are not likely to throw away their chance of complete selfrealisation in order to enjoy promiscuous flirtation' (p. 246). As they grow older the common reference to a girl who is going to be married as having 'got him at last' is too near the truth to be pleasant. To neither young men nor maidens is there any real thought of the seriousness and responsibility of matrimony. Both are restless and want a change, and marriage is the normal means to obtain it. In many cases among the lower grades of those whose lot we have been considering it is certainly taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding.'

Where marriage signifies to the contracting parties the mystical union of Christ and His Church, there is the religious foundation upon which to build a life for the child. Religion is the pregnant force that can alone transform the whole life and overcome all obstacles.' It must be there from the very beginning as the foundation of home life and the cementing power to unite the family. Amid the degrading circumstances of town life it is often very difficult for religion to have its rightful place. But the child of a God-fearing mother to whom the birth of a child has always been a subject of prayer, starts with an asset in life of which no one can appraise the value. The meanest house and environment in any town cannot deprive the child of the grace of God thus obtained by a mother's prayers. To that mother the service of thanksgiving after child-birth has a real meaning, and she will not fail to bring her babe to be baptized at the earliest opportunity, when others will join

1 Mrs. Bosanquet and Mr. Bray differ strongly as to the capacity of character to overcome the conditions of the environment. They also hold divergent views as to the constituent elements which form family life. In his book, Mr. Bray appears to have adopted some of Mrs. Bosanquet's comments upon his essay in Studies of Boy Life. We agree with Mrs. Bosanquet that family life is something deeper than he suggests and cannot be diagnosed quite so easily as he has attempted in his pages, so that she is a safer guide upon this subject. Reference should also be made to Mrs. Bosanquet's volume The Strength of the People (Macmillan, 1902), especially c. vi., 'The Importance of the Family.'

with the parents in praying 'that this child may lead the rest of his life according to this beginning.' Where there is religion in the home and the will to overcome obstacles, then the way is found for its exercise. The claims of daily work upon the father and other members of the family may prevent him from taking his place as the head of the family to 'read prayers,' but he will find a way to gather them together as one body for devotions upon Sunday. The child who is born into a family of this character finds himself in an environment which has had and continues to have an influence stronger than that of the town, for where the spiritual forces are well balanced within the family, then out of all the stress and strain arise qualities of mutual respect, forbearance, and self-control.' ' From his earliest years the child is taught to believe that at the background of all the trivialities of the day's routine the due performance of his share leads to the establishment of God's Kingdom here on earth, and that he may rightly regard himself as one among those who work for the realization of that Kingdom.

1

Mr. Bray contends that it is impossible to teach the child the lessons of religion amid the surroundings of the town. 'At present they lack the vigour of actual experience; and actual experience from some quarter or other they must have. . . . The first duty of religion is therefore to bring the child of the town into the country and leave him there for Nature to do her work' (pp. 245-6). Mr. Bray must have forgotten that he had previously written, 'The spectator may note and regret the gaps in the child's experience which the environment of the town fails to fill; but they are gaps to him and not to the child' (p. 53). His contention is based upon the assumption that to see in the environment of the town the witness of any vast and unfathomable power passes the wit of man.' But in order to accept this hypo

2

1 H. Bosanquet, The Family, p. 244.

* An interesting contrast with this opinion is afforded by a recent sermon preached in St. Paul's by Canon H. S. Holland: The revelation which reaches us through the towns must have more to say to us than we can get out of lone hills and shining seas and running waters' (Church Times, September 6, 1907).

thesis it is necessary to believe that every child born into the town is placed at a perpetual disadvantage in the sight of God until such time as he can be transplanted into the country. It is, of course, painfully true that there are many forces in the town contending against the growth of religion in the child's soul. Mr. Bray has some justification for saying that

'Awe, reverence, the feeling of mystery, in short all the more characteristic emotions of religion, find in this [the towns] spirit of unrest and pettiness their most bitter foe. Religion affirms that the world is the revelation of the work of unseen forces--silent, unmeasurable, ineffable; the town appears as the whimsical product of human energy-noisy, disordered, frivolous. Religion tells us that each hour is fraught with tragic decisions and shot with eternal significance; the town fills the whole day with trivial actions whose effect is transient and whose meaning, if there be any, is absurd. Religion demands an arena for the struggle of immortal souls; the town supplies a cockpit for the inane bickerings of animated puppets' (p. 244).

But we cannot believe that the town environment has 'bricked up the window of the soul' so that there is no external channel through which God reveals Himself. To the child of the country, God is a creative power. It is true that immediately around the town-bred child there is nothing to help him to a realization of that truth. But a practical illustration may shew that the necessary compensation is provided for its absence. In teaching a class of infants in the country it is quite simple to take the various parts of the dinner which they have just eaten to shew that 'All good gifts around us, Are sent from Heaven above.' They saw their fathers dig the potatoes out of the garden and know that they were fed and watered by God's Almighty Hand.' That is one of the things entirely outside the purview of the town-bred infant, but use may be made of the peculiar sharpness and precocity with which in most cases he is endowed. There are few things which a class of infants do with more pleasure and keenness than tracing the genesis of the food they had for Sunday's dinner. They have never heard of home-made bread, but they can trace the

loaf back through the baker, miller, &c., to the field, and so also with the vegetables. The longer distance from motherearth to the dinner-table presents the necessary mental exercise for the town child, though not a direct revelation of God as a creative power. To him He is a controlling will, revealed through the human element which is paramount in the town. Mr. Charles Booth provides evidence on this point. The saintly self-sacrificing life is that which strikes the imagination of the poor as nothing else does.'1 Or we may take the negative evidence for the same truth. There is probably no greater opposing force to the advance of Christianity in towns than the lives of many who profess and call themselves Christians. The exacting conditions of modern life under which the town dweller does his work are justly regarded as a denial in many cases of the elemental truths of Christianity. But a more concrete example is provided by the visitation of death. In the town there are many more opportunities for the child to be acquainted with all the circumstances than in the country. Death is regarded as a visitation from God. Not infrequently it happens that there results a change in the life of some member of the family to which the dead person belonged. The neighbours see and note the change. Thus the towndweller has the opportunity to recognize the presence of a power whose ways are not amenable to prediction and of whose activity the results are unlimited in extent. But whatever may be the exact means through which God reveals Himself to the individual soul, we know that the revelation is as necessary for the eternal welfare of the town-dweller as the countryman, and that he has equal opportunities of obtaining it. Only the efforts based upon that truth can hope to benefit permanently the town child. Thus it is that the literature concerning his welfare cannot be used to while away an idle half-hour, but demands the careful attention of the reader, with a full recognition of the tremendous importance of the grave problems under consideration.

1 'Religious Influences, Life and Labour,' in London Summary, p. 24, and see also p. 427.

VOL. LXV.-NO. CXXIX.

I

ART. VI. THE SPIRIT OF PORT ROYAL.

The Story of Port Royal. By ETHEL ROMANES. (London: John Murray, 1907.)

PORT ROYAL, like Mary Queen of Scots, is a subject never out of date:

'Ev'n in their ashes live their wonted fires.'

Michelet may deride it as 'une question fort secondaire d'une petite secte catholique,' but the verdict of humanity has been otherwise: Vinet sets forth 'le penchant très vif que j'ai pour l'école ou pour la vérité janséniste,' and innumerable readers have felt the same; each in his turn pursues the subject 'ingenti percussus amore.' What if disciples of Voltaire or of the Jesuits laugh; yet these two categories do not exhaust the world.

Mrs. Romanes, to whom many aspects of truth are dear, has devoted a large volume to this one. She has read the literature of the subject widely and sympathetically; she enters minutely into the details of convent life and the emotions of the holy sisterhood (who excelled in self-analysis); she does justice to the great ladies who patronized the Monastery, making devotion a phase of their æsthetic life; the saints and doctors of the party, Saint-Cyran, Singlin, Arnauld, De Saci, De Tillemont, pass across her pages; she deals excellently with Pascal's Pensées, finding their special force to be in teaching us the intense earnestness, the awful seriousness of human life,' and also 'the exceeding folly of measuring things eternal by human measures.' Two criticisms suggest themselves as we read, though possibly some may consider the first to be a merit. those who desire to be taken back for a time into the atmosphere of Port Royal, to realize for themselves its life, to understand its thought and feeling, Mrs. Romanes somewhat spoils the impression by always having one eye upon the twentieth century. Quotations from Dr. Moberly, Dr. Gore, Dr. Bigg, Canon Mason, our best Anglican writers,' multiply under her pen. And, secondly, like

For