And it is obvious that Christianity was something with a very positive life of its own, which rejected vigorously much with which it came in contact. It would, of course, be absurd to suppose that the Hellenistic theology as a whole which, under the guise of Christian Gnosticism, tried to establish itself within the Church, was compatible with the principles of the Christian life. At many points the antagonism was profound, but it is perhaps the less necessary to insist upon this as the contrasts have been forcibly put by the writers of Church history. Dr Bigg's chapter on Gnosticism' in his posthumous 'Origins of Christianity' is taken up entirely with insisting upon the contrasts. To his fine and true spiritual frame the elements of baser superstition in Gnosticism were particularly repulsive and, it may be, deserve the contemptuous abhorrence with which he handles them. It is certainly something of a disappointment when he raises the question, How far did Gnosticism affect the Church?' to find that he means only, 'How far did the Gnosticism which was ultimately rejected by the Church obtain a temporary footing?' It is, of course, plain that Gnosticism, definitely marked as such, had a very limited vogue in apocryphal gospels and pious romances. Only two elements does Dr Bigg point to in passing as having struck root in the Church-asceticism and worship of the Virgin; it is interesting to note that the Anglican writer is in a position to stamp these elements of Roman Catholic Christianity as alien accretions with no more compunction than Harnack shows in doing the same thing for various parts of the theology which Anglican and Roman have in common.

Even at first sight the Gospel must have presented in some ways a striking contrast to Hellenistic theology.' It must have seemed such a simplification. Instead of the enormous apparatus of mystical words and ceremonial practices, to believe that in order to conquer all possible terrors of the Unknown, the whole range of ghostly enemies, one needed only to know Jesus! It must have been like the lifting off of a burden to say, 'I believe in One God, Maker of heaven and earth.' Christ had left his community indissolubly attached to its spiritual progenitors of the old Israel. There was something in the Hebraic element, the specially Synoptic element. in

Christianity so far all may find a truth in Harnack's view-which saved it from being carried away by the Hellenistic current. The Christian could never look with the Gnostic's abhorrence upon the earth and all the conditions of bodily life; to pray continually, 'Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven '-that alone set him. on the side of the Hebrew prophets and at variance with a theology for which the earth was incurably bad, and escape from it the whole of salvation. Perhaps few books seem less ethereal than Ecclesiasticus in its sober-going morality, its pattern of ordered family life, the strong earth-treading family tradition of the Hebrews. And it may seem surprising that a Christian mystic like Clement of Alexandria should draw his quotations from this very book with notable frequency. We may see, however, that while the Gnostic was wishing to fly forthwith above the stars, it was just such a tradition of domestic pieties which kept the Christian (who also regarded himself as a stranger and pilgrim) content to discharge meantime the business of life and submit himself to laws which were not the Devil's, but God's. The distance which the Christian Church swung in the direction of asceticism after a few generations shows how strong the pull of contemporary forces was; but there was always something which held it back from the Gnostic extreme, no less than from the opposite Gnostic extreme of lawless indulgence. The Christian, like the Gnostic, might feel that there were spheres of hostile or obstructive power surrounding him. Indeed many of the phrases of St Paul, 'the Prince of the Power of the Air,' the World-rulers of this darkness,' 'angels and principalities and powers,' have obvious affinity with contemporary Pagan and Jewish Gnosticism. And St Paul seems to have conceived of these powers as opposing themselves to intercourse between God and man. But all that opposition-here was the difference all barriers, all distance were annihilated by the love which, reaching down from the highest, held the redeemed man in an immediate grasp. 'I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor Height, nor Depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

EDWYN BEVAN.

Art. 10.-TWO CHAMBERS OR ONE.

1. The Government of England.

By A. L. Lowell. Two

vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1908.

2. The Governance of England. By Sidney Low, M.A. London: Unwin, 1904.

3. The Reform of the House of Lords. By W. S. McKechnie, M.A., LL.B., D.Phil. Glasgow: MacLehose, 1909.

4. Second Chambers, an Inductive Study in Political Science. By J. A. R. Marriott, M.A. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.

5. The Union of South Africa. By the Hon. R. H. Brand, Secretary to the Transvaal Delegates at the South African National Convention. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909.

6. A Bill to make provision with respect to the Powers of the House of Lords in relation to those of the House of Commons, and to limit the duration of Parliaments. London: Wyman, 1910.

7. Report from the Select Committee on the House of Lords. London: Wyman, 1908.

In his Governance of England' Mr Low gives a striking illustration of the great change which has taken place in the public estimation of the House of Commons. In 1901 Lord Hugh Cecil said in Parliament, Why is it that nobody cares, outside these walls, about the rights of private members? Because there is a deep-seated feeling that the House is an institution which has ceased to have much authority or much repute, and that when a better institution, the Cabinet, encroaches upon the rights of a worse one, it is a matter of small concern to the country.' As Mr Low observes, a hundred years earlier those who used such language were prosecuted for sedition at the instance of the affronted Commons; nobody proposes now to prosecute or even reprimand Lord Hugh Cecil. These symptoms are not confined to the British Parliament. In the most democratic of all countries, the Western States of the United States, it is not uncommon to forbid the Legislature from meeting more than once in two years, in order to reduce, so far as possible, its capacity for mischief. It is curious that this moment, when representative assemblies throughout

the world are admittedly on their trial, should have been chosen by the Liberal party for the purpose of concentrating all power in a single House of the British Parliament.

The House of Commons has lost the right which it once had of claiming to be the sole organ for the expression of the public will. In former days things were different. The Cabinet was not tempted to look beyond the Commons to the people; the people, being inarticulate except at a General Election, were content to trust the Commons. Now, however, new competitors have sprung up to claim the right of interpreting to the executive the will of the people. By means of the press and the platform, powerful influences are brought to bear on the Cabinet over which the House of Commons has no control. The House is being squeezed out between the Cabinet and the electorate.

At the same time the more rapidly and effectively the voice of the people is heard, the more difficult it is to interpret its language. Greater experience has taught us that the country's will,' the sense of the community,' and so forth, are themselves very uncertain quantities and rarely expressed at a General Election in a manner so authoritative as to require unquestioning obedience. We have learnt from our party managers that public opinion is a semi-manufactured article, and requires to be worked up by every possible process of suggestion. And yet it is common knowledge that this uncertain quantity, even for what it is worth, is generally misrepresented by the Commons. A large majority in Parliament often represents only a small majority in the country. Party managers know that there is a floating mass at the top which can be turned with comparative ease this way or that, according to all sorts of adventitious circumstances. For all these reasons the claim of Parliament to represent an opinion which is comparatively fixed and unchanging impresses no one.

But the weakness of Parliament is not solely due to the fact that it can no longer draw strength from a claim to be the sole representative of the deliberate will of the country. The very growth of democracy itself has sapped its energies by destroying its independence. As Mr Lowell remarks, the House of Commons

no longer legislates; the Cabinet legislates by and with the consent of the House of Commons.' Mr Lowell gives some remarkable figures demonstrating the continuous growth of rigidity in the party system, figures which prove the causes of this tendency to be permanent and deep-seated. There has been a marked development of the domination of the Cabinet and the party caucus. It is said that in Australia the Labour caucus now meets and discusses in secret all public measures and decides upon their fate. The proceedings in the Federal Parliament will be quite unimportant and will 'merely embrace the formal registration of the decrees of the Labour caucus.' In South Australia the Labour caucus now elects its Ministry by ballot. Is this the direction in which we also are tending?

The liberty of the Commons has been further restricted by another marked tendency of the time, namely, the growth of public business. Bagehot points out that in the early part of the nineteenth century a Government was supposed not to legislate, but to administer. Legislation was as much the function of the private member as of the Government. In modern days both the administrative and the legislative duties of a Government have increased a thousandfold, owing partly to the great extension of the Empire, but mainly to the huge growth of Government activities in Great Britain itself. The complexity of modern civilisation is so great, the extension of State control so marked, and the belief in the efficacy of legislation so widespread, that the demand for it, and, in truth, the need for it, has enormously increased. For many reasons the work can only be undertaken by the Government. The ordinary member of Parliament has practically no part in it. To Englishmen who have lived in one of the great dominions it seems astonishing that the people of Great Britain and Ireland should attempt to govern not only themselves, but a vast Empire, by one Parliament. Canada has ten Parliaments to govern some seven million people; Australia six Parliaments to govern some four and a half million people; South Africa five Parliaments to govern one million white people and five million Kaffirs. The single British Parliament governs forty-five million people and the whole Empire. Subjected as it is