tantism, for it shows that Christian doctrine can neither be defined nor verified except by an authority which, as both logic and experience prove, Rome alone can with any plausibility claim. To vindicate, however, the Roman theory of authority as a theory of Christianity, which is logically consistent in itself, is but half of the task which lies before the Roman apologist. He will have to show not only that this theory is logically consistent with itself, its postulates having been once admitted, but that also its postulates are in their turn consistent with the tendencies of scientific knowledge. This consideration brings us to a new aspect of the question, and here we shall discover in a yet more striking way the unique capacity of Rome for defending the Christian faith and, without being false to any one of its present principles, turning modern science into its principal witness and supporter.

IV

THE ROMAN CHURCH CONCEIVED OF AS A SERIO-SPIRITUAL ORGANISM, DEVELOPED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF ALL ORGANIC EVOLUTION.

Modern Protestants, those especially of the Broad Church school, have shown themselves anxious to appropriate the word 'evolution,' and apply it in various ways to Christianity, and the moral life; but they are generally equipped with the loosest conception only of what evolution, in a scientific sense, is. They regard it merely as a technical synonym for development, or at all events for such development as arises from struggle, and from the survival of the fittest. They fail to lay stress on the two most important facts which evolutionary science reveals to us in the natural world: namely, the nature of the development, as apart from its various causes, which takes place in organisms as they rise in the scale of existence; and the fact that social aggregates, in their lower developments and their higher, are themselves organisms, no less truly than individuals, and evolve in accordance with precisely similar laws. Now, if we turn to Mr. Herbert Spencer, we shall find this process of organic evolution described as a process of change from a condition of heterogeneous homogeneity to one of homogeneous heterogeneity. That is to say, in living things of the lowest type there is but a slight differentiation of the organs. Their parts, indeed, are so much alike that a species is often multiplied by the simple process of fission. In living things of the higher types, the organs are differentiated more and more, and yet are, at the same time, more and more definitely related to one single whole, and one common sensorium. And what holds good of individual organisms, holds good of social organisms also. It is only necessary to carry Mr. Spencer's doctrine farther, and to add that what holds good of social organisms holds good of religious

organisms likewise, and we shall find that we have before us in the Church of Rome an organism whose history corresponds in the minutest way with the process of organic evolution as modern science reveals it to us, while Protestantism will appear as an organism so low down in the scale that its evolution seems hardly to have yet begun. It is almost structureless; it is made up of heterogeneous, yet similar, parts; it has no single brain by which the whole body is guided, and new sects are born from it by the simple process of fission. The Church of Rome, on the contrary, by a process of continuous growth has developed, through the differentiation of parts, an increasingly conscious unity, and a single organ of thought and historic memory, constantly able to explain and to re-state doctrine, and to attest, as though from personal experience, the facts of its earliest history. Is doubt thrown on the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ? The Church of Rome replies, 'I was at the door of the Sepulchre myself. My eyes saw the Lord come forth. My eyes saw the cloud receive Him.' Is doubt thrown on Christ's miraculous birth? The Church of Rome replies, I can attest the fact, even if no other witness can, for the angel said Hail! in my ear as well as Mary's.'

But the strength of the Roman position does not end here. Besides thus generally offering all the features of a complete organism, the detailed history of the means by which the cardinal Christian doctrines have taken a definite shape and been imposed on the acceptance of the world affords, in the light of the theory just indicated, fresh evidence that this theory is scientifically sound, and that the doctrines themselves are true; and points also to another conclusion which is, in some respects, even more important. One of the principal facts which historical criticism has elucidated is the fact that, though Christianity began as a religion among the Jews, the doctrinal explanation of Christianity was founded on the philosophy of the Greeks-firstly on the philosophy of Plato, subsequently upon that of Aristotle. That is to say, from the day when the Apostle John declared that Christ was the Logos, who was with God, and who was God, the Christian Church has been adopting, and making part of its teaching, the science of an outside world, which was either opposed to Christianity, or ignorant of it. Were the Church merely, as according to Protestantism it is, a homogeneous mass of heterogeneous individuals, this fact that Christian theology is so largely pagan in its origin would itself discredit the authority of Christian theology altogether; but the moment the Church is presented to us as a fully developed organism, with a single directing brain inspired by the Spirit of God, all this selection of doctrines from non-Christian sources, is exhibited merely as the selection by some individual living creature of the food that suits it, and the conversion of it into the substance of its own body. Such being the

case, then, let us turn from the past to the future. Just as Rome has absorbed Platonism in the Fourth Gospel, and in the doctrine of the Trinity, and has absorbed Aristotelianism in the doctrine of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, so we may naturally expect that it will, in its theory of its own nature, absorb some day the main ideas of that evolutionary philosophy which many people imagine destined to accomplish its destruction; and may find in the Spencerian philosophy a basis for its own authority, like that with which Aristotle supplied it for its doctrine of transubstantiation.

At all events the whole course of modern intellectual history, in so far as it is not tending to make all religions incredible, is tending to prepare this argument for the use of the Roman Apologist, and to render its use impossible for apologists of any other school; and if one who is not a Catholic may venture to give such an opinion, it appears to me that, the credibility of any religion being granted, the intellectual prospects of Christianity were never more reassuring than they are as now represented by the prospects of the Church of Rome, under the pressure of historical criticism and the philosophy of organic evolution.

W. H. MALLOCK.

HORTICULTURE AS A PROFESSION

FOR THE EDUCATED

IT is not because from earliest childhood I have been an enthusiastic practical gardener that I venture to discuss the future of horticulture as a profession for the educated classes. There are many as enthusiastic, who are also more competent than I. It is rather because for the past six years I have, as honorary secretary for the Horticultural College, Swanley, been in close relation with educated men and women gardeners, and with educated men and women who have employed them; because I have been the agent between the supply and demand for a longer period, and in relation to larger numbers, than has perhaps fallen to the lot of others, in this country at least, that I offer a few deductions from my experience, which I shall be the more glad to have contradicted and opposed, that they are not, on the whole, as hopeful as, until a year or two ago, I had expected them to be.

That we do not turn to sufficient account either our land or our educated classes, is a proposition which has of late years become a commonplace. We send out capital to the farms and gardens of Scandinavia and Belgium, and potential horticulturists to California and New Zealand. In agriculture, with which, except incidentally, I have, however, no concern at the moment, things are in a similar The late Lord Winchelsea put the numbers of those directly or indirectly connected with the land at sixteen millions; Mr. Jasper Moore, M.P., puts the number of actual farmers at 600,000, and yet we pay an annual bill to continental farmers of close on twenty-six million pounds!

case.

The modern idea of applying the advantages of advanced education to the practical work of the garden rests upon the hypothesis that horticulture is a science as well as an art; that it is the application of principles and not of mere physical energy and rule of thumb; that it demands much science, pure and applied, and not merely a cast-iron back with a hinge in it.' Much had been done by individual effort before the modern movement in this direction; and many, both men and women, had pointed the way for the

employment of scientific horticulture to commercial ends; but the establishment of horticultural colleges and technical classes has been the affair of the last decade.

The connection between land-culture and the physical sciences was first established by Sir Humphry Davy, then a young lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Institution. He was shortly appointed permanent lecturer to the Board of Agriculture, and in 1813 he put together the results of his researches in a volume, well-known to students, on The Elements of Agricultural Chemistry. It is interesting to note how he had to meet then, as we have now, the oft-repeated argument as to the superior value of practice to theory.

It is no unusual occurrence [he writes] for persons who argue in favour of practice and experience to condemn generally all attempts to improve agriculture by philosophical and chemical methods. . . . It has been said, and undoubtedly with great truth, that a philosophical chemist would most probably make a very unprofitable business of farming; and this certainly would be the case if he were a mere philosophical chemist, and unless he had served his apprenticeship to the practice of the art as well as to the theory.

Davy himself was no 'mere philosophical chemist,' and he served his apprenticeship to the art on a piece of ground lent to him for the purpose, at Roehampton, by Mr. Bernard, one of the founders of the Royal Institution, which, in those days, was a philanthropic establishment intended to benefit the condition of the poor. Other experiments, beyond his opportunities, were carried out by the permission of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, and with the help of Mr., afterwards Sir, Joseph Banks.

Like many good things, that old Board of Agriculture came to an end in the gloomy days of the French Revolution, after less than a quarter of a century of existence (1793-1816). So far as I can discover, its legitimate successor in relation to horticulture is the Royal Horticultural Society, which, founded in 1812, somewhat overlapped it in time, though its real activities did not begin till 1859, or perhaps even till thirty years later. Dr. John Lindley, secretary to the Society from 1822 to 1862, has the credit of having raised horticulture from an empirical art to a developed science.

The recognition of the fact that horticulture is a science as well as an art was the ultimate cause of the establishment of Horticultural Colleges and of the various training institutes which have become so active a feature of the work of the County Councils. The art of gardening can only be learnt experimentally and in the garden; the science is an affair, not only of the garden, but of the lecture-hall, of books, and of the chemical laboratory. Its results may be measured in the examination-room, and foremost among such standards of measurement are the examinations of the Royal Horticultural Society. The modern gardener inevitably desires this