CHURCHILL of the Church, and that this work was most effectively done by zealous laymen and women of the same class as those whom it was desired to touch. “Evangelistic zeal with Church order” is the principle of the Church Army, and it is essentially a working men’s and women’s mission to working people. As the work grew, a training institution for evangelists was started in Oxford, but soon moved (1886) to 130 Edgware Road, London, W., where the headquarters of the Army are established. Working men are trained as evangelists, and working women as mission nurses, and are supplied to the clergy whenever asked for. The men evangelists have to pass an examination by the archdeacon of Middlesex, and are then (since 1896) admitted by the bishop of London as “lay evangelists in the Church ”; the mission nurses must likewise pass an examination by the diocesan inspector of schools. All Church Army workers (of whom there are over 1200 of one kind and another) are entirely under the control of the incumbent of the parish to which they are sent. They never go to a parish unless invited, nor stay when asked to go by the parish priest. Officers and nurses are paid a limited sum for their services by the vicar or by voluntary local contributions. Church Army mission and colportage vans circulate throughout the country parishes, if desired, with itinerant evangelists, who hold simple missions, without charge, and spread wholesome literature. Each van missioner has a clerical “ adviser.” Missions are also held in prisons and workhouses, at the invitation of the authorities. In 1888 (before the similar work of the Salvation Army was inaugurated) the Church Army established labour homes in London and elsewhere, with the object of giving a “fresh start in life” to the outcast and destitute. The Church Army homes deal with the outcast and destitute in a plain, simple, straightforward way. They demand that the persons should show a desire for amendment; they subject them to firm discipline; they give them hard work; they give them decent clothes j and they strive to win them to a Christian life. The inmates earn their board and lodging by piece-work, for which they are paid at the current trade rates, while by a gradually lessening scale of work and pay they are stimulated to obtain situations for themselves and given time to seek for them. There are about 103 homes in London and the provinces, and 56 per cent, of the 26,000 cases helped in 1900 made the successful beginning of an honest, self-supporting life. Selected and tested cases are enabled to emigrate. The Church Army has lodging homes, an employment bureau, cheap food depot, old clothes department, dispensary, and other social works, and an inebriates’ reformatory under the Act of 1898. The whole of the work is done, in loyal subordination to the diocesan and parochial organization of the Church of England. (m. b. s.) Churchill, Missinnippi, or English, a river of Athabasca and Keewatin districts, Canada. It rises in La Loche—a small lake in 56° 30' H. lat. and 109 30 W. long., at an altitude of 1577 feet above the sea—and flows in a north-easterly direction to Hudson Bay, passing through a number of lake expansions. Its principal tributaries are the Beaver—350 miles long, Sandy, Montreal, Reindeer, and Little Churchill rivers. Between Frog and Methy portages—480 miles—it formed part of the old voyageur route to the Peace, Athabasca, and Mackenzie. Its largest affluent, Reindeer river, discharges the waters of Reindeer lake (with an area of 2490 square miles and 1150 feet above the sea) and Wollaston lake (altitude, 1300 feet). The Churchill is 925 miles long. Port Churchill, at its mouth, is the best harbour in the southern portion of Hudson Bay.
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Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer (1849-1895), English statesman, third son of John, seventh duke of Marlborough, by Frances, daughter of the third marquis of Londonderry, was born at Blenheim Palace, on 13th February 1849. His early education was conducted at home, and at Mr Tabor’s preparatory school at Cheam. In January 1863 he went to Eton, whei'e he remained till July 1865. He was not specially distinguished either in school work or games while at Eton; his contemporaries describe him as a vivacious and rather unruly lad. In October 1867 he matriculated at Merton College, Oxford. He was fond of amusement, and had carried to Oxford an early taste for sport which he retained throughout life. But he read with some industry, and obtained a second class in jurisprudence and modern history in 1870. In 1874 he was elected to Parliament in the Conservative interest for Woodstock, defeating Mr George Brodrick, a fellow, and afterwards Warden, of Merton College. His maiden speech, delivered in his first session, made no impression on the House, nor did he become in any way conspicuous till 1878. In that year he forced himself into public notice as the exponent of a species of independent Conservatism. He directed a series of furious attacks against some of the occupants of the front ministerial bench, and especially that “old gang” who were distinguished rather for the respectability of their private characters, and the unblemished purity of their Toryism, than for striking talent. Mr Sclater Booth, president of the Local Government Board, was the especial object of his ire, and that minister’s County Government Bill was fiercely denounced as the “crowning dishonour to Tory principles,” and the “supreme violation of political honesty.” The audacity of Lord Randolph’s attitude, and the vituperative fluency of his invective, made him a parliamentary figure of some importance before the dissolution of the 1874 Parliament, though he was not as yet taken quite seriously. In the new Parliament of 1880 he speedily began to play a more notable role. With the assistance of his devoted adherents, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Mr John Gorst, and occasionally of Mr Arthur Balfour, and one or two others, he constituted himself at once the audacious opponent of the Liberal administration and the unsparing critic of the Conservative front bench. The “fourth party,” as it was nicknamed, was effective at first not so much in damaging the Government as in awakening the Opposition from the apathy which had fallen upon it after its defeat at the polls. Churchill roused the Conservatives and gave them a fighting issue, by putting himself at the head of the resistance to Mr Bradlaugh, the member for Northampton, who, though an avowed atheist or agnostic, was prepared to take the parliamentary oath. Sir Stafford Northcote, the Conservative leader in the Lower House, was forced to take a strong line on this difficult question by the energy of the fourth party, who in this case clearly expressed the views of the bulk of the Opposition. The long and acrimonious controversy over Mr Bradlaugh’s seat, if it added little to the reputation of the English legislature, at least showed that Lord Randolph Churchill was a parliamentary champion who added to his audacity much tactical skill and shrewdness. He continued to play a conspicuous part throughout the Parliament of 1880-85, dealing his blows with almost equal vigour at Mr Gladstone and at the Conservative front bench, some of whose members, and particularly Sir Richard Cross and Mr W. H. Smith, he assailed with extreme virulence. From the beginning of the Egyptian imbroglio Lord Randolph was emphatically opposed to almost every step taken by the Government. He declared that the suppression of Arabi Pasha’s rebellion S. III. —12
