books and theological terms, doctrines, practices, and life. The distinction is foreshadowed by the exhortation of St. Peter, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." In our day the extreme illustration is found in answer to the simple but deep inquiry - Why are you a churchman, or why are you not a churchman, or any variation upon this question, such as, why are you a Baptist, or a Methodist? The favorite answer

is the very acme of emptiness - Because I was born in this or that religion. But in point of fact that remains the only reply which the majority can intelligently make unless it be- Because I like the Reverend Mr. So-and-So, or the music, or the class of people who attend such and such a place of worship. Put the question in somewhat different form to the average professedly Christian man or woman" Why are you not a Jew instead of a Christian," and one will be surprised to find how few can reply convincingly. That, then, is the condition of many individuals to-day. Some belong to a class, irrespective of their educational advantages in general, or their position in business and society, or their general intelligence - the class of the ignorant, uninstructed churchmen, quite unable to answer any question in a sober, thoughtful reply, whose religion becomes more and more a matter of convention or custom or prejudice or predilection, and less and less a matter of conviction and deepening understanding and constant development. Others, taking an interest in their Christian profession as the most important thing in life and the central fact around which their activities all revolve, consequently seek continually to know God better that they may love and serve Him better. To the former class belong those among us who have never sought to go beyond the elementary, superficial instruction of the ordinary confirmation preparation, and alas! the number is large of those coming into the communion of the Church in adult years who have never had even such instruction. Or, the impression made by Sunday School teaching has never been followed up in the case of those developing increased capacity for grasping the meaning and practical requirements

of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and all other things that a Christian ought to know and practice for his soul's health. The ignorant churchman, unashamed of his ignorance, satisfied to remain ignorant, is set over against the churchman, eager to learn for his own soul's good and that he may teach and convince others. The gulf between them grows wider and wider. The one has the pearl of great price and would value it more nearly its ineffable worth. The other does not recognize the value and cares not to surrender anything to obtain it.

Is

S this ignorance the fault of the Church? Certainly not, it is the fault of those whose duty it is to teach and present the Christian revelation in all its fullness and completeness. It is the responsibility of the individual who declines to put himself in the way of learning. One office of the Church is to be the Ecclesia Docens, the teaching Church. One common duty of Christians is to recognize their membership in the Ecclesia Discens, the learning Church. The Church will do the teaching, if allowed to work out from our Lord as He presents Himself in her worship, festivals and seasons, in her sacraments and characteristic habits of devotion. That is the method by which people grow into an understanding of catholic truth. Brought into membership of the Church through the gateway of the sacraments, Holy Baptism, and shown the heavenly worship upon earth in the Sacrament of the Altar wherein the Ascended Christ is the object of worship, the education goes on radiating out from that as a centre. Where the Holy Eucharist is made avowedly the chief act of Christian worship, Christian education consists simply in learning better and better the meaning of the Present Christ. The neglected central truth is that Jesus Christ is continually really present with His Church. That truth is taught best by acting as though He is really present. The all too common habit of treating the Sacrament of His especial Presence as a luxury and an irregular, emotional, personal affair, results inevitably in the assump

tion that He is not here amongst us except as we wish Him to be, and that for the most part He is entirely beyond our reach and hearing.

THE

'HE distinction we are emphasizing may be stated as the difference between a Morning-and-Evening-Prayer churchman and a Real-Presence-in-the-Sacrament churchman. Parishes which are typified by these two classes are those that from start to finish keep the Holy Eucharist in the background which results generally in making that great Act a side issue, and those parishes where definite, if simple, worship and teaching make it the daily Act, the daily Bread, the daily Presence. The gripping force of true Eucharistic teaching is tremendous. The soul really is hungering and thirsting for the supernatural Food and Life and Presence. All teaching and strength and worship are centred in Him. All other offices of the Church are focussed on this point. From eucharistic worship men can be lead to other acts of corporate prayer and praise. It is doubtful if, except in the exceptional and extraordinary cases, the reverse is true. Parishes that establish daily Morning Prayer at ten o'clock in the morning are not very likely to get to the daily Eucharist at seven. So the day is not given its true beginning and centre. The same holds good if one wishes to develop eucharistic life among people or in oneself. If we wish people to attend a monthly Eucharist, they must have access to a weekly Eucharist. If it is desired that they come to Festival Eucharists, they must have provided for them week-day Eucharists. If the life is to be centred in communion with our Lord, there must be, as the widespread arrangement, a daily Eucharist.

LOOKING at the matter of instructed and ignorant church

people from another point, we are convinced that the whole Christian world is hungering for that strong, true teaching on this life and the life of the world to come which is the Catholic Faith. Of that Faith the very heart and core are the correlative truths Jesus is God, Jesus is here, Jesus reigns. He is

God, One with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost, therefore to be worshipped and adored as the Second Person of the Ever Blessed Trinity. At the same time He is true and perfect Man by the overshadowing of Mary Ever-Virgin on the part of God the Holy Ghost. He lives in His real Humanity, risen from the dead by His own divine power, laying down His life and taking it again, the Father and Holy Spirit co-operating. His Body is the Catholic Church which is the sphere of the Divine Spirit's working. These are the truths that men receive with joy in their thirst for the living God. Rationalism has disappointed men. Controversy has embittered them. Criticism has lead to selfsufficiency and pride. The negations of Christian truth which are the stock in trade of protestantism are veritable husks which fill but neither satisfy nor nourish. The Christ Who comes in the sacraments, incorporates, feeds, absolves, blesses, is the Christ men need and long for, amidst the joys and sorrows, the successes and failures of life, in the quiet walks of ordinary occupations and in the violence of the battlefield. That is the Christ that the Church has to set forth and to give. Wherever He is thus offered and set forth men are gripped by the full satisfaction of their wants. They are not afraid of strong language on sin and death and judgment when they know the Christ Who can absolve and set them "faultless before the throne" of judgment. They do not decry the setting of His perfect Example before them as an ideal when they have learned that He comes with actual strength in the sacraments to enable them to follow Him. They find the preaching of the Cross an inspiration when they know it as the sign of final victory, not of failure and defeat. The Catholic Faith is the religion for the man in his vigor and heroism.

BUT

UT what of that other section, kept in ignorance, rapidly parting company with salutary truth because of teachers who will not set before them the truths needed for the soul's health, progress, life? Well, for the most part the pulpit is the centre of that presentment of a religious system, and the man in the pulpit dominates, rather than the Divine Teacher in His

Church. The congregation that is to be held solely from the pulpit must be kept interested, amused, stimulated by cleverness, drugged by soothing words, flattered by congratulations on their generosity, refinement, intellectuality, puffed up by comparison with the sinful and the irreligious so that they thank God they are not as other men are. And they must never be taught that there is any authority in religion. We have been told of a city rector who declined to allow the parish Church to be used for an elementary lecture on the Authority of the Church, on the ground that there was a risk of alienating some who were in his congregation because they did not like authority in religion. Then for such all religion must be carefully censored. They must be warned against certain truths, certain teachers. Only a part of the facts must be given to them, and everything Catholic must be labelled papal.

We have been informed that in the reredos of a city Church recently erected figures of Calvin and Luther are to be given niches. Yet if the rector should tell his people what Calvin taught in his awful theory of God's arbitrary election of some and total damnation of others, or should read extracts from Luther's coarse and vulgar sayings and tell them how a monk broke his vows and married a nun, whatever else the congregation might feel, it is highly probable that they would rebel at such men having representation alongside of the Apostle of love and Mary the pure Virgin. It is this teutonic method of censoring Christian truth and explaining away the strong teaching of the Eucharist and the Priesthood that is emphasizing more and more strongly this divergence between ignorance and true, intelligent teaching.

BUT there is a nemesis, a righteous retribution, that meets those

who thus darken counsel. The slightest inkling that there has been any trickery or misrepresentation, any suppressing or hiding of the truth, is likely to stir up all the determination of the earnest man to find out the whole matter. The time comes when negations and denunciations have lost power, as the effect of the opiate given to drug the body wears away. Then the