the keeping of a higher educational influence perpetually at work, and the maintenance of a Church connection and religious tone among the members. I would like the clergy to give as much of their time to the clubs as they can possibly spare from other parochial duties, and that laymen should supply what the clergy cannot do. I would suggest that great care should be taken to put down a tendency to split up into cliques, which is very common among working men that the older men should be induced to mix with the younger, and the poorer class with the upper class of artisans that esprit de corps should be kept up, and the club made, not only a place to which men can go, but a society to which they can belong: that men should feel their own independence, and should not have reason to suspect that the club is a mere charitable institution.

:

At the Oxford House in Bethnal Green, to which I have the honour to belong, we have tried to carry out something of the plan I have just described. Our House is a centre where laymen can come and live in the very midst of the poor part of London, and by personal intercourse can get to know and love the people. We can find out from the poor themselves what their needs are, we can hear from their own lips how they want to be helped, and we can try and help them accordingly. This I believe to be the true kind of Working Men's Association," the association of all who work, whether with their hands or their heads.

The success with which God has crowned our small efforts of this kind down in Bethnal Green makes me feel certain that very much more can be done with Working Men's Clubs than churchmen at present are inclined to believe, and I offer what I have said just as a suggestion, hoping that those who have had more experience of the ins and outs of the question, and know the working men better than I do, will, at any rate, try and see if our clubs, whether old or new ones, cannot be made more what our Lord Jesus Christ would like to see them.

DISCUSSION.

JOHN TREVARTHEN, Esq., Provost of the Guild of St. Alban

the Martyr.

I MAY, perhaps, be allowed to introduce myself to the meeting in connection with this question as Provost of the Guild of St. Alban, a society which for many years has taken a special interest in young men and youths, and I shall draw a little upon the experience which I have obtained in that society. I should like to say, first of all, that the definition of the subject, "Young men between school and marriage," is certainly a little vague. How long a fellow is a "young " man is rather a moot question. Some of us who are very close on fifty like to think ourselves young still, and a good many who are "young men in the sense of not being married have certainly passed fifty some time ago. Again, coming to the other end of the scale, "young England is so very precocious now-a-days that it is very difficult to say when boys may be considered to become young men. I can say from my long and large experience of juvenile criminals that, at any rate, boys know wickedness early enough to be called young men when they are only twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years old, and I cannot see why, if people are capable of such an amount of wickedness at that early age, they should not also be capable of learning better things. However, I suppose we may take it broadly that our subject applies to the years from fourteen or fifteen up to twenty-five. To enable you to form some idea of the vast numbers who are implied or interested in this view of the Church's duty, I may be pardoned for mentioning one statistical fact. In 1881, what is called the intra-metropolitan area of London had a male population of 1,192,885, and excluding those under fifteen, I find that those between fifteen and twenty-five years of age formed one-third of the whole male population. I wish to accentuate the

fact that it is the Church's duty towards this class of people, as, indeed, towards all her children, to bring every child first of all to Holy Baptism; and then to keep up her connection with him until Confirmation, followed by regular attendance at Holy Communion, rivets the tie for ever. Assuming that the Church is able to get all her children to Holy Baptism, the next thing is to prepare them in due course for confirmation. Because I think confirmation a matter of the highest im. portance, I wish to offer two observations which I hope the clergy and the bishops especially will not consider impertinent. First, I think the clergy, or a good many of them, make a serious mistake if they suppose that all the lads and girls of the proper age will voluntarily come forward and offer themselves for confirmation. It requires immense moral courage for a young man or woman to make the initial effort involved in going up to the rectory or vicarage, ringing the bell, asking for an interview, etc., in fact, inviting the special attention involved in offering himself or herself as a candidate for confirmation. I have myself been connected with confirmation classes, and I have got over much of the difficulty in this way. I have the honour to be a licensed lay preacher in the diocese of Rochester, and, in connection with a rural mission, I have had to help in bringing forward candidates for confirmation. The way which I find most successful in getting over the initial difficulty of taxing unduly the nervous systems of the would-be candidates is to specially invite all those in the parish or district who are old enough to be confirmed to come to a meeting or series of meetings without saying anything about giving in names until I have had an opportunity of explaining to them the duties and privileges connected with confirmation. It then becomes a much easier matter for candidates to offer themselves after such meetings, and the number is greatly increased because obstacles are lessened, and moreover they better understand their duty. In the next place I have this to say, if they will allow me, to their lordships the bishops: I sincerely believe that any of them who try to repress early confirmation are doing incalculable injury. I think the number of bishops is very small, if there are any now, who would lay down a hard and fast line as to age. Learned, and pious, and gifted, as they are-and we never had a bench of bishops of whom we should be as proud as the present one-it is impossible in the nature of things that they can know all the little ins and outs of the individual lives and circumstances of candidates for confirmation, and they must trust their clergy and lay helpers. If the Church's requirements (which are clearly defined and very simple) can be satisfied at an early age so much the better. The earlier a child is capable of receiving the special instruction, and giving the necessary satisfaction as to the future, the sooner he or she can be brought to confirmation the better. I could give you, if time permitted, some illustrations of the sad mischief which has ensued from children being kept back until it was thought they were old enough, according to some standard of years. It is marvellous how, in our crowded towns, etc., the veriest boys and girls become acquainted with all the sin imaginable, and, that being so, surely it is treason to the grace of God not to believe that they are capable of receiving higher and better knowledge. It is, therefore, in my mind, a very great thing to ensure our young men becoming, as early as possible, fit and proper candidates for confirmation, and all possible difficulties should be moved out of the way by all concerned. I should like to see a great improvement also in the proportion of communicants to those who have been confirmed. There are a great many young people who, even after they have been confirmed, fall away in the sense of not becoming regular communicants; the reason is that the real spiritual life in young people cannot be sustained by a series of spasms, but by the spiritual system of the Church. I hope the Church will not be content to do what a mother in Ramsgate, of whom I heard the other day, has been in the habit of doing. She gave her boys a piece of bread in the morning and told them to go and shift for themselves for the rest of the day. That is, however, what we shall be doing if we bring children to Baptism and then let them go adrift, or if we bring them to confirmation and then do the same thing. I should like to say further as a more important point, that we can never do good work in this or any other matter without being assured of the immense power and the indispensable nature of personal influence. In my own guild we find that the sooner we can get hold of lads the better, and the more generally we can minister to their various wants the better. The inexorable bell compels me to close, so I can only add that these wants are briefly: recreation of a healthy kind-and the unhealthy sort is more mischievous than most people imagine-intellectual culture, and sound religious training.

J. JOHNSTONE BOURNE, Esq., Secretary to the London Diocesan Council for the Welfare of Young Men, Northumberland Chambers, Charing Cross.

I RISE with mingled diffidence and thankfulness; diffidence in presuming to speak in the presence of so many at whose feet I would rather sit; thankfulness that this very important and interesting matter is put in the forefront of the meetings of this Congress, and that so many laymen are permitted to express their feelings and hopes on the subject. My purpose is, in the first place, to mention a fact which may not be known to many, and, in the next, to make a simple but earnest appeal. The fact is this. The wants which were referred to in the first paper, and which subsequent speakers have dealt with, the London Diocesan Council for the Welfare of Young Men are at this moment endeavouring to meet. I wish to tell you the motives which led to this effort, the mode in which it is being carried on, and what we hope to accomplish. The year before last, at the London Diocesan Conference, the subject of young men and their needs was very fully discussed, and these three propositions were established : First, that young men had not received all the care and attention which they ought to receive; secondly, that it was the Church's business to undertake some further effort, and thirdly, that some practical measures should be forthwith adopted. The constitution of the Council which was formed by the Bishop of London to this end, is very liberal and comprehensive. One of the members was that great man whose name we all reverence, the Earl of Shaftesbury. The President is the Bishop of London; the Chairman is the Duke of Westminster; the Vice-chairman is Archdeacon Farrar; and the Treasurer is the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, the Member for Westminster. The objects the Council set before them are these :-To do everything that is possible for the welfare of young men, but primarily to establish two important branches of work, the first being to stir up the clergy of London, with a view to the establishment in every parish, or group of parishes, of an evening home for young men and lads, where they may go after the toils of the day and find harmless recreation, combined with moral, intellectual, and spiritual improvement. Twelve grants have already been made towards the opening of such institutes, and I could give some interesting details as to what is being done by the Clubs which have been established in East End parishes. The second object is to have a place in London to which country clergymen and others may refer young men with the certainty of their finding a friendly welcome, being recommended to lodgings, and obtaining introduction to the clergyman of the district in which they are going to live. Just to give an instance. A young man came up to London, from a remote town the other day, bringing with him a letter from the vicar of his parish. We tell him first where to get safe and reliable lodgings, give him kindly advice, and then offer him a letter to the clergyman of the parish in which he is about to settle. As the young fellow goes off to occupy these lodgings, he says, "I came to London feeling a perfect stranger, but it seems as if I were at home." For more details of this work I would beg to refer all persons to the book to which reference has already been made and to our papers and cards in the Art Exhibition, which give full information on the subject, and one of which we want everyone present to take. We say, then, that this is necessary work, that it is Christian work, that it is Church work, that it is work in entire harmony with the Spirit of Him who stayed the funeral march, and whose bidding, Young man, I say unto thee arise," brought back the soul to the lifeless body, and caused the widowed mother's heart to sing for joy. Will you not all help us in this work? Many I know will say that it is not such heroic work as founding an empire, or commanding an army, or pulling down a national Church; but, we believe that it is work in entire accordance with the acts of Him whom we desire and profess to serve, and I venture to think that when the mists of time have rolled away and the deeds of earth are weighed in the balances of Heaven, and the scroll of life is fully unrolled and truly read, it will be found that this call of the London Diocesan Council to the young men will have kept many under the shadow of the Cross, and prove one of the echoes of the Master's voice, which will reverberate through the endless ages, and swell the angels' song.

The Rev. H. WOOD.

IF any apology were required from me for addressing this meeting, it would be simply this, that I have had some little experience of young men in town and country, and that I have derived some of the greatest pleasures of the ministerial life from their ready interest and kind affection. I am speaking simply as a plain country rector, whose lot is now cast amongst a purely rural population, and as every kind of experience is valuable, I trust I may be able to add my mite to this discussion by speaking of one particular phase of it. The years between Sunday school and marriage are years of unconscious development, and I believe it depends in a great measure upon ourselves what direction that development shall take. I do not believe for one moment in any obstinate antagonism between our young men and the Church. On the contrary, I believe that those to whom we have imparted sound doctrines as lads, have their hearts with us as young men. I am bold to say, that if this is not the case, there must be something deficient in our own teaching, and that the blame lies, in a certain degree, at our own door. I think it is very possible to get into a desponding way of thinking, and speaking, and acting, with regard to our young men, and thereby helping to create those very evils which we deplore. I think it is quite possible not to give our young men half credit enough for strong attachments and unselfish efforts. In many of our isolated parishes life would be almost unbearable if it were not cheered by their rough affection. No doubt it is true that at a certain period of a young man's life there does seem to be ground for despondency. Just at the age when a young man is vacillating between pupilage on the one hand, and independence on the other, there is no doubt he is a very difficult subject to deal with. Does it not fall within the experience of many of us, that sometimes a lad who has been with us from infancy, carefully trained, and carefully taught, and who has been, moreover, the subject of many prayers, does for a season turn out to be the deadliest foe of the parson and the teacher. We all know the signs of the complaint. He begins to be irregular at Sunday school. We ask the reason why, and are given an evasive answer. The following Sunday he is hanging about the place, which still has a fascination for him. We go out and invite him in, and he looks at us with the stolid impassibility of countenance against which there is no appeal, and we go away utterly defeated. I will not try now to enter into any details as to Church work; I wish merely to enforce the one lesson of hopefulness in dealing with the young men; they will in time come back to be your firm friends and supporters. If we have hopefulness and love they will be found to be the foremost supporters of our Church.

The Rev. RICHARD HIBBS.

THE best feeder, or nursery ground, for Working Men's Associations in town and country, is open-air preaching, preceded by a judicious selection of prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. I say this after more or less experience extending over a quarter of a century. Let me add, that the services of clergymen at these "Homilies" are always preferred by working men. But the time comes when the Homilist must retire into winter quarters and cease from his sub Jove frigido addresses. If unbeneficed, in order to make amends for his unremunerated services in the summer months, he seeks perhaps a locum tenency in the country to assist in keeping the wolf from the door. This has been my course of action for many years. At the fall of last year, however, just this time twelvemonth, when at Chepstow, whither I had been taken by the then new vicar, the Rev. H. Law, since deceased, I was suddenly inhibited by the Bishop of Llandaff from officiating in the diocese. And as the same thing had occurred at Swindon in 1879, of course I am now to all intents and purposes, as an excommunicated person, or one, at all events, as good as deposed from the ministry. I think it right to say thus much for the information of unbeneficed brethren in the ministry. To minister to working men, and to sympathise with them in their distress, it would seem can only be done at the risk of being put out of the Church by some Diotrephes.

The Rev. C. LLOYD ENGSTRÖM, Rector of St. Mildred's, Broad Street, City, and Secretary of the Christian Evidence Society.

I PROPOSE to speak of the spirit in which we should address working men rather than refer to the work of any particular association. In the first place, with regard to sympathy, a great deal has been already said about it, but it is very important to understand the practical line that sympathy should take. Sympathy does not mean that we are to humiliate ourselves in dealing with working men. Working men are perfectly well able to understand the advantage which culture, if we possess it, gives us. It is, indeed, a great responsibility; still, if we can show a liberal spirit arising from culture we need not underrate our advantages, and they will be willing to accept us as teachers. But we should also recollect that we must come before working men with great humility in our hearts. The other day I heard Mr. Rowland, the secretary of the Cabdrivers' Association, say at a Purity meeting, "It is not very easy for a man to bring up a family respectably and purely on 30s. a week." Now 30s. a week is about £80 a year, and I say that a man who is able to bring up a family properly upon that is worth ten times as much as one who is only able to do it on £800 a year. Surely that is the true view which was given by the poet Goethe, viz.-that besides reverence for what is above us, and reverence for what is around us, we should have reverence for what is (nominally) beneath us. With regard to the subject of belief the first thing to observe is that men should be encouraged to boldly state their difficulties. Let us all see exactly where we are as regards our faith. And let us not suppose for a moment that because people have difficulties that is any proof they are unbelievers. Christianity in the minds of the first converts was originally, so to speak, in a state of solution, but in time it crystallized into what is called Christian belief. Every now and then the crystal is broken up and becomes reliquefied; but if the spirit of truth is working in the solution it will return again to the state of crystallization. We ought to show working men, and others also, that to see a difficulty is not to disbelieve, and that to boldly face it is often the way to get rid of it. I have lately, as secretary of the Christian Evidence Society, had to meet Mr. Foote, the editor of the Free-thinker, in a hall at Battersea, as well as to lecture and to enter into discussion with other Secularists in Hyde Park, and I am perfectly certain, from what occurred then that we must not give up one jot of God's truth. Many people are inclined to do so, because they think that they will thereby persuade doubters to embrace Christianity, but we have no right to surrender what we have been made responsible for. The great thing is to be both sympathetic and firm, for when you have people's sympathy you are able, when necessary, to administer a very strong and stern reproof to anything partaking of blasphemy. At two of the Hyde Park meetings, of which I have just spoken, I did this, and in one case the man, whom I thus censured, was not only not angry, but positively congratulated me on the fairness of my lecture. That truly "grand old man," Lord Shaftesbury, who, perhaps more than any other man who has lived in this country, has done the most for the working classes, said last year that the "higher criticism was awful nonsense;" and though Lord Shaftesbury was narrow in his views on such matters, he was not after all so very wrong. Supposing I were speaking to a body of working men on the subject, I should refer to that picture in Funch, in which a "jerry builder" in the suburbs, whose attention has been directed by the tenant of a hastily run up house to a wall which has fallen down, says, not at all surprised or abashed, "Oh, yes, I s'pose somebody's been leaning against it!" I venture to say that the history of the rationalistic discussion on the Gospels during this century has resulted in this-that the whole thing has tumbled to bits, and that not even through being leaned against, but in consequence of its own inherent weakI think, therefore, Lord Shaftesbury was not far from right in saying that the higher criticism was "awful nonsense." Another question on which I feel strongly, is that of purity. The other day I heard it stated by the secretary of the Central Vigilance Committee, with regard to their work in London, that the working man and the poorer tradesman were those who really helped the Committee the most.

ness.