woman who is finding her highest service in the worship of the Sacramental Christ on the altar. The following experience indicates that there is need and a desire for help. A Churchwoman found herself in a position where advanced study was necessary to prepare her for a certain form of Church work. Being unfamiliar with theological and other religious educational facilities for women, she naturally turned to the East as the logical center in which to secure information. Upon investigation she learned that she was beyond the age limit for admission to the Deaconess Training Schools and the only other place offering opportunities to women for such study was the Union Theological Seminary of New York, and there she immediately enrolled as a student. Other women are having similar experiences. It is true that we have not produced many women who have made valuable intellectual contributions to the Church, but we feel that there is abundant hope for the future in the magnificent supply of unreleased mental and spiritual energy in countless thousands of splendid women, but this fact is in itself a problem; for how to secure and use to the greatest advantage this dormant energy, is the most serious question concerning women now before the Church. Under no condition would we ask for a training school to prepare women for the ministry, but the Church ought to have a safeguard to check the chaotic and undirected thinking of no small proportion of educated Churchwomen; and should arouse such women to give of their highest and best through bringing them to a realization of the significance of the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord.

3. Limited Fields of Activity. This is one of the contributing causes of our weakness. The whole time positions available in the Church where women may find full scope for their executive ability and an outlet for their altruistic impulses are few in comparison to the number who are desirous of working in the Church. Open avenues outside the Church are numerous where women can find a way to serve needy humanity, and at the same time earn enough to enable them to live in some degree of comfort. This fact in itself is a deterrent to women whose knowledge of the Church and whose spiritual discernment have not yet brought them the vision to see that Christ chose the

slow, sacrificial method of winning people to His Kingdom. The positions for women holding the greatest opportunities for constructive work lie in the missionary districts, and these are limited in number and confined to district nurses and women connected with Church hospitals, teachers in the mission schools and a few evangelistic workers. No woman, unless she has reached a high plane of spiritual development, can continue long to do effective work under the strain of work in the pioneer sections of the country. The number who are volunteering for missionary work is encouraging, but that does not alter the fact that countless numbers of consecrated Churchwomen of intellectual ability will not make the sacrifice required for such work, which entails long separation from relatives and friends, no contact with Church centers where inspiration can be secured, no hope of adequate provision for old age, and in many cases no opportunity to receive the Blessed Sacrament even as often as once a month.

The positions for women under the Presiding Bishop and Council as official representatives of the Women's Auxiliary and other national societies for women are full of marvellous possibilities for gaining the material, intellectual and spiritual contributions which Churchwomen throughout the land are so willing and ready to make when they know the Church's work and understand her needs. Unfortunately, the number employed in this manner is exceptionally small and likely to remain so until the central organization has found itself and some of the disquietude concerning its methods has been dispelled. There are various other positions of a diocesan and parochial nature, some of them offering real opportunities for service, but considering the question as a whole the Church has given but little scope for the intellectual activity of women, and the dignity and devotion that characterized women's work in the early days of the Church have been dispelled by the drudgery of rummage sales, teas and bazaars, which are the result of the Church's depending upon women to keep up the financial end of her work. These methods, if continued indefinitely, have a paralyzing effect upon the spiritual lives of the women who have assumed this responsibility, and naturally college women will have nothing to do with them. Those who are engaged in Church work that is national in its

scope are constantly coming into contact with bright women who are giving unreservedly of their time and strength to civic and philanthropic activities; but when it comes to the work of the Church it seems as if they have the minds of children, and sick children at that.

I

(A Triennial Charge to the Diocese of Vermont)

BY THE RT. REV. A. C. A. HALL, D.D.

N what must probably be my last Triennial Charge, I propose to supplement what has been said in previous utterances1 by an exposition, brief as it must be, of The Church: its nature and authority. I am persuaded that in many proposals for Reunion a beginning is made at the wrong end, the Ministry being first discussed, whereas this can hardly be rightly understood without a previous understanding of the Church, whose organ the Ministry is.

Anglican formularies are extremely-and I suspect purposely-vague on the subject. Nothing is said about the Church in the Catechism, and among the Articles of Religion number XIX, which is entitled' Of the Church,' tells you nothing by which you can recognize the Church of Christ, for almost every religious body calling itself Christian would claim that it corresponded with this definition, that it is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.' Nor, as far as the statement goes, is any Unity required, binding together the different congregations.2

Let us then look somewhat more closely at the description of the Church, as it is given in the New Testament Scriptures.

1. The Church is not accidental. It is not a voluntary coming together of people with like thoughts and aims, in order that in cooperation and with mutual sympathy their plans may be furthered. Such a society, humanly devised, people might join or not, as they considered one course or the other to be profitable. On the contrary, the Church is a part of the design of our Lord Jesus Christ for His disciples. He gathers them into a society and fellowship, which by His apostles is called His Body, because of the closeness of its union with Him, the Head, and

More particularly in those on Ecclesiastical Authority (1904), The Apostolic Ministry (1910), Liberty and Loyalty (1916). However unsatisfactory and inadequate in itself, Article XIX must be understood along with Art. XXXIII, which speaks of an excommunicated person as cut off from the unity of the Church,' and of his need of being received into the Church' on penitence and reconciliation. The Church' here clearly does not refer to a local congregation.

because its purpose is to carry on His work on earth, as the organ of the ascended Lord. His servants do not join it; but to it they are joined as His members.3

2. The Church is not a merely external organization. Its character is primarily spiritual and supernatural. It is the company of those who believing in and surrendering themselves to Jesus Christ as the Son of God made man have received the gift of His Spirit. It is the society or family of the twice-born, the Body of Christ of which we are made members when we are baptized. Ideally its members should all be living according to this upward, heavenward calling, but not all are walking in the Spirit,' exerting the powers of the new life of which they have been made at any rate potential-partakers."

The Church is sacramental, having its outward and visible as well as its inward and spiritual side. In this it is in accord with the Incarnation, the benefits of which it perpetuates ('the Word was made flesh '), and with the two-fold nature of man, spiritual and material, to which it ministers. The Church and

3 Matt. xvi. 18, 19: Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

xxviii. 18-20: All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.

Acts ii, 42, 47: They continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers. The Lord added to them day by day those that were being saved.

ix. 31: The Church

the Holy Spirit was multiplied.

walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of

Eph. i. 22, 23: God gave Christ to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

The Baptismal initiation into the Church is completed in Confirmation or the Laying on of hands, whereby the indwelling of the Spirit of God is pledged. The position of late commonly assumed, and unhappily adopted at the beginning of the Lambeth Appeal to all Christian people, that Baptism by itself-by whomsoever administered and in whatever separated body-confers membership in the Church, is abundantly refuted from Scriptural, Patristic, Anglican and older Roman Catholic authorities, in a tractate entitled Who are members of the Church? by Darwell Stone of the Pusey House and F. W. Puller, S. S. J. E. (Pusey House Occasional Papers, no. 9, Longmans, 1921.)

I may point out that in various publications I have myself taken the same line, relying chiefly on the teaching of St. Augustine; e. g., in my Charge on Ecclesiastical Discipline, p. 28 n., in the volume on Confirmation, ch. v. and in my protest against the Lambeth Appeal, spoken in the Conference and published in The Mountain Echo, Nov., 1920, p. 13 (6), and in the London Church Times, Dec. 3, 1920, p. 563.

John fii. 3, 5: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew (or from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Except one be born of water and the

Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

Titus iii. 5: According to his mercy he saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.

Phil. iii. 14: I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high (or upward) calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Rom. vi. 3-13: All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also

might walk in newness of life.

Gal. iii, 27: As many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.

v. 25: If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.