example, as a useful and ready mechanism with
which to work out the social and sanitary amelioration of the lives of
the multitude, and so to take him to be the best qualified Clergyman who
is, perhaps, the most "muscular" of Christians, or the cleverest at the
invention or superintendence of recreations on a large scale, or the
quickest student and exponent of the principles or theories of political
economy, or possibly of socialistic enterprize? But all this may leave
entirely out the very life-blood of what the New Testament means by the
Gospel of the grace of God; and in many, many cases it does entirely
leave it out.

*"NATURALISM" IN CHRISTIAN WORK.

A conception of "Church work" is widely entertained, and thought to be
adequate, out of which is practically dropped all the mystery, and all
the mercy; above all, the work and message of the atoning Cross and the
dying Lamb; and the need of the sovereign grace of the Holy Ghost to
begin and carry out the Regeneration of the soul; and the depth of our
Fall; and the offered greatness and splendour of our New Creation; and
"that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ." [Tit. ii. 13.] It is just one wave of the great
anti-supernatural tide of our time. Christian work is viewed as much as
possible as man's work for man in this present world, under the example,
doubtless, of the beneficent life of our Lord, but not under the shadow
of Calvary, nor in the light of Pentecost, nor in the definite prospect
of an immortality of holy glory.

HOW TO COUNTERACT IT.

To counteract this tendency, and to do so _in the right way_, is one of
the very noblest tasks set before the younger Clergy of the English
Church in our time. It is for them, under God, in a pre-eminent degree,
to find out the secret, and then to live it out, how to be at once the
perfectly genuine _man_, devoted to the service of men, carrying what he
is and what he believes into the actual surroundings of modern life, not
allowing illusions and poetic day-dreams to come between him and facts;
and also the convinced, unwavering, spiritual _Christian_, conversant
with his own soul, and with his living Lord and Saviour, and with that
sacred, unalterable written Word which that Saviour put into His
people's hands, never to be taken out of them. Nothing is more wanted at
present in the sphere of "Church life and work," unless I am greatly
mistaken, than a generation of youn