the simple alone to seek a common
expression of their hope and calling. A similar stream is carrying the
learned which at present runs parallel with our homelier brook, but
will sooner or later mingle waters. Then there will be a flood wherein
many tired swimmers will doubtless perish, but which may lead to the
sea those who keep their heads. Signs of that are on all sides of
us. "_What is the Kingdom of Heaven_?" asks Mr. Clutton-Brock, and
succeeds at his best in telling us what it is not. As for anything
more positive, he concludes very reasonably that it is a state of
mind, and leaves us to infer that the ruck of humanity need the
guidance of inspiration to induce it.

It is not at all difficult for him to show that the Church lacks
inspiration, or that there is something inherent in the essence of
a Church destructive of it. What should have been equally easy would
have been to point out that the Church's Founder as certainly had it.
Nobody ever guided men more unfalteringly than He, and we need not
doubt but that it was His instigation which turned the hearts of the
village people to find a common focus for their thanksgiving. Mr.
Clutton-Brock has felt the sting and owned to the need; he is in the
stream, but is not a bold swimmer. I hope he may reach the sea.

Why it is--assuming the inspiration of Christ--that men have
nevertheless ceased to be guided by it, and have consequently lost
touch with the Kingdom of Heaven, is explained by a more hardy plunger
in the stream, the Hibbert Lecturer upon "_Christ, Saint Francis,
and To-day_." With great learning, skill and courage he has used
the documents of the Franciscan revival to illustrate what must have
happened to the Christian well-spring. He shows that even in the
lifetime of its founder the Franciscan fraternity crystallised under
the insensible but enormous pressure of the world, the flesh and
(doubtless) the devil. Saint Francis of Assisi, for instance,
taught literal poverty--abstinence from money, goods and books. His
Franciscans wouldn't have it. They asked for money and took it. Not
always directly, but always somehow.

"By God we owen forty pound for rent!" said Chaucer's Franciscan when
pressed by the good wife to declare what ailed him; and he got his
forty pound. Saint Francis told them to build churches like barns;
they built them like cathedrals. He would have had men uninstructed
in all but love; and they became the greatest schoolmen in Europe