facts one that their head-quarters are in the not very savoury region of the Whitechapel Road; the other that, like the secret societies of Foresters, Buffaloes, Odd Fellows, and their kindred, they appear to take an immense delight in absurd titles, and in the wearing of uniforms and decorations. The kind of religion which is preached by the leaders of this singular organization may be readily comprehended by the study of a few numbers of its favoured organ. In the first place the hierophants of the sect appear to lay great stress on their having been originally persons of very bad character, and at best of the lowest rank in life. Each number of the "War Cry" contains the portrait and biography of one of the leaders of the movement, and during the first three months of the present year the personages thus commemorated have been as follows: Abraham Davey, an agricultural labourer, educated as a Protestant dissenter of some unspecified type; Henry Reed, of Launceston, Tasmania, who, if not a convict, seems as though he ought to have been one; Tom Payne, a "converted pot-boy;" "Captain (Mother) Shepherd," born a Baptist and utterly without education, who lived a vicious life for many years until "converted" by the preaching of "Dowdle, the converted railway guard;""Captain Captain" George Taberer, the converted drunkard; "Captain" Polly Parks, an ex-nursery maid; "Captain" Thomas Estill, an ex-seaman, not wholly unknown to the police: "Captain" Roe, the converted horse-jockey; "Captain " Wilson, the reformed Manchester drunkard; "Captain" Hanson, a foremast man, who appears to have been the most respectable of the party; and, lastly, " Mrs. Captain" Howe, apparently an ex-maidservant. The second point about these worthy people is, that, apart from their fantastic designations as members of the "Salvation Army," they are extremely fond of adopting fancy titles and eccentric signatures. Thus, in the number of the "War Cry" for the 13th of January there is a letter, the signature to which is literally as follows; "Private W. Stephens, the bloodwashed coachman of the Stroud Corps." In that for the 3rd of February is a piece of Welsh poetry, which is signed "William Davies, the happy Welshman," and similarly eccentric signatures may be found in every number.

A third point which will strike the dispassionate reader of this paper is the astonishingly free-and-easy way in which the "Salvation Army" deal with matters of which commonplace Christians speak, if not "with bated breath and whispering humbleness," with at least reverence and humility. Richter is said to have remarked that no man could be described as truly religious who was not on such friendly terms with his religion that he could make a joke of it. Whether the saying was not in itself a somewhat indifferent jest may be open to question. At

the same time, it is beyond question that the "hot-gospellers of the Salvation Army talk about the most sacred things with an irreverence which can only be described as shocking. No small amount of space is taken up with pious parodies of popular songs. "Rule Britannia" becomes "Rule Emanuel :"

When Christ the lord at God's command,

In love, came down to save the lost,

The choir of heaven, with golden harps,
Praised Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

CHORUS.

Rule Emanuel, Emanuel rules the waves.
Christians never shall be slaves.

The "Blue Bells of Scotland" is distorted into a hymn beginning

"Weel

Oh, where! and, oh where can I now a Saviour find?

may
the keel row" becomes the "Newcastle Anthem '
Oh, we're all off to glory, from glory to glory,

We are all off to glory, to make the heavens ring.

And so forth. The specimens already given will show pretty clearly the type of literature represented by the "War Cry." The news is given in paragraphs of the same character. We quote one which has for head-line: "SHEERNESS. Major Moore to the front. All night with Jesus.

Our Chatham comrades ran over, and the salvation jockey and his lieutenant gave some soul-stirring speeches. We could see that many were too badly wounded to get over it without going to the Great Physician. But the meeting that followed, called "an all-night with Jesus," beggared description. From one to two o'clock Tuesday morning there could not have been less than 100 souls (saints and sinners) struggling and wrestling with the Lord, who had promised a clean heart. For about half-an-hour we felt we were in Heaven; the Spirit of God was upon us. . . . . We do want a barracks of our own. Will not some one who loves God and souls send Captain Davey a good donation towards one. The Almighty pays 100 per cent. for all that is given out of pure love to Him. Send it along.

The appeal with which this paragraph closes is eminently characteristic of the paper in which it appears. The begging is constant, and apparently very successful. By the figures which are published from week to week, it would seem that the circulation of the "War Cry" is about 5,000, and the leader of the movement acknowledges from week to week contributions of from

£20 to £50. Where the balance-sheets are to be seen is not stated, nor is the total of each week's contributions given; but we have, instead, a strenuous protest against unprincipled imitators who in the words of the cheap tailors-"are guilty of the untradesmanlike falsehood of representing themselves as the same

concern

In reply to numerous inquiries, we desire it to be distinctly understood that we have nothing whatever to do with the American Christian Army, or the Christian Army, or the Gospel Army, or the Christian Mission Army (neither at Ripley or Castleford).

And we will not be held responsible in any way for the debts or doings of either of these societies, or any other imitation.

We have no connexion with persons styling themselves the Hallelujah Army in Ireland or elsewhere, and invite information of stating they are in connexion with us.

persons

The interests of the Presbyterians are cared for in the "Weekly Review," a four-penny journal of moderately Liberal politics which dates from the spring of 1862. As a matter of course, the greater part of the space in this paper is occupied by the doings of the body in whose name it speaks, but some portion of it is reserved for leading articles and for occasional poetry of a somewhat advanced type of Protestantism. There is a fine intolerance about some of these productions which is very characteristic of the country of John Knox, while the terminology is exactly what might be expected amongst people who have put what they call "Sabbath-keeping" in the place of almost all religious duties, and who have substituted the hearing of polemical sermons for the duty of Christian worship. The spirit of the following piece of verse is worthy of the Covenanters themselves :

BRITISH LAW MUST CONTROL OUR PAPAL PRIESTS.

If any Papal Cleric be inclined

To show his canine teeth, no man, I hope,

Would urge our Government to tell the Pope
That such a snarler ought to be confined.
What! shall we miserably creep behind
The Papal petticoat, and scream" Ahoy!
Good mother, rid me from that naughty boy!"
For shame, is that the measure of your mind!
Our ruling men must manage our affair,
And not go whining to a foreign priest;
When any double-dealing knave will dare
To violate our statutes in the least,
Let him be put beneath the judge's care,
And dealt with so that truth may be increased.

* "Weekly Review," March 12, 1881.

The expression of these lines might perhaps be improved, but there is no possibility of misunderstanding the spirit which dictates them, and that spirit, it is lamentable to say, pervades the entire paper.

The Unitarian "Inquirer" is a paper of a very different type. Its tone is almost ostentatiously tolerant, and there is a superciliousness about its leading articles which, to the nonUnitarian mind, is sometimes intensely exasperating. At the same time it must be admitted that there is an air of culture about the paper, which is by no means frequently to be met with in the organs of the dissenting sects.

Of the other religious papers-so-called-it is not necessary to say much. Quakerism boasts a couple of organs in the weekly press-the "British Friend" and the "Friend-but neither of them presents any very salient features. The Hebrew community are also represented by two newspapers, the "Jewish Chronicle" and the "Jewish World," two journals which serve, if they serve no other purpose, to prove that the people of what it is the fashion to call "the ancient faith" have hardly altered in about two thousand years, and that there are amongst them a quite sufficient number of those qui negant esse resurrectionem. These papers are, however, of very small interest as compared with those which describe themselves as "unsectarian," and which are carried on in the interests of the dissenting sects. A writer in "Macmillan's Magazine" recently described these organs at some length, and it would be difficult to add much to his account of them. The "Christian World," the "Christian," the "Christian Herald," and the "Fountain," appear to be written by dissenting ministers of the lower type-and what they are Mrs. Oliphant has told the world once for all in her inimitable novels, "Salem Chapel " and "Phoebe Junior"-for the edification of the young ladies and gentlemen of a "serious" turn of mind, who serve behind the counters of the shops in provincial towns, and who form the back-bone of the congregations of the dissenting chapels in the provinces. The stories which they contain are somewhat dull, and the articles which adorn them are not, as a rule, of a kind to attract people of refined taste, but there is an abundance of sectarian spite and jealousy, which, it is not unfair to suppose, makes up for deficiencies in other respects. Two points only remain to be noticed. The first is, that these papers appear, as a rule, to live by the advertisements of quack medicines, quack tea, quack jewellery, and quack pictures; the second, that the most widely-circulated of all-or at all events the one which professes to enjoy the widest circulation-is given up to speculations on the prophecies of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse. Of these matters it requires a certain sense of humour to speak

with temper. When, however, we find a "clergyman of the Church of England "—whose name, by the way, does not appear in the "Clergy List "-complacently predicting the destruction of the world as imminent on the strength of his reading of certain passages in the prophecies of Daniel, and talking with similar complacency of the "followers of the Scarlet Woman of Babylon," our laughter is apt to have a rather sardonic quality about it. Nor, in view of the fact that those who believe in the peculiar theology of these journals are amongst the most devout of Sabbatarians, is it possible to regard with entire complacency the trivial circumstance that one at least of them is openly sold on Sundays within the walls of that "Temple" of which its editor is the hierophant.

On the whole, a survey of the so-called religious press of England is not flattering to the national pride. Amongst the organs of the Establishment may be found the representatives of the half dozen sects into which that body is divided; but in no one is it possible to discover that Catholic spirit which it was the hope of the Tractarians of 1830 to revive. The Low Church party appear to delight in journals whose actual raison d'être is their opposition to the Catholic faith, and which in their violent Protestantism not unfreqently lose sight of the decencies of controversy. The papers which represent the interests of Protestant dissent are not much wiser or less virulent; whilst some of them are, as a matter of fact, examples of what journalism should not be. Yet these are papers of the widest circulation; and it is to their readers and supporters that is now committed the final decision of all matters concerning the real government of the country.

ART II. THE EXTENT OF FREE WILL.

E need not, we hope, remind our readers that our present succession of articles has for its purpose the establishing securely on argumentative ground-particularly against contemporary Antitheists-the Existence of that Personal and Infinitely Perfect Being, whom Christians designate by the name "God." Hardly any premiss (we consider) is more effective for this conclusion, than the existence of Free Will in man, as irrefragably proved by reason and experience. We have accordingly been proceeding of late with a series bearing on this particular theme. We drew out, in April, 1874, our general line of argument on the subject; and we examined