somebody after them. If they will not have your doctors of divinity and your polished divines, get hold of fishermen and costermongers and send them. Let the people have a chance for their souls.''

One good lay preacher going forth accompanied by half a dozen such honest Christian fellows would find himself in a strong position; and few better ways could be devised for training men to be lay preachers themselves, than to let them begin with a few short sentences at first among a number of other speakers.

And will it bring an indelible taint of heresy upon this Review, if we venture on a still further and bolder inquiry? Is the question finally, irrevocably settled, that women are on no occasion to speak publicly in suitable places on religious topics? When S. Paul says, 'Let your women keep silence in the churches,' is it absolutely certain that his meaning is not explained by the clause following, that if they wish for elucidations, they are to ask their husbands at home, instead of interrupting the speaker 'in the church?' When the same Apostle says, 'I suffer not a woman to teach,' may he not possibly mean that he forbids women to be made authoritative exponents of the Christian tradition, or to make themselves arbiters of the orthodoxy of their ministers, as in spite of his prohibition they sometimes do; for he continues, nor to usurp authority over the man?' If he did indeed mean that 1 Aggressive Christianity, Third Address, p. 16.

no woman was to 'teach,' alas for our Sunday schools, and for many other branches of Church instruction! The teaching work of women in sisterhoods, and mission houses, and penitentiaries, would all be doomed if we are literally to understand that no woman is to teach. One of our greatest needs in the present day is the establishment of some kind of order of Sœurs Chrétiennes, to undertake religious instruction in the day schools; but we must pause, if S. Paul has laid his inspired ban upon all teaching by women. The same Apostle has another passage, in which he asserts that a woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered dishonours her head. There can be but little doubt that he is speaking of what takes place at public Church gatherings. Can it be confidently denied that, in prescribing how the woman was to be attired while praying or prophesying in public, he gave sanction to the usage? Was he shocked, and did he protest, when, staying in the house of Philip the Evangelist, he discovered that the Evangelist's four daughters all prophesied? As we have said that we are unprepared to welcome laymen as preachers in church, the assertion need not be repeated with an à fortiori in regard to women. Far be from all whom we love the Salvationist interpretation of S. Paul's principle of neither male nor female in Christ.' The horror with which the Apostolical Constitutions condemn any public liturgical ministrations of women as heathen and not Christian ought to be felt by all: and preaching, in the course of any of the solemn offices of the Church, partakes of the liturgical character. If women are ever to be allowed to preach, they should certainly be restricted to unconsecrated buildings and to informal occasions. But we have no scruple in saying, that so far as our experience of the Salvation Army is concerned, the power would be gone from its meetings if the women were silent. While the men often repel, by their business-like air, their jocularity, their self-satisfaction, their irreverence in prayer, in the addresses of the women, and in their prayers, the congregation cannot fail to be moved by the sincerity, the modesty, the devoutness, the love of souls, the self-forgetfulness, which is so prominent in nearly all of them. We should like every one to read-it is too long to quote here, and we should spoil it by cutting it down-the touching account which Mrs. Booth gives in one of her lectures of the way in which she at last yielded to her husband's wishes and began publicly to witness for Christ.' Men, at

1 Aggressive Christianity, Seventh Address, pp. 14-19.

least, who read that account-whatever her sisters may think -will be disposed not to condemn her too harshly. A far smaller proportion of women than of men would be found qualified to give religious discourses, as we believe many Quakers would feelingly testify. And feeble sermons from women would be quite as intolerable to most hearers as feeble sermons from men. But that some women have a wonderful gift for public speaking no one will deny who has heard addresses from Miss Hammond, or Mrs. Josephine Butler, or Mrs. Pearsall Smith, whatever he may have thought of the matter of their speeches. God does undoubtedly give to some persons gifts which He does not mean them to exercise on earth; is this quite assuredly a case in point? It is easy to show the weakness of arguments for the preaching of women based on such passages as Psalm lxviii. 111 or Isaiah xl. 9, where the female 'preachers' spoken of are either choirs of women singing patriotic choruses or cities personified. It is easy to show that the traditions of the Church have been against the preaching of women, and that a Maximilla in the early days, or a Joanna Southcote in modern times, are not reckoned among Catholic luminaries. The whole span of Church history, from the Apostolic age till now, contains no names of great female preachers, with the one illustrious exception of S. Catharine. But if the thing was allowed by the Apostles in their time, and if even once the Church has since allowed the same, is it not conceivable that the circumstances of our age may make it right for the Church, in the amplitude of her authority, to use an ancient force once more, and, under as severe restrictions as she may please, to give leave, in the words of Joel and S. Peter, for her daughters again to prophesy?

ART. VII.-JOHN INGLESANT.

John Inglesant: a Romance. By J. H. SHORTHOUSE. Two Volumes. Second Edition. (London, 1882.)

How are we to review a book which everybody has already read, and everybody has discussed? A notice such as we now offer proposes in general to call attention to a book; it

1 It must be remembered that, in Psalm lxviii. 11, the LXX has the masculine, not the feminine.