to know." The old-fashioned Nonconformists fully shared this view. They looked upon the Catechism not indeed as "gospel," and as requiring to be supplemented by the teaching of "faith" and "conversion," but still as embodying certain permanent and universal elements of doctrine and morals which it was good for everybody to know. The more one sees of country people in all parts of England, the stronger grows one's conviction that the forcing of an arid, barren secularism upon them would be the greatest outrage imaginable. They are "lapsed" in practice, utterly vague in doctrine, but they do not yet think that "the Hope of the World is a lie." If it is true, let it be taught, and let the parish clergyman whose business it is see to the teaching of it. Their attitude to the Church generally is that though they make very little use of its ministrations they like it to be there. They like to feel that the clergyman may be called for in an emergency. "She prayed to Almighty God to relieve her of all her sins" you will perhaps be told of someone who died after an illness of an hour or two; "of course we know we can all pray to Almighty God for ourselves, but I always think a little help doesn't do any harm." This is of course the specific doctrine of the via media-the midway course between a rigid "sacerdotalism" and the absolute rejection of it.

The belief in Almighty God is practically the one doctrine of village theology. There may be more or less of Christian coloring-truth compels me to say that there is usually very little. There is surprisingly little spontaneous and instructive reference to Our Lord in the religious talk of the country poor. But Theism of a very anthropomorphic kind they regard as a selfevident truth. Anyone who doubts it seems to them only fit for a lunatic asylum. They indeed believe in the

Providence of God. Their one festival is the Harvest Festival. Their great text is that "while the earth remaineth seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." The text about the sparrows is a favorite. "That great Master of ours is providing for the birds," one of the "lapsed" once told me as he pointed to the profusion of hips and haws in the hedgerows one freezing day of a hard winter. The simplicity with which they believe this often puts one to shame. "It stands to sense," a woman said to me the other day, "that there's Someone very different to we to keep things goin' as they do-the moon and the stars and the trees and everything. If anybody says to me, 'When you're dead you're done for,' I tells 'em 'You wait.'" This theology of the English poor, with its strong belief in God and duty, and its distant yet respectful attitude to other doctrines, is in reality the theology of the English governing classes. It is precisely the attitude of the conscientious, church-going Anglo-Indian who dislikes missions. The theology of the poor moreover has undergone the same modification as that of their betters. "There's one thing I never shall believe," the same woman went on, "and that is that Almighty God is goin' to put us in a fire and burn us. If anybody has to be burnt, I'm sure it'll be me, and Lord! what a flare I shall make!" This last is surely the instinctive feeling of any sensitive mind.

Though it is true that the Articles of the Creed are not dwelt upon, that they do not apparently color the people's lives, it would be unjust to assert that they are not held. They are not denied of course; but more than this, I think they are rooted in some subconscious region of the mind. This is often borne in upon one, above all in hearing the people talk about the dead. A cottage woman was recently telling me

about her mother who had lately died, and who had been buried in her husband's grave, not in the village churchyard, but in a town three miles away. "When father died he was took to Sutton of course a man like father he didn't never really have no avocation to live in Tilney at all. But there was only room at Sutton for the one grave. So we says to mother, 'Will you be buried here, or will you have the grave three feet deeper and lay a-top o' father?' She says, 'I'll lay a-top o' father." Something like this hears again and again, and I am con

The Outlook.

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vinced that the underlying thought that suggests it is not only the desire of being near one another in the churchyard, though of course it is that, but also and much more, the wish to be together at the Resurrection. They do not come to church much, these "lapsed masses," the class of whom I write, but they come now and again, and they sometimes hear it sung:

On that happy Easter morning, All the graves their dead restore, Father, brother, sister, mother. Meet once more.

R. L. G.

Miss Jane Addams has added one to the names respected everywhere in her country, and if everyone who knows the name, would read her little book, "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," one might hope to see a vast improvement, for it is such a criticism on the prevailing relation of society and youth as one seldom meets and it is equally blended of knowledge and tolerance. The fault is evidently not in the youth, and Miss Addams indicates more than one source of evil for which no citizen can declare that he is in no way responsible, and suggests remedies or directions in which it may be well to look for remedies. Moreover she insists that in these matters a duty is laid upon every citizen, and this cannot be too often stated. The Macmillan Company.

The days when the arrival of the circus was a signal of dread for country constables and city policemen have passed thanks chiefly to the late P. T. Barnum, and "Hey Rube" is no longer a signal of terror, but a cry to be regarded philologically as a survival of the Norman "Haro"! While the trans

formation has proceeded the circus story has also changed and the storybook boy is no longer stolen by the ring master as a punishment for stealing under the tent, but is allowed as a great favor to join a band of hard-working, temperate, honest men, women and children, earning their living in a legitimate way, with occasional adventures. "Redney McGaw," by Mr. Arthur E. McFarlane, belongs to this later school, and teaches the value of tact. industry, obedience, and good-temper as truly as if the hero were the nicest of nice boys, instead of a street Arab. Little, Brown & Company.

Mr. Herbert Croly's "The Promise of American Life" is one of the few serious books on abstract politics recently published, and its intention must command the greatest respect, in spite of its somewhat formidable length. The author expends twelve chapters on showing the grounds upon which the promise rests, and in the thirteenth assures the individual citizen that to do his very best in his appointed place is to do his best for the nation. The best of the book lies in these earlier

pages of this last chapter, in which various heresies and fallacies are dissected and left in shreds. This single chapter, as a tract would be of immense value to the individualist cause, and of great use to those unattached thinkers, who although not perceiving any remedy for existing faults in the social order, frankly admit them and eagerly look for a remedy. Mr. Croly writes with dignity and gravity. The Macmillan Company.

The brief ingenious stories in which Mrs. Annie Fellows Johnston concentrates the essence of each of her "Little Colonel" books are always published separately, in small thin volumes with decorated title pages and cover and with illuminated borders, making pretty gift books in the holidays and at other times. The story of the volume for this year, "The Jester's Sword," tells of a brave soldier prince who, when disease deprives him both of beauty and of strength, accepts the advice of the village jester and sets

custom and the substance of Chinese character in action. Between the lines of a remarkable story, are other lines revealing the character of a people. Necessarily the tale is not complete, for no man's life touches the life of his entire race, but no foreigner could possibly have written a work so instructive, and no untravelled native could have made it intelligible to the West. The author is well known as the first Chinese commissioner of education. but the name of his office assumes a new meaning after reading his book. belongs to that type of man always possible in the East, the man who carries his idea into execution. This makes a most interesting story both in the telling and in the acting, and if now and then heart breaking it is satisfactory when successful. Mr. Yung's story, roughly speaking, is a series of adventures in the promotion of his idea of educating young Chinamen in the United States, but in the intervals when for one cause or another it went into retirement he turned his hand to

He

cal defects but also his mental and spiritual shortcomings even to that of allowing himself to sorrow for his misfortunes. First as the jester's companion, afterwards as his successor, he becomes a source of joy and contentment to all whom he meets; and when he dies, and is recognized by the sword which he has always carried beneath his mantle, and is borne back to his father's house, all can see that he has been, as it was prophesied that he should be, the bravest of the brave, the silent conqueror of fate and himself. L. C. Page & Co.

In "My Life in China and America" Mr. Yung Wing has written much more than an autobiography: he has given his Occidental readers an opportunity to behold the machinery of Chinese

made an opportunity to invest $100,000 in Gatling guns for her immediately after the Riel rebels had been taught their usefulness; as a private individual he mastered the secrets of two important businesses, and in the last year of the civil war, having six months' leisure while waiting to receive a piece of work ordered for his government, he ran down to Washington and volunteered to serve as an orderly and despatch bearer for six months. China would have taken him and used him to some purpose; the United States, apparently puzzled, declined his services. Even Hedin's service to Asia last year is not so great as that done by this work. He penetrated Lhassa and reported his experience. Mr. Yung presents each of his readers with a fragment of China herself. Henry Holt & Co.