on the platform, that the most important part of it, to my mind, was the reformation-nay, rather the revolution-which it effected in the mode of electing the Guardians of the Poor. Remember that before 1894 no one could be a guardian unless he had a certain property-qualification. The voter had a plural vote, greater or less according to the length of his purse; and the election was by open voting on paper. It was impossible for a poor man to be a guardian, and almost impossible for any number of poor men to return the candidate of their choice. We reversed all that by a stroke of the pen. We made the poorest man in the parish equally eligible with the banker or the squire. We established the principle of "one man, one vote," and we gave the voter the protection of the ballot. Surely, with the aid of this reform, it ought to be possible for us Christian Socialists to bring the administration of the Poor Law into something like accordance with Christian charity.

Our palpable and inexorable duty is to return such guardians as will distinguish between deserved poverty and undeserved poverty. For deserved poverty-the poverty which comes of idleness, drunkenness, thriftlessness, rascality-the workhouse is the proper place. For undeserved poverty-the poverty which overtakes honest, industrious, sober old people, through years and sickness and the loss of children-provision should be made at home. When a man has done his level best all through a long life to serve his day and generation in his calling as a labourer or an artizan, I submit that he is as much entitled to public assistance in his old age and decrepitude as the soldier, the sailor, the policeman, or the Civil Servant. And till Parliament gives us some rational system of old-age pensions, carefully distinguishing between deserving and undeserving cases,

Christian charity demands a much more liberal use of out-door relief.

Men who, like myself, were undergraduates at Oxford in 1875 will never forget a University sermon by Dr. Pusey on "Christianity without the Cross a Corruption of the Gospel." It had been suggested by a book, just then widely popular among undergraduates, called "Modern Christianity a Civilized Heathenism,” and the great Doctor spoke of the duty of the rich to the poor in a passage which I might not have ventured to write, but which I will venture to quote :

What shall we have to say to our Lord when He comes down to be our Judge-when we shall behold Him whom by our sins we have pierced? "True, Lord, I denied myself nothing for Thee; the times were changed, and I could not but change with them. I ate and drank, for Thou too didst eat and drink with the publicans and sinners. I did not give to the poor, but I paid what I was compelled to the poor-rate, of the height of which I complained. I did not take in little children in Thy name, but they were provided for. They were sent, severed indeed from father or mother, to the poorhouse, to be taught or no about Thee, as might be. I did not feed Thee when hungry. Political economy forbade it; but I increased the labour-market with the manufacture of my luxuries. I did not visit Thee when sick, but the parish doctor looked in on his ill-paid rounds. I did not clothe Thee when naked. I could not afford it, the rates were so high, but there was the workhouse for Thee to go to. I did not take Thee in as a stranger, but it was provided that Thou mightest go to the casual ward. Had I known that it was ThouAnd He shall say, "Forasmuch as thou didst it not to one of the least of these, thou didst it not to Me." And in a foot-note to the sermon, the Doctor added :—

Reliance on the Poor-law interferes with Christian charity; offers, in large towns, a mode of relief which the better poor would rather starve than accept; and in times of suffering, as of an epidemic, offers relief in a way which degrades the poor in their own eyes and of their compeers, if they accept it. . . If the poor, like the lower animals, needed only

food and warmth, the poor-house system provides these, I doubt not. But the poor have souls and loving hearts, more loving than many rich, and to separate those whom God has joined, as the condition of supplying them with necessaries, is un-Christian and anti-Christian. I fear that in the Great Day many even kindly people will find that reliance on the Poor-law has steeled their heart against Christ.

And now I have done. I thank you for allowing me this opportunity of enforcing on your attention a truth in which I am persuaded that you believe as firmly as I do, and the practical application of which vitally concerns our claim to the title of Christian Socialists. Our Lord and Master has given us, as citizens of this great city, the power, and with the power most assuredly the duty, of promoting His Kingdom on earth by brightening, purifying, and humanizing the lives of men. To that great end let us press forward with a single aim, not merely talking the language of Christian Socialism, but doing its work and living its life;

In the undoubting faith, although
It be not granted us to see,
Yet that the coming age shall know

We have not wrought unmeaningly;
When gold and chrysoprase adorn
A city brighter than the morn.

LIBERALISM AND THE CHURCH1

R. CAINE, M.P. for the Camborne Division, pre

MR. siding the other day over a meeting of "The

Deputies of Protestant Dissenters of the three denominations-Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists"said that "Nonconformity was more and more dominating the Liberal party. More than half the members of the present House of Commons on the Liberal side were Nonconformists, and the Liberal party were united as one man in resisting Sacerdotalism. On the other side of the House they were not without friends who might be relied on to help them on all their special questions."

Now, Mr. Caine has (like Lord Macaulay) "his own heightened and telling way of putting things," and this must be taken into account when we consider his public utterances, or, as Pennialinus would say, his Pronouncements. But, making all due allowance for the way of putting it, I fancy that Mr. Caine's opinion is in substance not far wrong. Liberalism and Nonconformity are old allies. The later Whigs were a good deal tainted with Socinianism, and eagerly co-operated with their Nonconformist friends to keep the Church in its proper place. Nonconformist Liberalism smashed the Education clauses of Sir James Graham's Factory Act. The same power in the present day makes a Religious Census impossible. It says, with Matthew Arnold's friend, Mr. Bottles, "No-here I put down my foot. No Government on 1 The Pilot, 1901.

earth shall ask me whether I am a Particular Baptist or a Muggletonian." And so the insidious project is defeated. That Nonconformists should be eagerly on the watch for what they believe to be encroachments on their liberties, and that they should actively cooperate with the political party which will defend those liberties, is highly natural, and even laudable. What is less amiable is the desire, if it exists, to violate the conscientious rights of Church-people, and to force the Liberal party into a policy of persecution. This was impossible as long as Mr. Gladstone lived. His hold over the Nonconformist conscience was one of the most curious phenomena in contemporary politics, and it strengthened as time went on. When he first came over to Liberalism, the chains of Oxford still hung about him, and he was more than suspected of obscurantist leanings. But during the last twenty years of his active life a complete harmony was established; and the Nonconformists, although they regarded his theology as an irritating and dangerous delusion, gave him an enthusiastic and whole-hearted support. He on his part was active in promoting those moral principles of political action on which Nonconformists set the greatest store, and he repeatedly did due homage to the righteous influence of Nonconformity in great issues of public controversy. Yet, highly as he esteemed the political value of Nonconformity, he never suffered it to affect his dealings with the Church. In 1870 he strained the loyalty of his Nonconformist allies to bursting-point by saving the Church schools when he passed the Education Act. In 1874 he fought a single-handed fight against the P. W. R. Act, which all Protestantism demanded. In later years, when it was proposed to penalize King's College for being a Denominational institution, he said: "It is no more virtuous