A GERMAN READING FROM SHAKESPEARE. ULK (Falstaff) to the Prince of Wales: "Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch; this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest."HENRY IV., 1st part, Act 2, Sc. 4.

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But as

HE Prince of Wales is now fifty years of age, and a grandfather. Since his birth, in all churches by law established, which comply with the plain ordering of the Book of Common Prayer, the prayers quoted above have been offered twice daily, morning and evening, for half a century. daily service is the exception rather than the rule, we may take it that the above prayers are only offered twice a week, instead of fourteen times, as by law enacted, in each of the Anglican churches throughout the Empire. As there are 28,000 clergy in England alone, there must be at least 20,000 churches at home and abroad using the Book of Common Prayer. The prayer for Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, must, therefore, in the last half century have been said aloud in the hearing of the worshippers at least 100,,000 times since first the cannon thundered at the birth of the Heir-Apparent to the British throne. It is a moot question how many in a congregation actually unite in the prayers that are read by the minister. Perhaps we shall not overestimate the average if, out of a congregation of a hundred, we suppose that ten intelligently follow the service so far as to experience a real wish that the petition sounding in their ears should be granted. Allowing ten persons who really join, I do not say with passionate fervour, but with a conscious desire, more or less tepid, that their humble beseechings on behalf of the Prince may be heard at the Throne of Grace, we have one thousand millions of prayers offered up to God that he would endue the Prince of Wales with His Holy Spirit and enrich him with heavenly grace.

Eight hundred and eighty millions of prayers, and as answer thereto the Baccarat Scandal of Tranby Croft! As a prayer gauge on the principle suggested by Professor Tyndall, His Royal Highness, who in course of time may become Defensor Fidei, can hardly be said, as Heir-Apparent, to have contributed much to strengthen the faith of the modern world in the efficacy of prayer. Rightly or wrongly, if we may judge by the utterance of such grave and official organs of public opinion as the Times and the Standard, the net result attained so far has been so unsatisfactory as to amount to a dramatic fiasco, as if all

the

prayers of the Church for fifty years had been but as the whirling of prayer mills innumerable of pious Thibet.

With such a result before us, is it not time to ask ourselves seriously, and with due practical precision, whether, after all, the fault lies with the Prince or with Providence; whether, in fact, the fault does not lie mainly with ourselves? May we not, as a nation, largely be responsible for the unsatisfactory issue of our prayers? Have we not been imitating the lazy waggoner of Esop, who, when his cart stuck in a mudhole, contented himself

with bellowing to Hercules instead of clapping his own shoulder to the wheel-with this difference, that we ourselves have made the mudhole in which our princely chariot is sticking? This is the topic to which, in all seriousness, recent events call our attention with an imperiousness that may not be gainsaid.

It is surely time, after fifty years, that we should give Hercules a fair chance. Even the most fervid Christian has come to recognise that if you allow a girlchild to be reared in a haunt of vice, and suckled on gin, you have no more right to expect a miracle to be wrought in response to your prayer that the girl might grow up a vestal virgin, than you have to expect Snowdon to be cast into St. George's Channel, let prayer be offered never so earnestly. Is it not just the same with the Prince? It is true that the Book of Common Prayer tells us that God is the only Ruler of princes; but it is quite possible for man so to mar His work that His ruling seems to go awry. If we cannot help, at least we might refrain from hindering.

A familiar story occurs to me in this connection. A revival service was once going on in a Methodist chapel, a drunken mob burst open the door and was pouring in, when they found their progress arrested by a stalwart convert, who, planting himself in the porch, drove the invaders back by the simple but effective process of knocking down like ninepins all who came within reach of his fists. The preacher, hearing the hubbub, hurried to the porch, and was greatly scandalised to find his convert wielding weapons of warfare which, though natural, were not less carnal. "Brother," said he hastily, "forbear! Is it not written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'" "Yes, yes," answered the convert impatiently, as he dealt another intruder one from the shoulder, which sent him reeling, "I know all that, but-don't you seeI'm helping the Lord ?" The moral of the Tranby Croft scandal seems to be, that the time has fully come for some of that kind of helping to be done without delay.

I. BACCARAT AND BETTING.

If the Prince of Wales had never done anything worse in his life than play at baccarat for stakes which, in proportion to his income, were no higher than the halfcrowns staked at any round game, there would not be so much reason for wringing our hands over the absence of any apparent answer to the prayers of the Established Church. It is, of course, perfectly consistent for those who, like most of the Evangelicals, and Nonconformists of the Prince's age, have never staked to win or lose a pennypiece in their lives, to lift up hands of holy horror at the spectacle of the Prince amusing himself at baccarat. But the ostentatious and Pharasaic