fact. Some men are favoured above others. It is possible to reject the hypothesis of choice by a will that can be called in any sense personal, and so eliminate one kind of unethical action; but this leaves the facts ethically unexplained, and shuts out the possibility of an ethical explanation. Accept the idea of election, and you make such an explanation remotely possible, even though the fact be, for the moment, one of those which John Stuart Mill called 'final inexplicabilities of nature.' You may not be satisfied with St. Paul's robust conviction that the Judge of all the earth must do right; you may suspect that it failed to silence his own obstinate questionings. You may see a glimmer of reason when you understand that election is not merely to privileges, but rather to a life of labour and responsibility. A scheme of salvation in which every man has charismata suited to his needs and opportunities will give small occasion for revolt: an order of Grace, in which the chief charisma and the highest work is charity, will be generally commended by the human conscience. But it is idle to suppose that all can be made plain.

VI.

We have touched what seems to be the value of the idea for the religion of our day. It has passed through a long course of theological treatment; it has barely survived, but it still lives. It lives because it is the recognition of a real experience. The election of Grace is a fact. The hungry are filled with good things, and the rich are sent empty away; Jacob is loaded with the favours of love, and for Esau there is the drouth of Mount Seir, But we are disposed to approach the idea from the side opposite to that by which it entered the Christian consciousness. We do not start from an habitual contemplation of divine favours bestowed on a peculiar people, and proceed to a search for the practical and religious effect of such favours upon the individual recipient. That may still be the course of catechetic instruction, but it is not the course of introspective analysis. Our habit is rather to begin

with the individual consciousness, the personal experience. 'I am consciously at war with the eternal purpose of things, of my own being and of the order of the world. I have experience of sin. I have experience also of a deadly weakness; to will is present with me, but how to perform that which I would, I find not. The utmost effort of my nature disappoints me. I look abroad, and I find that others have the same experience. But if my nature fails,

I need some help that is beyond my nature, a supernatural aid. This, I am told, may be obtained by the grace of God. Others bear witness to it: I too obtain it. Out of weakness I am made strong.'

So the idea of Grace seems to be presented to our minds. Consequently the fact of election is not a stone upon which we stumble towards the end of our inquiry; it is the rock from which we start. The fact that I personally have received this supernatural help, which others may lack, is the amazing circumstance from which my synthesis of religious experience proceeds. St. Paul himself seems to have made such a progress, and he never ceased wondering at it; but St. Paul was probably exceptional, if not unique, among the Christians of the first age. This similarity of thought is due, we may suppose, not so much to any native resemblance between his mind and ours as to his immense influence on the subsequent theology of Grace; for this theology, however little we may be in accord with its form, has entered deeply into the Christian mind. During many centuries it was so persistently analyzing certain facts of spiritual experience, that we cannot easily ignore those facts; we may reject the synthesis of theology, but the results of its analysis hold good. The system of St. Augustine may perish, but it leaves a conviction of the need of supernatural succour; the distinctions of the School may induce resentful weariness, and yet they have contributed something permanent to our mental equipment; we may be impatient of the rigid theories of Port-Royal and of that regard for special providences which Port-Royal shared with men as alien as the Wesleys, but the quiet waiting for the movement of Grace which so strangely penetrated

the tumult of the grand siècle has come, by many channels, to be a part of our practical religion.

If it seem over-bold to assert the general acknowledgment of the need of supernatural succour, that is due probably to a narrow conception of the supernatural-to an excessive polarization of the word. The supernatural is as different as possible from that which is preternatural or contranatural. It is a part of the coherent system of which God is the Author. The difference between the natural and the supernatural is only the difference between ordinary and extraordinary powers, between faculties which are connatural to us and endowments which are bestowed on us. It is possible to lie in the slime and to be fairly happy; but there is a general aspiration after heights of less or greater altitude, towards which we are conscious of struggling in vain unless there be added to us wings of desire and a new spiritual strength. You may be content with Nature, if you prudently set your affection on things within your reach; when you stretch yourself beyond your measure, you need the succours of Grace. There are times indeed for relying chiefly on these. It was the counsel of Professor T. H. Green that a man should cultivate a wise passiveness to the heavenly influences which are ever about him.' On the need of these influences it has been well said by one who certainly does not lack sympathy with the modern spirit :

'This divine and supernatural life, with its disinterested ideals and enthusiasms, is altogether beyond the resources of our natural and separate powers of endurance and abnegation, and beyond our limited psychic and mental energies. Of ourselves we cannot even think, much less desire and perform effectually, what is disinterestedly good in the divine and universal sense. Such thoughts and desires and performances do obtain in us all, but only because we are all by our whole nature and destiny instruments of God's working, which mingles with ours in every instant of our inward life. If it is only through Him that we can think and do anything that is really good and divine, it is only through Him that we can do more: it is only by so adjusting ourselves as instruments to His hands, that from Him the strength and vigour of the Whole may flow into

us and make us equal to the labour and suffering entailed by the service of universal ends-to the strain of a divine life energising in the frail mechanism of our finite nature.' 1

The idea of Grace finds outward expression in the sacramental system of the Church. The symbol may be disproportionately valued, but even at the lowest depth of appreciation the essential meaning is not lost. There is a public, sacred act, by which the heirs of Grace appropriate the divine favour and claim the divine aid. God gives freely, but man must lay hold of the gift. The publicity of the method is invaluable. Subjectively considered, the possession of Grace is consciousness of beauty and favour; and this, if conceived in terms exclusively individual, may have deplorable results. It is a strange, but not inexplicable, perversity which has made some strenuous advocates of the doctrine of Grace to be known chiefly as sour fanatics. A larger practice will justify the insight of Philo; a certain 'hilarity' should flow from the consciousness of Grace received, rising on occasion to enthusiasm.

But of all things implicit in the Idea, that which counts perhaps for most is the potentiality of infinite beauty taken as the measure of a man's value. There is a corresponding virtue-sustained aspiration after the unattainable. The development of this conception of the supernatural may possibly be the destined contribution of our age to the theology of Grace. We will not venture on more than a bare indication of what is meant; it is the tremendous thought of Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra, 'All I could never be. . . . This, I was worth to God.' Here may lie the secret of that ethical presentment of the election of Grace which we impatiently demand. There let the suggestion rest it illustrates the continuing fruitfulness of the idea. T. A. LACEY.

ART. V.-CHILDREN WITHOUT NURSERIES.

1. The Town Child. By REGINALD A. BRAY, L.C.C. (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907.)

2. The Family. By HELEN BOSANQUET. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1906.)

3. The Children of the Nation. By the Rt. Hon. SIR JOHN E. GORST. (London: Methuen, 1906.)

4. Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities. Edited by E. J. URWICK, M.A. (London: Dent, 1904.)

5. The Problem of Boy Work. By SPENCER J. GIBB. (London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1906.)

6. The Apprenticeship Question. Report of a Section of the Education Committee of the London County Council. (London: P. S. King & Son, 1906.)

7. Baby Toilers. By OLIVE C. MALVERY [MRS. ARCHIBALD MACKIRDY]. (London: Hutchinson, 1907.)

THE article on ' Books about Children' in the July number of the CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW calls up by contrast before the minds of many of us another aspect of child life which is gradually receiving a literature of its own, as its importance becomes more fully realized. There are hundreds of thousands of children who know nothing of the 'bright, fireside, nursery clime,' of which R. L. Stevenson sang so beautifully, and social reformers are endeavouring to ascertain with some exactness the conditions of their existence. It may be that there is a tendency to depict them in dull grey tones, forming a sombre contrast to the rosy hue which seems to brighten the life of the child of the nursery, but in dealing with some of these books we shall endeavour, at the risk of being charged with coldness and want of sympathy, to present the life of the child without a nursery' simply and plainly as we know it. There are many degrees and variations, but it may be possible to find certain main features which are a weakness to the national life, because obstacles to the full physical and religious development of the children, and to suggest remedies for the improvement of the conditions in order that they may be enabled 'to learn