A BIT OF WRECK.

BY JENNY MARSH PARKER.

"BRIGHT fields beyond the swelling flood!" Sing the old hymn

once more.

I thought I heard the breakers. I stood upon the shore:

The tireless waves were tossing their white arms up to me-
Those mighty arms on which I lay and drifted out to sea.
Far out beyond the coast lights the night was coming in-
Far out, far out, and there they lay, the bright fields of the
hymn,

The pastures green and rollers cool. Ah, it was sweet to be
So like a broken oar adrift at mercy of the sea!

It's blessed to forget this place-the fever and the heat,
The wailing of the children, the pent-up, burning street.
Rich folk can say "God's will be done" far easier than we,
And, parson, landsmen cannot know this longing for the sea-
For one breath of the ocean; to see the ships sail out
For far-off ports, full laden; to hear the sailors' shout
Above the booming breakers, the creeping tide's low moan,
The singing of the fisher lads at far-off sight of home.

And when you sing the good old hymn it all comes back to me.
And, mother, mother! there you sit a-knitting by the sea;
And here is Rob, your sailor boy! The cool waves kiss my
feet!

The strong arms lift me as a flood

These rocky isles, O far-off, unseen shore;

His be the harbour of all peace-so like a broken oar!

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION IN FRANCE.

BY S. FARMAN.

THE PRIEST-SOLDIER,

THE truth of the homely French proverb, "L'appétit vient en mangeant," is, to some degree, being illustrated in France at the present time. The anti-Jesuit decrees were not a month old ere M. Paul Bert, who is one of the most active in the internecine strife now being waged across the Channel, who pursues with equal ardour the destruction of the clergy as he does the vivisection of helpless quadrupeds condemned to suffer atrociously in the interests of science, came forward and presented his colleagues in the Chamber with a Bill, the purport of which is to render military service obligatory for divinity students, who, before taking holy orders, shall be called upon to pay the "'impôt du sang," as it is termed, who must learn the art of war ere they preach the evangelical doctrines of peace and good will. This reform figured amongst others traced out by M. Gambetta at Romans, his argument being that there should be equality for all French subjects, privileges for none. Since the Romans discourse, the notion has been fostered and enlarged upon by the Radicals, whose constant taunt addressed to the clergy is that their ranks are recruited solely because young men dread the conscription, and take refuge under the priestly soutane, in order to be exempted from donning the military uniform. The ground having been well prepared--the appetites of the enemies of religion and the Church, whetted by the Ferry laws, sharpened yet more by the decrees, their hatred having been stimulated in countless ways-the opportune moment, it is deemed, has arrived for dealing a fresh blow at the foe. M. Paul Bert's arm is ever ready to strike, and although, to escape the accusation of inconsistency, he proposes in his Bill that young men studying for the scholastic professions, who, like divinity students, have hitherto enjoyed the privilege of exemption from military service, shall henceforth be deprived of it, it is patent to everyone that it is the religious element which

he has essentially in view, and that if he strikes at the schoolmaster, it is but to reach more surely the priest. With respect to that class of the community who devote themselves to the studies requisite to qualify them to become teachers of the young in French communes, it is urged by the upholders of M. Paul Bert's proposition that reasons which formerly justified, or at all events excused, their being treated as favoured individuals exist no longer. Formerly, it was extremely difficult to recruit the ranks of instructors for elementary and normal schools. Their duties were arduous, their salary so wretchedly slender, that young men preferred to be agricultural labourers, artisans anything, in short-rather than teachers in the village school. At that time, moreover, military service lasted seven years; the blood tax was heavy, the opportunity afforded of not paying it most tempting-exemption, in fact, a precious privilege which was held out as a kind of bribe to induce young men to become teachers. In the present day all this has changed. Schoolmasters are better remunerated, their position is a more independent one, they are treated with greater consideration, and are no longer the ill-paid, hard-worked drudges of times gone by. There is, therefore, argue M. Paul Bert's partisans, no necessity for granting them a special favour not shown to their fellow citizens. Whether these arguments, with regard to those about to embrace the scholastic profession, are weighty or the reverse is, however, beside the question, since it is generally acknowledged that the real aim in view is to push the actual campaign against the Church a little further; the thinly-veiled object of the anti-Church party, led by M. Bert, M. Ferry, and others, being to disorganize the clergy, and to render the task of finding recruits for the ecclesiastical ranks more arduous than at present. To bring about this, the anti-clericals have taken Germany as their model, and have sought a precedent for their policy in the most regretable traditions of the Culturkampf, which they propose to follow, on the specious pretext that there should be absolute equality for all Frenchmen before the law. Absolute equality; this is the dream of the Radicals and Socialists in France at the present time, not only with regard to military service, but with regard also to property, which they would have shared in common by the drones and the busy bees-to the ground, which the Collectivists in their revolutionary programme claim as the rightful heritage of the whole nation, and which should be parcelled out in

identical plots to all; to the churches and cathedrals, which should no longer be dedicated exclusively to devotional purposes, but which should be let out to the ministers of religion on one day, to circus managers on another, be turned into dancing saloons on a third; in a word, be the property of the commune, and regarded as buildings to be put to the most profitable account from a pecuniary point of view. Absolute equality, even under a democratic Republic, is an impossibility, and M. Paul Bert, in presenting his Bill, had no such aim as this before him. His measure is but a fresh weapon brought into the field by radicalism to hew down clericalism; it is idle to hide the poison under a coating of sugar, or to seek to avoid calling a spade a spade. It is felt that the Church is still a powerful adversary, united in her ranks, and not easily to be daunted. It is acknowledged by the freethinkers and the professional scoffers at religion, whose theory it is that there is no hereafter, no God, no heaven, nothing beyond the grave, that there are millions of Catholics in France who cling to the principles of their fathers, who teach the same to their children, who baptize them, ask the blessing of the Church when they marry, call in the minister of religion to succour and console them on their death-beds, and bury their dead conformably to the rites of the Catholic Church, in the firm and happy belief that the beloved departed, whose mortal remains they consign reverently to mother earth, have immortal souls, and that the narrow coffin imprisons but the perishable envelope of our being. Such bigoted notions are fostered, think the Voltairians, by the army of priests, who innoculate modern France with obsolete doctrines that the progress of civilization laughs at. A great point would, then, be gained if the rising generation could be placed out of the priest's or congregationist's reach, and if young men. inclined to embrace the ecclesiastical calling could be turned from their vocation at the threshold, lose their taste for theology and the service of the Church whilst still at the seminary, have their religious feelings and purity contaminated by the barracks, the Church would find an obstacle in the way of recruiting her ranks; there would be an enormous diminution in teachers of religion, and consequently a proportionate falling-off in the numbers of church-goers and believers. Let all the candidates for holy orders, all the seminarists pass a year's barrack life, let them rub off the rusty notions inculcated by fanatics mongst comrades who will make men and enlightened citizens

of the divinity students, let them exchange the gown for the uniform, the book for the knapsack and gun, and the Church will see how many will support the ordeal, and return after it to her flag. And if but a small minority resume the career and studies brusquely interrupted, what better proof can be needed, asks Radicalism, to show that coercion has been used to turn laymen into priests? It is unquestionably true that should M. Paul Bert's Bill be adopted, there will be a great falling-off in the number of those who select the clerical career as their own. This may be admitted, however, without admitting the truth of the reproach that coercion is used to recruit the ranks of the priesthood. If youths, at an impressionable age, are taken away from their books and studies, from the prayerful preparation requisite to fit them for a life of self-abnegation, chastity, and devotion, and are exposed to all the temptations, to the influence of bad example, in a world they know but little of, and which their vocation requires them in a great measure to renounce, it is highly probable many of them would succumb. The atmosphere of the barracks would unfit them for the purer atmosphere of the seminary. Strong and earnest ones might resist; the weaker would yield to the influence of their surroundings, and, after a year or more of soldiering, would find the calm austerity of the seminary, theological studies, and devotional exercises distasteful. This is what the Radicals hope to achieve; this is the thought uppermost in M. Paul Bert's mind when he asks Parliament to sanction his innovation, and proclaim on principles of democratic equality that there shall be no longer any privileges accorded the Church. Decimate the clerical forces and religion will die of itself, say the freethinkers. France will be delivered from the thraldom of priests, from the yoke of the Church, and modern society gradually become what it ought to be in an age of progress-a society without God; a society abjuring the House of God, the rites of religion; a society which will not baptize its new-born, which will marry without the intervention of the priest, which will die without a prayer, which will be buried without mummery, which will look forward to nothing beyond the grave, which will believe neither in eternity nor in Christ, which will concentrate all its thoughts upon the brief span of life here below, seek nothing better, believe in nothing higher. That would be an unhappy country in which such a state of thing were to become a reality, and to return to the consideration