Christianity, but (it is to be feared) because they know that she teaches rank Paganism. This last class consists of men of science who despise the religious sentiments of their neighbours, and who, from the heights of their superiority, rebuke them by referring to "the action of Almighty Power" in the natural world as sanctioning practices which the unscientific Christian is disposed to abhor.*

In face of these perilous reasonings, both on the side of the thoughtless who know Nature too little, and of the scientists who know her too well, it is surely time once more to raise the old prophetic cry: "If Baal be God, worship Him; but if the Lord be God, worship HIM." There ought to be no halting between two opinions. Pardonable as it is for men, wearied of the controversies of theology and tortured by the difficulties which beset every phase of faith, to turn to the external world and think that there at least they may find solid ground to build their temple, it is yet urgently needful to resist such a tendency and recall the minds of our generation to the truth, which none may gainsay, that, if there be a God at all, He is a Spirit, and that it is in spirit He must be found and worshipped. In the language of the old theology, it is God the Holy Ghost, the "Holy Spirit throned within us," of whom Seneca spoke, the "still small voice" of the religious consciousness which Elijah heard, which can guide us to Divine knowledge; not the wind, not the earthquake, not the fire, not the laws of Evolution. Our purview of the universe is all too incomplete, our insight into the meaning of the laws which govern it too superficial, to enable us to form from it any intelligent or trustworthy idea of its Author and He has Himself chosen to teach us in another way.

There will come a time, as I believe, in the æons of our immortality when we shall be able with eagle eyes to embrace the Divine plan of our world's history, and once more look on everything which has been made and find it good. But now-poor flock of aphide that we are, crawling on one leaf of the great Ygdrassil oak-it is vain for us to hope to attain any such sweep of vision. Let Science toil on and add fact to fact, and improve her theories generation after generation, carrying the assurance with her that

*Here is a specimen of such argument from a pamphlet issued by the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research :-"It is not so much by means of unenlightened sentiments that men hold communion with the Creator, as by a knowledge of the great laws and principles by which Almighty Power governs all things, and which, largely by means of experiments, scientific men have discovered. And the men who know most about the powers which regulate the universe, and determine human actions, are the most likely to know, about a Cause of all things." "The complete disregard of human and animal life by the operations of Nature, as in the recent earthquakes at Ischia and Java, ought to teach us that in cases where objects of greater importance and magnitude are involved, pain, and death even, of countless numbers of men and animals, is a secondary matter. The necessity of new knowledge, and of pain and toil to obtain it, are unavoidable conditions of life, and to find fault with this, or object to take the means necessary for gaining such knowledge, is disobedience of Divine commands."

to-day's knowledge will be to-morrow's ignorance. When all is done her tower will never reach to heaven, nor even be appreciably nearer to it at the summit than at the base. It is in other ways that man must find God; nay, rather that God will find Man; that the Father of Spirits seeks and finds the spirits "which also are His offspring." We may still gaze upon this beautiful world with the sweet sense that our joy in its loveliness is in truth the deep sympathy of sons in their Father's work, the echo of God's divine delight in Beauty, manifested in earth and sky. But when we behold the wrongs and agonies of unoffending creatures we need not perplex our souls and warp our moral sense by endeavouring to find justification for such evil, but fall back on the testimony of our own consciences to the perfect goodness of their Lord. The "still small voice" which says to us "Be Merciful!" is our guarantee that He who utters it is All

Merciful.

FRANCES POWER COBBE.

WELSH NATIONALITY.

IF

F a thoughtful student of modern politics were asked to name the motive force which has most powerfully shaped and directed the course of contemporary history, he would probably reply, "The sentiment of nationality." To say nothing of its influence on smaller communities, it has already created or consolidated two great European States, and there are those who believe that it is destined to break up a third. In days when empires were built up or held together by military conquests or dynastic alliances, the growth of such a sentiment might have been disregarded with impunity. In an age when the strongest governments are more or less penetrated by democratic ideas, it cannot fail to awaken the interest of the philosopher, the hopes or anxieties of the statesman.

In the case of the United Kingdom the problem is complicated by the co-existence of several very distinct and pronounced types of national character, as well as by the popular sentiment which has grown up around each. Speaking generally, it may be said that, by the majority of Englishmen, the nationality of Scotchmen is regarded with good-natured toleration or sentimental sympathy, that of Irishmen with growing alarm or awakening self-reproach, that of Welshmen with something like contemptuous indifference. Yet it would not be difficult to show that, of these three nationalities, that of Wales is at once the most strongly marked and the most likely to prove enduring. When therefore men like Lord Selborne profess themselves unable to see the slightest reason why Wales should claim from the Imperial Parliament a more distinctive treatment than Yorkshire, it is time to enter a good-tempered protest against assumptions which are not the less irritating or mischievous because they are founded upon ignorance. Upon the causes of that ignorance I will endeavour

to touch hereafter. Let us first determine-What constitutes a nation?

The question is by no means easy to answer in the abstract, though each of us may feel no difficulty in recognizing any particular branch of the human race as coming within the designation. One man would probably reply that a nation is created and kept together by identity of political institutions, another by community of origin, a third by similarity of language. Yet it would be possible to show by examples that not one of these three elements, taken by itself, necessarily constitutes a nation; and, on the other hand, that a nation may exist independently of one or more of them.

Let us take each in order. Our great Indian dependencies are ruled by the same Government, and, speaking generally, by the same laws; yet no one would think of speaking of the Indian nation. Every student of Indian history knows that our conquest of the country was facilitated and our hold strengthened by the innumerable racial and religious differences which enabled, and still enable, a handful of Europeans to subjugate and hold in subjection some 200 million Orientals. Indeed, it is a cardinal article of belief with most Anglo-Indians that the growth of a spirit of Indian nationality will necessarily involve the downfall of our great Eastern Empire. The Turkish Empire, again, is nominally under the sway of one ruler, who, so far as he acknowledges any law at all, governs it by the same laws. Yet no

one would think of dignifying the heterogeneous mass of Arabs, Kopts, Kurds, Slavs, and Greeks who acknowledge the suzerainty of the Sultan with the name of a nation. The great mass of the Russian people are animated by a blind and fanatical devotion to their Czar, and by a patriotism not the less genuine because it is largely coloured by religious zeal. Their Government is one of the most compact and highly centralized in the world. Yet, though we may look upon the Poles and the Finns as a nation, I doubt whether any one could speak of the Russian nation in the sense in which he might apply that term to the French, Germans, or Italians. The same remark applies with even greater force to the ill-assorted bundle of nationalities which compose the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It follows, therefore, that the accident of political union under the same sceptre, though it may make a State, does not necessarily make a nation.

Let us apply another test-that of community of race and origin. No one will deny that few things are more calculated to weld men together than those common temperaments, habits, and types of character which, modified as they may be by climate and other local influences, are popularly believed to be the distinctive and indestructible attributes of different families of the human race, especially when, as often happens, the bonds of racial affinity are strengthened by a common religious faith and worship. Perhaps the most remark

able proof of the resistance of a strongly marked nationality to all external influences is to be found in the history of that Hebrew race, which, dispersed as it has been over three continents, and persecuted with unrelenting severity in each of them, still remains almost as much a nation as it was in the days of the Mosaic dispensation. Yet it would be rash to conclude that a nation, in the true sense of the word, can only be composed of men of the same blood. The French are probably the most homogeneous people in Europe. No nation has ever developed such a capacity for assimilation, either at home or abroad; yet the least observant traveller must have noticed how widely the Frank or Teuton of the north-east of France differs from the Gascon or Breton of the south and west. The English themselves are one of the most mixed races in the world; and although it is the fashion to speak of our Transatlantic cousins as members of the Anglo-Saxon family, it is certain that their original racial type has been, and is, largely diluted by Irish Celts, by German and Scandinavian Teutons, and even by Spanish Mexicans. Yet no one ventures to deny that the people of the United States are in the truest sense of the word a nation—a name to which they have proved their title by the tremendous sacrifice of blood and treasure which they have made to deserve it. On the other hand, a recent visit to the Scandivanian peninsula has convinced me that two peoples so closely allied in blood as the Swedes and Norwegians may, even when united under one king, speaking a language nearly identical, and divided by an almost imperceptible boundary-line, remain for all intents and purposes two separate nations. The well-known stanzas descriptive of the puny physical barriers and strong traditional jealousies which separate the sister Iberian kingdoms will occur to most readers of "Childe Harold" as an illustration of the same truth.

The recurrence of these seemingly inexplicable anomalies should act as a warning against a hasty adoption of what is called "the racial theory of nationalities." A learned writer in the Times, on "The Race Types of To-day," has pronounced the Welsh to be as complex a mixture as could be desired," because their heads are of different shapes and their eyes of different colours. Such speculations are more interesting to the ethnologist than to the practical philosopher; for they leave out of account the various material and moral influences which tend to separate or unite men of the same or different lineage. The climatic and alimentary conditions which make out of the same species a Newfoundland watch-dog and an Italian greyhound, a Shetland pony and a London dray-horse, are not without their effect on the human race. The presence of a strongly marked geographical barrier-a precipitous mountain chain, or a storm-beaten arm of the sea-the consciousness of a common faith, a common history, common associations, common sufferings, and com