should be familiar with the moving and beautiful stories of the Old Testament, told in language of such incomparable grace and beauty; with the splendid and inspiring visions of proph ets, with the intense sense of personal holiness and personal responsibility which is the lesson of the Old Testament. And here I can only say that it is high time for the authorities of the Anglican Church to make some definite pronouncement as to how the Old Testament is to be read and studied. If some leading prelate or high ecclesiastic of unimpeachable orthodoxy would but state in a little book, frankly and without reserve, what it is essential to Christian faith to hold with regard to the Old Testament, how much may be looked upon as legendary and unhistorical, and how, at the same time, even what is legendary and unhistorical may be fairly regarded as an inspired vehicle of Divine teaching, it would be an immense relief to hundreds of very earnest schoolmasters. One does not want needlessly to trouble boys about matters of doctrine, or to unsettle immature minds. But at present the position is profoundly unsatisfactory. How often did I find myself in the lamentable position of not only feeling that I ought to suppress my own views, but that I ought, in order to avoid possible offence, to teach an Old Testament statement as literally true which I did not really believe to be true. I have heard in scholastic circles a colleague of my own criticized with strong disapproval for indulging before the boys in the mildest rationalism with reference to the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. The result of this unhappy system, this timidity on the part of teachers, is that boys grow up at school in a conspiracy of silence. Their parents do not feel competent to discuss the question of Old Testament criticism, and the masters will not; and further, many excellent Christians among schoolmasters are profoundly averse to speaking frankly and emotionally of their own religious beliefs, and confine themselves to dry expositions; the result is that the boy grows up not knowing whether his masters care about their faith at all. And then when he goes up to the University or out into the world, and finds that much of the Bible is regarded as fabulous, and that religion is supposed to be a feminine and a clerical thing, the whole of his faith goes by the board. There is a striking story told by a former Eton master which illustrates this point. When he was a little boy at Eton, he came out of chapel with some other boys after the ante-communion, when there was a Celebration. He and two or three other boys began to knock a fives-ball about, and to shout in one of the old fives-courts between the chapel buttresses, and disturbed the worshippers. Dr. Keate, then Headmaster, came out in his canonicals, and spoke to the culprits, not angrily but severely, and with obvious feeling, about their irreverence. “Up to that time," said the narrator of the incident, "it had never occurred to me that Keate cared about such things, or that he was a Christian at all in the sense in which I knew that my father and mother were Christians." We would plead, then, that in the religious instruction of boys at public schools, there should be in the first place less reserve about the whole subject. It is a severe strain on many sensible Englishmen to speak of religious subjects simply and sincerely; but it is a strain which the Christian teacher ought to be willing to undergo. It is not lengthy or rhetorical discourse that is wanted. But men should be ready to show that they care, and are not ashamed to care, for the things of the soul. And next I would strongly plead for or who anxiously confer as to what the more direction and guidance in ques- policy of teachers is to be on these tions of Biblical criticism. Cautious points? The only effort made, at the ecclesiastics may reply that the time is instigation of some very earnest Annot ripe; that the higher criticism has glicans, when I was at Eton, was to not finished its work; that definite add a certain amount of Church history statements would be premature and un- to the school curriculum. This was, I settling—there are always excellent consider, a mistake, because it was a reasons for delay, and for taking away species of denominationalism. Church with one hand what is given with the history, at all events in its later stages, other. But if the Anglican Church is is seldom written from an unbiased to maintain its hold upon moderate, in- point of view; if it were quite fairly tellectual, and sensible people, the dis- written, it would be a highly unedifyintegrating process cannot be allowed ing chapter of human development, and to continue further. It is not from would probably only produce a deeptheory, but from wide practical knowl. seated disgust of all sectarianism; as a edge, that I say that there are num- matter of fact, it is generally written bers of parents who are profoundly dis- with a parti pris, and every sect and quieted and bewildered by the present denomination deduces from Church condition of things. They do not know history nothing but the essential rightwhat they must believe and what they ness of its own separatism. The Roneed not believe, and while they feel man Catholic deduces from Church histhis, what is the most important part tory its own indefeasible claim to be of religious instruction, namely, home the main stream of Christianity; the instruction, is sacrificed. The parents Anglican deduces from it his belief put the responsibility on the school- that his own communion best repremaster, and the schoolmaster dares not sents the primitive Church; the Nontake it. I say deliberately that the conformist deduces from it the evils of authorities of the English Church are prelacy and ecclesiastical policy. If gravely at fault in the matter. They we could find anywhere a sect which are so much absorbed in active work had been converted out of disunion and social questions, that they are let- by the impartial study of Church histing the essence of the faith evaporate. tory, we might think it a desirable form Many subjects of high importance are of instruction for the young: but as it being daily debated by the highest is, Church history is only used to justiclerical authorities; but they avoid, in tify separatism and disunion; while the the face of difficulties, what is perhaps desirable thing for the young is to apthe most important question of all, how preciate if possible the essential unity the rising generation of the upper and of Christian communities, rather than middle class of the country are to be their tendency to acrimonious divertrained in faithful and practical Chris- gence. A far better species of instructianity. They are ready enough to de- tion is, as I have said, the study of the plore the spread of sceptical influences, lives of Christian-minded men, of whatand to wonder pathetically why men ever communion they may have been; tend to absent themselves from the ser- and a boy is better initiated into the vices of the Church; but they do not at- secret of Christian life by apprehending tempt to hallow and consecrate the the noble qualities that made such men, fountain-head. How many head- say, as Francis of Assisi, Father Damasters even are there who give their mien, John Wesley, and Bishop Heber assistants any direction in the matter, into saints and evangelists, than if he understood the underlying heresies of ated by doctrinal differences; and, if it the Monophysites and the Gnostics. were possible to demonstrate it, such One of the qualities which can be de- demonstration is hardly likely to sow pended upon in most boys is an admira- the qualities which one desires to imtion for the heroic temper; and it is plant in growing boys. It is quite surely better that a boy should be able clear from the Synoptic Gospels that to feel the nobleness and unselfishness the instruction which Christ gave to of great Christian leaders, than be His followers was poetical and practimade to understand the errors of their cal rather than doctrinal and speculadoctrinal positions from the point of tive; and we cannot be far wrong if view of Anglicanism. It is, indeed, an we base the teaching of our boys in impossible thesis to maintain, in the religious matters on the type of teachpresence of the annals of the saints, that ing which our Divine Founder gave to the great Christian qualities are viti- those who heard Him. The National Review. Arthur C. Benson. THE WARWICK PAGEANT. “Merrie England!” We have dreamed of it, and worked for it; but still it has seemed very far off, divided from us by great distances of sombre thought and habit, blotted out by the dust and fog of selfish, breathless labor, and the evil melancholy of compulsory, mechanic toil. The spirit of delight seemed to have taken flight once and for all from this unhappy land, and the stories of masque and pageant on green swards, under the open sky, seemed but a mocking echo from a buried past. Oriana and The Merry Wives—the frank gaieties and freehearted merriments of the Elizabethan age-the pageants of Windsor and Kenilworth-all seemed to lie far away bebind us, separated by a great gulf. Our very atmosphere seemed to smile an ironic smile. The smoke of factory chimneys had fallen-so some said-like a pall over the corpse of that dear, dead England. Gaiety, so long banished from the heart of the English people, seemed to know of no guise for her return except the dull and ugly revelry of the drinkshop and the shabby, greedy motley of the racecourse. The only surviving sign of pageantry in England seemed to be the plumed hearses of our costly and unsightly funerals. The Nemesis of banished joy seemed to lie on our provincial towns “heavy as frost, deep almost as life!" But there were men who did not despair of England, and believed that what once had been under English suns could be again. They had great faith, these men. They even believed that the dramatic instinct of the people could be lifted from the gutter of the music-hall and used once more, as in Periclean Greece and Elizabethan England, for high national ends-to awaken great memories, arouse great 'hopes, create new prides. They saw that the chief intellectual want of England was a sense of its own past-a consciousness of its own great story. For a mean future awaits those nations who live only in the present. With such aims they could not walk better than in the footsteps of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth, woman, knew the power of display: she appealed to the eye. Her weapon was the pageant. Why should not that be their weapon too? And so, at Sherborne last year, at Warwick this year, and at Bury St. Ed as а a common own mund's next year, the English pageant the pageant is essentially a local gloriis coming back into our national life fication, to which outsiders are invited and reviving that lost art of conscious, as guests, whose politeness is premultitudinous delight. sumed. Others will find a new suggestiveness in this gradual widening from the petty affairs of a village into The essence of the pageant is that it the great struggles of the disputed Engshould be function-not lish monarchy-until in Leicester, the merely witnessed, but shared in by the lord of Kenilworth, the little story of whole community. At Warwick this Warwick opens out into the "spacious year, as in Sherborne in 1905, almost times" of his great mistress. The vast every family in the town, from the stage-a veritable country-side-gives highest to the lowest, must have pro play for quick movement and bold acvided one member-man, woman, boy, tion. The pageant flashes past in a or girl-to strut an hour upon the series of episodes, spaced like a Greek sward of Warwick Castle. For this play with chorus-odes, freely dipping one week of performance the town of from time to time into Marlowe and Warwick has been in travail for a Shakespeare, never broken by the fall whole year. Two thousand Warwick- of a curtain. The wonder and delight ians have played their part without fee, of the piece is not so much in the inreward, or advertisement. Many dividual acting—though that is almost have provided their costume. without exception admirable-as in the From the castle to the meanest cottage, multitude of the players, all skilfully all have helped. Those who cannot act grouped, beautifully costumed, splenhave prepared bunting to deck the old, didly drilled. It is not a play of gray tower in a robe of many hues. "stars," but of a whole town. Every Warwick institution, from the But, after all, the abiding marvel is corporation to the schools and the alms- the stage. With excellent public spirit, houses, have joined hands in patriotic Lord and Lady Warwick have lent fellow-working, and put aside all graver their grounds for the performance, and tasks for one week of noble, disci- a great stand, capable of holding 5000 plined, and elevating joy. Surely, the people, had been erected in part of that most cheering social sign of the new noble space that lies west of the castle century. -a great open lawn, more than a hunThe theme of the modern pageant, as dred yards wide and five hundred deep, worked out by the skilful and untiring flanked on either side with trees in hands of Mr. Louis Parker, is like the their full midsummer pomp of foliage. widening circle sent out by the fall of This scene is backed on one side by a little pebble in a still water. It starts the placid Avon, gentlest of streams, with the early beginnings of the par. and on the other by a forest-road disticular city, and spreads out from that appearing down a long vista of trees. point into the greater story of the whole But the eye ranges much further, over country-through the early legends and placid English landscape with mighty traditions of the town of Warwick to oaks and elms, and deer grazing calmly the great national story represented by among the green bracken and underthe scene of Elizabeth's visit, the splen- wood. On such a stage anything is did climax of the whole series of possible. Cavalcades can maneuvre "Local gag,” say the vulgar, crowds can assemble-battles can be and yawn at the earlier scenes fool- fought-processions can march-horseisbly and selfishly ignoring the fact that men can gallop wildly, and troops of THE DOMINION'S FORTIETH BIRTHDAY. scenes. armored cavalry can beat their hoofs against the noiseless grass. All these things are done, and Mr. Parker has left no chance unused. By a fortunate gift of fate there has been to-day neither rain nor wind. The scene lay before us in such absolute stillness that it was possible to feed on a lovely and pleasing illusion-to nurse the subtle and luxurious flattery that this work of nature was really a fabric of human art—that all this show of trees and grass and river, was created by the scene-painter's brush. Movement had no effect on this sweet vanity of fancy. When the feeding deer in the background lifted up their heads, or Elizabeth's barge moved down the river, rowed by a bundred oars, you simply saw another triumph of the theatrical art-another victory of the machine. So strangely was reality mixed with phantasy in this spectacle, The Speaker. Bebind, and above all, was the triumph of association. The real mental setting to the pageant was that old English town, with its Elizabethan houses still smoking with living hearthfires—the long, straggling street, with its archwayed towers, and ancient "hospital”-the gray castellated walls of that noble castle mirrored in the still Avon and embosomed in the soft rich glory of her mighty trees. The past spoke with a hundred voices. The players seemed far more than the spectators of to-day the fit and true human setting to this lovely dowry of ancient beauty. Such towns-and there are many such in England-are theatres ready and prepared. There is little need of human art. Here is the stage already furnished. Harold Spender. The destinies of the British Empire will be decided in British North America. Chatham's phrase, coined a century and a half ago, is as profound today as it was then. Canada is the keystone of our Imperial arch, the link which connects our Colonial tradition with the Elizabethans. For, if our Imperial continuity received a shock from the secession of the Thirteen States, it was not broken. The Constitutional question, which was settled in America by the creation of the Republic, was settled in Canada by the creation of the Dominion. That is to say, the origin of the one was revolt, the origin of the other was unity. Unfortupately the Little Englander never realizes that Imperialism is historic, and that Canada is the mightiest expression of Colonial loyalty. For she founded by exiles, whose ideal was a United Empire. So great was their fidelity that they sacrificed position, country, and fortune to it. The story of the Huguenots and Pilgrim Fathers is among the most inspiring in the world's history, but it lacks the intensity of the story of the American loyalists. Moreover, they alone have preserved their ideal untouched by the materialism of the age, whereas neither the Huguenots nor the Pilgrim Fathers are a living force at all. Canada is unique as a State inasmuch as she was brought into being by the moral and spiritual forces which are the foundation of all religion, Her Imperialism has been sanctified by suffering. This is the cardinal fact of her bistory. She has been truer to the principles which gave us our world supremacy than the Mother-country herself has been. Until the South African war, was |