can take serious exception. Mr. Kinnaird, the member for Perth, we trust, will ere long accept the Chiltern Hundreds.

The existence of such an Act as the Disabilities only a year ago is a warning to us how necessary it is we should be careful whom we return to Parliament, and considering the powerful character of the influence we exercise, none are better able, numbering, as we do, within us the leading members of the Conservative and Liberal parties, to return such men as will not take an aggressive line against us or endanger the real interests of the country.

SCOTSMEN IN ENGLAND.

We have ever deprecated any appeal to England, for money. We have always held that we have more than enough in Scotland to maintain ourselves, and to do something else, but we also hold that Scotsmen in all lands are bound to rally round their fatherland.

There are many Scotsmen who reside in England who have large properties in England, and these men are bound to contribute of their abundance.

The claims of the Church in the country in which they reside are of course important, but the claims of the country of their birth are greater. We gladly learn that many are complaining that they have not been sufficiently acquainted with the wants of the Church, and have so hastened to give.

Mr. Flemyng has prepared a suitable address to Scotsmen in foreign lands, which we feel assured will meet with a hearty response.

We trust, however, that there is a clear understanding that there is no appeal to England. The Church in England has many claims upon her, and possessing, as we do, relatively more wealth than she has, we cannot too severely censure the policy of bygone days of begging in England as discreditable to us as a branch of the Church of Christ.

Any such appeals will, we trust, be understood to be entirely unrecognised by our Church and her authorities. Whilst anxious to co-operate with the Church in England upon all questions affecting Catholic Christendom, we do so as an individual branch of the Catholic Church. In the case, however, of Scotsmen in the south we trust they will not fail in their allegiance to their spiritual mother.

THE GREEK CHURCH.

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A MEETING was lately held in the Hanover Square rooms, under the sidency of the Bishop of Oxford, relative to a mission started in Servia, by two young ladies, one of them a member of the Scottish Church.

We attach great value to the mission. It may be one of small things, but this, to our mind, rather adds to its importance. The intercommunion between the East and West is much more likely to be promoted by these small events than by prolonged conferences and learned discussions. The boldness, the practical character, and the unostentatiousness of the attempt commend it to the interest of all churchmen. The negotiations, so far as they have gone, have as yet produced no practical results, simply from their indefiniteness, and the want of intercourse between the nations concerned. The causes of the separation have been forgotten in their antiquity. It is remarkable that the Greek Church has been ever the one that has been unaggressive. Whilst our English Sister has made an unwarrantable aggression in the case of the Jerusalem Bishopric, the Greek Church has ever shown herself willing to negotiate and to renew friendly intercourse.

The great differences between us and the East are not matters of doctrine, but of ritual. Our English Sister asserts to herself practi cally an infallibility upon this matter. She leaves matters of doctrine very much open questions, but the Book of Common Prayer, she regards as a sine qua non to all inter-communion. That such a state of things is at once irrational and anti-catholic must be evident, even to that Church herself. The question of ritual is in reality a very minor question. However startling it may be to English ears, it might be abolished to morrow, and the Church of England would be as pure a Church as ever. We should deplore, indeed, such an event as both inexpedient and unnecessary, but to say that every Church, to be in full communion with the Church of England, must necessarily adopt the Book of Common Prayer, is going further than Rome in her arrogance and anti-catholicity. It is in direct contradiction to the 39 Articles, and is opposed to the whole traditions of the Catholic Church. Then it is to be remembered that though it may be very convenient to us Westerns to forget the causes of the separation between us and the East, they are not forgotten by the Eastern Church herself. It was we who separated from her, not she from us; and she divided from us upon a very clear issue the usurpation of the Pope and the worship of images. This renders it, then, the more meritorious, that she is willing to arrange inter-communion with us.

In the negotiations which were carried on between the Scottish

and Greek Churches in the beginning of the 18th century, the want of difference of doctrine was admitted upon both sides, but a very important concession has within this century been made, by which, owing to the unceasing exertions of the Rev. George Williams, the Scriptures have been published in the vulgar tongue, and we therefore know of no serious difficulty in bringing about an inter-communion upon clear and definite principles.

Such an undertaking, then, as that of the two young ladies referred to, opens the most important question which can affect Christendom. The Church of Servia requires all the friendly offices we can render, and our showing a friendly desire to support her amidst her various trials and difficulties could not but be acceptable to the Church of the East. The Czar of Russia has hitherto made use of the Eastern Church as a political engine—as a means of increasing his territory, and enabling him to intermeddle in European politics. It is high time, then, that Christianity should have the support of Christendom upon its own account and its own merits. It is high time that the Scottish and Anglican branches of the Church Catholic should demonstrate their catholicity as in primitive times-when Christianity should assert her own, not sectionally or in detail, but through that channel which has been recognised in all times-The Church, "The pillar and ground of the truth."

Political support has never done the Church much good. Even in those cases when the assistance has been apparently the most practical in the case of an Establishment-there ever has been a bitterness in the draught. The Church and the world can never amalgamate or agree upon any compromise.

We find it at present in the case of the Church in England, in which it has been clearly demonstrated that she has no power in defining her doctrines, or expelling those from amongst her who call in question the inspiration of Scripture. So long as the Church of the East is a mere political tool in the hands of a great Empire, so long must her whole position as a Church of Christ be implicated. She must stand as a free Church upon her own account, and must fit into no political scheme. It is because of this, that she, for centuries, has drank the bitter dregs of political servitude. Persecuted, oppressed, corrupted in her ritual, she is still the same Church to which St. Chrysostom presented so noble an example of martyrdom. Her history is the most venerable of any in the Christian world. It was there that the early councils assembled to deliberate upon the weal of the Catholic world. It was there that the martyrdoms were enacted which were the seed of the Church," of all times. The faith remains intact. The apostolical succession is the same. The Scriptures are there unmuti

lated and read by all. If there be ignorance, it is our duty to remove it. If there be political servitude, it is our privilege as free men to mitigate it.

We are called upon to intermeddle in no political intrigues. We are asked simply to contribute to a scheme for the education of the people. It has the approval of the Government. It has the sanction of the Church. Men may use, indeed, that old worn out argument, we have enough to do at home before we go abroad. It is, however, a well known axiom in the religious world, that the more we do abroad, the more we do at home. Why have we Scottish Churchmen been faithless in this respect? It is when we think only of ourselves that we get callous to the affairs of Catholic Christendom. It is only when we forget our duties to the great family of Christ, that we also forget our duty at home. It is because the Church in Scotland has been an exclusive sect-composed of the "respectable" classes. It is because she has been an appendage of the drawing room, and has hung about the halls of the great. It is because she has been what is called the Scottish Episcopal Church-no part of the nation-supposed to be a mongrel importation from England. It is because she has not taken her part in the Catholic world. Her worldly policy has rebounded upon her. A new spirit we believe to be now abroad within her, and in renewing inter-communion with her mother Church -the Church of the East-she is returning to the "good old paths.' In holding out the right hand of fellowship to despised and crushed Servia, we are simply doing our duty as Christians. Great are the difficulties in our way. Long will be most probably the night of persecution, but that is nothing to us. The work must be done; and we must do it. We work not for time, but for eternity; to emancipate Servia from Turkish tyranny, not by the sword, but by the enlightenment of education; to raise the Christians of Turkey in Europe from the degradation to which they have all been doomed; to renew our intercourse with the Catholic world, upon the old platform of the Catholic Church; to emancipate ourselves from Western traditions, and from the narrowing prejudices of a dead age. Such is the mission of our Church; and the humble, unostentatious, self-sacrificing undertaking of the two ladies referred to is worthy of all honour, and the progress of the undertaking will be duly chronicled in the columns of our magazine. As the organ of the Church in Scotland, we wish it God speed. It will not need the eloquence of the Bishop of Oxford to recommend it. It is inscribed in the pages of a common history of suffering, of self-sacrifice, of heroic maintenance of the truth.

A VISIT TO BANKOK.

IN December, 1862, H.M.S. anchored off Bankok, in company with H.M. S. Coquette, the latter alone being able to pass the bar in consequence of her lighter draught of water. The day following our arrival, several officers proceeded in the small ship up the river, the scenery on either bank of which was picturesque in the extreme. Numerous floating huts or houses, half hidden by the rich tropical foliage in the background, peeped out from every creek and cranny as we passed along. After passing several small forts, we arrived off a village on the left bank of the river, in which we remarked a fort of considerable size, well manned, and intended probably for the protection of the capital, situated some few miles further up the river. From this village the Prime Minister of Siam, and other high officials, camė off to us in their barges. The minister was a great boat-builder, was very fond of machinery, and had visited England, where he had acquired a fair knowledge of the English language. He seemed to be a man of singular intelligence and very inquisitive: everything he saw delighted him, nor were his attendants less pleased with their visit. A few minutes after their departure the Coquette arrived off the capital, which presented a most novel appearance, the houses being built on floating stages, staked or tethered by bamboo poles, so that in the event of a fire they could be removed and drifted out of danger by the tide at a moment's notice. They were moored, so to say, in a regular line, with occasional breaks or streets running off at right angles. The houses of the leading merchants and foreign consuls were situated chiefly on the left bank, with gardens in front, running down to the water's edge. Numerous ships, of from 200 to 400 tons, lay at anchor in the centre of the stream, lading or unlading by means of barges. As soon as we let go the anchor opposite the delightful residence of Sir Robert Schomberg, the British Consul, that gentleman, accompanied by the Vice-Consul and others, came on board, and invited several of our party to make the Consulate our home during the period of our visit— an invitation of which the officers of the larger ship outside the bar were only too glad to avail themselves. No one could have been more hospitable than the worthy Consul, now, alas! no more, his death having occurred a few months ago in Germany. We had not much opportunity of seeing the interior of the country, as there was but one indifferently made road at the back of the Consulate along which it was possible to walk, ride, or drive. A sojourn of a week was therefore chiefly spent in visiting (by water of course) the various floating shops and bazaars, where photographs of the two reigning kings of Siam (first