to these people to attend church would do little good. Most of them would resent a personal approach on the subject of religion. They must be reached, if at all, by indirection. The entertainments were free, but the people were admitted by tickets which were previously distributed to them. Marked tickets were sent each week to a certain number of the non-church-goers, and when these marked tickets were presented at the doors it was known approximately who had responded. After the same people had been across the church threshold several times it was deemed that they might safely be visited by some member of the congregation and personally invited to the pastor's reception, or to the Sunday services. While it is impossible to give any exact figures as to the result of this method, it is safe to say that it has been instrumental in interesting more outsiders in the church and its work than many other agencies combined. It has familiarized a large number of irreligious people with the interior of the church, and broken down many of their deep-rooted prejudices. The plan involves much personal oversight and labor, and requires most of the time of a special clerk; but all its difficulties are offset by the single fact that no method has been found more efficacious in creating, in a natural and pleasant way, the first bond of attraction between the church and the indifferent outsider. The plan can easily be made self-supporting through the contributions which are willingly given at the entertainments.

The third division mentioned was that of Instruction. It includes all of those agencies, the object of which is to help people to help themselves. In this kind of work many churches in England have been successfully engaged for many years. One is almost dazed as he looks through the long list of their charitable and industrial departments. This list reveals the fact that in the mother country there is no interest pertaining to man's temporal well-being which is deemed unworthy of the fostering care of the church. Work of this kind is so rare in America that the few pastors who ventured to introduce it were almost regarded at first as dangerous innovators. Had these ministers proposed to become bakers and milliners themselves, some of their people could not have been more dumfounded than they were when it was suggested that a cooking-school and dress-making class be started in the church.

The conventional church architecture of the present day does not admit of the necessary facilities for carrying on efficiently the various branches of this department. There should be several

class-rooms specially furnished for the work. It is one of the signs of the times, however, that several of the churches which have been built within the past five years are provided with these facilities for example, the Pilgrim Church, in Worcester, which has a fine gymnasium, a carpenter's shop, well furnished with tools, a printing office, and a large number of class-rooms; and the St. George's Church, in New York, which has erected a magnificent structure thoroughly furnished for all kinds of secular instruction. In another church the industrial work is at present directed from two rooms. One is the headquarters of the work for women, and is called the Dorcastry; the other is under the care of the Young Men's Institute, and is called the Corner-Stone room. Both rooms are attractively furnished, and provided with the best reading matter and a variety of games. The superintendent of the Dorcastry, and the director of the Corner-Stone room are present every evening to welcome strangers and supervise the work in general. The former is a Christian lady whose whole time is devoted to the church. Scores of young men and women frequent these rooms and receive instruction in the various classes during the week. There is the class in painting, for example. But should painting be taught in the name of the church? Why not? There are thousands of young women of refined natures and artistic instincts in our great cities, who are obliged to lodge in cheerless attic rooms, and board at restaurants. What higher work of ministration can a church do than to gather some of these young women together in a bright room, under earnest Christian teachers, who shall teach them how to add a touch of beauty to the dull gray of their monotonous work-day life? Then there is the sewing school, where the bright-eyed little misses gather eagerly every Saturday to learn a useful handicraft; and the kitchen garden, where they learn the art of keeping house and waiting on their mothers; and the dress-making class, which saves the pupils a good many long bills from Madame Modiste. Then there are the classes in the history of art, and stenography, and elocution, and penmanship, and arithmetic, and type-writing; and it is proposed another season to add typesetting, carpentry, and wood-carving.

Most of these departments are carried on by the members of the congregation as a labor of love. It goes without saying that they have been greatly blessed while blessing others.

In reviewing what has been said, it appears that the church which honestly tries to adapt these secular means to a spiritual

end accomplishes three things which add much to the solution of the vexed problem of evangelizing the masses. First: It attracts to itself a large number of people who, under the ordinary conditions of our church life, would not be brought within the influence of the gospel. This has invariably been the case whenever the experiment has been tried in this country. Secondly: It confers an actual blessing on the objects of its ministration, and so fulfills the law of Christ. Such a church puts its warm hand, athrill with the heart-beats of the Saviour, into the hand of the distressed, the tempted, and the fallen; and leads them out into a large place. It may be said that this is the duty of the individual Christian, and so it is; but it is also the duty of the church as a church. For, thirdly, in attending to this duty as an organization it will make that impression upon the community without which it must inevitably become effete. It might often seem, to a superficial critic, that there was a larger outlay of time and energy in this kind of work than the results would justify. The mathematical Christian who is forever trying to solve the arithmetic of the Trinity, or presuming to demonstrate the results of church work in terms of the addition table or by the rule of three, might be disappointed with his figuring. The true value of such a work lies not in the material, or even in the spiritual help which may have been given to a few individuals; it lies rather in that indefinite yet potent influence, which like a subtle fragrance pervades the surrounding community, and counteracts the malaria of scorn and doubt which threatens the religious life of our times.

There are two or three objections to the positions taken in this article which call for a word in closing: The financial expense involved in maintaining such a church, the complexity of the organization, and the materialistic tendencies of the plan.

In answer to the first objection, it may be said that the necessary expenses will not seem large when the number of workers and the amount of work done are taken into the account. As a matter of fact, the actual cost of running such an organization is no greater than that incurred by many large city churches where they have but one salaried officer and a choir, and where the church is open but once or twice a week.

As to the objection that there is too much machinery, it may be said that one great lack of the churches is that of system and organization. If there were a more definite aim, and more systematic effort, there would be greater spiritual life. Things are

often left to run themselves, and they either run off the track or not at all. Intelligent business men, who are masters of the intricate machinery of trade and industry, and strict even to scrupulosity in their business transactions, often become parties to disorderly methods in church affairs, which, if employed by a neighbor in the commercial world, would condemn him to the pillory of their ridicule and contempt. The more beautiful the tapestry, the more delicate and intricate must be the machinery. The fabric of a perfected humanity can be woven in no bungling loom. We live in an age of wheels, ay, wheels within wheels, the swift revolutions of which are more dazing than the vision which Ezekiel saw. What is needed in the church is not less machinery, but more steam, - not fewer wheels, but more of the "living creature" within.

Which, perhaps, is the best answer that can be given to the last objection concerning the material and secular phases of this kind of church work. If the impression has been given that the various methods suggested here are in any sense to overshadow or supersede the ordinary means of grace, the pen has unfortunately belied the writer's intent. That intent was to present as clearly and fairly as possible a phase of church work which is just now arousing to an unusual degree the interest of the Christian world. It is true that this phase of work deals with material interests and secular means; but it is taken for granted that back of all, and working through all, is the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit ; and that the church should aim first and always to bring the soul of the sinner into vital contact with that Spirit. Whether the material shall be exalted at the expense of the spiritual depends upon the strength and quality of the spiritual. Religion pure and undefiled is not that which remains intact only so long as it is not in contact with the world; but it is that which keeps unspotted in the dust and din of life. Its virtue depends not upon the coddling of the nunnery, nor upon the sanctity of ecclesiastical surroundings. It calls nothing common or unclean which concerns the betterment of humanity; but, if need be, it can shake the walls of Jericho with a ram's horn, open blind eyes with clay, and use the waters of the turbid Jordan to cleanse and cure. If that which was designed to be the only moral antiseptic in a world of sinners has by contact with material things so lost its distinguishing qualities as to be known only by its original trade-mark, then indeed it is good for nothing but to be cast forth and trodden under foot of man. He is a weak Christian who cannot eat and

drink to the glory of God, but who perforce through these material appetites becomes a glutton or a drunkard. That is a weak church, a weak Christianity, which cannot sanctify a secular method to a spiritual end without itself becoming secularized in the attempt. Such a Christianity can hardly hope to influence the everyday life of this busy age, nor can it hope to possess and transform the world.

BERKELEY TEMPLE, BOSTON, Mass.

Charles A. Dickinson.

ONE ASPECT OF SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE."

I.

Ir is very nearly three hundred years since the first three books. of Spenser's "Faerie Queene" were published at London.

Up to that time the literature of England had been rather a promise than a performance. At the beginning of the last decade of the sixteenth century, England, flushed with the glories of her triumph over the Spanish Armada, and comparatively at peace with herself, occupied an assured and honorable place among the nations of Europe. But as yet England had failed to assert herself in the domain of literature and the arts. She had humbled the pride of Spain, but she still sat as a learner at the feet of the great poets of Italy.

A factor in continental politics, in all the centuries of gradual intellectual growth England had produced few literary works of more than insular importance. Two hundred years before the great Elizabethans, Chaucer stands as a witness to the temper and capability of the English mind, but these two hundred years were well-nigh completed before the promise of Chaucer was fulfilled. In the year 1590, when the first installment of the "Faerie Queene" was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company at London, England was on the verge of an unrivaled period in the growth of her literature. Little as she had done heretofore, the next quarter of a century was to witness the production of works which would entitle the English to rank with the greatest of world-literatures, for the hour of Shakespeare and Bacon and Hooker had fully come. The "Faerie Queene" stands at the very entrance, in point of time, to this imaginative and creative