ceptible, from the days of Cæsar, to the charms of intellectual novelties by a sudden inroad of new ideas after centuries of comparative seclusion-like the calm lakes under the shadow of our Welsh mountains -sheltered by the barrier of the Welsh language from the winds of doctrine which swept over England. The tendencies of the present in England are mainly the outgrowth of the past; in Wales they are, on the other hand, a revolution suddenly caused by the advance of the English language with its inevitable consequences. The Welsh people find themselves comparatively all of a sudden in the full stream of modern thought, like a boy at school hurried direct from the Fourth Form to the Sixth, or like a freshman losing himself in the fascinations of University life all at once from the simplicity of a country home. There are signs already of a momentous change of tone in Welsh religious circles. The most marked feature of Welsh religion in the past used to be a glowing fervour of Christian experience with a prac tical outcome in morality, but with the emotional side distinctly prominent. This religious fervour of our forefathers-the loss of which a Welshman cannot mention without a passing sigh of regret—is generally acknowledged to be, broadly speaking, now a thing of the past among persons under middle age in Wales, and its place yet remains to be filled by a more intellectual and more complex-may it only be as true-form of the old but ever new spiritual life. I do not believe that there is a man living in Wales farsighted enough to foresee what the result of the general knowledge of English throughout Wales within the next twenty years will turn out to be. It is quite possible that the landmarks at present dividing Welsh Nonconformist denominations from one another, which already have lost the greater part of their former distinctness and reality, may be swept away altogether, and either be followed by a general movement towards religious solidarity or else be replaced by new landmarks called into existence by new burning controversies about modern forms of doctrine powerfully arousing popular interest.

At such a time Welsh Churchmen cannot accept with a light heart the controversy forced upon them. Had they a choice in the matter they would have infinitely preferred to have their minds entirely free to study how best, by life and teaching, to place at the service of their countrymen the Church's varied wealth of continuous catholic inheritance of tried truth for fresh answers to fresh questions, and to bring out of her treasures things new because living, and living because old even from the beginning. Welsh Churchmen share the interest of their Nonconformist fellowcountrymen in the renovation of Welsh national sentiment, which has fortunately accompanied the advance of the English language in Wales, and in the gallant efforts of Wales to complete its national educational organization by a new system of intermediate schools, and soon, it is to be hoped, by a Welsh University. It has been my pleasant privilege to devote more time, I may say, to co-operation with

Welshmen of various views in national movements than to controversy. It is an utter delusion to think that Welsh Churchmen are bent upon contention with their Nonconformist brethren. All they wish to do is to endeavour to the best of their power to work out the mission of the Church, with no disrespect or hostility towards Welsh Nonconformists, because they also wish to discharge their religious duties according to the dictates of their own conscience and reason. The revival of Church life in Wales is not, to the best of my observation, a reaction against Dissent, but mainly, I trust, the result of an awakening of Welsh Churchmen to the lofty spiritual mission and truth of the Church. A SPECIAL OBJECTION TO WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT. It is probably no news to the readers of this Review that Welsh Churchmen-lay and clericalare practically unanimous against Welsh Disestablishment and Disendowment. We stand side by side with English Churchmen as to the general issues involved in this controversy. But a distinct case has obviously to be made out for Welsh Disestablishment. I am not aware that any one seriously maintains that a distinct case was at all made out in the recent debate on the subject in the House of Commons. The upshot of that debate was clearly indicated by the significant onslaught upon the Church in England as well as in Wales with which the leader of the Liberationist party that evening wound up the discussion. I wish to emphasize one special objection to separate Welsh Disestablishment upon which there is a strong feeling among Churchmen in England as well as in Wales. Welsh Disestablishment means not only Disestablishment, but also the dismemberment of the Church. The well-known utterance of the Duke of Devonshire upon Scotch Disestablishment obviously does not touch the most objectionable part of Welsh Disestablishment from a Church point. of view. Nor does Irish Disestablishment form an adequate precedent. The complete unity of organisation between the Welsh and the English dioceses of the one Church, accurately described by Mr. Gladstone as "the Church of Wales in England no less than the Church of England in Wales," differs essentially in kind, cause, date, and circumstances from the union of the Irish and English Churches. The compulsory severance, by Act of Parliament, of the unity of church organization, on which Churchmen in England and Wales alike lay great stress, seems to Churchmen little short of an outrage. If Parliament think it wise to disestablish and disendow the Church, it has of course the power to do so. But surely the internal organization of the Church is a matter for the decision of Churchmen. Underneath unity of church organization lies an organic spiritual church unity beyond the power of Parliament to destroy. But the fact that Parliament cannot destroy the oneness of cuhrch life is no reason why it should do the Church as much harm as it can by destroying the expression and application of Church organic unity by organization. The fact that the Church in Wales has been already

cruelly oppressed in the past, for political reasons, by Walpole and his successors, in an age of dormant Churchmanship, is no reason why it should be again oppressed now, for political reasons, by cutting it off from enjoying the full benefits of the free interchange of Church life which it now possesses by its complete oneness with the Church in England. Welsh Nonconformists appreciate more and more the religious advantages of close relationship with their brethren in England. The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, for instance, the only isolated Welsh denomination, are now endeavouring to arrange a connection with English Presbyterians. The compulsory isolation of the four Welsh Dioceses, as far as lies in the power of Parliament, would not only be an injustice to the Church, but also a practical injury to the general interests of religion in Wales.

THE SPIRIT OF THE CONTROVERSY.

I have pointed out reasons for regretting this controversy, and especially its inopportune concentration upon the Church in Wales. My only object in dwelling on its regrettable character was to support the powerful appeal of the Rev. F. Herbert Stead in the Last number of this Review for every effort to be made on both sides to keep within check its unnecessary asperities. The controversy is inevitable, and may be both long and severe. Too great issues are at stake to be trifled with. I have no wish to indulge in idle moans over an inevitable struggle. Christian charity is never to be served by playing tricks with conscience or by any voluntary compromise of principle.

The brunt of the struggle falls for the moment upon Welsh Churchmen. A copious vocabulary of vituperation has been freely employed in our abuse. We are no worse for it, as far as I know. The rural clergy of Wales suffered cruelly for some years from an organised agitation against the payment of tithes. None of them, in spite of it all, faltered in opposition to Disestablishment. That trouble is now, I think, practically past, and I have no desire to rake up its bitterness. We are thankful for the staunch support of English Churchmen to us in our struggle for the common cause. The sympathy and encouragement of Irish Churchmen, kindly expressed by Professor Stokes last month, is especially welcome to us in Wales. I trust we may endeavour to the best of our abilities to practise on our part the canons of controversy outlined with admirable impartiality by Mr. Stead. It is not easy to face calmly proposals which, I understand, involve, among other details, the placing in the hands of County Councils churches built and restored by the voluntary contributions of Churchmen, as Welsh Nonconformists may realise by a singularly deplorable attempt made recently to deprive a Welsh Methodist congregation, on a legal technicality, of its chapel. The resentment naturally provoked throughout Wales by this incident may enable Nonconformists to perceive that self-control is no easy duty for Churchmen under similar threats. A few Welsh

members of Parliament persist in irreconcilable opposition to the Clergy Discipline Bill, in the face of Mr. Gladstone's noble speech. If Churchmen opposed a Bill intended solely to improve the internal arrangements of a Nonconformist body-for instance, the Bill suggested for modifying the Wesleyan itinerant system -their conduct would be deeply and justly resented. A word of personal explanation, in conclusion, is due from me to Mr. Guinness Rogers. It was not my fault that I had no opportunity of criticizing his able address at Rhyl in his presence. I repeated my appreciation of its tone in his absence. He must have read a very condensed report of my remarks if he inferred that I impugned his theological orthodoxy. I understood him to found his advocacy of "religious equality" on religious grounds. I distinguished between his conception of religious equality," which I consider purely political, and the proportionate equality of responsibilities to opportunities which I hold to be the doctrine of the New Testament applicable to his point. In pointing out what I believe to be a historical connection between the idea of equality and Reunion I had no more intention of provoking "heat" and "bitterness" than I suppose Mr. Guinness Rogers had in maintaining that Churchmen rejected a Scriptural principle of cardinal importance. I agree with him that frankness of speech in fair argument does not clash with the law of Christian charity. I have only to regret that a speaker, as trenchant as he is courteous, should not be always able to apply his own canon of controversy to the speech of an opponent. May I add that if Mr. Guinness Rogers refers to Mr. Gladstone's profound volume on Church Principles he may see reason to revise his opinion of the bearing of Church Principles on this controversy. I am sure Mr. Guinness Rogers must have been as much pained as myself in listening to the irrelevant and irreverent attack made at a Liberationist meeting at Rhyl by a Welsh Member of Parliament upon a particular doctrine held, I believe, though certainly not in the sense the speaker imagined, by Presbyterians as well as by Churchmen. If Mr. F. H. Stead's suggestions as to the conduct of this controversy could be accepted by responsible speakers on both sides I am sure that much unnecessary injury to the interests of religion would be avoided, and I therefore hope the the numerous practical difficulties in the way of the Conference which he proposes may be surmounted. It will be a deep disgrace and a permanent loss to both sides if the discussion of a great religious question cannot be carried on without an unworthy appeal to base passions. I have certainly no desire to under-estimate the issues at stake. But important as these issues are I am convinced that the spirit shown in the controversy will be found, in the long run, of still greater importance.

I Owen

I THINK if I were asked to mention the most beautiful material object I had ever seen, I should name a magnificent Indiaman which I saw some thirty years ago sai ing out of the mouth of the Thames. Every stitch of her sails was set, and the white masses of canvas bellied to the fresh sea-wind which made music in her ropes and cordage. With the flag of England at her stern, her long streamers floating in the breeze, and the waves breaking into white foam before her prow and lapping pleasantly along her sides,

"She walked the waters like a thing of life,"

a superb instrument of human energy. "They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in the great waters, these men see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep"; but among the works of "all-devising man" they can see none lovelier than the grand old hearts of oak which were built into our Indiamen, or than their successors whose gliding swiftness has won them the name of "greyhounds of the deep."

"The sun is high in heaven; a favouring breeze

Fills the white sail, and sweeps the rippling seas,
And the tall vessel walks her destined way,
And rocks and glitters in the curling spray.
Among the shrouds, all happiness and hope,
The busy seaman coils the rattling rope,
And tells his jest, or carols out his song,
And laughs his laughter, vehement and long;
And nods the head, and waves the welcome hand,
To those who weep upon the lessening strand."

The poets have painted pictures no less beautiful of the joy of mariners when they reach the haven where they would be, and hang garlands on the prow.

- Few sights are more melancholy than the wrecks and
ruins of our gallant ships. There was infinite pathos in
Clarkson Stanfield's great picture of "The Castaway." It
represented the huge hull of a derelict vessel on a sullen-
coloured and lonely sea. Her masts have been cut away by
the board, her helm broken, her compass lost. There is
no living thing upon her decks. Her crew have either
abandoned her, or have themselves perhaps been swept
into the seething depths. The wild billows toss the
wretched derelict hither and thither at their will, and
sweep her from stem to stern with their leaping surge.
"Man marks the earth with ruin; his control

Stops with the shore. Upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed; nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown."

It has not happened to many to see a dismantled hulk upon the rolling waters, but many may have seen the ribs and fragments of desolate wrecks upon the lonely shores. The visitor to Folkestone or Sandgate has but to look from the beach to see the three masts of the ill-fated Benvenue rising above the waves. She was a Glasgow ship of 2,090 tons, and was wrecked off Sandgate in a terrific southeasterly storm in November, 1891. She was not more than three hundred yards from the land, and myriads of spec. tators on that wild November morning of 1891 watched her with intense anxiety. They could see that twenty-five of her crew had taken to the rigging, and the coastguardsmen were promptly on the spot with the rocket apparatus. But, owing to the tremendous fury of the gale, the fullestsized rockets, driven with the largest charge, feil far short of the wreck. Then an attempt was made by the help of many willing hands to launch the lifeboat, but the waves which dashed over the shingly beach were so huge and irresistible that every attempt was full of jeopardy. The lifeboat itself was nearly swept out to sea, and the effort had to be abandoned. Then the lifeboat was put on its waggon and sent to Hythe in the hope that it would be more easy to launch her there. The survivors of the wreck were watching with aching hearts the frustration of these attempts to rescue them. They were drenched with showers of ice-cold rain, and as the furious blast raged over them they would have dropped into the sea from cold and exhaustion had they not been lashed to the rigging. Telegrams were sent to summon other lifeboats, one even to Ramsgate; and meanwhile the soldiers who had been paraded on the shore endeavoured, under the direction of their officer, to fire a thin wire line over the wreck from a nine-pounder loaded with chain-shot; but the wire snapped, and this attempt also was found to be futile. Then a man on the doomed ship was seen to descend from the rigging, tie a bowline round his waist, and make an effort to swim ashore. He plunged into the crest of a huge wave, and for a few moments battled bravely in that tremendous sea; but buffeted, whirled, and tossed about hither and thither, he had no chance, and he sank exhausted and was seen no more. The survivors saw that such must be the fate of every one who made the same attempt, and the brave

fishermen who offered to try if they could swim to the wreck with a rope were not allowed to imperil their lives to no purpose. Meanwhile rocket after rocket kept falling short, and the anxious throngs were disheartened with the news that the lifeboat had capsized at Huil, and that one of the Sandgate boatmen, who left a widow and five children, had been drowned. The distress signals of the wreck had first been seen at seven in the morning. It was now three, and the terrible night was coming on, which it seemed impossible that any of the crew could possibly

survive.

But after five the news came that the famous Dover lifeboat was being towed to the wreck by a steam tug. Happily, after that day of agony, the black clouds cleared and the moon shone, though the storm continued. Another crew had been got for the Sandgate lifeboat, and she was launched at nine, with immense difficulty, by the aid of hundreds of hands. A mighty cheer rose from the spectators as she glided into the water, and in ten minutes she was alongside the wreck. In little more than an hour's time she was back at Sandgate, having saved twenty-seven out of a crew of thirty-two. The captain had perished by going down to fetch something from the cabin the very

moment that the hull sunk. The crew had suffered less from their long, cruel, and anxious exposure than might have been expected, and they said that they had felt but one moment of despair when the masts heeled over, and they feared that the vessel would either go to pieces or turn on her side; but she righted herself and remained fixed. The two apprentices were lost. One of them was only fourteen, and it was his first voyage. The poor lad was dashed off the ship by a huge wave, and swam manfully for his life, but the ebb of the wave swept him back, and he was carried out to sea.

The story of the Benvenue has multitudes of parallels. It is but a specimen of a calamity which, in its main outlines, is repeated every year. It iliustrates a very curious fact in psychology. Let but a single life be visibly imperilled, and hundreds of thousands of spectators will not only be attracted to witness the spectacle, but will be swept by the wildest gusts of emotion, and will make the most impassioned efforts to save even one child who is in danger. But the very same persons will listen with perfect callousness to the proof that lives past counting are being yearly imperilled by the very same causes, and that such perils are largely preventible. At the sight of a shipwreck, when, through the squalls of wind and foam, a few halffrozen men are seen clinging helplessly to some swaying mast of a wreck, women will weep and tear their hair and swoon, and men with wives and families will vie with each other in trembling eagerness to risk their own lives in the effort to rescue the survivors. Yet of all these, perhaps not one will go home and contribute so much as sixpence to the Institution which this year alone has already saved 579 lives, and sent lifeboats many times to carry back to shore those who would otherwise have inevitably perished. It is an extreme instance of the truth that things seen affect us far more intensely than things heard:

Report said that he wanted to save a favourite cat.

"Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures

Quam quae sint oculis submissa fidelibus." It is the object of this paper to arouse interest in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which furnishes the last earthly hope to SO many hundreds of shipwrecked mariners.

The existence of this society furnishes one more proof of the extraordinary awakement of the spirit of beneficence in modern times. It owes its existence to the agonised feeling of thousands of spectators who were watching a terrific storm at Newcastle in 1789. Vessel after vesse】 barely succeeded in making the port, and one-the Adventure-missed the entrance and was driven on to the rocks. The crew took refuge in the rigging, and so close was the ship to shore that the people could not only hear their wild cries for help, but could even see the pallor of the death-agony creep over their faces as one by one they were torn from the shrouds by the rush of water, or dropped exhausted from their hold. The scene was heartrending, but no ordinary boat, however strong, could live for five minutes in that hell of waters, and it was not long before that gallant vessel was battered to pieces by the fury of the waves, and her sailors perished before the eyes of their brother men.

A lifeboat had been invented nine years before this disaster, by a London coach-builder named Lionel Lukin. The thought struck him, we know not how, of building a boat with air-tight compartments, protected round the gunwales by bands of cork. In 1785 he became the pioneer of the blessed movement by publishing a pamphlet "Upon the invention, principle, and construction of insubmergible boats." His vessel was tried and lives were saved by it at Bamborough and Shields, and he has a right to the inscription on his grave in Hythe Churchyard that "He was the inventor of the first lifeboat." It is to the credit of George IV.-then Prince Regent-that he was one of the few who troubled himself to help Lukin by his support and sympathy.

The wreck of the Adventure led the people of South Shields to offer a prize for the best constructed lifeboat. Wouldhave, who had taken his idea from noticing the Two models were chosen. One was by a painter named broken piece of a wooden dish which always righted itself when turned over in the water-skeel which he helped to place upon a woman's head. The other was by Henry Greathead, who introduced the important modification of ordered Greathead to build one of these boats, which he not a curved keel. In 1798 the Duke of Northumberland only purchased, but endowed; and as it saved many lives, before 1804 he had received commissions to build no fewer than thirty-five.

A great impulse to the cause was given by the excellent baronet Sir William Hillary, whose memorial may be seen in the little castle built on a rock in the middle of Douglas Bay. He lived at Douglas in the Isle of Man. In old days the rocky island was a frequent scene of shipwrecks, and when I was a boy I have myself seen as many as a dozen wrecks at different times at Langness and other parts of the island. Loving the sea and sailors, he had personally assisted in snatching many lives from destruction between the years 1823 and 1827. In 1825 he had helped to save eighty-seven persons from one ship, the City of Glasgow. In that year he succeeded in interesting two Members of Parliament in his exertions, and the

* Between 1821 and 1845 there were no fewer than 144 wrecks on the coasts of the island, in which 172 lives were lost, and a quarter of a million of property sunk.