ion:
take your own; choose between the mess of pottage and the birthright
of the Bride of Christ."

IV

_LIFE AND LIBERTY_

The title is glorious; and, so far as I know, the credit of inventing
it belongs to my friend the Rev. H. R. L. Sheppard, the enterprising
Vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Mr. Sheppard has what in newspapers
we call a "magnetic personality," and no one has more thoroughly
laid to heart the sagacious saying that "Sweet are the uses of
advertisement." Whatever cause he adopts, the world must know that
he has adopted it; and it shall obtain a hearing, or he will know
the reason why. The cause to which (outside his pastoral work) he
is just now devoted is that which is summarized in the phrase,
"Life and Liberty for the Church of England." It is a fine ideal,
and Mr. Sheppard and his friends have been expounding it at the
Queen's Hall.

It was no common achievement to fill that hall on a hot summer
evening in the middle of the war, and with very little' assistance
from the Press. Yet Mr. Sheppard did it, and he filled an "over-flow
meeting" as well. The chair was taken by the Rev. William Temple,
who tempered what might have been the too fervid spirit of the
gathering with the austerity which belongs to a writer on philosophy,
an ex-Head Master, and a prospective Bishop. The hall was densely
crowded with clergy, old and young--old ones who had more or less
missed their mark, and young ones keen to take warning by these
examples. There were plenty of laymen, too, quite proud to realize
that, though they are not in Holy Orders, they too are "in the
Church"; and a brilliant star, if only he had appeared, would have
been a Second-Lieutenant in khaki, who unfortunately was detained
at the front by military duties. A naval and a military chaplain
did the "breezy" business, as befitted their cloth; and, beaming
on the scene with a paternal smile, was the most popular of Canons,
who by a vehement effort kept silence even from good words, though
it must have been pain and grief to him.[*]

[Footnote *: Alas! we have lost him since.]

The oratorical honours of the evening were by common consent adjudged
to a lady, who has since been appointed "Pulpit Assistant" to the
City Temple. May an old-fashioned Churchman suggest that, if this
is a sample of Mr. Sheppard's new movement, the "Life" of the Church
of England is likely to be a little too lively, and its "Liberty"
to verge on licence? A mini