such there be, the probabilities of some such view as that of Mr. Welldon seem to us to be very great. Yet the difficulty of understanding that there can be a future life for any creatures for whom by the conditions of their nature it is impossible that their immortality can be spent in knowing and worshipping God affords another illustration of the obscurity in which the whole subject is involved, an obscurity which is greatly increased by the fact that we can have no knowledge of any kind as to the nature of the consciousness of the lower animals. We are and must be in complete ignorance as to what the mental feelings, if that phrase may be used, of even the horse or the dog which is our daily companion, are like.

Mr. Welldon exercises a wise reserve in treating any details of the future life. The philosophical arguments which comprise the greater part of the book can shed little light on them; the Scriptural teaching to which he devotes his last chapter says very little about them. Yet he states with calm strength propositions for which there is the highest authority, the clear enunciation of which is much needed at the present day. The soul,' he says,

'survives in all its powers, intellectual, moral and spiritual. It carries with it into futurity the weight of its guilt and shame and suffering; it carries also its prerogative of duty achieved and character disciplined by patience and faith won at the foot of the cross.

'It is because death does not in a moment reverse or undo the effect of the earthly life that that life gains inexpressible importance. . . . There can be no doubt that' [our Lord] 'taught the supreme value of the present life as affecting the future destiny of mankind. To Him the one thing hateful, the one thing fatal, was sin but sin was a taint contracted in the present life; and to purge away the taint of sin was a task so difficult as to demand a divine sacrifice ...

'Jesus Christ laid down the principle of retribution. He taught that sin in its nature implied and involved punishment. Punishment must attend evil, as the shadow attends a man. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." If it is not always apparent in this life that suffering is the necessary result of sin, it is because in this life there are temporal conditions interposing between cause and consequence in the providential order. But it is as sure as the sequence of night upon day that every violation of the divine law carries with it an ultimate pain; it must be purged away by fire' (pp. 304-6).

'Jesus Christ associated the law of the divine justice with an event which should be the consummation of the world's history and the vindication of God's providence-viz. His own future advent in glory. "The Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him." Then shall the sentence of eternal felicity or

eternal punishment be spoken to "all nations." Then shall the severance of the sheep from the goats take its effect. That the ground of reward shall be charity and the ground of condemnation shall be hardness of heart is well known : it accords with the Christian estimate of righteousness and sin as the two essential factors in human life; but, however pictorial the scene may be as portrayed in the Gospel, it brings out in strong light that it is for the "deeds done in the body" that men shall be judged at the judgment seat of Christ' (pp. 306-7).

And he draws out, with skill and insight and reverence, the 'conditions of the perfected or eternal life in immortality' for the assertion of which Holy Scripture supplies ground, and mentions, with a reserve that gives solemnity and force, that the 'shadow or reverse of these, with its keen, incessant sense of misery, is hell' (pp. 310–31).

The problem whether men and women who have known one another in this life will have any capacities of recognizing and of being recognized in the future life, illustrated in this book by the pathetic lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Constance,' is one of absorbing interest and to many of painful anxiety. We have sometimes known it decided in one way or the other with a brief and thoughtless dogmatism calculated both to pain and repel. The treatment of it in The Hope of Immortality is very brief, but it is thoughtful and suggestive and profoundly reverent. In Mr. Welldon's judgment, the retention of personality means the retention also of the 'power of mutual recognition' (pp. 338-39).

It has been a great happiness to us to read the beautiful passages in which it is shown that the conception of death. and immortality which is involved in our Lord's teaching necessarily implies that the departed retain the capacity of prayer for the living and that the prayers of the living for the departed are of use in promoting their purification and

1 Shakespeare, King John, III. iv. :

"... father Cardinal, I have heard you say

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven :
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;

For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,

To him that did but yesterday suspire,

There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,

And chase the native beauty from his cheek,
And he will look as hollow as a ghost;
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit,
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven,
I shall not know him: therefore never, never
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.'

progress. We have already quoted so much that we must quote little more, but we may be allowed two short extracts from what is said on this subject:

'He who has apprehended the eternal verity of the spiritual life will no more doubt that prayer can pass the barriers of the unseen world than he will doubt that the spirit itself passes those barriers when it is emancipated from the body at death' (p. 335).

'Le culte des morts-that beautiful habit and act of the Catholic Faith-needs revival in Protestant theology. Protestantism, which so well exhibits the strength, and so ill the poetry or romance of religion, and is always in danger of losing the delicate flower of devotion, has too much forgotten the dead. It has buried them out of mind as out of sight. It has not thought of them as dwelling in communion with the progress, the sympathies, the aspirations of the holy and eternal souls upon earth. It will not have been in vain that this essay has been written if it shall help to inspire any living human soul with a more tender and constant memory of the dead (pp. 340-41).

Here and there we have experienced a feeling of regret in reading this thoughtful treatise. Recognition of a primitive revelation to the first man might have added value to parts of it which, so far as they go, are valuable (see e.g. pp. 64-72). We are not quite happy about the reserved sentences in which the question of the 'kenosis' is set aside (p. 274), although we are glad to notice that our Lord's teaching is emphatically regarded as infallible and supreme. We are of opinion that the discussion about the representations of the future life in the Old Testament (pp. 79-114) needs reconstruction in view of the admission that the book of Job is 'perhaps the earliest book in the Bible' (p. 102); and we hardly think that the author, usually so reverent in thought and careful in expression, can deliberately have intended to say that the 'conception of a future spiritual existence' was imagined' by the psalmists and prophets' (p. 119). That 'the theologians of old' 'could discern in' human nature ' nothing but evil' (p. 129) is a statement which surely needs much qualification. By interpreting the words 'Every man that hath this hope in Him' as referring to the hope being in the man's heart (p. 160), not, as we think unquestionable, to the hope that is placed in God,' he loses part of the force of what St. John says. In some passages, in spite of much that is well said about the growth of the soul after death, he seems

1 The italics are ours.

21 St. John iii. 3: we infer that this is the interpretation intended, because the words are printed 'this hope in him,' while Mr. Welldon's ordinary custom is to use a capital H when referring to God.

to ignore the intermediate state (see eg. p. 201). The suggestion that the Gospel called St. John's looks more like the work of a pupil faithfully recording, to the best of his memory, a master's oral teaching' than the work of the master himself' (p. 278), appears to us to be involved in more difficulties than it would solve. And we venture to appeal to the talented and distinguished author to give the most careful consideration, when he is preparing the next edition of this excellent book, to the paragraph on p. 9 beginning 'Protestantism is the democracy of religion,' and to the expression of some statements on p. 10 with a view to seeing whether they are not likely to give readers an impression that the value which he attaches to the authority of Holy Scripture and of the Church is much less than from much which he has here said we are led to believe it to be.

Readers of The Hope of Immortality must not expect to find in it a treatment of its great subject of a dogmatic or historical character. The object aimed at in it is to 'recommend the belief in immortality by such considerations as are independent of Christianity,' and to prepare the way for Christian belief' (p. 1). The last chapter, entitled 'The Christian Amplification of the Belief,' is simply intended to show the light added to the belief in immortality which philosophy demands by the revelation of our Lord. Of the value and practical utility of the work, judged by what it is intended to be, we have already said enough to show our very high sense.

Since the publication of this book, it has been announced that Mr. Welldon is to succeed Bishop Johnson in the See of Calcutta. The post of Metropolitan of India is one which calls for the very highest intellectual and spiritual qualities. The noble work done by his predecessors should serve as a spur to the new Bishop's energies. The high reputation he has won in different spheres may be joined with the great ability and Christian spirit shown in the book under review, as allowing us to anticipate that his administration of the Church in India may be of such a kind as to be capable of receiving rich blessings from God. To this end, we may express our hope that in teaching and in practical matters he will carry out to its full issues the principle involved in his strong words:

'To a Christian the authority of Christ Himself is final; it cannot be resisted or disputed; and as soon as it becomes clear that He announced authoritatively this or that truth concerning immortality, there can no more be any question about it' (p. 269).

ART. X.-CHURCH REFORM.

1. Essays in Aid of the Reform of the Church. Edited by CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D., of the Community of the Resurrection, Canon of Westminster, Hon. Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. (London, 1898.)

2. Advent Sermons on Church Reform. With a Preface by the Right Rev. the LORD BISHOP OF STEPNEY. (London, 1898.)

SCARCELY anything is more remarkable in home politics than the extraordinary change which has come over the Liberal party in regard to the question of Disestablishment. At one time, not long since, it was held by both Liberal Churchmen and Nonconformists that the only real cure for the scandals and abuses which were conspicuous in the Church of England was to disestablish and to disendow her, and let her reform herself without any interference on the part of the State. Such an attitude was greatly fostered by Mr. Gladstone's policy of Disestablishment in Ireland, and for many years the subject was kept before Parliament as one which must be dealt with in the near future. This attitude was adopted as well towards the Scotch Kirk as towards the Established Church in England, until it culminated in Mr. Asquith's proposal to sever the Welsh Church from the province of Canterbury, which met with the only fate that it deserved. Meanwhile there was growing up among Liberal Churchmen a demand for a free Church in a free State,' and the question was seriously propounded whether Disestablishment could not be obtained without Disendowment. It was discussed as an academic question long after it was plain that no Government would consent to such a proposal, and we believe that there are some who still cling to this method as the best solution for our present difficulties in regard to scandals and abuses, for by it the Church could reform herself without let or hindrance. But more recently the notion of Disestablishment has been looked upon with more or less disfavour by the Liberal party, both Churchmen and Nonconformists, and the cry of Church Reform has been raised in all directions. It is felt now that the Church might gain from the State the power to manage her own affairs, and that there is no need to disestablish the Church in England, but rather to procure for her such a measure of freedom as the Established Kirk in Scotland has enjoyed for three hundred