IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY.

We are told by the Guardian, that, at the Church Congress, held in October, at Swansea, the Rev. R. B. Girdlestone, of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, made some striking remarks on the Universities regarded as places of training for holy orders :

"When a man enters on his University course he is embarking on a wide ocean of life and thought; and it is the opinion of some fairly competent observers at Oxford (I say nothing of Cambridge), that those who come up without fixed religious principles are not likely to get them there. I will not stop to enquire whether the fault lies in any measure with the college tutors; whether it arises from their want of moral courage, from the haziness of their beliefs, from the weakness of their convictions, or from simple forgetfulness of the great responsibility laid on them. It can hardly be their deliberate judgment that youth fresh from school are fit to enter upon the moral and intellectual conflict which Oxford life involves without a helping hand from their elders. Again, the possession of a University degree means absolutely nothing from a religious point of view. A Mahometan, a Hindoo, an absolute atheist may take his degree at Oxford. But apart from this consideration, it may be asked, How far does a degree presuppose a thorough intellectual training? Owing to the changes introduced of late years into the Oxford system, a man may become a B.A. without knowing anything of Aristotle or Plato, of Bacon or Mill, of moral, social, or physical sciences, of mental analysis, or of the laws of evidence. A few months later he may find himself in a town curacy amidst self-taught mechanics, who talk glibly about plutosophical and social questions to which he is an utter stranger. Moreover, even if a man has passed his examination in such books as the Ethics or Butler's Analogy, he may be utterly nonplussed when one whose heart the Lord has opened presses him earnestly with the question, 'What must I do to be saved?""

We venture to say that any young pastor from any Baptist College could give a satisfactory and scriptural answer to that solemn question, and are, therefore, more qualified to occupy a church pulpit than many surpliced novices who parade themselves there.

We conclude our extracts with one on

THE DISCIPLINE OF THE CLERGY.

At the Church Congress Canon Gregory said:

'Clergymen were expected to live a purer life than laymen. They were set up as examples for the flock of Christ-to instruct, teach, guide, and mould the characters of those to whom they were bound to minister. Therefore, if their characters were vitally important, some positive discipline ought to be exercised over them in order to compel them to do their duty or resign their livings. Discipline should have a wider range than merely to exclude clergymen from their places if they grossly violated the ordinary rules of morality and decency. It was notorious that clergymen who were well known to have been guilty of such violations had escaped owing to their wives and children. He knew of one case in which the churchwardens had actually carried their parson drunk out of the pulpit, and when they were asked by the Bishop whether they had seen him drunk they said 'No,' because he had a nice wife and good children."

Here we lay down our pen. One thing is certain. We need not blush for Nonconformity. We have a goodly heritage, and, shame on any who may feel ashamed of our history, principles, doctrine, and future. We are the descendents of prophets, apostles, and martyrs, of whom the world was not worthy, and we may thank God and take courage when we may have to defend our Faith.

G. W. M'CREE.

Catharine Tait.

WE cannot but be thankful that Mr. Benham has given to the world a memoir of Catharine and Craufurd Tait, wife and son of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Much as His Grace naturally shrank from such a publication, his kindly disposition and Christian unselfishness determined his consent to it. "If," said Miss Tait, "it be thought that the history of my mother's life is likely to do good by helping and encouraging anybody in good living, then let the thing be done, but any other motive ought not to be heard of."

The lives of mother and son were so much one that it seems quite fitting there should be only one biography, but so numerous are the incidents, so varied and interesting the scenes described, that, for the present, we must give special attention to the career of Mrs. Tait. She was a daughter of Archdeacon Spooner, and was born at Elmdon on 9th of December, 1819.

TRACTARIAN TENDENCIES.

The Oxford movement had a strong charm for her in the days of her girlhood, chiefly through the influence of a brother-in-law, Edward Fortescue, who ultimately seceded to the Romish Church. How far the teaching of this school affected her is brought to light in a passage which may be given here as supplying an amusing example of the way in which the current of more than one life has been somewhat diverted: "She has often told me how when she heard that one of the four protesting tutors, who helped to bring to a sudden close the series of the Oxford Tracts, was a candidate for the head-mastership of Rugby, she earnestly hoped that he might not be successful. . . . . It was a strange turn of fate which made her open her heart next year to the very candidate whose success she had deprecated, and become the happy partner of his life at Rugby, Carlisle, Fulham, Lambeth... Lady Wake (the Archbishop's sister) writes: "She often said to me in after years, 'Had I not fallen in love with your brother, I should long, ere this, have been a nun; and a very bad nun I should have made,' she always added with a laugh." There can be no doubt, however, that this temporary excitement made way for a more healthy enthusiasm, and that without it we might never have known that deep religious fervour which so strongly characterized her subsequent career.

HER MARRIAGE,

which took place June 22, 1843, was solemnized by an uncle who jokingly forecast it some six or seven years before. It was then-long before she or Mr. Tait "had any thoughts of each other"-that her uncle remarked, "I suppose you are making these slippers for Mr. Tait." She was reminded of this the day of her marriage by her uncle's quiet observation-"So, Kitty, you were, after all, making those slippers for Mr. Tait." Dr. Sandford tells another humorous story of like interest: "On one occasion we were reading' Agathos,' and she made a false quantity in pronouncing the Greek word' Agape' (love), and was set right by the head-master (Mr. Tait, of Rugby). . . . My father, on hearing of the engagement afterward, wrote to the headmaster that he was glad to find that he had taught Catharine the right

way to pronounce 'Agape." Years before this she was warned by a Scripture-reader at Hastings, "as the best advice he could give her, not to marry a drunkard or a Sabbath-breaker!" How, right through her married life, she was in the truest sense both womanly and wifely, and how, therefore, she secured perpetual peace and real enjoyment in the home, may be gathered from this witness: "She passed through all the different phases of her life perfectly true to her own convictions, yet loyal and dutiful to her husband. She could appreciate and understand his way of viewing things, even when it differed from her own; and I have seen her indignation roused to the utmost at some unfair criticism, or imputation of motives to him, which she knew to be perfectly untrue to his whole being."

PRIVATE CHARACTER.

She was eminently practical. From her marriage forward, she undertook the entire charge of her husband's accounts at Rugby. "These," says he," were complicated enough, even when confined to my own household expenses and those of the school-house which she regulated with the utmost accuracy....It was the same all through our Carlisle days and in London, and when I became Archbishop. If my affairs have been well managed, it was her doing. . . .There was in her no trace of the fine lady who thinks her husband's common work a thing in which she need not take much interest." Her mind was well-disciplined. All its powers were called forth in her outward circumstances, and that cultivation which began early, she continued all her life, furthering it by extensive reading. Her facility of adaptation to external conditions, her persistency of purpose and effort, her fine consideration for the thinking and feeling of others, with her uniformly gracious manner, gave abundant evidence of the strength and beauty in her character. But, as the Archbishop says, "The real key to her character is to be found in the depth of her Christian life." Possessed of such a character, and having "conferred on her the charm of beauty," it is no wonder that she “ was a favourite wherever she went, from some quiet indescribable charm. She neither sought society nor avoided it; she enjoyed it when it came in her way quietly and calmly, and consistently with all the claims of important duty, which were ever present to her mind."

It is not difficult to see how largely her character was matured by keen

PERSONAL TRIALS.

Twice-at Rugby in 1848, and at Thanet in 1868-she watched and tended her husband through weeks of perilous sickness. In both seasons, when in the utmost state of suspense, the same words came to her mind with strong support, "Who is among you . . . that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." Probably the most sadly fascinating part of Mr. Benham's book is that containing Mrs. Tait's own narrative of that five-fold bereavement with which the family was visited at Carlisle in 1856. Nothing can be more touching than the mother's record of those five weeks of anguish, within which five little daughters were removed by death. Here are the words in which she concludes it: "Thus were we called upon to part with these five most blessed little daughters, each

more truly

CATHARINE TAIT.

93

of whom had been received in prayer, borne in prayer, educated with prayer, and now given up, though with bitter anguish, yet with prayer and thanksgiving." Six months before her death "the great sorrow . the crowning victory of her life in this world," came upon her. Her son Craufurd, about to enter upon full pastoral work in London, was taken to heaven, May 29th, 1878, at the early age of twenty-nine. When he was laid to rest his mother, standing for a moment by the side of his tomb, was heard to say, in a low but intensely earnest and thrilling voice, "I believe in the resurrection of the dead." Her

CHRISTIAN ACTIVITIES

amongst the boys at Rugby, amongst the poor in Carlisle, and amongst the cholera patients of London, besides numerous other works of charity, supply ample proof that she held it to be "the first characteristic of a Christian to look out of self." Hospitals, Orphanages (in conjunction with Mrs. Gladstone and Miss Marsh she founded an Orphanage), and kindred institutions, found in her an active supporter. She took an especial interest in such work as that carried on in St. James' Home, so much so, that there used to be a joke "that one day when she said to her footman at the carriage door, 'Home,' he answered, 'which Home, ma'am?"" She seems never to have been disheartened upon detecting imposture, and tells some curious stories of the sort of thing she met with in her charitable work at Carlisle. An Irish woman, to curry favour with her, said one day, in answer to the question, What place of worship do you attend? Well, ma'am, I'll not tell you no lies: I am a Catholic, but then I'm a very bad 'un." Over against this we may set an instance of the way in which her simplicity of character influenced even the most neglected of our race. Staying by Blean Forest, she visited one day a gipsy family, the mother of which lay sick in their wagon. The boy, a wild specimen of his tribe, was greatly attracted to her by the stories which she told them, ever glad to sow some good seed, even in the most passing visit."

She bore a

66

CONSTANT TESTIMONY

to the power of Christianity. By word and act, in life and in death, she witnessed for Christ. Hence, "duty was with her not merely the result of admirable parental training, it was an instinct." Her fidelity to conscience may be gathered from the following story which, though it may serve to amuse, is not without pathos: "A University Don, who has since become strictly orthodox, was visiting Rugby, and gave utterance to some theological opinion or other which scared and grieved her. Her precautionary measure was prompt. She left the room, shut herself in a spare room, and repeated aloud the Apostles' Creed." On some occasion of rare earthly joy, in her early years, "She seemed to hear the words, 'But make for the higher!' The motto of her life was essentially "Make for the higher! In carrying that out, how nobly she testified of the Highest! Her losses only served to intensify the message of her life- "Whatever work I have been allowed to do for that Home," (the Orphanage in the Isle of Thanet) she wrote, "has been connected in my mind with the sweet

band of the children in heaven." The very tone of her voice seems to have been charged with the Gospel-" I can never think of the 12th of Hebrews without the voice of Mrs. Tait coming back to me reading it so solemnly by my bedside in hospital years ago. I can never forget it," wrote a poor working man after her death. Her Sundays were seasons of delight because they brought opportunities for usefulness. "When you met her in the early morning," says one, "her very face seemed to tell you it was her day of days."

After the death of her son she rapidly declined, until at the beginning of December, 1878, upon arriving at Edinburgh immediately after the marriage of her second daughter, it became apparent that the end was near. In her last hours she could appreciate the recital by her husband of such sweet words as "Jesus, lover of my soul," and, "Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom." In the full possession of her faculties and enjoying that restfulness of spirit which attended her through life, what could be less like dying than her departure to the land of light? The lines were quoted:

"And with the morn those angel faces smile

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

"Yes, yes," she repeated, and either then, or a few minutes earlier, she spoke of those who had gone before, stretching out their hands to welcome her. After this she did not speak again, and so ended her earthly course of fifty-nine years.

Amongst the letters of sympathy received by the Archbishop may be mentioned one from the Queen, one from the Empress Eugénie, and another from the Princess Alice. It was the last letter the Princess ever wrote. Dean Close, Mr. R. W. Dale, an influential M.P., and one of the judges, wrote beautiful letters, which are amongst the few given to us in print out of very many.

The burial took place in Addington churchyard, on Dec. 7, 1878. "The chief mourner walked up meekly to the coffin in the chancel, and gently kissed the head of it, and joined the choir in singing, 'Lead, kindly light,' and spoke the benediction at the grave."

In another paper we will notice the son's career.

W. J. AVERY.

Though the Cuckoo has flown the gay
Redbreast is here,

And will twitter away as it snows;
The Chrysanthemums, too, in the garden

appear,

And they blossom in place of the rose.

And so bright with some purpose or sharp with some aim,

Must be everything sent us to-day; For the God who sends Summer sends Winter the same,

And He loves us now and for aye.

W. H. PARker.