invariably be made in favor of the pressing demand of the moment. "This ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone," is a counsel which is weighty at the present time. We do not meet the necessities of the case by diverting to Red Cross and other praiseworthy and noble philanthropic objects the money and the sacrifice that heretofore have been devoted to the spread of the Church. The duty of subscribing to the Liberty Loan by no means absolves us from " lending to the Lord." When a commission for arranging terms of a permanent peace begins its work nations will be represented, some of which will be found to be non-Christian, others un-Christian, still others anti-Christian. The positively and avowedly Christian nations to the members of which Jesus is Lord will find their task is to insist on Christ's underlying principles and His Kingdom as the only secure basis. These nations will need to come strongly backed by the Christian Churches within them and the moral witness as well as the practical value of their championship will gain immeasurably if they are conscious of never giving Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Church a lower or secondary place. Now is the time to make effective the principles of the greatest motive force in the world — the Church, the Kingdom of love.

BUT equally imperative with the need of money to carry on

what the Church has undertaken is the need of men for the Sacred Ministry of the Word and the Sacraments. The Church is even less prepared to meet the crisis because of an insufficient force of clergy, than to cope with reduced material resources. We are informed that several hundred of our clergy will be retired this next twelvemonth from active service by the working of the Church Pension Fund machinery, while several hundred more have for the time being been removed from parochial work to supply the demand for Chaplains and religious workers in the army and navy. Here is plainly a shortage of an extremely serious nature. The Seminaries are better attended than might have been expected at this juncture but

they can furnish only a small number of trained priests this year and for several years to come. The Church always needs money, but it must have priests. The assigning to laymen in the emergency of more work in such spheres as lay people may occupy, will not meet the real need. Only Priests may administer the Sacraments, act as physicians of souls and teach with authority. The laity may take up institutional work, act as district visitors, assist in financial matters, but further than that they have not the power nor the right to go. The Church has been handicapped here in America throughout the whole of her history by an insufficient number of priests. Now that a tremendous crisis has come upon us we simply have no resources wherewith to meet it. And those resources cannot be obtained as the Liberty Loan is secured, by immediate payments, or as the Red Cross subscriptions can be met, by drawing a cheque to-day and getting it cashed to-morrow. We are too late for the present emergency. Are we to be too late for the next emergency, whatever form that may assume?

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FEW days ago we met a Bishop from a western Missionary Jurisdiction on a visit to the east. "Have you come east to try to get clergy for your work?" we asked. Yes, and I must have them to take the place of those who have been drawn off by the war," was the reply. Then the Bishop with much feeling agreed perfectly with us that he was a victim of the lack of statesmanship on the part of his predecessors in his field of work and of the Church in this country in general. Not until we again have statesmanship in the conducting of the affairs of the Church shall we be in any position to do the work God has marked out for us to do. We have enough and quite too much of ecclesiastical politics. A certain kind of diplomacy and plausible compromise is applauded to-day by the popular voice. But of that great quality of foresight and insight which, without neglecting the present demands, lives and works for the future, there is

a pitiful absence. Let a Bishop get his diocese staffed with clergy and he will generally view the situation with the utmost complacency. He will not think of the future, immediate or remote, when either he or his successor will face a drift right away from the diocese, leaving parochial posts vacant. He will not move literally heaven and earth to find men who have a vocation for the priesthood and see that they are properly trained to take up and carry on the work and enable an aggressive and extensive pushing out of the Church's lines. He will trust to the Lord and the Seminaries to provide. No Bishop, excepting those in the foreign field and in the newest missionary territory can reasonably expect to get back for his work any greater number of men than he has found and put in training. Statesmanship will foresee conditions certain to arise. Policy will only regard the work of the moment.

W

E must make a great "drive" to find men for the work of the priesthood. That means that every one concerned and interested must get at the matter - Bishops, priests in parishes and in schools, laymen and laywomen (the former not only do not help but positively hinder), fathers and mothers- none are without responsibility and opportunity. There must be no doubt about the place and importance of the priesthood. The office is full of joy and inexhaustible opportunity. In that office Christ uses all who are called and respond, with their varied capacities and acquirements. "He does not call those who are fit, but He fits those whom He calls." "Fit and prepare them by Thy grace for the work of the ministry," is our prayer. And a vocation to the priesthood is imperative in its demand for a response. The fisherman at his net, the business man at the receipt of custom, the scholar in contemplation "under the fig tree," the soldier in the trenches, the man of wealth and social position, like St. Barnabas, as well as young men - these and other types have heard the call and have come forward for the cause. We must create an atmosphere in which vocations can

be heard. The responsibility is heavy upon Church Schools and all colleges where they are associated with a parish Church, for not finding and sending a continual supply to meet the demand. But, of course, if the religious atmosphere of the institution or the parish or the home is thin and not bracing in Church life in general, if the true ideal of the priesthood is not witnessed to and presented, the results will be correspondingly meagre and the quality feeble. First we must present boldly the full catholic doctrine of God, the Trinity, the Divine Head of the Church, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in the Church, of the Sacraments and the highest types of spiritual life. When we as a Church are doing that, vocations will be found and answered. Bishops will benefit from such statesmanship. It has happened before, it must and will happen again.

THE

HE Reverend Dr. Gwynne has written to take exception to the review in the August number of the Monthly of his book Primitive Worship and the Prayer Book as not doing him justice. We regret that we are unable to allow space for rejoinders, as a rule, to articles, contributed or selected, in the pages of the magazine, or to have a correspondence department in which controversy might go on. The method of the presentation of subjects is intended to be constructive, not polemical. Our reviewers are selected with due care, but without reading each book and reviewing the review it would not be practicable to weigh and accept or reject the statements made. A review is not a verdict, to be considered final. It is a personal opinion of some one whose opinion carries weight. It is not ordinarily held to be decisive. Readers can carry the matter further and compare and test statements of both author and reviewer. Divergence from the author on the part of the reviewer is quite a common experience. We recommend our readers to take book notices as suggestions and aids, not as authoritative settlement of all questions involved.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Work of S. Optatus of Milevis against the Donatists: Translated by the Rev. O. R. Vassall-Phillips, B.A., pp. xxxv, 438. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $4.00 net.

Most of our readers do not study the Greek Fathers, or even the Latin Fathers, in the original tongue. To such this volume may be as a new planet swinging into view. For this translation of S. Optatus into English, made by a Roman Catholic priest of the Redemptorist Order, is the first that has ever been presented to the public. Optatus, Bishop of Milevis (or Mileum) in North Africa was an older contemporary of S. Augustine of Hippo, writing his treatise against a Donatist Bishop of Carthage, Parmenian, about 373, and bringing out a second edition some fifteen years afterward. About fifteen years later still S. Augustine wrote another reply to Parmenian, who had then been long dead. The Bishop of Hippo did not regard the work of Optatus as an end of controversy, it would seem. And indeed Optatus is not a great thinker. He is pious and zealous, and he has a certain largeness. He calls his schismatical opponent "brother." "Even where there is sin," he says, "the name of brotherhood is not lost (p. 7). But he is not deep. What gives him particular value in the eyes of Roman controversialists is the fact that he urges the necessity of union with the Cathedra Petri (regarded as distinctly the Episcopal Chair of the city of Rome) with a whole-hearted intensity which cannot be matched in any other writer.

Parmenian, the Donatist, had evidently claimed six notes of a true church he called them dotes, "endowments," as belonging to his sect. The first three were the Cathedra, the Episcopal Throne, the Angelus, a duly commissioned Bishop (referring, of course, to Revelation i:20), and the Fons, the Baptistry. Optatus answers that the original and unique Cathedra is that of S. Peter, and is placed at Rome. Any church which is not in communion with that Cathedra is manifestly separated from the communion of the Apostles generally. Our Lord established one Cathedra expressly to prevent the rest of the Apostles from claiming independent thrones," so that he who should set up a second Cathedra would be shown at once to be a schismatic and a sinner." That may seem to be a highly exaggerated doctrine. It is certainly the doctrine of Optatus. No wonder that our Roman translator delights in him!