the beginning of this year, and there is now keen competition between them. The Russian oil has a flash-point of over 100° Fahr. (Abel test), and, as Mr. Spencer's experiments proved, is practically safe in all lamps. The oil is reported to have higher illuminating powers than the American product. The price is the same. Just now the Anglo-Caucasian Oil Company is selling petroleum which has a flashpoint of 103 (Abel test) for less than the American oil, which is only slightly over 73°. The trade is showing that it prefers a safe oil when easily obtained, but safety cannot be secured until all lowflash oils are prohibited for use as an illuminant.

Owing to the ascendency of the Standard Oil Trust a few years ago many of the refineries at Baku were closed; these will now be opened, and the supply could be enormously increased. The question of supply affects the price more than an alteration of the flash-point, and the supply is inexhaustible. The world's deposits of petroleum have only just been tapped. In America and Russia there are apparently unlimited supplies. There are fields in Galicia and Roumania yet to develop, deposits in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo untouched.

Although a majority of the Petroleum Committee decided that the flash-point should be raised, many reasons are given and excuses sought for inaction. Mr. Jesse Collings, chairman of the Committee, who opposed the decision of the majority, holds Colonel Majendie's views. He considers that the subject was settled for all time in 1879. He regards it as beyond the pale of reform. In explaining the change in 1879 Mr Collings says that: "All that was done was to substitute a reliable method of testing for an unreliable one. The sole object of fixing a flash-point at all was to name a dividing-line between petroleum oil and petroleum spirit." Both these statements are wrong. Dr. Attfield, who, as I have described, took a leading part in fixing the original flash-point, disposes of the contention that there was no change in 1879, when the flash-point was lowered to 73°. The test then made was right, but the basis upon which it was fixed was wrong. "A fallacious and discredited test-apparatus," says Dr. Attfield, was allowed to become the measure of our standard of safety for all lamp-oils." When, therefore," he adds,

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"the Petroleum Committee now propose to make the flash-point 100° for oil used in lamps, it simply restores our legal standard of safety to its original figure, and does neither more nor less than what the Government and the Legislature intended to enact in 1862 and again in 1868."

Mr. Collings's other statement that the sole object of the flash-point is to make a dividing line between petroleum oil and spirit, that, too, is based on a misapprehension and a fallacy. The Petroleum Act makes no distinction between oil and spirit. It refers to petroleum below the legal flash point and petroleum above it, and the object of

the flash-point was to fix the safety line. If it is found by experience that the safety line is too low to give the maximum amount of safety there should be no difficulty in raising it. The administrative difficulties in connection with such a change are unduly magnified. The same machinery which enforces the present test would, without much extra trouble or expense, carry out new regulations. No oil below the legal flash-point would be imported for illuminating purposes, simply because it would not pay exporters to send it, or oil merchants to deal in it. It is suggested that the Russian and Scotch oil interests are now seeking to get the flash-point raised "simply as a matter of business." For the same reason the Standard Oil Trust seeks to keep it down. It will be easier to raise the flash-point when the powerful oil interests are at variance, and the present state of the market shows that there will be no rise in price with the increased safety.

If Parliament raises the flash-point it will provoke more competition and ultimately lead to a reduction in price. American refiners

outside the Standard Oil Trust are, Mr. Spencer understands, quite prepared to manufacture 100°-flash oil, and to furnish it in unlimited quantity." Prohibit the sale of dangerous low-flash oil in England and hundreds of lives now lost will be saved, fires will be diminished by one-fourth, and a blow will be struck at the most powerful monopoly which has ever existed. Attempt to regulate the manufacture, importation, and sale of lamps by a measure which it will be next to impossible to enforce, and at best can only be a palliative, and the only people whose interests will benefit will be the Oil Kings of America.

ROBERT DONALD.

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

In the region of ecclesiastical org.

N the region of ecclesiastical theory the present situation is unThoughts and tendencies, which had for some time past been working more or less beneath the surface in various ecclesiastical circles, have emerged almost coincidently in books which can fairly be taken as representative. Three such may here be named, as together affording occasion for an attempt to estimate afresh the fundamental issues involved in Lightfoot's great essay on "The Christian Ministry," published exactly thirty years ago.

The works in question are Hort's "Christian Ecclesia," published early last year, Moberly's "Ministerial Priesthood," which followed towards the end of that year, and Brown's "Apostolical Succession," which appeared several months ago. The first of these is a careful, positive exposition of the "early history and the early, conceptions of the Ecclesia," as these appear in the New Testament itself, and is by one who, as combining to a rare degree the historical and philosophic tempers, has been esteemed by so good a judge as Professor Sanday to be "our greatest English theologian of the century." The two other works cover a larger range and are more controversial in character, each serving to emphasise the attitude of one school of thought towards the high clerical conception of the Christian ministry.t

"Review of the Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort," in the American Journal of Theology, i. 97, where the exact meaning of the phrase is made clear.

In what follows we shall say little of Dr. Brown's book, just because we are in fundamental agreement with its general conception of Church life and thought in the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, the period on which the main issue turns, and where, as it happens, the work strikes us as soundest and most competent. On the other hand, our discussion largely takes the form of a criticism of Dr. Moberly, who, for the moment may be regarded as the typical exponent of the theory which we are opposing.

The newer note in the discussion, as at present carried on, is the explicit reference to the first principles of the Church's life, which in turn implies in a way that must one day be made explicit and decisive the first principles of the Gospel of Christ. Meantime, it is our purpose to review the subject, namely, all that is involved in the conception of " Apostolical Succession," in the light of the actual state of the discussion, and to attempt some estimate as to how the balance, historically and philosophically-ie., as to facts and their larger meaning at present inclines as between the two opposed parties.

The need for a fresh "Apologia" of the High Anglican position has recently been felt the more keenly that Hort's great weight has been thrown decisively into the opposite scale. It is, indeed, a most significant fact that Hort, who earlier in life could, from the standpoint of a follower of Maurice, express sympathy with High Church principles more than with any other, has ranged himself (as we show later) definitely with those who repudiate the exclusive clericalism that unchurches communions outside the "Apostolical Succession." So that self-styled "Catholics" must now be content to place his name, side by side with that of his friend Lightfoot (with whom, on one cardinal point at least, Bishop Westcott must also be ranked), on the “Index Expurgatorius," which at once proves and disproves claim to the title "Catholic."

In the execution of our task we have felt that there was a double gain in the co-operation of members of two communions, standing in some respects at a considerable distance from each other in feeling and traditions. It seemed, on the one hand, to give an aid to objectivity of view beyond that of the mere two pairs of eyes that are better than one; and, on the other, to bring out the essential idea of Church unity which we believe to be at once primitive and eternal. For, to illustrate our position by anticipation, we think that we put the case mildly when we confess that we are, as members of our respective communions, nearer to one another in all that constitutes Christian fellowship, and so, Church unity, than was the average Jewish Christian of Palestine to the average Gentile Christian, with whom he would not even eat. And yet, this, as we hope to show by-and-by, goes to the very root of the matter.

At the outset we have no difficulty in agreeing with much in Dr. Moberly's criticism of Lightfoot's essay on the ground of its limited scope and the unguarded way in which some of its "pre-suppositions" are alluded to. No one claims that a fully adequate feeling for the philosophic side of things was among Lightfoot's many qualities. As Hort said of him with reference to his commentaries, his was "masculine good sense, unaccompanied by either the insight or the delusion of subtlety." But if one wishes to see what Lightfoot gained by not

exposing himself to the "delusion of subtlety," one has only to read the more ambitious parts of Dr. Moberly's able but far from lucid work. We cannot but agree with a eulogistic review in the Guardian, when it says that "he exhibits to a certain extent the 'defect of his quality'' of intellectual subtlety. "He states strongly in his preface the truth that pre-suppositions are necessary for the estimate of evidence, as in other departments, so in the ecclesiastical. But we think he states it somewhat one-sidedly. The exact examination of evidence is what is intended to verify or to correct and that not only in detail'— our pre-suppositions. There is such a thing as a very fundamental correction of one's premisses." On the other hand, when the same reviewer hails Dr. Moberly as "beyond all other living Englishmen qualified to perform " the task of examining the pre-suppositions implied in Lightfoot's theory of the Christian ministry, we are quite unable to follow him; holding, on the contrary, that, while marked by plausible suggestiveness, his own analysis of the idea of society in its various forms is both inadequate and confused. The former epithet applies specially to his discussion of the philosophical idea of society, the latter to the theological and specifically Christian idea.

It is certainly a good thing in considering the character of the Christian society to bear in mind all that is properly and philosophically implied in the conception of human society in general. It must be recognised by any philosophical inquirer that social life, in order to attain its end and secure permanence, must develop some kind of organisation. There must, that is, be in society differentiation of function. For the purpose of bringing out clearly this great fundamental principle the analogy of the living organism has been found very helpful. But the analogy may easily be over-pressed: we had a good deal too much of it in some writings on political theory which were fashionable a few years ago. It is somewhat surprising to find that Dr. Moberly seems scarcely aware of this danger, and apparently wishes to apply the analogy, without the necessary qualifications, to the society of the Church. He seems to suppose, though, indeed, here as elsewhere it is not always easy to follow exactly his line of thought, that the relation of the Church to its members is almost the same as that of the physical body to its members. But while it is true that the physical members cannot exchange places or functions with each other, this cannot be said to be the case in the political organism; nor, unless special proof is brought, can it be said, with even any presumption of probability, to be true of the Church. The truth is that, while it is very important to approach the inquiry into the nature of the Church with a philosophical theory of society, it is still more important to see that our philosophical conceptions are clear and accurate. We can scarcely say this of Dr. Moberly's treatment of the subject. Not only does he appear to labour under the