Democracy is a state of mind. No definition of it by describing its symptoms is quite satisfactory, yet that is the only way open.

By democracy is meant the habit of assuming in every other man—whether he actually have it or not - at least as much of self-respect as one possesses oneself. Democracy shows itself in habitual emphasis on the man rather than on the office he holds, on his character rather than on his reputation, on his feelings and mental alertness rather than on his acquirements, such as his tastes, sensibilities, or learning.

Now the thing one finds out about the first generation of English reformers is that they were all, at bottom, democrats.

As theologians one finds them dull, as pietists impossible. In polemics they are no better than their opponents. When one comes, however, to understand the state of mind in which they wrote, and through which they reached their conclusions, the margin of intelligibility and vitality is distinctly increased. In fact, they grow interesting, and, in spots, almost thrilling.

The ways in which they expressed their democracy were chiefly two: First, through their doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and secondly, through their hostility to the whole order of bishops, from the Pope down.

Taking them in this order, one might say that they dared to look at the Lord's Supper in relation to the time and the whole circumstances of the institution thereof. They tried to see the thing in historical perspective. What they saw was something like this: the Master, knowing that His hour was at hand, would leave with His friends, who had been also His companions by day and night, through summer and winter, for

three years, a love token, remembrance, rallying point of friendship, sign of continued and renewed fellowship; -therefore the Lord's Supper. From the Passover it was a thing apart. It was not, at the time of its institution, designed to supplant the Passover. The Twelve, and all other friends of Jesus, could still observe both the Passover and the Supper. This new institution was not the cause of friendship, but an effect. It did not originate love for Jesus. It did but continue, conserve, intensify a love already existent.

Having reached this position, which is distinctly constructive as far as it goes, they addressed themselves to the love of which the Lord's Supper is the continuer, conserver, intensifier. Whence came that love? How could it be originated, aroused, inspired? That, rather than any considerations soever touching the Lord's Supper, became to them the immediate and important subject. Hence the emphasis on justification by faith.

To return to the Lord's Supper, this friendship token, this fellowship pledge. They observed that those who loved Christ loved it, prized it, reverenced it that lovers and imitators of Christ needed not to argue respecting the presence of Christ in it. Love settled that. They would not argue the presence therefore. William Tyndale's letter to John Frith (1532), in prison and about to suffer for views respecting the Lord's Supper, puts the position quite succinctly: "Of the presence of Christ's body in the sacrament, meddle as little as you can, * *****. I would have the right use preached, and the presence to be an indifferent thing, till the matter might be reasoned in peace at leisure of both parties. If you be required, show the phrases of the Scrip

ture, and let them talk what they will." The reformers of the first generation were breaking with the present and the more immediate past. They were venturing new conclusions from old facts. They trod delicately, fearfully withal. This historical view of the Lord's Supper opened up new vistas. They saw that the thing expressed, as it must have done to the original Twelve, the abiding spirit of friendship, co-operation, unity of purpose they had with one another, as well as with Christ. It meant a gladder, freer thing than the Mass of their time, which, whatever the doctrine attached to it might be, was in effect merely a badge of obedience to the Church, which was then stupidly corrupt and strangely perverse.

The word "democracy" was not then in their vocabulary, but they saw the implications of their doctrine, and sometimes shrank from them. Their opponents also saw the implications of their doctrine. They wanted none of what we now know as the democratic spirit. They ignored these obvious meanings of the institution of the Lord's Supper, and stuck hard and exclusively to the one mystic element in it-"The Presence." That was made the article of a standing or falling Christian. Latimer, Ridley and a small host of lesser lights went to the stake because they were not sound on “the presence” indeed, but also because of a determination to crush the implications of their doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which were all in the direction of democracy.

Due to the reaction produced by the Oxford Movement, whose benefits are thankfully recognized, we today are little, if any, better than the opponents of the Reformers. We are caught on the dead center of "the presence," a thing that never can be proved until, as the poet sings,

"We close with all we loved, "And all we flow from,"

Our Lord's Supper, as it is ordinarily celebrated today, is not the token and

witness of discipleship, but simply a symptom of a peculiar state of mind. We celebrate it at hours when scarce anybody attends, and by about every means emphasize the sacrifice, which, except of ourselves, does not exist, and minimize or utterly forget the fellowship. Consequently our stiffest church people are mystics where, especially at this time, they ought to be democrats.

Secondly, respecting the reformers' hostility to constituted authority. This must be said in brief, not because there is not much to say, but because it has already been much said, and belongs to those most obvious phases of the Reformation which need not be discussed in this paper.

It should be insisted that the hostility was not to authority in religion, but only to authority as constituted, a very different thing.

The bishops of the reformation time seemed to have had absolutely no sense or perception of the authority which comes through and is grounded on moral and spiritual leadership. Their whole idea seems to have been that here was a movement which looked as if it were going to attenuate their control, therefore it must be choked from the start. How far they pushed their activity, and how foolishly, may be gathered from the very direct and very tart speech of Latimer, made to them in Convocation assembled:

"That the people is better learned and taught now, than they were in time. past, to whether of these ought we to attribute it, ***** ? Ought we to thank you, or the king's highness? Whether stirred other first, you the king, that he might preach, or he by his letters, that ye should preach oftener? Is it unknown, think you, how both ye and your curates were, in a manner, violence enforced to let books to be made, not by you, but by profane and lay persons; to let them, I say, be sold abroad," (not over seas) "and read for the instruction of the people?"

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The bishops would allow no translation of the Bible, whether with or without marginal notes. Cranmer wanted them to make their own translation. Most could not, and the rest would not. So, bulwarked by the authority of the king and his vicar-general, and in spite of the bishops, Cranmer-in 1537issued the so-called Matthew's Bible.

What did more than anything else to dissipate reverence for the office of a bishop in the general mind, certainly what most provoked the reformers, was the fact that in a generation when a very well defined distinction was being drawn between what were called "voluntary works" (like "setting up candles. gilding and painting, building churches, giving ornaments, going on pilgrimages") and "works of mercy," (like "relieving and visiting poor neighbors"), the bishops gave voice and influence in favor of voluntary works rather than works of mercy.

And these were "successors of the Apostles!" At any rate, they taught that they were.

burdened with the cares of patronage, invested funds, institutions and properties which mark the bishops of today, and the foot-free, unencumbered, simpleliving and much travelled apostle of the first generations, there may be a likeness, but it would take Mr. Sam. Weller's "pair o' patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power" to see it.

The reformers democratized the episcopate by changing its theory. Their theory simply stood the office of a bishop on its base, as it were, instead of on its apex. Beginning, in England, with William Tyndale, they insisted that the terms episcopos and presbyter were interchangeable; that bishop was a priest. Was he more? (To endeavor to translate their spirit) "Well, since you ask the question directly, we would say that we know certainly that a bishop is a priest not a lordling, courtier, statesman, civil official - but a priest.

Charles Lewis Biggs.

Clytie Hazel Kearney.

It has been my lot of recent months to go to churches. I am in one of our eastern cities, a city equally famous for its large living centers of worship as for its many moribund shrines. On each Sunday I visit from one to four. So systematic am I in my attendance that after each visit, and, after reading all contributed literature, I stick colored pins in a large mounted map to indicate my impressions. On this tour all sorts and conditions are included from pretentious piles of European cathedral proportions to rococco imitations in miniature, from tremendous amphitheatre gathering places to the In As Much, the Who So Every or Why So Ever Missions. Some have hearty congregational services. Some have such complicated ceremony that the congregation cannot hope to take part, nor are they desired to do so, for paid choirs chant the people's parts. In others silence is enjoined by all in whom the spirit fails to move. One church was found by the illuminated cross gleaming from its tower, but many more were found with dark entries. One has the Angel Gabriel trumpeting from the roof, another that I visited had a drunken man crying on the door step.

And the sermons! Let me quote a few of the subjects gleaned at random from a recent offering: Go Work, Follow the Gleam, The Gospel that Failed, The Gambling Habit, The Christian and the Card Table, Steam and Spirit, Did Jesus need Salvation? The Lame Man Who Stood Well, How we Live after Death, Growing a Big Soul, A Volunteer. At one of these I heard this story as an illustration of proof for the existence of God.

In his youth the man in this story didn't believe there was a God. But certain experiences caused him to change

his mind. He is a successful manufacturer of cutlery. Following is his. simple, straight-from-the-shoulder explanation of why he knows there is a God:

"It takes a girl in my factory about two days to learn to put the seventeen parts of a meat chopper together. Is it possible as I look upon the stars, each with its separate orbit all balanced so wonderfully in space, that they just happened; that by a billion years of tumbling about they finally arranged themselves? I am merely a plain manufacturer of cutlery. But this I do know, that you can shake the seventeen parts of a meat chopper around in a washtub for the next seventeen billion years and you'll never make a meat chopper."

Surely if any proof is needed for the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient God it lies in the phenomena that He can take this conglomerate offering of form and ceremony, of words and dogma and make of it worship acceptable in "His most holy spirit."

What has impressed me most vividly, however, is that so many of these oddities, or may I say crudities, of worship are needless. So many men have developed curious mannerisms, of which though they are unaware, their congregations are not. For example, one clergyman never drops his voice at the end of a sentence, but either swings it up like escaping steam from a valve or, he just stops, leaving one hanging in jeopardy on the edge of a precipice. Another drops his voice so often that a stranger is always expecting him to sit down; but his congregation knows that the end of the sermon is not reached until nervously he grasps the desk and raps the bottom side with his fingers five times.

Sometimes it is just sheer carelessness that mars the beauty of a service. Interest cannot be held if the preacher sprawls himself all over the pulpit as if he were not able to stand alone; and a service perfunctorily read in a mumbling voice so that nothing is understood, cannot be enjoyed. And even in dress does this carelessness manifest itself. I have no prejudice against red neckties, in fact I like them, except on a parson preaching. I recall a friend who so attired himself. Among the congregational gifts his first Christmas, were twentynine white cravats and seventeen sombre black ones. Even among the vested clergy care is necessary. For example, a few weeks ago, I was in one of the largest Episcopal churches of our city. where the choir and clergy enter at the rear and march the entire length of the center aisle. There were two clergymen, one very tall, the other very short. It was surely amusing to see them, for the tall man wore a very short and tight surplice and the little man a very long and flowing one.

All of which leads to this, since most of these curious things are unconsciously or carelessly done is there not some way in which the attention of the perpetrators can be called to them?

Criticism is the cure. Constructive criticism is the great need of clergymen today. It is needed for two reasons. First, to free worship of any personal idiosyncrasies of ministers; and second, to keep them alert and "up to scratch" at all times. I expressed this idea to a lay friend and he said that he understood that one of the greatest burdens a parson has to bear is the criticism to which he is subjected. Which is true. but the criticism that he now receives is petty, gossippy, vicious and as far from the constructive criticism that I advocate as a cat from a camel, that criticism depends on the degree of affection for the man and the more intense the affection the less valuable the criticism. What I plead for, is keen, trained criti

cism of his method of delivery, his conduct of service, of what he says and how he acts in the pulpit. And practically every clergyman that I know is anxious for such criticism.

Why is there not some good, nice, kindly and, withal, keen man who will go about the churches and, let us say, after such a sermon as I heard a few Sundays ago by a young man, go up to him and say, "Now sonny, that was a fine effort, a little platitudinous though, but fairly well constructed. But why shout so? I sat in the back row and you almost pierced my eardrums. Next Sunday quiet down, try and get a little more smoothness and gentleness into your voice." A clergyman told me recently of an experience while he was yet a seminarian. He went to a church to preach on the Freedom of the Human Will. Just as he entered the pulpit he saw in the congregation a university professor who knew more about the freedom of the will than anyone else in the country. After the service this man took the young preacher home, and together they thrashed out the point presented in the sermon. "And in twenty minutes, said this man, I learned more about preaching than I did in the three years at the seminary." It is this personal criticism of work performed that is invaluable and helpful.

Of course the parson's chief critic is, or should be, his wife. This has two shortcomings. First, too many who need criticisim do not take unto themselves wives. Second, many more who need it equally, take unto themselves wives who are not capable of criticizing. Too often he is so perfect in her eyes that what He does or says is her criterion of judgment. Like Mrs. Murphy "every lad in the parade is out of step but my Johnny." I know of one young preacher who is ruining all chances of promotion because his wife likes very slow preaching. I know of another, a bishop, who says that his wife spoils every one of his sermons. "I have to