minded person may exercise a definite influence for good over his fellow-citizens, and help to mould a healthy public opinion on many important subjects, even though he may never be called to fill any public office. But those who do fill such offices need maintain a very high standard of conduct; and whilst I believe it is perfectly right and according to apostolic precept that we should adapt ourselves, so far as we conscientiously can, to the habits and modes of thought of those with whom public life brings us into contact, we should not join in or countenance things which we had always previously regarded as evil in tendency, without very carefully weighing the reasons of our change of opinion or action.

The actions of a politician, or public man, are before the world, and his motives are freely canvassed, and what might pass unchallenged in a private person will be called in question in his case. At the same time his position is an exceptional one; he may have information reaching him in his public capacity which may be of advantage to him in his private relations; or he may have favour or patronage in his hands which others may try to gain; and it sometimes needs the greatest watchfulness to resist using these exceptional advantages for his own personal enrichment. It is most essential that the Christian should keep himself above suspicion in this respect, and the man who yields to the temptation, though he may do nothing but what is strictly legal, unintentionally mars his own character and lessens his power of future usefulness.

English public life is very closely bound up with public hospitality, and this brings with it special difficulties. I should be the last person to condemn public hospitality; it has its good and useful side, and yet it is often no easy task for any one accustomed to the social life and habits of Friends to accommodate himself with Christian courtesy to the customs which

obtain on such occasions, without either wounding his own conscience, or throwing difficulties in the way of others who may naturally look to him as a Friend to make a stand against what is foolish or hurtful. Some men who enter into public life become, for a time at least, very popular; their opinion is sought, their lead followed, and numerous offices are thrust upon them. Many persons consider this an unmixed evil, to be regarded only as a temptation to be resisted. I do not agree in this opinion; where such popularity comes unsought by its recipient as the result of honourable unselfish work for the public good, I believe it ought to be accepted as a power or talent conferred on us for the time being, by which we may influence others; and in the same way position, official or otherwise, may be rightly employed as a means of promoting the commonweal.

To sum up in a few words, I think we may fairly deduce from the above considerations that it is not only allowable for Friends, as practical Christians, but that it is their evident duty, to take a lively interest, and, where right opportunity offers, an active share, in the political and public life of the country, but always with a view of influencing that life beneficially; uniting with and supporting all those whom they see to be sincerely endeavouring to promote the health, happiness and prosperity of the community to which they belong.

SAMUEL PRICE.

U

POLITICAL SUBJECTS IN ADULT SCHOOLS.

TO WHAT EXTENT AND IN WHAT WAY SHOULD POLITICAL SUBJECTS BE DEALT WITH IN THE PROCEEDINGS OF ADULT SCHOOLS ?

OUR first thoughts would probably assign a narrow place to Politics in the proceedings of Adult Schools. The school is a place not only where Churchmen, Wesleyans and Baptists may meet upon common ground, but it is also one where the Radical and the Conservative may abide peacefully together, free from all risk of intellectual assaults. It is primarily a place, too, where the New Testament is taught, and the New Testament has little to say upon Jewish or Roman politics; and, lastly, it may be thought that the stir of political discussion would deaden the ear to holier voices.

Some of these considerations will be dealt with in subsequent pages, but it seems needful, in the onset, to inquire what is the meaning of the silence of the New Testament upon political subjects. In doing this we are confronted with the fact that the "silence does not extend to the whole Bible-that the Old Testament is intensely political. The Patriarchal Chieftain, the father of the Hebrew race, the Prime Minister of Egypt, the Liberator and great Legislator of the Jews, the Shepherd King, and the confidential adviser of a Persian monarch, are among the most conspicuous figures in Old Testament story. The Pentateuch contains a Code of Laws. The Book of Joshua is the narrative of a conquest, the Books of Samuel, of the Kings, and the Chronicles are pages of national history, whilst the voices of the Prophets are the voices of political as well as religious reformers. The Old Testament is political because it describes the

growth and history of a nation. The New Testament, on the other hand, portrays a Life the very existence of which was at the time almost unknown outside the narrow limits of Palestine. The first Christians were the rejected and outcast members of the nation, and, except in times of persecution, their orbit hardly crossed the orbit of the national life.

The Apostles laid the foundation of religious liberty when they asserted the claims of conscience-the duty of obeying God rather than man. But, speaking generally, it may be said that the New Testament is silent upon national politics; silent for the simple reason that the early Christians were thrust outside the sphere of the national life, and neither had, nor could have had, any close contact with, or direct influence upon the politics of either Judea or Rome. The measure of our power is the measure of our responsibility. The early Christians had no power to perform useful political functions, and therefore they were free from responsibility in regard to them. Our position is exactly the reverse of that of the early Christians. We belong to a nation which, as we are assured on the best authority, has, " in the matter of government, undertaken far more than ever in the history of the world has been previously attempted by the children of men."* We have " already on our hands or on our conscience, so to speak, 250 or 300 out of the 1,200 millions of the human race." In India alone we have undertaken to rule one-sixth portion of the denizens of this earth.

It is no exaggeration to say that the happiness and well-being, not of the inhabitants of these little islands only, but that the happiness of a large portion of the human family, may depend upon the intelligent and

* Mr. Gladstone, in the Nineteenth Century, Sept., 1878, p. 581. + Mr. W. R. Greg, in ditto, p. 400.

conscientious exercise of the franchise by the English voter. Take a single illustration. We know the evils. that arise from intoxicating liquors in this countrythe use of opium is far more dangerous and far more deadly. The English manufactured opium in India and wanted to find a market for it. China was near and China was populous; but the Government of China, aware of the tremendous risk attendant upon the use of opium, forbad its importation. The might of civilised and Christian England was used to compel the Chinese to open their ports to this deadly drug. Canton was bombarded, and the English attained their end. The Indian revenue from opium, which in 1840 was one million, in 1877 had risen to eight millions.* It is said that so firmly has the use of this drug taken root in the vitiated appetite of the Chinese people that it now defies eradication. The population of China is supposed to number 400 millions, or onethird of the human race. We have implanted in the midst of this vast population a vice even far more deadly and destructive than the vice of intemperance as known in England. But the perpetration of this stupendous crime could have been averted if the English voter had said that it should not be.

Take a more recent illustration. Some two or three years ago our ears tingled as we heard the details of the famine in Madras. According to the low estimate of the Government of India 1,400,000 people †—a number equal to the population of five or six great West Riding towns-died at that time from actual starvation in South India. The Indian population is so poor and so heavily taxed that, after the

*Sir John Lubbock in the Nineteenth Century, March, 1877,

p. 42.

"The Bankruptcy of India." H. M. Hyndman, Nineteenth Century, October, 1878, p. 604.