school owes to the last superintendent, the Rev. R. Appleton, who held office for eight and a half years, more than double the length of time of any of his predecessors:

Teachers have gained some advantage, I hope, from a weekly social gathering in my rooms, which has given opportunities for informal introductions and conversation. A plan of the same nature has been very successful with the first division of our boys, those at the critical age 13 to 15. In the winter months we have opened two class-rooms for them once a week, from 8 to 9.30. The first hour has been devoted to games, papers, &c., the last half-hour to a reading or lecture by one of the teachers. The periodic catechizing of sections of the school has been continued with good results as regards the scholars. We have not, however, been able to rouse the parents as a body to show interest by being present; teachers may with profit work for this.

A Bible class has been formed for young men who have left college choirs, and whom their vicars find it advisable to entrust to our care. The members have been few in number, but give encouragement by their interest and regular attendance. The Choristers' Branch has made solid progress in all ways under the new superintendent.

Our last discussion opened up the questions of our scholars' prayers and Bible reading. It is our great privilege and opportunity that we are able to assist the parents in inducing habits in our scholars while they are young and impressible. It was suggested that each teacher may form his class into a union to read over week by week the lesson of the next Sunday afternoon, or some other passages. We desire to see our scholars not alone "firmly rooted once for all in Him," but also "built up higher in Him day by day," and "growing ever stronger and stronger through their faith."

We have said nothing about the Children's and Mission Church of St. John, erected in 1873, at an expense of £1,200, in which the services for all the Sunday Schools of the parish have since been held, nor of the lending library by which 5,249 volumes were circulated last year; but it is time we should conclude.

We welcome the existence and continued prosperity of the Jesus Lane Sunday School, because it affords to young men a field of unobstrusive but useful labour for the glory of God and the cause of Christ; it tends to diminish the selfishness and selfindulgence inseparable from University life, and brings undergraduates into contact with people of a different class and different age from their own; it gives some happy and useful employment for the hours of the Lord's Day; it leads to the earnest and prayerful study of God's word, and to supplications for others at a throne of grace; it gives to our future clergy an interest in Sunday Schools, and an insight into their working.

The Jesus Lane Sunday School undoubtedly owed its origin to the Evangelical section of our Church, but is evidently not

now so exclusively attached to it as once it was; it seems rather to reflect somewhat the prevailing idea among young men at Cambridge that it is not well that they should make a formal adherence to any school of thought. If, however, it is to continue to do good work it must be conducted in the spirit of its founders, and rest upon that strength which has hitherto sustained it, and given it such a remarkable development. It was founded in humble dependence upon the blessing of the Holy Spirit. "It was commenced," says one of the earliest teachers, "with much prayer:" "we knelt down and prayed together for a blessing on the work in which we were about to engage," writes another in the same spirit it is, we are sure, still conducted.

There are dangers in popularity and prosperity against which the Committee of Management will do well to guard, and we cannot do better than conclude with the wise words of Bishop Titcomb who, as will be most readily admitted, both in Delahay Street and Salisbury Square, showed no narrow or exclusive spirit in his dealings with others."

In a work like that of Sunday School teaching, unless all are agreed in fundamental principles, how is success possible? What uniformity of action, or what union of spirit can there ever be, if some teachers are undoing the work of others? It is worse than useless for the sake

of too broad a charity to overlook essential distinctions, and to attempt impossible amalgamations. Let us hope, however, that such dangers are in this case imaginary. The teaching of this school has hitherto preserved the simplicity of evangelical teaching; and I trust it will long continue to do so.

C. ALFRED JONES.

ART. III.-PRESENT ASPECT OF THE CONFLICT

WITH ATHEISM.

THE HE championship of Christianity against unbelief appears to be passing into the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race. France has lately returned, on mature deliberation, to that complete banishment of God from the national life which she had adopted for a brief period only during the fiercest frenzy of her first revolution. In Italy the hatred of religion runs so high that it cannot spare from insult even the ashes of a dead Pope. Not much can be said in favour of Germany while Häckel is a chief authority in science and Strauss in theology. Russia is strug

1 See Introduction to the "History of the Jesus Lane Sunday School," published in 1864,

gling in the grasp of a Nihilism, whose creed is the negation of all accepted beliefs. On the Continent, therefore, the outlook, from the point of view not merely of a Christian but of a Theist, cannot be regarded as bright. In England, however, and in North America, whilst the struggle waxes hotter and hotter, there are no signs of defeat. There was never a time, I believe, when the fire of Christianity burnt more clearly, or was more widely spread. The extended and ever-increasing agencies for doing good-good physical, mental, and moral-all of which have their origin and their life in the religious motive, are in themselves a sufficient evidence of this fact. It may be said that Atheism is also advancing, both as to the number and calibre of its adherents. But even granting this to be so, it is clear that these new adherents are mainly recruited, not from the ranks of sincere Christians, but from the vast multitude of the lukewarm and the indifferent. This multitude, standing between the two contending hosts, is, I believe, diminishing rapidly, by inroads both from the side of Christianity and of Atheism. With regard to the former we may well rejoice; and even with regard to the latter we have warrant for holding that no state is so hopeless as that of lukewarmness, and that an open enemy is better than a feigned ally.

Such being the state of the struggle, it seems worth while to inquire what are the chief agencies by which, on the one side and the other, it is being carried on. In the present Article I propose to attempt this very briefly, confining myself entirely to our own country; and having done so, to consider whether the agencies on the side of religion deserve encouragement, and if so, how far the encouragement now afforded them is adequate to the need.

I will begin first with the forces of our opponents. There are in England two active societies existing solely for the propagation of Secularist ideas. The larger of these numbers many thousands of members, and the additions have lately been at the rate of 100 a month. It maintains some eight or ten lecturers, and procured in one year the delivery of over 1,000 lectures, and spent nearly £4,000 in propagandism. It issues three weekly publications, which have a large circulation, besides a deluge of pamphlets, tracts, and leaflets. Bundles of these latter are distributed gratis in factories and elsewhere; and the papers are issued to public reading-rooms. The other society is less energetic and influential, but still issues a weekly paper, and promotes the circulation of literature, which it recommends as being of the most destructive character possible. Such are some of the agencies at work for the spread of Atheism amongst the masses. With regard to the upper classes, there is not, of course, the same organization, and the missiles, so to

speak, are far fewer; but they are more powerful in at least the ratio of cannon-balls to rifle bullets. Scarcely a month passes but that one or other of the leading magazines contains an article of a distinctly anti-Christian character; and no one able to read between the lines can fail to see that the downfall of religion is an object dear to the editors of at least a large proportion of our daily and weekly journals.

The advocacy of one or two eminent men of science is a potent factor in the case; and probably not a day passes in which Professor Huxley's Agnosticism is not somewhere quoted triumphantly as a convincing proof that Christianity is a falsehood.

We will now pass on to the agencies existing on the Christian side. Amongst these the first place is fairly due to the Christian Evidence Society, which claims for itself to be the only Society whose sole and specific work it is to endeavour to check the spread of popular infidelity-the only organized missionary agency to Secularism. It was founded in 1870, has the Archbishop of Canterbury for President, and numbers amongst its Council such men as the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Gloucester and Peterborough, Lord Carnarvon, Lord Shaftesbury, &c. Its main work has been the giving of lectures, especially in London. It has had the courage to grapple face to face with the great Propaganda of Secularism, described in the last paragraph. On several occasions the Society has taken for a course of lectures the Hall of Science, at Clerkenwell, which was built by Mr. Bradlaugh and his followers, and forms their acknowledged headquarters. These lectures have been given by clergymen or laymen chosen by the Society, and at the close of each lecture full discussion is allowed. This generally means that some one popular champion, put forward by the Secularists, engages in a kind of duel with the lecturer, each delivering alternate speeches of ten minutes' length, and each attacking his opponent's position and defending his own. Lectures under similar conditions are continually got up by the Society in different parts of London and the suburbs.

Speaking from some personal experience, I must record my belief that such discussions are productive of great good. It is not that many, or perhaps that any, are convinced and converted on the spot. A clever orator-and the Secularists have many such-will always have enough rhetoric on his own side of the question, to dazzle minds generally incapable of cool reasoning. Mr. Bradlaugh, for instance, has at command an endless flow of metaphysical phrases and fireworks, which have little or no meaning in themselves, but which are as inspiriting to his audience as "that blessed word Mesopotamia" was to the old woman of history. What such discussions effect is to show, to

those still open to conviction, that conviction is possible; that Christianity has not merely authority but also evidence on its side; that its claims can be argued; and that its supporters are willing to come out and argue them in fair field, and are able at least to hold their own, even against the best champions of" free thought." Seed is thus sown, by which, through God's blessing, men may be and have been brought back from error to a sincere acceptance of truth.

A less attractive, but, I believe, equally important work, is done by the Christian Evidence Society in providing lecturers to meet the open air propaganda of the Secularists. In many open spaces of the east and north of London, Secularists regularly assemble every Sunday, and give lectures on their favourite topics to all who will listen to them. The arguments used at such times, as might be expected, are far more coarse, violent, and blasphemous than in their more formal meetings, but their effect is probably to the full as mischievous. The Society combats these by employing Christian lecturers to give addresses at the same time and place as those advertised by our opponents. These lecturers are laymen, chiefly clerks or tradesmen, and are thoroughly acquainted with the classes with whom they have to deal. Their task is a difficult one; it needs besides sound thinking and the power of clear expression, very decided gifts of temper, tact, and in many cases personal courage. Their chief temptation is to follow their opponents in descending to blacken the characters of the opposing leaders-a line of conduct which, though not without some justification, is not to be encouraged.

Hitherto we have spoken of work in London alone. The Society, however, does its best to carry out similar work in the provinces, especially in the manufacturing districts; and although it is difficult to obtain local assistance in the getting up of such lectures, yet a considerable number are delivered every year. Another department of their work consists in holding classes, and arranging examinations on the subjects of Christian evidence. The number of persons offering themselves to such examination. is not large, but about 130 certificates were issued in 1881. Lastly, the Society endeavours, in some degree, to meet the want of publications on the question, which may be readily and cheaply obtained. Many of the lectures given at the Hall of Science, and elsewhere, have been collected into volumes and published, and these volumes have passed through several editions. Tracts are also widely distributed, and grants of books are made under special circumstances. No works aimed

specially at the forms of unbelief current among the more cultivated classes have been published; but the Society has