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 THE 
 
 THOLIC CHURCH 
 
 TENTH EDITION 
 
arV13947 
 
 ■^^ell university Library 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 269859 
 
THE 
 
 NEW CATHOLIC CHURCH, 
 
 ETC. 
 
THE 
 
 NEW ■ CATHOLIC CHURCH 
 
 WITH 
 
 THOUGHTS ON THEISM 
 
 AND 
 
 SUGGESTIONS 
 
 TOWARDS 
 
 A PUBLIC RELIGIOUS SERVICE 
 
 IN HARMONY WITH 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 TENTH EDITION. REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 LONDON 
 
 TRUBNER AND CO., LUDGATE HILL 
 
 1887 
 
 1> 
 
-f^lc -b ll 
 
 " Greai thoughts are heaving on the u-orld's wide breast j 
 
 The Time is labouring with a mighty birth ; 
 
 The old ideas fall ! 
 
 Men wander up and down in wild unrest j 
 
 A sense of change preparing for the Earth 
 
 Broods over all" 
 
 Dr. Charles Mackay. 
 
 d. 
 
 " What is to be the future of the Christian religion ? Is 
 it to survive and govern the new world which we can dis- 
 cern as it rises swiftly and portentozisly out of the old? 
 Or is it even now perishing, and are we the spectators at 
 the fifth act of a tragedy that has lasted eighteen hundred 
 years ? 
 
 " That some exceedingly great change is coming over the 
 spirit of mankind no one can doubt who has considered by 
 what signs former revolutions in religion have been attended. 
 The matter, indeed, is so clear, that men of every Church 
 are beginning to ask themselves, not whether a change is 
 coming, but how they are to meet it ? What must be sur- 
 rendered? Can ought be saved?" 
 
 Rev. William Barry. 
 
 President White , 
 
 "'■'I'i ' 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This essay having reached a tenth edition is now, 
 for the first time, issued in the more portable and 
 convenient form of a pocket volume. 
 
 It has been deemed advisable, in the light of 
 recent researches in natural science, to insert a few 
 additional thoughts in relation to the nature of 
 atoms and molecules, the development of variety • 
 in species, and other allied topics, so far as they 
 bear on the main subject of our present inquiry, 
 and it is hoped that this will enhance its value in 
 the estimation of the reader. 
 
 It is our earnest contention that a true faith 
 can co-exist with modern science ; whereby man 
 may avow a feeling of dependence on Deity ; may 
 believe and trust in the grand order and succes- 
 sion of things as being predominately beneficent ; 
 and yet may unite to all this a humble, but 
 ennobling sense of gratitude for what he now is, 
 with a firm belief of what, in thankful -hope, he 
 possibly may become hereafter. 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 We are persuaded that a more rational theology 
 and an improved religious service are much 
 needed. We require a Church as wide as the 
 wants of humanity, and as Catholic as the first 
 and great commandment. Towards this end, in 
 common with many thoughtful and earnest men; 
 we work and wait. 
 
 " Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul according well, 
 May make one music." 
 
 In the hope that the teachings of this small 
 volume may be of service to show in some degree 
 how a satisfying religion may be entertained, 
 which is in full harmony with the most advanced 
 conclusions of science and philosophy, this new 
 edition is offered to the public. 
 
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Signs of Progress in Anglican, Roman, and other 
 Churches. 
 
 Our belief in Deity, its basis and limitations. 
 
 The Religious Nature of Man. 
 
 Universality of Law. 
 
 Extravagances of the present Religious Symbolism. 
 
 The essential elements of Universal Worship. 
 
 Aspiration, not Supplication. 
 
 Ideal of a National Church. 
 
 Neither Atheism nor Calvinism. 
 
 Hints to Professional Teachers. 
 
 Proposed Religious Service for a New Catholic 
 Church. 
 
" There is, there is, one primitive and sure 
 Religion pure, 
 Unchanged in spirit — though itsfor7ns and codes 
 
 Wear myriad modes — 
 Contains all creeds within its mighty span, 
 The love of God displayed in love of man'' 
 
THE 
 
 NEW CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 In asking the attention of thoughtful members of 
 our various religious bodies to the suggestions 
 with which the latter portion of this volume is 
 occupied, a few remarks upon the condition of 
 religious feeling and of speculative philosophy 
 at the present time may be made- by way of 
 introduction. 
 
 The religious world of to-day is not in harmony 
 with modern thought, and the air is heavy with 
 coming change. Not yet has the tempest actually 
 burst upon us, although the dark thunder-clouds 
 are visible upon the horizon, and the deep and 
 dull mutterings of disagreement may be heard. 
 Doubt, schism, and thoughts of secession rankle 
 and spread throughout the churches. Should we 
 conclude that the unrest and dissatisfaction which 
 so generally prevail are things of evil omen .' Or 
 should we not rather conceive of them as the 
 harbingers of a new and grander development of 
 
lO 
 
 intellectual, moral, and religious thought ; pointing 
 to a second Reformation approaching, when all 
 Truth will be gladly hailed, and every earnest reli- 
 gious seeker will be received with a genial look 
 and friendly welcome ? After the storm shall have 
 cleared the murky atmosphere, and the gloomy, 
 grosser superstitions shall have been dispersed, 
 our spirits will be lightened, and we shall rejoice 
 in the renewed brightness of a serener day. The 
 present religious crisis cannot be stiiled, nor can 
 it pass by without leaving permanent traces of 
 advancement. With it will come new and able 
 teachers, who will lead religion forward to loftier 
 and grander heights than any yet attained by man. 
 
 I. When Science modestly speaks within her 
 own domain, and when she can be made to repeat 
 her demonstrations and deductions at our option, 
 it little avails that ignorant religious enthusiasts 
 should censure her truth-loving votaries and ex- 
 claim against " Scientific Infidelity 1 " Proud 
 churches of almost every party once virulently 
 denounced " The British Association for the 
 Advancement of Science." Hard words, however, 
 break no bones. The world moves, and the ocean 
 rolls, and the stars change position in the bosom 
 of Infinitude — space boundless, indivisible, and 
 eternal, — as if no anathema had ever been pro- 
 nounced touching science. What would be thought 
 to-day of a physician who should affirm that the 
 blood does not circulate .? Should we think more 
 
II 
 
 favourably of an astronomer who would tell us 
 that the earth " is flat and round like a plate," and 
 does not go round the sun ? or, of a benighted 
 and lagging Jew who could repeat the story 
 of a six-day creation ? Religious dreamers and 
 visionaries need no longer deprecate the un- 
 answerable from pulpit and platform or perform 
 pilgrimages to Knock, to Lourdes, or Pontigny. 
 The dismal days of superstition in England are 
 passing away. Old prejudices are breaking up. 
 Science is in the ascendant. Theologians are 
 being swept from their old moorings by the rising 
 tide of knowledge. " Science," it has been well 
 said, "has penetrated everywhere — into the 
 home, the college lecture-room, the board school, 
 and even into the pulpit. Its results are in 
 €very one's hands, its methods are consciously 
 or unconsciously followed by every mind. In 
 ■every kind of study its influence has made itself 
 felt ; the moral philosopher, the editor of a 
 ■classical poet, the historian, the biblical critic, are 
 forced to adopt and to follow the rules of evi- 
 •dence of which the history of science has proved 
 the universal necessity. The idea which may 
 be said to underlie the very conception of 
 science, the idea of law, is now familiar to every 
 one who has the rudiments of education. Science 
 has transformed not only the material aspect of 
 life, but the whole mental attitude of mankind." 
 
 The sooner all statements conflicting with 
 
12 
 
 scientific truth, however sincerely advanced, are 
 withdrawn, the better. "Science knows no a 
 priori limits ; its province is the whole range of 
 phenomena." No sophistry, nor wire - drawn 
 distinctions ; no grandiloquent phrases, no Pope 
 nor Archbishop, nor all Churches combined, 
 can alter in the smallest degree one well-ascer- 
 tained scientific fact. True Science cannot bow 
 down before any ecclesiastical authority. " The 
 earth is our workshop," and Science merely 
 desires peacefully to work out her own aims in 
 freedom and with accuracy. 
 
 It is now, on all hands, conceded that the Cos- 
 mogony of Genesis is, and the sciences of Astro- 
 nomy and Geology are, in some important respects 
 at variance ; and that to represent the statements of 
 the Bible on these points as divine and infallible is 
 delusive and obstructive. This, until recently, was 
 denied by both the Roman Catholic and the Pro- 
 testant Churches. But Science is no respecter of 
 persons nor of systems. Science tells of the mani- 
 fold and wondi»us works of God ; it is benign and 
 refreshing, as warmth, sunshine, and rain. Many 
 of our religious teachers are at present puzzled and 
 perplexed. In the obscurity of their mental vision 
 they fire off fog-signals telling us of their doubts 
 and darkness. We advise them to make confession 
 of their troubles to thoughtful scientific men ; and 
 a new illumination, brilliant, soft, and beautiful as 
 the Electric Light may be thrown upon some of 
 
13 
 
 their many difficulties. It is plain that if Religion 
 is to hold a place in the world it must contradict 
 nothing that true philosophy and exact science 
 have established. The "scientific imagination" can- 
 not be damped down nor suppressed by anathemas, 
 nor by utterances that are simply dogmatic. En- 
 croachments by knowledge are surely and exten- 
 sively being made into the region of the unex- 
 plored. 
 
 It is well known — nay, it is the commonplace 
 talk at table — that Heresy abounds at many im- 
 portant centres of learning, that clerical status and 
 influence are on the wane in England, and the ball 
 of religious controversy rolls freely on. In Scot- 
 land, especially, " bickerings hot " and sour discord 
 on many points of but little general interest are 
 rife. Indeed, it may be said that, except in men 
 of inferior ability, there is a growing disinclination 
 at our Universities and Colleges to take holy 
 orders. We have recently been told by an able 
 writer that " The greatest pains taken to raise new 
 crops of preachers in ecclesiastical forcing houses 
 have but imperfect results." 
 
 Many subjects of Old Testament history have 
 lost their former charm ; whilst the Book of Nature 
 is more and more read and felt by the people 
 to be the Book of books — the larger volume — and 
 many anxious faces are pleasantly turned toward 
 Science as unto a land of future hope and greater 
 
14 
 
 promise. The more we study Nature, the grander 
 she appears, — 
 
 " Nature never did betray 
 The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege, 
 Through "all the years of this our life, to lead 
 From joy to joy ; for she can so inform 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life. 
 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
 Our cheerful faith that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings." 
 
 If religious teaching is to maintain its hold upon 
 the popular mind and heart, it can only do so by 
 bringing it into closer conformity with the re- 
 quirements of modern life, the teachings of true 
 philosophy, and the revelations of science. 
 
 It is, however, cheerfully admitted that there 
 are many signs which point hopefully to a better 
 understanding and a closer union among our more 
 careful and matured religious thinkers. They now 
 cultivate a higher self-respect, and place at greater 
 distance the icy-fingered coldness of a needless 
 etiquette, vanity of birth, and pride of classic 
 learning. The orthodoxy, too, of the last genera- 
 tion is not the orthodoxy of to-day. Indeed, so 
 rapid are the fluctuations of thought on questions 
 
IS 
 
 of Christian Doctrine, that it is hard to determine 
 who keep, and who keep not, what has been called 
 the true ecclesiastical Faith, " whole and unde- 
 filed." Once it was considered dangerous to call 
 in question the doctrine of Eternal Torment ; 
 now the less appalling conception of Future 
 Punishment, finite in duration, has influential 
 advocates. Once clerical thinkers were chary 
 of ventilating doubts on the Atonement ; now 
 there are many theories of Atonement, main- 
 tained within the pale of orthodoxy, all character- 
 ized by important deviations from the old scheme 
 of Vicarious Satisfaction and Redemption. Once, 
 the professional teacher of Religion, who should 
 have whispered a doubt concerning the Plenary 
 Inspiration of Scripture, would have been deemed 
 audacious, and would, in all probability, have lost 
 something far more substantial than caste with his 
 sect or party. Now, theologians calmly discuss 
 the nature and extent of Inspiration, and detect 
 "human elements" in the Bible ; while a Bishop 
 finds flaws in the genealogies of the Pentateuch, 
 and disputes the asserted number of the ancient 
 Hebrews at the Exodus. And if we turn to the 
 Church of Rome, there, too, we notice signs of 
 necessary homage to liberty — for even the most 
 Ultramontane Catholics appear desirous to con- 
 vince us that individual freedom, and the rights of 
 conscience in religion, are fully recognized within 
 their communion ; that they court free discussion, 
 demand a fair field and no favour, and strive to 
 
i6 
 
 feel that they are abreast of the time i-n which we 
 live.* 
 
 Other agencies, likewise, than those which are 
 directly intellectual, are tending, silently yet 
 powerfully, to soften theological asperity, and to 
 make men, in their spirit and daily bearing, less 
 severely angular and thorny, less repellent towards 
 one another than formerly, or than their opposing 
 creeds might seem to indicate. There are irresist- 
 ible social influences at work, the effect of which 
 is to make persons holding the most conflicting 
 opinions — from those of the profound and devoted 
 Roman Catholic on the one hand, to those of the 
 cultivated and devout Theist on the other^ — not 
 unfrequently to meet and blend in harmony, " like 
 kindred drops that mingle into one." In England 
 neither dissenting Christian nor Jew has much 
 reason to complain of civil disabilities. This 
 absence of legal grievance — this free social inter- 
 course of thought — promotes a better under- 
 standing of each other's position and principles, 
 
 * We have recently been informed by several Roman Catholic 
 priests, both Home and Foreign, that the Roman Catholic Church 
 is •willing to accept modern science. When speaking of this im- 
 portant matter to a well-travelled, and an intelligent Roman 
 Catholic layman, he remarked that personal liberty of opinion on 
 scientific questions is now generally permitted in England and 
 Scotland ; but, as to Italy and Spain, such a statement would be 
 quite incorrect. The thin end of the wedge has, however, been in- 
 serted, and the wedge itself will yet be fully driven home. Woe 
 unto any Church which refuses to accept modern science. A 
 Church obstinately at war with common sense and science is sure, 
 sooner or later, to become defunct. 
 
17 
 
 and destroys that sectarian bitterness which is 
 fostered by rivalry, distrust, and isolation. Such 
 are some of the gratifying features of a freer 
 intercourse amongst our divergent religious organi- 
 zations. 
 
 2. It may be safely affirmed that Theology, Re- 
 ligion, and Science, are now perceived and acknow- 
 ledged — more clearly and fully than they ever were 
 before — to be normal products of the human mind, 
 systems which are in unison ; parts of one grand 
 harmony ; each having its true and appropriate 
 place ; and all exerting a stimulating, educative, and 
 elevating influence on mankind. If we may judge 
 from many signs, we cannot but indulge the hope 
 that, in the not distant future, Religion and Science 
 — rivals no longer, but sisters — will forget their 
 ancient feuds, and shed conjointly upon humanity 
 an influence so genial, that the understanding will 
 be enriched and mellowed by the heart, and the 
 heart will be nurtured and regulated by the under- 
 standing. Even the Atheistic-Secularist is by the 
 clearer light of modern science changing his posi- 
 tion of careless neutrality, and is at work correcting 
 his circular reasonings. This disquieted party of 
 the unattached, with its levelling tactics and | 
 chaotic tendencies, contributing little better than 
 a " may-be " to the solution of almost every pro- 
 position that can be off'ered, and so seldom ac- 
 companied by the soft graces of humility, nowhere 
 stirs humanity into a glow. " Mere negation," 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 Lord Macaulay tells us, "has never disturbed the 
 peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for 
 action. It inspires no enthusiasm. It has no 
 missionaries, no crusaders, no martyrs." And 
 George Eliot, writing with a large and varied 
 knowledge of the world, also declares : — " I have 
 too profound a conviction of the efficacy that lies, 
 in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that 
 comes with no faith, to have any negative propa- 
 gandism in me. In fact, I have very little sym- 
 pathy with Free-thinkers as a class, and have lost 
 all interest in mere antagonism to religious doc- 
 trines."* We have brought together at the end 
 of this volume a number of extracts tending to 
 show that the most advanced thought of our time 
 is on the side of liberal Theology and Religion. 
 
 3. An active, earnest, and persistent endeavour 
 after an enlarged religious freedom is a chief and 
 welcome characteristic of our day. 
 
 Free inquiry, free speech, a free press, ex- 
 posing and keeping in check fanaticisnlv postal 
 communication, the telegraph hourly flashing 
 to distant lands intelligence of important 
 events occurring in the more enlightened parts 
 of the world, and the rapid intercommunication 
 of mankind by land and sea, help to mould our 
 
 * The Times of 2Sth September, 1885, writes :— The Inter- 
 national Congress of Free-thinkers at Antwerp has adopted the 
 following resolution : — " Moral responsibility does not exist." 
 
19 
 
 thoughts and lives into better and more cosmo- 
 politan form.* The onward and upward move- 
 ment of the human race slowly but surely pro- 
 ceeds, like movements of the hydraulic press ; and 
 its more complete development, by sound culture, 
 tends to make humanity a glorious thing in the 
 world. Could the Infinite and Eternal One be 
 imaged in any finite work, we might, in figurative 
 and poetical language, exclaim that Man is, in- 
 deed, a noble although a mysterious mirror of the 
 Deity ; and, with all his limitations and imperfec- 
 tions, he yet illustrates, on a scale incomparably 
 higher than any other being on our planet, the 
 ennobling principles of Intelligence and Love. 
 
 " A miracle with miracles enclosed is Man;" 
 
 Man reflects more of the Divine than any other 
 being that we have knowledge of ! 
 
 4. (a.) The consciousness of Infinitude, of the 
 Boundless and Indivisible One, the All-embracing 
 Uncreate, which cannot be conceived of either as 
 beginning or as ending, may be said to be the ele- 
 mentary, intuitional gift, or the natural revela- 
 tion of God himself to Man. 
 
 * We were in Switzerland with an American friend when the 
 railway was being constructed on the banks of Lake Geneva, and 
 which now goes all the way from Amsterdam to Rome. We asked 
 him what he thought its effect would be upon the stagnant mind of 
 the Roman Catholic peasantry along its route. He answered, "I 
 put that question to a Roman Catholic priest. His answer was 
 short and decisive — ' Sir, it is the road to hell!'' " 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 {b.) All the visible objects and invisible ener- 
 gies and agencies of Nature, the totality of Finite 
 Things, however vast and varied, exist and move 
 and act in the Eternal Immensity. 
 
 {c.) Each of these things is finite per se; and 
 all of them are limited in magnitude, in number, 
 and in power.* 
 
 Without such a basis for belief as this, it is 
 probable that the fact of Deity could not reason- 
 ably be affirmed. Let us, then, never confuse 
 ourselves by intermingling in thought the Infinite 
 One with the finite many ; the Supernatural with 
 the natural. 
 
 " Had there e'er been nought, nought still had 
 been ; " and " Everything that happens has a 
 Cause." No part of the Universe of Things ever 
 sprang into existence by virtue of its own energy, 
 force, or power. The world reverberates with 
 fully accentuated affirmations that God is ; that He 
 is first, and rules for ever. The Formless Infinite, 
 the Eternal One, changes not position, and is 
 
 * Dr. Martineau, in the following passage from his " Types of 
 Ethical Theory," seems to strengthen the chief view taken above 
 with his high authority : — "When you consider what is involved in 
 Space-belief, — that it cannot be present at all without the idea and 
 assurance of Infinitude, that you cannot look out from your own 
 point, or plant a single body in any other, without enveloping your- 
 self and it in a boundless circumambient field, throughout which 
 all measures must be taken by the same three dimensions which 
 are familiar, near at hand, — you cannot but perceive how far beyond 
 the range of any empirical groping of ours extends the sweep of this 
 added knowledge." 
 
21 
 
 without part or passion. What, then, it may be 
 asked, is our conception of this indestructible 
 element of thought, which is devoid of form and 
 has no succession, no necessary co-existence, has 
 neither up nor down, centre nor circumference ? 
 We reverently answer : — That which Is, and is one 
 pure Being, Ens, or Entity, of which degree is un- 
 thinkable. It is not manifold, nor plural, nor of 
 time ; but simple, single, and eternal. It is always 
 Infinite, it can be conceived as neither more nor 
 less, neither as better nor worse. This view clears 
 the ground and prepares the way for a truer 
 understanding of Theism ; and it excludes every 
 form of Atheism, Anthropomorphism, Pantheism, 
 and Polytheism. 
 
 We believe — nor are we singular in the belief — 
 that there is in man the abiding consciousness of 
 an ever-present Deity : the Nature of Whom — it 
 has of old, perhaps, been correctly said — we do 
 not '-know" or intellectually perceive; and of 
 Whom, as a Being with Infinite faculties, pro- 
 perties, and qualities, we (let us humbly con- 
 fess it) have no mental image or picture. This 
 seems to be the groundwork of a true theology. 
 Here, at last, we think, a well-defined line may 
 be usefully drawn. Infinitude is not an inference, 
 nor acquired by experience ; it is not reached 
 through the medium of the senses (as has been 
 conjectured) ; but, rather, is it to the studious and 
 meditative mind a necessarily resultant truth; the 
 
22 
 
 most stupendous and sublimest fact that we can 
 realize in thought. Sometimes it has been called 
 an d. priori or intuitive conviction ; or an imme- 
 diate fact of consciousness. 
 
 In further illustration of this important subject, 
 it may be remarked, that an Infinite organ and 
 function, an Infinite courage, knowledge, reason, 
 and goodness are not realizable by man. All 
 these are Unknown ; incomprehensible and un- 
 representable. Indeed, an Infinite molecule and 
 boulder, ship and house, are just as imaginable — 
 as real regarded as mental representations — as an 
 Infinite person. An "Infinite Force," and an "In- 
 finite and Eternal Energy " (both recently affirmed 
 by living writers) are as phrases an unfortunate 
 blending of words without any correspondent 
 thought. Affirmations about the essence or 
 nature of God are, we think, inconsiderate and 
 unwise. They are ideas arbitrary and fanciful,. 
 " the jargon o' the schools," a cloud of unmeaning 
 words, " dreams of the dotage past," the foolish 
 guess-work of a too active and fertile imagination. 
 These prolonged and prevailing errors — lingering 
 shadows of past thought — make men weary and 
 sad at heart ; they are to us meaningless, " stale,, 
 flat, and unprofitable." 
 
 The Infinite and Indivisible One, we may re- 
 mark, cannot be thought of as forming part of 
 anything which is limited and of time ; nor can 
 
23 
 
 the finite Many be transmuted into the Infinite 
 and Eternal One by any effort or process of 
 the mind of man. They are distinct and dissimi- 
 lar. There is no ratio of likeness. No binding 
 links can make them one. There is nothing 
 common to both except the fact of existence. 
 
 " A million is full as far from infinite as one." 
 
 Infinitude — the Unconditioned One — is never 
 known as possessing faculties, properties, and 
 qualities. The Finite — the Conditioned Many, 
 visible and invisible — are in their grand variety 
 always and only known by quantitative and 
 qualitative distinctions. Although there is anal- 
 ogy between all things of the heavens and the 
 earth, there is none between the infinite and the 
 finite, eternity and time. A broad and deep curtain 
 of darkest shade and of impenetrable substance 
 hangs between the intellect of man and the 
 vainly assumed faculties and other attributes of 
 God. The properties and qualities which flow 
 currently in the streamlet of our thoughts are 
 finite, and these alone are distinctly representable. 
 No human eye has seen, no imagination has 
 painted, no judgment has comprehended the 
 essence, the nature, or the substance of the Un- 
 create. 
 
 " What Thou art surpasses me to know." 
 
 " How Thou art, and seemest to Thine own being, 
 I can never know, any more than I can assume Thy 
 nature." 
 
li 
 
 24 
 
 ' To think that God is as we can think Him to be 
 is blasphemy." 
 
 Not What Thou art, or Bow Thou art, but That 
 Thou art, is wisdom. 
 
 This conclusion, so important in the discussions 
 of theology, is maintained by Sir William Hamil- 
 ton in the following well-known passage, which 
 might be emphasized, and should always be kept 
 steadily in view : — " The infinite God cannot by us, 
 in the present limitation of our faculties, be com- 
 prehended or conceived. A Deity understood, 
 would be no Deity at all ; and it is blasphemy to 
 say that God only is as we are able to think Him 
 to be. We know God according to the finitude of 
 our faculties ; but we believe much that we are in- 
 competent properly to know. The infinite, the 
 infinite God, is what, to use the words of Pascal, 
 is infinitely inconceivable. Faith — Belief — is the 
 organ by which we apprehend what is beyond our 
 knowledge. In this, all Divines and Philosophers, 
 worthy of the name, are found to coincide ; and 
 the few who assert to man a knowledge of the 
 infinite, do this on the daring, the extravagant, the 
 paradoxical supposition, either that Human Reason 
 is identical with the Divine, or that Man and the 
 Absolute are one." 
 
 This is the decision of many thoughtful Jews, 
 Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and others, and 
 it is eloquently expressed in the Quarterly Review 
 for January, 1885: — "There is nothing new or 
 
25 
 
 strange in the position, that the adequate idea of 
 God is unattainable by the human mind as now 
 constituted. It is even one of the axioms of 
 CathoHc Theology that God, in the perfection of 
 His essential nature, is by Man unknowable. God 
 is infinite : but a finite being cannot comprehend 
 infinity. By no finite intelligence, wherever found, 
 can God be known as He essentially is." 
 
 We, therefore, conclude that the Infinite and 
 Eternal One, by and in whom we live and move, 
 should not be called a Person with human faculties 
 and qualities indefinitely enlarged and improved. 
 An Infinite personality is a contradiction ; and a 
 Limitless organism an absurdity. As to three 
 distinct and dissimilar Infinite Entities — a triple 
 or triad Deity — that is a conception which is alto- 
 gether inadmissible. Indeed, we may reaffirm 
 that any Infinite quality, property, or faculty, 
 which can be conjectured, is the veriest phan- 
 tom of the imagination, and cannot, as such, be 
 jealized by human thought. Such powers and 
 qualities are always things of degree, may be 
 thought of as more or less, and exist in man. 
 Symbolically, then, but only symbolically, God 
 may be regarded as our Heavenly Father and 
 Mother, who is most wise, and good, and affection- 
 ate. Figuratively, but as a figure of speech merely. 
 He may be said to be the Sun of Righteousness, 
 and the Rock of Ages. Should He, however, be 
 Infinite and Absolute, as is often said, He cannot 
 
26 
 
 be informed, and does not require to be instigated, 
 importuned, or, sometimes, with deplorable pre- 
 sumption and irreverence — actually coaxed and 
 advised what to do ! We think that the purity and 
 sublimity of worship are tainted and enfeebled by 
 men making the Creator in their own image ; by 
 giving Deity a-Will like unto a Human Will ; con- 
 sidering Him to be an Impersonal Force, or a 
 Personal Energy, or some sort of a Spiritual Per- 
 sonality, a man-like God — subject to human affec- 
 tions, passions, and motives — and who may be 
 influenced by entreaty, gifts, and flattery. This 
 error is yet rampant even in so-called advanced 
 and self-styled reformed churches. All forms of 
 Anthropomorphism are but the creation of a wild 
 and wandering imagination, pervading all the 
 ancient and many modern manifestations of re- 
 ligious thought.* 
 
 The above view is well set forth in the following 
 passage, which we have pleasure in quoting from 
 the Inquirer : — 
 
 " There is intense earnestness with which the en- 
 deavour is being made to attach an intelligible, rational, 
 scientific meaning to the term God — a meaning that 
 reason may sanction, science approve, and the heart find 
 
 * An Anthropomorphic God cannot be conceived as an Infinite 
 God. Personality and Infinity are terms expressive of ideas which 
 are mutually incompatible. The pseud-idea "Infinite Person" is 
 neither more nor less unthinkable than the pseud-idea "Circular 
 Triangle. " Thus from every point of view the doctrine of a quasi- 
 human God appears equally unsatisfactory to the scientific thinker. 
 
 John Fiske, M.A. 
 
27 
 
 to be a sufficient basis for its trust. This seems to be 
 the first great aim of the most thoughtful minds of our 
 time. The God of the old traditional theology can no 
 longer be accepted. The knowledge of the world has 
 gone beyond this partial anthropomorphic conception. 
 Reason and science alike compel us to reject it as un- 
 worthy and false. A truer basis of the world's religious 
 faith has to be found than that which the old creeds and 
 theologies supplied. The idea of an artificer God out- 
 side of nature, and working on it from without, is a 
 notion of the past. Such an idea is at variance with 
 the teachings of science, and with all the later know- 
 ledge of our day. The anthropomorphism, too, con- 
 nected with the idea of a personal God has also to 
 be abandoned. Much that is contained in the Scrip- 
 tures, especially the Old Testament, will have to be 
 passed by as suited only to the barbarism and infancy 
 of our race. The fundamentals of theology will have 
 to be readjusted on the basis which our knowledge 
 supplies, and the great task before us all is this work of 
 readjustment." 
 
 But, although the Object of the Religious Emo- 
 tions is veiled in mystic shadows impenetrable to 
 the gaze of the acutest intellect, we hold that 
 there is in man an intuition, a sentiment implanted, 
 " a moving why," or an a priori form or con- 
 dition of thought, which prompts to a belief in 
 the existence of a Deity, and this belief appears 
 to be ineradicably rooted in the native substance 
 and structure of the human mind. May we ask 
 this question :■ — Are we not often certain of the 
 
28 
 
 Existence of a Cause, believing that it is, and 
 perceiving what it is Adequate to Produce, without 
 knowing what it is in itself?* 
 
 Altho;]gh the " I AM THAT I AM " cannot be 
 comprehended by us, having no likeness to any- ■ 
 thing in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, 
 may we not reasonably believe that God Is — and 
 is, in our imaginary flight and ideal treatment, 
 unthinkably grand in His Being, existing, we may 
 humbly venture to suppose, in His own uncreated 
 light, more majestic than motion, more wise 
 
 * What the Substance or Essence of that Being, which is self- 
 existent, or necessarily-existing, is we have no idea, neither is it 
 at all possible for us to comprehend it. That there is such a 
 Being actually existing without us, we are sure (as I have already 
 shown) by strict and undeniable demonstration. Also what it is 
 not ; that the material world is not it, as modern Atheists would 
 have it ; has been already demonstrated. But what it is, I mean 
 as to its Substance and Essence ; this we are infinitely unable to 
 comprehend. Yet this does not in the least diminish the certainty 
 of the demonstration of its existence. For 'tis one thing to 
 know certainly that a Being Exists ; another, to know %vhat the 
 Essence of that Being is. And the one may be capable of the 
 strictest demonstration, when the other is absolutely beyond the 
 reach of all our faculties to understand. 
 
 Samuel Clarke, D.D. 
 
 "God, all theologians admit, can only be apprehended, not 
 comprehended. " — Professor C. B. Upton's recent Address to Theo- 
 iogicEll Students of University Hall, London. 
 
 Be it so. What, then, do we apprehend as Infinite ? We 
 answer Infinitude as one being or entity, a simple intellection, or 
 a pure mental apprehension of what is boundless, indivisible, and 
 eternal. With a //«j of any kind ? No! And an Infinite " sympa- 
 thetic personality " is not in harmony with the world as experienced 
 by man. 
 
29 
 
 than conceivable wisdom, more loving than any- 
 imaginable love ? We acknowledge that He can 
 only be imperfectly represented, if represented at 
 all, in thought and speech by finite symbols, of 
 which the highest and best that we know are 
 Truth, Wisdom, Love, Spirit. It has been, we 
 submit, correctly and usefully said : — •" When we 
 attach the adjective infinite to any quality, by 
 doing so, we remove it from the category of known 
 things." 
 
 Should we not regard it as an unworthy con- 
 ception, a vulgar estimate of Deity, to think of 
 Him as one resembling His own handy-work ? 
 And should it be thought complimentary to affirm 
 that He is wise, good, and mighty, with the prefix 
 " ALL " to each of these human conditions, as if 
 the circle of difficulties were thereby squared ? It 
 may be considered certain that the contents of 
 every street and square in London, and every 
 page of the two organic kingdoms, flatly contra- 
 dict such a misuse of terms, such an overcharged 
 and misleading hypothesis. Vainly striving for 
 " human attributes magnified to infinity," has 
 been the prolific cause of a countless waste of 
 time, confusion and contradiction of thought, 
 thousands of useless volumes and much profit- 
 less debate. Man has an instinct for food : what 
 inference can be correctly drawn .-' Must a Cause 
 be like its Effect .■■ Because the Deity made 
 a flower, must He be like a flower } Because He 
 
30 
 
 made a fish, or bird, must He be like a fish, or 
 bird ? And because He made the mind of man, 
 must He, therefore, in any sense whatever, be like 
 a human mind ? This is the " blasphemy " so 
 properly complained of, which should be carefully 
 watched and avoided in our Theological Semi- 
 naries and Churches. Upon this prevalent error, 
 Professor Tyndall, aided by the clear light of 
 science, and with a soul of deep reverence, re- 
 marks : — " When I attempt to give the Power 
 which I see manifested in the Universe an objec- 
 tive form, personal or otherwise, it slips away from 
 me, declining all intellectual manipulation, I dare 
 not, save poetically, use the pronoun ' He ' regard- 
 ing it ; I dare not call it a ' Mind ' ; I refuse to call 
 it even a ' Cause ' (?). Its mystery overshadows 
 me ; but it remains a mystery, while the objective 
 frames which my neighbours try to make it fit, 
 simply distort and desecrate it." If we are entitled 
 to believe in a Deity, and are able to affirm that 
 He IS, although we do not know wkai He is in 
 His nature or kow He exists in His being, and if 
 the effects, which are the expression or manifesta- 
 tion of God — the world itself — may be correctly 
 held to be that which it has been called, " a thing 
 of time," " a manufactured article,'' not only 
 created but also sustained by Him, this may be 
 considered an ample belief for a truly devout 
 mind, although the essence, the nature, or the 
 substance of Deity be altogether unknown, and, 
 probably, for ever, unknowable. It is obvious to 
 
31 
 
 ourselves that what has been called " God in 
 Nature " need not in any way be like mind in 
 man. 
 
 This view is so fundamentally important, affect- 
 ing, as it does, the whole question of man's rela- 
 tion to the Great Unseen, and in particular to 
 every conception of worship, that a few extracts 
 from what has been written upon the subject by 
 leading thinkers, mostly of our own time, may be 
 considered both interesting and pertinent : — 
 
 " How far, and in what way, our fundamental, intel- 
 lectual, and moral conceptions are rationally predicable 
 of an Infinite Being, is the unsolved problem of meta- 
 physics." 
 
 " Mind." 
 
 " At last our greatest thinkers are beginning to per- 
 ceive the utter impossibility of learning anything about 
 the nature of God." 
 
 "The Langham Magazine." 
 
 " Among the unknowable things, the first we recognize 
 is the nature or attributes of the First Cause." 
 
 Harriet Martineau. 
 
 " Any attribute may represent the character of God 
 to man, for we know nothing whatever of His real at- 
 tributes, and cannot even conceive Him as endowed 
 
 with attributes." 
 
 " Fortnightly Review." 
 
 . " I cannot define, or explain, or understand God's 
 nature, essence, or mode of being.'' 
 
 Rev. R. RoDOLPH Suffield. 
 
32 
 
 " In those things which concern God, it is great know 
 ledge to confess our ignorance." 
 
 Cyril of Jehusalem. 
 
 "Job had the true temper towards this Power when 
 he buried his forehead in the dust, and exclaimed, 
 ' God is past finding out.' Whichever way we look, we 
 come athwart a Power of which we know nothing." 
 
 "The Inquirer." 
 
 " The mind seeks in vain to embrace the infinite in 
 
 a positive image, but is constrained to believe, when its 
 
 efforts fail, that there is a something to which no limit 
 
 can be put." 
 
 'Dr. McCosH. 
 
 " Take up any of the works of the old theologians, 
 and you find that they talked as if they knew everything 
 about God ; as though it were not only an ' open secret,' 
 but no secret at all. They understood God better than 
 they knew their next-door neighbour." 
 
 Rev. M. J. Savage, Boston, U.S. 
 
 " The license of affirmation about God and His pro- 
 ceedings, in which the religious world indulge, is more 
 and more met by the demand for verification. . . . The 
 assumption with which all the churches and sects set 
 out that there is a great Personal First Cause, the moral 
 and intelligent Governor of the universe, and that from 
 Him the Bible derives its authority, cannot at present, at 
 any rate, be verified." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " May we not therefore rightly refrain from assigning 
 to the Ultimate Cause any attributes whatever, on the 
 
33 
 
 ground that such attributes, derived as they must be 
 from our own natures, are not elevations but degrada- 
 tions?" 
 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 " What, then, is the conclusion I come to ? It is a 
 conclusion which may, to some extent, startle you, yet 
 one to which I have been coming for many years, and 
 towards which the whole of my thought and study has 
 seemed to converge. And if what I am about to state 
 to you is true, it forms the point of difference between 
 theology and other sciences. I believe that, in regard 
 to theology proper, we know very little, and never shall 
 know much more. The being of God entirely overtops, 
 and surrounds, and overwhelms, and floods, and drowns 
 our faculties." 
 
 Rev. Charles Beard. 
 
 " An artist of fine taste, exuberant imagination, and 
 high culture, resolved to send to the International Exhi- 
 bition, held in London in 185 1, a work in marble to 
 represent — God is Love. He toiled anxiously and 
 patiently with pencil for many weeks. He experienced 
 little trouble in giving adequate expression to an emotion 
 which flowed so fully in himself, and which glowed so 
 warmly in those around him. Then, however, came 
 difficulty — insurmountable difficulty ! When endeavour- 
 ing to make a sketch picture of the Deity, he properly 
 refused to draw the figure of a fine old gentleman, with 
 long curling hair, and a river of a beard, as Roman 
 Catholic artists have often done in their pictures. But, 
 finally, — the crayon dropped from his hand ! Thoughtful 
 men are asking and urging this plain question, — Can a 
 human being realize in thought an Infinite energy or 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 force, goodness, love, or wisdom ? and the answer we 
 respectfully submit should be, — NO. 
 
 ' How eloquent ofttimes is silence.' 
 
 Let the turbulent rhetorician and the ' heated pulpiteer ' 
 pause and wonder, stand uncovered, and with bated 
 breath be solemnly silent about the nature of Deity." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " How it may be with God in His own essence, I dare 
 not presume to think. He is the high and holy One 
 who inhabiteth eternity; and if you will say of Him 
 those awful and mysterious things, that flow from the 
 conception of infinitude, — that in Him there is no suc- 
 cession, no transition, no emotion, — that He never comes 
 and goes, is neither here nor there, — that He is the 
 Stationary Now, abiding still, with nothing past, and 
 nothing future ; — I hold my peace, and breathe no word 
 against you." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Martineau. 
 
 " Our soundest knowledge is to know that we know 
 Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him : and 
 our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, 
 when we confess without confession that His glory is 
 inexplicable, His greatness above our capacity and 
 Teach." 
 
 Richard Hooker. 
 
 "The philosopher sees, indeed, that God governs 
 His creation by rules and mechanical laws, and that the 
 soul governs the body in a similar manner : he may 
 even know what these rules and mechanical laws are ; 
 
35 
 
 but to know the nature of that Infinite Being, from 
 •whom as from their fountain, all things in the world 
 derive their existence and subsistence — to know, I say, 
 the nature of that Supreme Intelligence with its infinite 
 arcana — this is an attainment beyond the sphere of his 
 limited capacity.'' 
 
 Emanuel Swedenborg. 
 
 " Man recognizes in man the yearning for a power 
 outside his individual self which he may venerate, a 
 love for the author of his chief good, the need for 
 sympathy with something greater than himself. . . . 
 It is not the emotional elements of Religion which fail 
 us. For these, with the growing goodness of mankind, 
 are gaining in purity and strength. We need to-day, 
 not the faculty of worship (that is ever fresh in the 
 heart), but a clearer vision of the power we should 
 worship." 
 
 Frederic Harrison. 
 
 " It seems, then, there is a consensus among all 
 competent persons, who have ever thought deeply on 
 the subject, that the real nature of that Power which 
 underlies all existing things is absolutely unknown to 
 man. And it is allowable, therefore, in the last resort, 
 to fall back upon Spinoza's word, ' sub-stance ' ; and to 
 accept — if charity so require — as the common basis 
 for theological reunion the Agnostic formula, Something 
 Is." 
 
 Rev. Canon Curteis. 
 
 " I am that which is, that which was, and that which 
 will be : — No one hath lifteth my veil." 
 
 " The Sanctuary of Sais." 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 5. Proceeding to the consideration of the mental 
 world, we would say that Mind is itself. What 
 thinks exists. Man cannot believe that he Tiimself 
 does not exist. Human Personality and Identity, 
 with the unmistakable intuitions of Here and 
 There, This and That, Now and Then, Self and 
 Not-Self — each standing clearly apart and inde- 
 pendently of the other — seem not to be within 
 the possibility of unbelief. The existence of mind 
 and its relation to an external world is attested by 
 its own consciousness, and we regard this as an 
 ultimate court from the decision of which there 
 is no appeal. (Did any one with a healthy mind 
 ever mistake Not-Self for Self >) Man IS, and he 
 thinks. Self J>Ius state, Self />lus objects, are 
 formal necessities of thought, they are prior to 
 reasoning, require to be assumed, and are superior 
 to any proof If we allow these conceptions their 
 due weight, we may resolutely keep clear of pure 
 Idealism on the one hand, and complete Mate- 
 rialism on the other. The conscious subject, and 
 the consciousness of objects, are two well-grpynded 
 certitudes of belief ; they are true in philosophy, 
 safe in practice, trustworthy, and reliable as the 
 solid granite rock itself Sir William Hamilton 
 observes : — " We are immediately conscious in 
 perception of an ego and a non-ego, known to- 
 gether, and known in contrast to each other. This 
 is the fact of the Duality of Consciousness. It 
 is clear and manifest. When I concentrate my 
 attention in the simplest act of perception, I 
 
37 
 
 return from my observations with the most irre- 
 sistible conviction of two facts, or rather two 
 branches of the same fact : — that I am — and that 
 something different from me exists. In this act, I 
 am conscious of myself as the perceiving subject, 
 and of an external reality as the object perceived ; 
 and I am conscious of both existences in the same 
 indivisible moment of intuition." Mr. J. S. Mill 
 insists upon a similar distinction. "All language," 
 he says, " recognizes a distinction between myself, 
 the Ego, and a world, either material or spiritual, 
 or both, external to me, but of which I can, in 
 some mode or measure, take cognizance." To the 
 same effect a recent and discriminating Reviewer 
 felicitously writes, " We have the same knowledge 
 that the outward world exists for us an inde- 
 pendent thing, essentially apart from sensation, as 
 we have that we exist ourselves ; these two con- 
 victions are intuitive, and must be assumed if 
 speculation is not to run into mere extravagance ; 
 and we shall find if we act otherwise, that thought 
 on the subject is without a basis. The reasoning 
 which resolves things into objects of perception 
 for us will also resolve our own being into a mere 
 entity of perception ; and this absurdity, we think, 
 shows that we must start in Metaphysical in- 
 quiries with postulates absolutely incompatible 
 with Berkeley's subtile and ingenious theory."* 
 
 * In a work recently published, entitled " The Philosophy of 
 Kant," by Professor Edward Caird, we read : — " So long as he 
 IBerkeley] is arguing that the mind can apprehend nothing but 
 ideas, and that an object which is not an idea is an absurdity, he is ■ 
 
38 
 
 We also venture to submit that these mainstays 
 of philosophic thinking, — the definite, the indefi- 
 nite, and the infinite on the one hand ; and time, 
 duration, and eternity on the other, — are, as 
 it were, prerequisites in conducting the Senses, 
 the Understanding, and the Pure Reason to 
 absolute conclusions in Philosophy, Religion, and 
 Theology. The mind's perception of Succession 
 and its laws of Causality and Inference, which 
 imperatively demand that every Effect, or thing 
 which begins to be, necessarily requires a Sufficient 
 Cause, are as binding in "Reason and absolutely 
 certain as that twice two are equal to four ;, 
 neither more nor less. And Nature herself is not 
 altogether a riddle which cannot be understood. 
 
 irresistible ; because we suppose him to be maintaining only the 
 self-evident proposition that consciousness cannot get out of itself."' 
 This statement seems to involve a fallacy. Why should any one 
 think that he cannot have an idea of himself, and another idea of 
 an object existing outside of himself^ say, a billiard-ball, a statue, 
 or the moon? And why should consciousness require to " get out 
 of itself " in order that any of these should be perceived ? Do they 
 exist because we think of them, or do we think of them because 
 they exist ? Does the ear, for instance, make the wave-like motions 
 of air ? Or the eye the wave-like movements of light, which speed 
 along, it is said, at 186,000 miles in a second before they enter it? 
 Although no one can leap out of his own skin or away from his. 
 shadow, do not men with sound Common-Sense correctly be- 
 lieve that they may, and often do, leap from and to those of their 
 neighbours ? We are assured by Geologists, that our earth existed 
 many millions of years prior to man. Must we then conclude that 
 this science is a fiction, and must be cancelled in order that Idealism 
 should prevail? In fact, the whole doctrine of evolution is de- 
 prived of its foundation, unless we believe that the energy of nature 
 exists outside of, and independent of, the consciousness of the mind 
 of man. 
 
39 
 
 All material substances, we have been told, are 
 physically divisible into molecules, and chemically 
 divisible into atoms that have distinctive qualities. 
 We may ask, Does the Universe of Things so far 
 as known by us — the earth and moon and comets, 
 sun and stars and planets, the all of finite exist- 
 ences in boundless and indivisible space — not admit 
 of an antecedent ? Do any of the sixty-three, or 
 more, simple and elementary substances afford 
 evidence that they necessarily exist ? Take a 
 particle of sand, split it into its chemical con- 
 stituents, oxygen and silicon, and do the atoms of 
 these two specific kinds of matter suggest the 
 faintest hint of their being eternal ? Could any 
 one be thought very intelligent who would affirm 
 that a gas obviously shows the possession of 
 primordial principles, and never began to be, 
 because of its own self-existing essence ? Nay, 
 the entire globe on which we are, with its origin 
 in the far-distant past of incalculable millions of 
 years, presents to rnany eminent Chemists and 
 Geologists not a feature of independent existence, 
 and the two organic Kingdoms — the Vegetable 
 and the Animal — are assuredly not self-originated 
 and self-sustained. 
 
 Several eminent scientific writers have recently 
 affirmed that they " can find no evidence of any 
 potency inherent in matter." " The atom of 
 modern science is a very different thing from the 
 atom of the older speculation. . . . The cardinal 
 
40 
 
 idea of the new conception is that each so-called 
 atom is a ' manufactured substance,' that it has 
 properties which are not necessary, but contingent 
 and artificial." . . . "There is no chemistry that 
 can make an organ. There is no laboratory that 
 can turn out even the lowest living cell." 
 
 The cell might be said in relation to chemistry 
 to occupy the position of an admittedly impas- 
 sable barrier. In making this bold assertion we 
 are relying on many of the ablest chemists and 
 physicists who, although admitting the possibility 
 of the synthetical formation of more and more 
 complex organic bodies in the future, yet never 
 project that a time will come when they can 
 hopefully attempt the production of the organic 
 cell. The door from the non-vital world to the 
 living cell is shut, and no chemical manipulation 
 can open it. A cell is checkmate to chemistry. 
 
 Professor Flint, in his recent work on Theism, 
 writes : — 
 
 " Should we seek, then, after what is eternal ? Science 
 tells us that it is not the earth, nor anything which it 
 contains ; not the sea, nor the living things within it ; 
 not the moving air, not the sun, nor the moon, nor the 
 stars. These things when interrogated all tell us to 
 look above and beyond them, for although they may 
 have begun to be in times far remote, yet it was within 
 times to which the thoughts of finite beings can reach 
 back." 
 
41 
 
 Henry Drummond, F.R.S.E., in " Natural Law 
 in the Spiritual World," writes : — 
 
 " On one of the shelves in a certain museum lie two 
 small boxes filled with earth. A low mountain in Arran 
 has furnished the first ; the contents of the second came 
 from the island of Barbadoes. When examined with a 
 pocket lens, the Arran earth is found to be full of small 
 objects, clear as crystal, fashioned by some mysterious 
 geometry into forms of exquisite symmetry. The sub- 
 stance is silica, a natural glass ; and the prevailing shape 
 is a six-sided prism capped at either end by little pyra- 
 mids modelled with consummate grace. 
 
 " When the second specimen is examined, the revela- 
 tion is, if possible, more surprising. Here, also, is a 
 vast assemblage of small glassy or porcellanous objects 
 built up into curious forms. The material, chemically, 
 remains the same, but the angles of pyramid and prism 
 have given place to curved lines, so that the contour is 
 entirely different. The appearance is that of a vast 
 collection of microscopic urns, goblets, and vases, each 
 richly ornamented with small sculptured discs or per- 
 forations which are disposed over the fine white surface 
 in regular belts and rows. Each tiny urn is chiselled 
 into the most faultless proportion, and the whole pre- 
 sents a vision of magic beauty. 
 
 " Judged by the standard of their loveliness, there is 
 little to choose between these two sets of objects. Yet 
 there is one cardinal difference between them. They 
 belong to different worlds. The last belong to the 
 living world, the former to the dead. The first are 
 crystals, the last are shells. 
 
 "No power on earth can make these little urns of 
 
42 
 
 the Polycystinae except Life. We can melt them down in 
 the laboratory, but no ingenuity of chemistry can repro- 
 duce their sculptured forms.'' 
 
 Professor Ramsay, as President of the British 
 Association, in his address delivered in August, 
 1880, remarked : — 
 
 " If the nebular hypothesis of astronomers be true 
 (and I know of no reason why it should be doubted), 
 the earth was at one time in a purely gaseous state, and 
 afterwards in a fluid condition, attended by intense heat. 
 By-and-by, consolidation, due to partial cooling, took 
 place on the surface, and as radiation of heat went on, 
 the outer shell thickened. Radiation still going on, the 
 interior fluid matter decreased in bulk, and, by force of 
 gravitation, the outer shell being drawn towards the in- 
 terior, gave way, and, in parts, got crinkled up, and this, 
 according to cosmogonists, was the origin of the earliest 
 mountain-chains. I make no objection to the hypothesis 
 which, to say the least, seems to be the best that can be 
 offered, and looks highly probable. But, assuming that 
 it is true, then hypothetical events took place so long 
 before authentic geological history began, as written in 
 the rocks, that the earliest of the physical events to 
 which I have drawn your attention in this address, was, 
 to all human apprehension of time, so enormously re- 
 moved from these early assumed cosmical phenomena, 
 that they appear to me to have been of comparatively 
 quite modern occurrence, and to indicate that, from the 
 Laurentian epoch down to the present day, all the phy- 
 sical events in the history of the earth have varied 
 neither in kind nor in intensity from those of which we 
 now have experience." 
 
43 
 
 The Duke of Argyll, in the Contemporary Review 
 for September, 1880, has the following fine state- 
 ment : — 
 
 " There are structures in nature which can be seen in 
 process of construction. There are conditions of matter 
 in which its particles can be seen rushing under the 
 impulse of invisible forces, to take their appointed places 
 in the form which to them is law. Such are facts visible 
 in the processes of crystalUzation. In them we can see 
 the particles of matter passing from one ' molecular con- 
 dition ' to another ; and it is impossible that this passage 
 can be ascribed either to the old arrangement which is 
 broken up, or to the new arrangement which is substi- 
 tuted in its stead. Both structures have been built up 
 out of elementary materials by some constructive agency 
 which is the master and not the servant — the cause and 
 not the consequence of the movements which are 
 effected, and of the arrangement which is their result. 
 And if this be true of crystalline forms in the mineral 
 kingdom, much more is it true of organic forms in the 
 animal kingdom. Crystals are, as it were, the begin- 
 nings of Nature's architecture, her lowest and simplest 
 forms of building. But the most complete crystalline 
 forms which exist — and many of them are singularly 
 complete and beautiful — are simplicity itself, compared 
 with the very lowest organism which is endowed with 
 life. In them, therefore, still more than in the formation 
 of crystals, the work of ' differentiation ' — that is to say, 
 the work of forming out of one material different struc- 
 tures for the discharge of different functions — is the 
 work of agencies which are invisible and unknown, and 
 it is in these agencies, not in the molecular arrange- 
 
44 
 
 ments which they cause, that the essential character 
 and individuality of every organism consists. Accord- 
 ingly, in the development of seeds and of eggs, which 
 are the germs of plants and animals respectively, the 
 portions of matter can be traced moving, in obedience 
 to forces which are unseen, from ' molecular conditions ' 
 which appear to be those of almost complete homo- 
 geneity to other molecular conditions which are of 
 inconceivable complexity. In that mystery of all mys- 
 teries, of which physicists talk so glibly, the living 
 ' nucleated cell,' the great work of creation may be seen 
 in actual operation, not caused by ' molecular condition,' 
 but determining it, and, from elements which to all our 
 senses, and to all our means of investigation, appear 
 absolutely the same, building up the molecules of proto- 
 plasm, now into a seaweed, now into a cedar of Lebanon, 
 now into an insect, now into a fish, now into a reptile, 
 now into a bird, now into a man. And in proportion as 
 the molecules of matter do not seem to be the masters 
 but the servants here, so do the forces which dispose of 
 them stand out separate and supreme. In every germ 
 this development can only be 'after its kind.' The 
 molecules must obey ; but no mere wayward or capri- 
 cious order can be given to them. The formative 
 energies seem to be as much under command as the 
 materials upon which they work, too, invisible, intangi- 
 ble, and imponderable as these are — unknown and 
 inconceivable as they must be in their ultimate nature 
 —enough can be traced of their workings to assure us 
 that they are all closely related to each other, and belong 
 to a system which is one. Out of the chemical elements 
 of Nature, in numerous but definite combinations, it is 
 the special function of vegetable life to lay the founda- 
 
45 
 
 tions of organic mechanism, whilst it is the special 
 function of animal life to take in the materials thus 
 supplied, and to build them up into the highest and 
 most complicated structures. This involves a vast cycle 
 of operations, as to the unity of which we cannot be 
 mistaken — for it is a cycle of operations obviously de- 
 pending on adjustments among all the forces both of 
 solar and terrestrial physics — and every part of this vast 
 series of adjustments must be in continuous and un- 
 broken correlation with the rest." 
 
 " If art to form and wisdom to conduct 
 Reside not in each block, a Godhead reigns." 
 
 6. In the uniformity or even tenour of the vs^orld, 
 the thoughtful and the wise have full trust. There 
 is no chance or caprice in Nature, unless to the 
 careless or the stupid — 
 
 " Leaves have their time to fall. 
 And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 
 And stars to set." 
 
 The farmer feels safe in acting upon the ex- 
 perience of former years in growing grain and 
 rearing cattle ; the engineer accepts the strength 
 of metals and the force of steam ; the ship-builder 
 the carrying power of water ; the chemist recog- 
 nizes the reality of atoms and their molecular 
 combinations ; the sculptor counts upon the 
 cohesion of marble ; the painter relies upon the 
 harmony of colours ; the manufacturer, merchant, 
 and banker upon the principles of demand, supply, 
 and exchange ; the physician points out the causes 
 
46 
 
 of disease, and the established conditions of 
 health ; the statesman endeavours to eradicate the 
 one and promote the other by sanitary laws ; the 
 philosopher knows the trustworthiness of the 
 senses, each freighted with the transmission of 
 distinctive wonders correctly delivered. And in 
 the higher mental spheres there are the Necessary 
 Truths of the Reason, which are thinkable one 
 way only, and so are requisite to the sure founda- 
 tion and the safe upbuilding of Intellectual Sys- 
 tems. There is, finally, the authoritative voice of 
 Conscience with an imperative Yes or No ; the 
 ability accurately to observe, correctly compare the 
 Many, and select One to the exclusion of all others 
 in the unmistakable presence of " a better and a 
 worse " — an ethical condition standing, sentry-like, 
 at the springs of actions " not to counsel but com- 
 mand," and entering qualitatively into the very 
 texture of volitions — all these things are per- 
 manently written by God in the Book of Nature 
 and the Constitution of Man.* 
 
 " The primal duties shine aloft like stars." 
 
 The four Seasons come to us unasked. The 
 sweet breath of spring — herald of coming glories ; 
 the rich foliage, the flowers and fruits of summer 
 with their unfailing delights of form and perfume ; 
 the lovely tints of autumn ; the bridal dress of 
 
 * " The idea of a higher is as much entitled to be believed as 
 that of an outer ; the right as the true ; and both are distinct from 
 the pleasant." Rev. Dr. Martineau. 
 
47 
 
 winter gemmed with crystals ; the mantle of the 
 world sparkling with countless dewdrops ; the 
 starry sky of night " thronged all over with splen- 
 dours " ; the golden and silvern clouds fresh every 
 day ; the invisible vital forces actively building up 
 material structures with exquisite fitness of part 
 to part, and parts to whole ; the swell and spray 
 of ocean ; the graceful movement of fishes ; the 
 hum of insect life ; the plumage, song, and easy 
 flight of birds ; the sure and gainly step of 
 animals ; the marvellous instincts of living beings 
 — untaught knowledge — true as the needle to the 
 pole ; the sweet faces and joyous play of children ; 
 the daily banquet of the world with the radiant 
 sun pouring transcendent glories of light and heat 
 upon the multitudinous tables laden with boun- 
 ties ; while eager life, reinvigorated by sweet sleep, 
 awakens and rejoices in the perennial feast ; all 
 proclaim Divinity ! 
 
 " Mysterious round ! what skill, what force divine. 
 Deep-felt, in these appear ! A simple train, 
 Yet so delightful, mix'd with such kind Art, 
 Such Beauty and Beneficence combined." 
 
 7. God's reign of Law appears to be everywhere 
 in Mind, in every variety of Life, and in all kinds 
 of Matter. There are no signs visible of any in- 
 constant deflecting influence perturbing the world 
 of things and thought. "The universe has no 
 outlaws ; strict causality rules everywhere, as much 
 in the world of mind and thought and conscience 
 
48 
 
 as in the material world, where its presence is 
 already generally assumed." Each atom, every 
 molecule, all conglomerate masses, however enor- 
 mous, and all living beings, however minute, deli- 
 cate, or ponderous, act as they do by virtue of 
 their original and acquired specialities — each ac- 
 cording to itself. Much of our world is to us 
 beautiful, comprehensible, and in its vast variety 
 charmingly uniform — enough to show that all is 
 under analogous law. Ignorance and chance are 
 bound together — they partially and transiently 
 exist. Knowledge and fortuitous events are alto- 
 gether incompatible. 
 
 "But how are all the changes of development in 
 plants and animals carried on ? Is it by a number of 
 fortuitous changes, and by phenomena without order, 
 and apparently subject to no law ? " asks St. George 
 Mivart, and he answers thus : — " Surely it is the very 
 reverse ! The transformations, the successive embodi- 
 ments of new ideas of all ranks and degrees which are 
 daily taking place in countless myriads on all sides of 
 us, take place harmoniously and in due order. However 
 singular or surprising may be the process of evolution 
 in certain cases, however roundabout its course, or un- 
 expected its intermediate stages and ultimate outcome, 
 it is in each and every case a process carried on 
 according to definite eternal laws, to fulfil a precise 
 and predetermined end. What we find to be the 
 case now, we ought, if we are to take experience as 
 our guide, to regard as having been the case ante- 
 cedently." 
 
49 
 
 Dr. F. A. Pouchet, in an interesting work, tells 
 that :— 
 
 " Some few years ago, when a large tree in the 
 environs of Orleans was cleft, a cavity quite closed up 
 was found towards its centre containing a death's-head 
 and cross-bones. The astonishment of the public was 
 extreme, and the prodigy was talked about everywhere. 
 But the whole turned upon a vital phenomenon of which 
 physiology gives a complete explanation. At a distant 
 epoch some anchorite of the forest, having probably 
 hollowed the tree, prostrated himself and prayed before 
 these human relics, which he placed in the excavation. 
 Then the recluse having disappeared in the course of 
 years, nature took up the work again, and ingeniously 
 preserved the oratory by covering it with thick woody 
 layers." 
 
 " A scaly Lathrasa, having germinated at the bottom 
 of a mine, raised itself to the prodigious height of 
 120 feet in order to reach the light, although it ordi- 
 narily attains a length of only five or six inches." 
 
 Prof W. S. Jevons also says, " Happily, the Uni- 
 verse in which we dwell is not the result of chance, 
 and where chance seems to work it is our own deficient 
 faculties which prevent us from recognizing the operation 
 of Law and Design. ... In the greatest storm there is 
 nothing capricious ; not a grain of sand lies upon the 
 beach, but infinite knowledge would account for its lying 
 there ; and the course of every falling leaf is guided by 
 the same principles of mechanics as rule the motions of 
 the heavenly bodies. Chance then exists not in nature 
 and cannot co-exist with knowledge." 
 
 E 
 
so 
 
 It thus appears that there are no erratic pro- 
 cesses and sudden leaps in Nature ; there is nothing- 
 whimsical, unsupported, accidental ; there are no 
 absurdities nor contradictions in her stone and living 
 books. Ask the Societyfor the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Animals if the wind is ever tempered by the 
 Deity to the shorn lamb ? and the ready answer will 
 be. Never ! Look over the bills of mortality during 
 a season of severe weather, and it will be seen that all 
 artificial aids recommended prove to be inadequate 
 to prevent a vast increase of disease and death.* 
 
 * " External nature exhibits no trace of moral life. There is no 
 apparent sympathy in nature with moral ends, no faintest intima- 
 tion of the moral law. The elements are no respecters of persons ; 
 they know neither sinner nor saint. The sun smiles alike on the 
 evil and the good. The same moon lights the robber and the 
 minister of mercy on their several ways. The same breeze propels 
 the merchant's and the pirate's sail. Traitor and patriot, murderer 
 and missionary, cannibal and Christian, all have the same nature 
 for their heritage, and find in nature the same accommodation. The 
 blue sky bends over all, the hospitable earth entertains all, — all are 
 served by nature's laws." F. H. Hedge, D.D. 
 
 "The origin of evil may appear to us to be a great mystery. 
 But this at least may be said in mitigation of the difficulty, that 
 without the possibility of evil there could be no possibility of any 
 virtue." The Duke of Argyll. 
 
 " I cannot agree with those who think that there is no mystery 
 in mere pain ; that it is sufficiently accounted for by moral evil, and 
 Involves no separate problem. The history of suffering began on 
 our planet long before that of sin ; ages prior to the appearance of 
 man, earth was a scene of war and mutual destruction ; hunger and 
 fear, violence and agony, disease and death, have prevailed through- 
 out the air, the land, and ocean, ever since they were tenanted. " 
 
 Professor Flint, D.D. 
 
 " About the origin of the world, and why all things are now as 
 they are, we have not sufficient knowledge to determine. But we 
 
SI 
 It is only weak and shallow men who talk of 
 
 know enough to pronounce emphatically against an inconsiderate 
 and faulty system of pure and simple Optimism. ' From the same 
 stem the rose and prickle rise.' It is no use calling things better 
 than they are. There are many natural objects in our world very 
 destructive and heart-rending, sights and smells and sounds abso- 
 lutely revolting. Do the earthquake, the hurricane, the land- 
 slip and volcano not present startling evidence against what has 
 been too freely assumed to be an Infinitely Beneficent and Holy 
 Will ? On the other hand, melancholy and moody Agnosticism, 
 blatant and dim-sighted Pessimism — these fatal blights of joy, the 
 wrecks and ruin of hope and happiness, are even more to be 
 deplored ! Waves of this gloomy and sickening philosophy, the 
 wild theories of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, with their painful 
 results, have passed over Germany, and threaten England. " 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " I mean by Pessimism the view that the world is so bad that 
 its non-existence would be preferable to its existence." 
 
 Professor Henry Sidgwick. 
 
 One of the main causes of the prevalence of Pessimism in our 
 time is forcibly indicated in the following passage by S. Laing, 
 Esq., M.P. :— 
 
 "Pessimism, the gospel of feebleness and failure, has had a 
 considerable effect on the Continent, though little in this country. 
 ... To understand how such a doctrine can have found accept- 
 ance, we must remember that the tendency of modern civilization 
 is to throw more and more work on the brain and nervous system 
 and less on other organs. This of itself tends to produce more ill- 
 health, both of mind and body, especially of those digestive organs 
 upon which the sensation of health and well-being so mainly 
 depends. A dyspeptic man is of necessity an unhappy and de- 
 sponding man. ... It is among such men, with cultivated intel- 
 lects, sensitive nerves, and bad digestion, that we find the prophets 
 and disciples of the gospel of Pessimism." 
 
 S. Laing, Esq., M.P. 
 
 Another phase of the question of Pessimism is given in the fol- 
 lowing extract from Principal Tulloch : — 
 
 "To any one at all acquainted with the spiritual and social state 
 of Germany, the absolute void of faith which the overthrow of 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 luck and put their trust in circumstances. For 
 
 successive systems of philosophy or religious thought has left in the 
 national consciousness, the rise of Pessimism is intelligible, how 
 ever deplorable. It is merely a deepened phase of the materialistic 
 spirit which has spread itself everywhere in that country, in reaction 
 from the speculative extravagancies of a former generation, and the 
 failure of ideals, which have crumbled into dust. It is impossible 
 for the German intellect to rest content with the mere empiricism of 
 materialistic science. Philosophy without metaphysic, morality 
 without metaphysic, may satisfy other nations, or a large class of 
 mind in France and England ; but the German cannot even have 
 Materialism without metaphysic. And the Pessimism of Hartmann, 
 as of Schopenhauer, is nothing else than an attempt to find a meta- 
 physical basis for modem Materialism. But we must ask, — Is this 
 the Germany which we loved and admired years ago, in the days of 
 her intellectual glory ? Are these the descendants of a long line 
 of illustrious thinkers, from Luther to Kant and Schelling ? Are 
 these the countrymen of Schiller, Jean Paul, F. Schlegel, and 
 Novalis ? Did Goethe, in his greatest work, only foreshadow this 
 aberration of the human intellect ? With rulers whose policy is 
 'Blood and Iron,' with statesmen whose maxims of government 
 are intolerant and reactionary, with a philosophy sunk in godless 
 materialism, with a literature abandoned to blasphemy and licen- 
 tiousness, with false conceptions of fundamental truths rampant 
 amongst the people, neither military power nor extended education 
 can avert the dangers which threaten the whole fabric of society. 
 The acceptance which these wild theories of Schopenhauer and 
 Hartmann have met with in Germany is a marvellous and appalling 
 sign of the times ; for we cannot conceive it possible that a nation 
 should imbibe large draughts of this poison and live. " 
 
 Principal TuLLOCH. 
 
 " IntelUgent and wise men are neither pure Optimists nor raw 
 Pessimists, neither complete Gnostics nor entire Agnostics ; but 
 while knowing many things thoroughly and usefully, probably, 
 leave very many to be ascertained and advantageously applied." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " The impenetrable virgin forest alarms us by its sombre and 
 terrible aspect. 'On one side vigorous parasites assail the aged 
 trees, forming with them an inextricable net-work which the axe 
 can scarcely cleave, whilst all progress through it is impeded by 
 
S3 
 thinking men, any day of miracles that may have 
 
 bushes and tall herbs, where so many redoubtable enemies lie con- 
 cealed. During the day all is silent : the frightful heat paralyzes 
 the tenants of this realm of vegetation, and sleep reigns everywhere. 
 But when night arrives all becomes full of life : birds, mammals, 
 and reptiles declare war on one another, and every part rings with 
 groans and hoarse cries of pain and death. " 
 
 F. A. PoucHET, M.D. 
 
 ' ' How much sober admonition and argumentativ-e preaching, it 
 may be queried, would be required to persuade the English and 
 Scotch farmers that the Colorado Beetle (described by a Bishop as 
 ' this noisome beast ') is a creature sent by an Infinite One who is 
 on friendly personal relationship with them, one who is infinitely 
 wise and good, infinitely considerate of their best interests, and 
 that its visit to our shores is not a curse, but a kindness ? If we 
 do heartily welcome Spring, and rejoice in the beauty and frag- 
 rance of flowers and fruits, and the exquisite structures of animals ; 
 we are horror-stricken at the heartless systematic carnage of war 
 lately seen in Turkey and Africa, and we sigh and drop a tear over 
 the Indian famine, and our own late harvests and ruined crops. It 
 is merely a weak evasion of such hard problems to attribute these 
 and other evils to the intervention of a ' fallen angel,' created by a 
 Deity who fore-knew and fore-ordained his existence and action." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 "If harmony and fitness are to be cited as proofs of beneficent 
 design, then discord and unfitness must equally be kept in view as 
 evidences of less admirable contrivance. A scheme which permits 
 thousands of generations to live and die in wretchedness, cannot, 
 merely by providing for the well-being of later ages, be absolved 
 from the alternative charge of awkwardness or malevolence. If 
 there exist a personal Creator of the universe who is infinitely in- 
 telligent and powerful, he cannot be infinitely good ; if, on the 
 other hand, he be infinite in goodness, then he must be lamentably 
 finite in power or in intelligence. By this two-edged difficulty 
 Theology has ever been foiled. ... To say that God's goodness 
 may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, 
 with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be 
 good ? With Mr. Mill, therefore, ' I will call no Being good who 
 is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow- 
 creatures.' And, going a step farther, I will add that it is impos- 
 
54 
 been has quite gone by.* Supposed irruptions 
 
 sible to call that Being good who, existing prior to the phenomenal 
 universe, and creating it out of the plenitude of infinite power and 
 foreknowledge, endowed it with such properties that its material 
 and moral development must inevitably be attended by the misery 
 of untold millions of sentient creatures for whose existence their 
 Creator is alone responsible." John Fiske, M.A. 
 
 * " The Church of Rome professes to possess a continuous mira- 
 culous attestation ; but whenever we hear of a Romish miracle, we 
 set it aside at once, without troubling ourselves to inquire into its 
 evidence. This tendency is in some degree increased by the un- 
 questionable fact that this Church has encouraged the belief in 
 miracles which are notoriously false, and therefore stands before us 
 in the character of a convicted impostor." 
 
 Rev. Prebendary C. H. Row. 
 
 Superstition writ Large. — " I think it is impossible to 
 withstand the evidence which is brought for the liquefaction of the 
 blood of St. Januarius at Naples, and for the motion of the eyes of 
 the pictures of the Madonna in the Roman States. I see no reason 
 to doubt the material of the Lombard Crown at Morfza ; and I do 
 not see why the Holy Coat at Treves may not have been what it 
 professes to be. I firmly believe that portions of the true Cross 
 are at Rome and elsewhere, that the Crib of Bethlehem is at Rome, 
 and the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul also. I believe that at 
 Rome, too, lies St. Stephen, that St. Matthew lies at Salerno, and 
 St. Andrew at Amalfi. I firmly believe that the relics of the saints 
 are doing innumerable miracles and graces daily, and that it needs 
 only for a Catholic to show devotion to any saint in order to receive 
 -special benefits from his intercession. I firmly believe that saints 
 in their lifetime have before now raised the dead to life, crossed the 
 sea without vessels, multiplied grain and bread, cured incurable 
 diseases, and stopped the operations of the laws of the universe in 
 a multitude of ways." Cardinal J. Newman. 
 
 A Pilgrimage to Knock. — Nearly 500 Roman Catholics from 
 Manchester and Salford started yesterday for Knock, in Ireland, 
 where apparitions are reported to have been seen. Among the 
 pilgrims were a large number of cripples and other deformed per- 
 sons. — The Times, Aug. 10, 1880. 
 
 "At Limerick, on Sunday, Aug. 15, 1880, a thunderstorm of 
 
55 
 
 produced by Unseen Powers into the natural order 
 of the world are multiplied in a "remote period, 
 and diminished as we approach a more modern 
 era. 
 
 " In the olden times," Dr. B. W. Richardson tells us, 
 " each manifestation of diseased action was considered 
 an entity ; to be epileptic or insane was, for example, to 
 be possessed of an evil spirit ; the causes of the pheno- 
 mena were left as inscrutable. Diseases were the direct 
 and dire chastisement of a Supreme Power ; and to ask 
 their natural origin were to court a superfluous or sinful 
 labour. Even in these days this impression is not alto- 
 gether absent in civilized communities ; in uncivilized, 
 
 great violence frightened a swarm of school-children, and sent them 
 all praying to the Virgin Mary for protection, and as they sung a 
 hymn, ' Look down, oh Mother, Mary, ' one of the party suddenly 
 exclaimed ' Look there ' ( !) and all saw Mary in the air, attired in 
 a white robe with a blue sash round her waist. The infant Saviour 
 was borne on her right arm, and a rosary depended from her left, 
 and she seemed to rest on a white cloud, upheld by two angels, 
 who carried in their disengaged hands some branches covered with 
 foliage. . . . This occurred at the Church of Mount St. Vincent, 
 and it was followed by equal wonders the day after. The children 
 were at play, and one called out, ' Look at the Blessed Virgin,' and 
 instantly fainted. All the children and one nun then saw the ' Im- 
 maculate Mother,' vestured in white, with her hands raised as if 
 invoking a blessing, her eyes cast down, and a light surrounding 
 her. . . . The faith in the miraculous appearance of the Virgin 
 Mary, with attendant saints, at Knock, was so strong and general 
 •that the railway companies found it profitable to advertise return 
 tickets at single fares. Although the pious pilgrims might not ex- 
 pect to be rewarded by a renewal of the vision, they could at any 
 late gaze upon the plaster on which it had appeared, and there 
 was, also, at, or near, Knock, a statue of the Virgin, which five or 
 six hundred people saw winking from ten in the morning till six in 
 the evening." — The Inquirer. 
 
56 
 
 where it has taken root, it remains unchanged. It is 
 not until we are brought to understand the physical de- 
 sign of the phenomena of disease, as opposed to the hy- 
 pothesis of what has been called 'visitation' and 'entity' 
 of disease, that we can move a step towards any attempt 
 at prevention or removal of the phenomena.'' 
 
 Dr. Cameron, M.P., also remarks, with much 
 accuracy and force : — 
 
 "The researches of modern scientists, and notably 
 those of Pasteur and Tyndall, have proved that, besides 
 its visible animal and vegetable inhabitants, this world 
 swarms with a population of living entities of extreme 
 minuteness, detectable only under strong powers of the 
 microscope, and requiring special treatment and strain- 
 ing to render them perceptible even then. These enti- 
 ties possess most of the distinctive characteristics of 
 vegetable life, but many of them are full of energy and 
 motion, wriggling and gliding and swimming about in 
 the fluid in which they live, so that for long it was a 
 question among philosophers to which of the great divi- 
 sions of life they really belonged. To get rid of dispute 
 on this preliminary point, Sedillot devised for these 
 microscopic organisms the non-contentious name of 
 ' microbes,' or minute living beings, and that name, being 
 adopted by Pasteur, has become classic in every tongue. 
 The world of microbes counts as many and as diversified 
 families and races as there are races and families of 
 visible plants and animals. We may be sure of so much, 
 and we have good grounds for the belief that the species 
 of microbes are incomparably more numerous than any- 
 thing to be found among their grosser fellow-dwellers on. 
 
57 
 
 the globe. Their forms, functions, and habits are infi- 
 nitely varied. They are to be found everywhere, and 
 performing all kinds of work. Microbes ferment our 
 bread, turn wort into beer, grape-juice into wine, and 
 wine into vinegar. Microbes cause meat to putrefy, milk 
 to become sour, and butter rancid. Exterminate the 
 microbes in our fields, and they would produce no crops, 
 and without the aid of the hosts of microbes who find 
 their habitation within ourselves, it seems highly pro- 
 bable that the digestion even of the ploughman would 
 come to a stop, and that food would be to us as a poison. 
 On the other hand, could certain mischief-working mi- 
 crobes be banished from the world, smut, and rust, and 
 mildew would disappear from our fields, and small-pox, 
 typhoid, consumption, leprosy, yellow fever, and a host 
 of other scourges would cease to afflict the abodes of 
 men. These microbes propagate themselves by budding 
 or subdivision, and by the production of spores (or rudi- 
 mentary seeds), and under favourable circumstances 
 they do so with such extraordinary rapidity that a single 
 individual will give rise to myriads in the course of 
 twenty-four hours ; and during one revolution of the 
 earth a greater number of generations will have sprung 
 into life than man can boast of since the days of 
 Adam." 
 
 It is the credulous rustic who believes in witch- 
 craft and is afraid of ghosts.' These vapoury visitors 
 gradually grow dim and doubtful as knowledge 
 becomes clearer and more assured. That which 
 was Magic and Divination two hundred years 
 ago, or less, is in our day correctly referred to 
 causes readily understood. It can be shown that 
 
58 
 
 false beliefs, mere fleeting figments of human ima- 
 gination, can be propagated with as much certi- 
 tude as fevers, measles, and small-pox are gene- 
 rated in the human body ; or vegetables, flowers, 
 and fruits grown in gardens* This is a scientific 
 
 * " Every one knows how hard a matter it is to perceive accu- 
 rately, to feel calmly, and to think clearly, when the liver is out of 
 order ; there is then a good foundation for hallucination. . . . One 
 may freely admit that persons have seen apparitions, and have heard 
 voices which they thought to be supernatural ; but inasmuch as 
 seeing is one thing, and the interpretation thereof quite another 
 thing, it may be right to conclude that they were nothing more 
 than hallucinations, and that the reason why no ghosts are seen 
 now, when people pass through churchyards on dark nights, as our 
 forefathers saw them, is that ghosts are not believed in now-a-days, 
 while we have gained a knowledge of the nature of hallucinations, 
 and of the frequency of their occurrence, which our forefathere 
 had not." Henry Maudsley, M.D. 
 
 "The Red Thorn Apple of Peru is in use among the Indians of 
 the Andes. The fruit of the plant is the part employed, and from 
 it the Indians prepare a strong narcotic drink, which they call 
 Tonga. By the use of this drink they believe that they are brought 
 into communion with the spirits of their forefathers. An Indian 
 under the influence of this drug is thus described — ' Shortly after 
 having swallowed the beverage, he fell into a heavy stupor. He 
 sat with his eyes vacantly fixed on the ground, his mouth convul- 
 sively closed, and his nostrils dilated. In the course of about a 
 quarter of an hour his eyes began to roll, foam issued from his half- 
 opened lips, and his whole body was agitated by frightful convul- 
 sions. These violent sjTnptoms having subsided, a profound sleep 
 of several hours succeeded. In the evening, when I saw him again, 
 he was relating tb a circle of attentive listeners the particulars of 
 his vision, during which he alleged he had held communication 
 with the spirits of his forefathers.' . . . The pretended second- 
 sight, and the other marvels told of the old seers of the Scottish 
 Highlands, may owe their origin to nothing more noble or myste- 
 rious than a draught of thorn-apple, nightshade, or belladonna tea. 
 And it is highly probable that the Witches' Drink was flavoured 
 with the thorn-apple, and that the victims who, in all sincerity, 
 
59 
 
 rather than a superstitious age. There is little 
 now cared for by thoughtful persons save orderly 
 development. The myriad adjustments of the 
 universe seem to be well kept ; and our own world 
 has not the look of a formless and purposeless 
 jumble, a ponderous and clumsy mechanism, ill- 
 came before the magistrates and declared themselves to have had 
 communications with the Evil One, had, under the influence of this 
 narcotic, seen visions which they could not distinguish from real 
 experience." The Chemistry of Common Life. 
 
 " It used to be a common thing for sailors to refuse to go to sea 
 on a Friday. We hear nothing of this in these steamboat days. 
 . . . Steam has been a great changer, and in the matter of super- 
 stitions it has proved the great reformer. Wherever steamboats 
 and steam-engines appear, superstitions disappear — ghosts, fairies, 
 witches, are speedily forgotten. Who ever heard of a ghost in a 
 railway station, or of a bewitched cattle truck, or of a haunted 
 saloon carriage ? The thing is impossible. The most expert seer 
 •could not find a ghost in a first-class waiting-room — could not even 
 imagine such a thing. Ghosts lilce very different quarters — old 
 houses, wainscoted rooms, secret passages, and scanty visitors." 
 
 Antiquarian. 
 
 In the life of George Combe we have the following amusing 
 anecdote, which has a family likeness to many other superstitions : 
 — An old lady, an acquaintance of ... . removed to a new house 
 in Dublin. Nelson's monument stood to the south-east of it. On 
 a cloudy evening it happened to be full moon ; and just as the 
 moon had got behind the figure of Nelson, the old lady happened 
 to look out from the window. At the same moment the clouds 
 opened, and showed her the figure of the hero full drawn on the 
 face of the moon. She fell on her knees, prayed aloud, calling for 
 the other persons in the room to come to her assistance. On her 
 knees, with uplifted hands, and in u hollow voice, she exclaimed, 
 " O Lord God Almighty, thou hast vouchsafed to show me the 
 man in the moon ! O Lord, I am a miserable sinner, and un- 
 worthy of thy consideration ! " Here the other inmates recognized 
 the real nature of the apparition, burst into loud laughter, and 
 helped the lady to rise from her devotions. 
 
6o 
 
 conceived and only half-executed. Although there 
 are many signs indicative of universal Providence 
 in the unchanging laws of Nature, there are none 
 of an interruptive Providence to dovetail with old- 
 fashioned creeds, and fit the fancies of their 
 modern professors. The best health of the body, 
 and the greatest vigour of the human mind, appear 
 to be inseparable from the consciousness of laws 
 that never deviate a hair's breadth, inseparable 
 from accurate knowledge of them, and strict obe- 
 dience to them. 
 
 The Mind of man seems, likewise, to have regu- 
 lar and reliable procedure ; its law of Philosophical 
 Certainty. Human volitions and actions, when 
 purely voluntary, can often be computed and fore- 
 told with much accuracy, and their moral attitude 
 ascertained and correctly fixed. Indeed, so 
 thorough and satisfactory has been the progress 
 of Science, that we can now calculate exactly the 
 ebb and flow of the tide, the birth of the young 
 moon, the beginning and ending of an eclipse, the 
 nearest and farthest points in the path of a comet. 
 It has been significantly hinted that could ail the 
 antecedents of the leading journal be accurately 
 known, we should be able to foretel every word of 
 every leader, without destroying or disturbing in 
 the least, any ethical condition of those connected 
 with this great instructor of the civilized world. 
 Here, then, is plainly a system of two or rather 
 three kinds of laws, and not of one kind only. 
 
6i 
 
 I. A system of necessity in which we are merely 
 passive instruments, and may be said to be as clay 
 in the hands of the potter. In the purely material 
 sphere, and in man's infantile state there is nothing 
 of the nature of a free-agent. Many wonderful 
 things are at the beginning of life done for us, and 
 not by us. 2. A system of acquisition, which 
 by-and-by grows into or becomes unconscious 
 automatic action, easy habit, or second nature. 
 3. Another system, one of conscious voluntary effort, 
 of self-determination or deliberate preference, at- 
 tention to duty, intensity of will and fixity of pur- 
 pose, from which it may be affirmed, that we are 
 as clay in our own hands. Man is not the mere 
 feeble plaything of surroundings, the toy and 
 sport, the outcome and passive product of over- 
 whelming circumstances, as some have unwisely 
 affirmed. The manner we use our faculties has its 
 own distinctive moral quality, and self-approval or 
 condemnation. " Well done, thou good and faith- 
 ful servant," is a verdict both natural and true ; 
 but assuredly not more so than the verdict of self- 
 reproach at conscious wrongdoing. 
 
 The foregoing view of the threefold character of 
 causation, if correct, goes far to establish laws of 
 physical and mental certitude, renders human 
 conduct more computable, gives philosophical 
 necessity, moral responsibility, vice and virtue on 
 the one hand, and, on the other, destroys the ex- 
 traordinary and erroneous doctrine which affirms 
 
62 
 
 that man is a receiver only, a sort of tube and 
 mouth-piece to imagined sprites, as certain dreamy 
 theologians and pseudo-philosophic thinkers teach. 
 Involuntary errors and mistakes, therefore, we 
 should pity or pardon ; voluntary conduct only 
 has merit or demerit, aftd is entitled to praise or 
 blame. 
 
 The position here assumed is to some extent 
 strengthened by the Duke of Argyll. This accom- 
 plished thinker writes : — 
 
 " There is nothing to object to or deny in the doc- 
 trine, that if we knew everything that determines the 
 conduct of a man, we should be able to know what that 
 conduct will be. That is to say, if we knew all the 
 motives which are brought by external things to bear 
 upon his mind, and if we knew all the other motives 
 which that mind evolves out of its own powers, and out 
 of previously acquired materials, to bear upon itself, and 
 if we knew the constitution of that mind so perfectly as 
 to estimate exactly the weight it will allow to all the dif- 
 ferent motives operating upon it, then we should be able 
 to predict with certainty the resulting course of conduct. 
 This is true, not only as an abstract conception, but as a 
 matter of experience in the little way towards perfect 
 knowledge along which we can now travel. We can 
 predict conduct with almost perfect certainty when we 
 know character with an equal measure of assurance, and 
 when we know the influences to which that character 
 will be exposed. In proportion as we are sure of 
 character, in the same proportion we are sure of con- 
 duct." 
 
63 
 
 But there are lazy and pretentious persons, both 
 lay and clerical, with — 
 
 " Devotion's every grace, except the heart,'' 
 
 who ignorantly, often irreverently and presump- 
 tuously, ask the Deity to do for them what they 
 ought, and easily could, do for themselves by 
 moderate activity, abnegation, and self-control ; 
 who expect, in fact, by some fanciful process, to 
 be good without taking the trouble of doing good. 
 This is futile. 
 
 " Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, 
 Which are ascribed to Heaven." 
 
 Action is the criterion, the blossom and the fruit 
 of true excellence. Man is thus far master of his 
 fate. He may by his nature — not by some 
 imagined " grace " — be truthful, just, and kind. 
 We are always anxious to deal leniently with 
 those who have to contend with many perplexing 
 doubts, serious difficulties, "toils obscure," trials 
 and adverse surroundings. But we think many 
 religious teachers would permit us to demand, 
 nay, wish us to expect, that they themselves should 
 be living exemplars of the cardinal virtues and 
 other Christian graces which they recommend to 
 others. 
 
 8. Both Science and Philosophy do now, we are 
 happy to think, emphatically refuse to admit that 
 any Church, or order of persons, can " shoot round 
 the corner," as did the Highlander's gun of old. 
 
64 
 
 Men have, indeed, been told that sailors have in 
 foreign parts ofttimes " whistled for a wind," and 
 have thought that they brought it ; and there are 
 yet well-meaning, sober-minded people who, with 
 rash confidence, solicit the Creator and Upholder 
 of the Universe, for a change of weather, "a fine 
 growing shower," " a nice drying day," or " a 
 fresh sou'-wester, to waft the laden ships to port." 
 The fierce Tertullian might in his day of light 
 and shadow exclaim, — " When indeed have not 
 droughts been removed by our prayers and fast- 
 ings !" Assuredly the calm scientific responses of 
 to-day would inquiringly answer, — When, indeed! 
 have they been so removed ? 
 
 " Prayer against His absolute decree 
 No more avails than breath against the wind, 
 Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth." 
 
 No appeals to Deity, however ingenious in their 
 form or impassioned in the utterance, seem to have 
 the smallest influence upon so much as one particle 
 of matter ; they do not alter the shape of a dew- 
 drop, nor the form of a world. 
 
 In the last week of August, 1877, it was ordered 
 that prayers should be offered in many of our 
 Churches for fine weather, and it is interesting to 
 note what followed this clerical mandatef. In the 
 first week of September, as if in derision of such 
 arrogance, imbecility, and error — a stiff, gusty, 
 biting wind came from the north, and snow fell 
 
6s 
 
 heavily in Scotland and in Wales. " The weather 
 is still unsettled, and to-night," a newspaper corre- 
 spondent on the 6th of September writes, "rain 
 is falling in torrents, the air being quite chilly, 
 resembling an evening in December rather than 
 September." On the nth of October we were 
 told, "This morning there was a heavy fall of 
 snow, accompanied by a strong gale of wind in 
 Edinburgh and district. Several peals of thunder 
 were heard in the course of the forenoon. . . . 
 The wind has been from the north-west, and to- 
 night the air is piercingly cold. In several dis- 
 tricts the crops are still in a rank state, and, with 
 such a sudden approach of winter, will, in all 
 likelihood, be irretrievably lost." 
 
 Again, on the i6th of November it was said — 
 " Very early this morning one of the most terrific 
 storms that have been experienced in this country 
 swept over the north-east of Scotland. At first 
 the wind was from the eastward, but latterly it 
 veered to the south-west, and the rain fell in tor- 
 rents. In the north-eastern counties, at Caithness, 
 Ross, and Sutherland, the storm seems to have 
 been felt with intense severity. Fields covered with 
 grain were swept clear, and the roofs of hundreds 
 of houses were blown in." 
 
 And it was reported of the whole month of 
 November — " This was a month of vast perturba- 
 tion — cloud, storm, and fatal accidents by land 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 and sea from lightning, tempest, and deluges from 
 rainfall. Atlantic cyclones visited our shores in 
 rapid succession, and raged with abnormal fury ; 
 few days were exempt from their destructive in- 
 fluence ; the rainfall was enormous, and the low 
 lands of England were flooded." 
 
 Were the labours of scientific workers at the 
 Royal Institution of Great Britain to be visited 
 by similar adverse results, would not some accom- 
 plished persons sip their coffee with delight and 
 look happy ! — 
 
 " Sit piping under budding boughs." 
 
 How their eyes would twinkle in imaginary 
 triumph ! 
 
 Such a melancholy failure as above indicated 
 ought to rebuke religious instructors, and should 
 admonish them by a salutary lesson of experience. 
 Highland lairds, Lowland farmers, and others, who 
 have blindly trusted to such broken reeds, random 
 thoughts, and a priori errors, may well be excused 
 for lying helpless and smarting under a sense of 
 heavy losses ! * 
 
 • Presbyterian Clergy and the Scotch Harvest. — " At 
 a recent meeting [1876] of the Angus Synod of the Established 
 Church of Scotland, an ' overture ' was presented, praying the 
 synod to appoint a day ' on which the thoughts of congregations 
 may be directed to the dealings of God with the harvest, which 
 has now been on hand for nearly three months, and is not yet com- 
 pleted.' The Rev. Mr. Anderson, in supporting the overture, said 
 it would be well for ministers to call the attention of their people 
 
6/ 
 
 " The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, 
 And these are of them." 
 
 Not a little curious is it — as well as instructive 
 — to note, that usually each religious sect or party 
 
 to indications of dissatisfaction witli their conduct shown by the 
 Ruler of the Seasons. The Rev. Mr. Young said it was very diffi- 
 cult to try and read the decrees of Divine Providence as expressed 
 by prosperity and adversity. On the east coast of Scotland the 
 harvest had been almost a failure, while on the west coast fine 
 weather had prevailed and the harvest was a good one. Were they 
 to infer from this that the Almighty was dissatisfied with the in- 
 habitants on the east coast and pleased with those on the west ? It 
 was ultimately agreed that on the first Sunday in November min- 
 isters should ' call the attention of congregations to the dealings of 
 God with the bad harvest. '"—i'a// Mall Gazette. 
 
 The Church and the Weather. — The Archbishop of 
 Canterbury forwarded the subjoined letter to the Bishop of 
 London : — 
 
 "Lambeth Palace, _/«!?)/ j, 1879. 
 
 "My dear Lord, — At the request of both Houses of Convo- 
 cation of the Province of Canterbury, I write to call your Lord- 
 ship's attention to the necessity of prayer being offered to Almighty 
 God for such weather as may enable our people to gather in an 
 abundant harvest. It would seem very desirable that each Bishop 
 of the Province should, at his discretion, urge upon his clergy the 
 propriety of setting apart some Sunday on which the attention of 
 their people may be specially directed to this subject, and I shall 
 feel obliged by your Lordship taking the usual steps to make this 
 my wish known to our brethren in their several dioceses." 
 
 "Our prayers for fair weather are founded on our practical 
 ignorance. Already we know sufficiently well (in words which the 
 late Duke of Cambridge is reported to haye uttered) that ' it is no 
 use praying for rain whilst this east wind lasts ' ; but that saying, 
 or something like that saying, marks the limits of our knowledge 
 now, and probably will mark them for many a long year. We do 
 not pray against eclipses. And, I presume and trust, that if some 
 eminent scientific man should demonstrate that in the year 1979 
 the world would be destroyed by a comet, -the nauseous vapours of 
 
 F 2 
 
6S 
 
 thinks its own prayers, however extraordinary 
 they may be, and not those of its neighbours, are 
 considerately and indulgently answered by the 
 Deity. Ask a religious fanatic of Africa or India 
 
 whose tail should suffocate us, and the hard kernel of whose nucleus 
 should crush us out of all interest in the subsequent proceedings of 
 our planet — I presume and trust that the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 of that date would not be requested by the Government to draw up 
 a form of prayer against such an inconvenient result. " 
 
 H. Chandler, M.A. 
 
 "We hear with surprise of the savage who, falling down a 
 precipice, ascribes the failure of his foothold to a malicious demon ; 
 and we smile at the kindred notion of the ancient Greek, that his 
 death was prevented by a goddess who unfastened for him the thong 
 of the helmet by which his enemy was dragging him. But daily, 
 withojit surprise, we hear men who describe themselves as saved 
 from shipwreck by ' divine interposition;' who speak of having 
 ' providentially ' missed a train which met vfith a fatal disaster, 
 and who call it a ' mercy ' to have escaped injury from a falling 
 chimney-pot— men who, in, such cases, recognize physical causation 
 no more than do the uncivilized or semi-civilized. The Veddah 
 who thinks that failure- to -hit an animal with his arrow resulted 
 from inadequate invocation of an ancestral spirit, and the Christian 
 priest who says prayers over a sick man in the expectation that the 
 course of his disease will so be stayed, differ only in respect of the 
 agent from whom they expect supernatural aid, and the phenomena 
 to be altered by him : the necessary relations among causes and 
 effects are tacitly ignored by the last as much as by the first." 
 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 "When anyone, even an Archbishop, like a bad workman, or 
 an unskilful farmer, meddles with what he does not understand, he 
 is sure to disclose a plentiful lack of knowledge. The Archbishop 
 of Canterbury has plainly enough no more direct or indirect in- 
 fluence on the weather than on the moon and the tides. " 
 
 Theist. 
 
 This error, we are sorry to say, was repeated by the late Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury as- recently as July, 1882, when his Grace 
 
69 
 
 if petitions to his gods are answered, and he will 
 reply, " That most certainly is my belief ! " Ask 
 a Roman Catholic if his entreaties to the Virgin 
 Mary, the mother of God, as an active and in- 
 fluential mediator, are answered, and he too will 
 reply, " That most certainly is my belief ! " Ask 
 a Presbyterian if his supplications to Jesus, the 
 son of God, are answered, and he likewise will 
 respond, "That most certainly is my belief!" Ask 
 some modern Unitarians, and many others, if one 
 and all of these persons are in such matters in 
 grave and mournful error, and they will unhesitat- 
 ingly answer you, " Most assuredly that is our 
 conclusion ! " It is obvious that no convictions 
 however sincere and strong, no impassioned and 
 ingenious pleading however subtle, can possibly 
 subvert the hard facts of scientific observation, 
 and the well- reasoned conclusions of sound philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 We rejoice that a deaf ear is apparently turned, 
 and that no favourable reply to such conflicting 
 and confusing importunities is ever verified in our 
 time. The only question that seems to be worth 
 raising about the efficacy of entreaty or supplica- 
 tion, and which is entitled to one moment's con- 
 addressed another similar communication to the Bishop of London. 
 The results on this occasion were as utterly futile as in 1879. 
 
 We very respectfully would submit to Clergy of all ranks, and 
 many worthy Church-going persons, that no Form of Words, how- 
 ever pleasantly articulated, is equal to a waterproof coat and um- 
 brella for keeping off rain ! 
 
70 
 
 sideration, is not, Does God hear ? but, Does He 
 answer? — a point which should not be hastily- 
 assumed or too lightly taken for granted, espe- 
 cially as it can in most instances be disproved.* 
 The reiterated expressions of ill-considered peti- 
 tions, often the mere routine and empty shell of 
 custom, the distrust an,d derangement which natur- 
 ally follow the " asking in vain," deplete our energy, 
 lead to self-made spirit voices and visions, to 
 essences and phantoms of the brain, to mental 
 
 * The Literary Churchman gives an anecdote of Mr. Hawker, 
 who was walking one day on the cliffs near Morwenstnw with the 
 Rev. Mr. W., when a gust of wind took off Mr. W.'s hat, and 
 carried it over the cliff. Within a week or two, a Methodist 
 preacher at Truro was discoursing on Prayer, and in his sermon he 
 said : " I would not have you, dear brethren, confine your suppli- 
 cations to spiritual blessings ; but ask also for temporal favours. I 
 will illustrate my meaning by relating an incident that happened to 
 myself ten days ago. I was on the shore of a cove near a little 
 insignificant place in North Cornwall named Morwenstow, and 
 about to proceed to Bude. Shall I add, my Christian friends, 
 that I had on my head at the time a shocking bad hat — that I 
 somewhat blushed to think of entering that harbour-town and 
 watering-place so ill-adorned as to my head ? Then I lifted up a 
 prayer for covering more suited to my head. At that solemn 
 moment I raised my eyes and saw in the spacious firmament on 
 high — the blue ethereal sky — a black spot. It approached — it 
 2argened — it widened — it fell at my feet. It was a brand-new hat 
 by a celebrated London maker ! I cast my battered beaver to the 
 waves, my Christian friends, and walked into Bude as fast as I 
 could with a new hat on my head." The incident got into the 
 Methodist Reporter or some such paper under the heading of 
 "Remarkable Answer to Prayer." " And," said the vicar, "the 
 rascal made off with Mr. W.'s new hat. There was no reaching 
 him, for we were on the cliff, and could not descend the precipice. 
 He was deaf enough, I promise you, to our shouts." 
 
 Chambers' s Journal, August, 1880. 
 
71 
 
 wandering and hysteria, " such stuff as dreams are 
 made of," to vexation of spirit and emptiness of 
 soul : — 
 
 " These are the children of an idle brain, 
 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.'' 
 
 It is difficult to realize, even in imagination, the 
 advantage and gain there would be were all 
 persons to abstain from petitioning images, mum- 
 mies, old bones, musty garments, dead saints, and 
 other ancient relics. Strange to think that we 
 have yet in our very midst, flaring mystic lights 
 — old and new ; blazing candles — thick, thin, 
 long, and short ; clouds of incense ; tinkling 
 cymbals ; absolutions and infatuations which can 
 be considered only as "barren-shine," the symptoms 
 and phantasmagoria of a sickly piety.* 
 
 " What keen religious eyes do they inherit, 
 That thro' these blinding forms can see the Father ! " 
 
 Let men, instead thereof, considerately and prac- 
 tically tone their natures in truer accord with the 
 
 * On Sunday, the 1st of June, 1879, we were present at a meet- 
 ang in a fashionable church near the centre of London, and dis- 
 tinguished by spirited and high-class music. At mid-day, when 
 the sun was bright and the sky was clear, there were some seventy 
 gas jets lighted and fifty candles burning. The candles measured 
 from about one foot and a half to eight feet long, and were propor- 
 tionably thick. The ostentatious display of costly jewellery by the 
 Reverend, and to us un-Venerable-looking preacher, seemed more 
 than enough to adorn a lunatic Duchess on leave with her keeper ! 
 Why should the Church of England be disfigured and disgraced by 
 ^audy millinery, senseless and tawdry finery, absurd and expensive 
 foolery ? 
 
ideas of God as shown by the Real and the 
 Phenomenal in Nature. Honest and earnest 
 effort, however feeble, is unfailingly rewarded, 
 and strength is ever given to the humble and 
 rightly turned heart. Man himself closes and 
 opens the door of his heavenly life. The great 
 trust of daily conduct — the realization of duty — 
 which is the highest form and function of human ' 
 responsibility, is purely personal, and cannot be 
 performed by proxy. One man cannot eat, or 
 sleep, or walk, vicariously for another ; nor can the 
 virtues or vices of one be transferred to another. 
 
 We ought carefully to note those conditions 
 which are apparently nothing but subjective results, 
 our own responses to our own prayers ; effects 
 upon ourselves wrought by ourselves. Praise, and 
 reverent Thanksgiving to God, with an intelli- 
 gent and devout appreciation of Nature, are the 
 essential elements of a Universal Worship. Aspi- 
 ration, the ardent desire after what is noble, the 
 persistent upward longing of the human heart, 
 not supplication, is in conformity with science and 
 the most devout mind. " Not our will, but THY 
 WILL BE DONE," will be the " cry " of future Saints : 
 or, " may our will always conform to Thine."* 
 
 * " Thanksgiving is the one religious act which even the most 
 uhra may own as beautiful and fitting. A staunch old Lancashire 
 ' Liberal ' was asked, ' Man, do you pray ? ' He replied, ' Well, I 
 don't know that I do, for I have about all that I want ; but I do a 
 bit of thanksgiving now and then. ' Perhaps our worship may have 
 to fall back upon thanksgiving altogether, some day. " 
 
 Rev. Brooke Herford. 
 
73 
 
 Then the peace of God, which passeth understand- 
 ing, will be more realized, and the heart's trust 
 will be so absolute, that, in the darkest hour of 
 perplexity the highest act of Religion will find 
 expression in the profoundest resignation. 
 
 " Could we but hear all Nature's voice, 
 From glow-worm up to sun, 
 'Twould speak with one concordant sound, 
 Thy will, O God, be done.'' 
 
 So long, then, as Man has a religious nature, 
 with its crowd of witnesses in the valleys, on the 
 plains, and the hill-sides of every country, evi- 
 dencing to the observant and reflecting traveller 
 the existence of spiritual faculties which are as 
 positive and universal as the senses of sight and 
 hearing, or the normal desire for food (and which 
 apparently can never be stamped out), so long 
 will men, women, and children pant for the 
 exercise of worship, for religious guidance 3.nd 
 culture. Morality in any high governing sense 
 does not often leave out theology, nor can religion 
 dispense with morality. These are the constantly 
 pervading influences, the warp and woof of best 
 society. " Some few persons," it has been said, 
 " can live apart from religious institutions ; but 
 mankind cannot dispense with religion, and they 
 need it organized into a church." It is probable 
 that the simpler and the grander phases and forms 
 of Faith will be realized more fully in the future 
 than they have been in the past. 
 
74 
 
 Principal Tulloch has the following admirable 
 passage : — 
 
 "The current of free thought is running deep and 
 sure in all the Churches, even within softened and ex- 
 clusive precincts where it makes no noise at all. It 
 will make its way towards the light by-and-by, from all 
 quarters of the ecclesiastic horizon ; and the Church 
 which will have most chance may possibly not be any 
 of the present organizations, but a Church more excel- 
 lent — because at once more liberal and Catholic — than 
 any of those now existing." 
 
 The permanent in religion — The Love of God 
 AND THE Love of Man— is the soul's ripe fruit- 
 age, the centre of the highest religious systems. 
 This is not the equivalent of Superstition, nor will 
 it die of inanition.* It will express itself in the 
 service of humanity ; it will exhibit itself in the 
 recognition by each class of society of its duty to 
 every other class ; it will give a death-blow to 
 that selfishness which, in complete opposition to 
 the spirit of the Founder of Christianity, has been 
 fostered by nominal followers, who not unfre- 
 
 * A "Free Protestant Church" has recently been opened at 
 Graff Reinet, and at the close of the services several young men 
 were publicly accepted as members of the Church, by affirming 
 their belief, in reply to the following question : — " Do you believe 
 that true religion consists in love to God and love to man, and is it 
 your earnest desire to practise this religion in your daily life ? " 
 
 " We all see Divine things ' through a glass darkly' ; but sure I 
 am that my doctrines cannot be right until that Church is dearest 
 to me which is most deeply rooted in the love of God and of 
 richest fruits in the love of man. " 
 
 Rev. Dr. Martineau. 
 
75 
 
 quently have made Christianity the most egotistic 
 of reh'gious systems. 
 
 To the clergy of our land we would venture to 
 say — Understand your age and you may greatly 
 help to lead it. Bear in mind that the people are 
 not made for the Church, but the Church for the 
 people. Abandon all purely sacerdotal preten- 
 sions, and " the seething thought of this anxious 
 age" need give you no undue alarm or anxiety. 
 Move forward ! Realize '' a spirit of intelligent 
 harmony with secular thought." Hold aloft the 
 torch of truth, that its light may illumine the high 
 places of society. Descend with it into the depths 
 of the lowliest retreats where ignorance lurks, 
 where crime burrows, and poverty and misery 
 hide themselves. And take for your motto the 
 words of our great Milton : " Who ever knew 
 Truth put to the worse in a free and open 
 encounter .■' " 
 
 9. Before proceeding to other matters, it may 
 interest some of our readers to present them in 
 this connection with the following estimate of the 
 author of Christianity by one of the most careful 
 thinkers and able logicians of recent times. In 
 his lately pubhshed Essays on Religion, John 
 Stuart Mill thus writes of the Great Teacher : — 
 
 " About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp 
 of personal originaUty combined with profundity of in- 
 sight, which, if we abandon the idle expectation of 
 
76 
 
 finding scientific precision where something very different 
 was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even 
 in the estimation of those who have no belief in his in- 
 spiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime 
 genius of whom our species can boast. When his pre- 
 eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably 
 the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, 
 who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to 
 have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the 
 ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor, even 
 now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a 
 better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract 
 into the concrete, than endeavour so to live that Christ 
 would approve our life. When to this we add that to 
 the conception of the rational sceptic, it remains a possi- 
 bility that Christ actually was what he supposed himself 
 to be — not God, for he never made the smallest preten- 
 sion to that character, and would probably have thought 
 such a pretension as blasphemous as it seemed to the men 
 who condemned him — but a man charged with a special, 
 express and unique commission from God to lead man- 
 kind to truth and virtue ; we may well conclude that the 
 influences of religion on the character which will remain 
 after rational criticism has done its utmost against the 
 evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and that 
 what they lack in direct strength as compared with those 
 of a firmer belief, is more than compensated by the 
 greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction." 
 
 To this we may add the following clear and 
 forcible statement by W. E. H. Lecky, the his- 
 torian of Rationalism, and himself a guiding light 
 of the party whose history he has written : — 
 
77 
 
 " It was reserved for Christianity to present to the 
 world an ideal character, which through all the changes 
 of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an 
 impassioned love, has shown itself capable of acting on 
 all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions ; has not 
 only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest 
 incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an 
 influence, that it may be truly said that the simple 
 record of three short years of active life has done more 
 to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the dis- 
 quisitions of philosophers, and than all the exhortations 
 of moralists. This has indeed been the well-spring of 
 whatever has been best and purest in the Christian life. 
 Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, 
 the persecution, and fanaticism which have defaced the 
 Church, it has preserved in the character and example of 
 its Founder an enduring principle of regeneration." 
 
 lO. It is worthy of remark, that there is to man 
 such a thing as a Principle of Certainty. He is 
 able to perceive particular kinds of truths, such as 
 the axioms of mathematics, to be invariably and 
 unalterably true. This is a valuable, although a 
 common possession of mankind. But the Infalli- 
 bility claimed by the Roman Catholic Church in 
 faith, morals, and discipline is not, and cannot be 
 allowed to be, the prerogative or the privilege of 
 any Person, Church, Book, or Assembly.* And if 
 
 * The doctrine of Infallibility to which we take exception, is 
 clearly set forth in the following passage by Cardinal Newman : — 
 
 " The Church has the office of teaching, and the matter of that 
 teaching is the body of doctrine which the Apostles left behind 
 them as her perpetual possession. If a question arises as to what 
 
78 
 
 man is not infallible, neither is he impeccable. 
 No ! Fallibility, frailty, and imperfection are 
 written upon man, and all man's works. Not in 
 action, any more than in judgment, is he unerring. 
 This is true even of the so-called head and pillars 
 of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 Professor St. George Mivart, a Roman Catholic 
 and an eminent man of science, in an article in the 
 Nineteenth Century ior July, 1 885, writes as follows : — 
 
 " By order of Pope Urban the Eighth, the Inquisition 
 formally promulgated certain statements for the express 
 purpose that Catholic men of science might be informed 
 what they were to hold on this subject. These state- 
 ments were as follows : — 
 
 " ' That the sun is the centre of the universe and 
 
 the Apostolic doctrine is on a particular point, she has infallibility 
 promised to her to enable her to answer correctly. And, as by the 
 teaching of the Church is understood, not the teaching of this or 
 that Bishop, but their united voice, and a Council is the form the 
 Church must take in order that all men may recognize that in fact 
 she is teaching on any point in dispute, so in like manner the Pope 
 must come before us in some special form or posture, if he is to be 
 understood to be exercising his teaching office, and that form is 
 called ex cathedrd. . . . He speaks ex calhedrd, or infallibly, when 
 he speaks, first, as the Universal Teacher ; secondly, in the name 
 and with the authority of the Apostles ; thirdly, on a point of faith 
 or morals ; fourthly, with the purpose of binding every member of 
 the Church to accept and believe his decision." 
 
 On the same question Cardinal Manning states : — 
 
 ' ' Now it is to be observed ; 
 
 " I. That the Council declares that the Roman Pontiff, speaking 
 ex cathedrd, has a Divine assistance which preserves him from error. 
 
 " 2. That he speaks ex cathedrd when he speaks under these five 
 conditions — (i) As Supreme Teacher (2) to the whole Church. 
 (3) Defining a doctrine (4) to be held by the whole Church (5) in 
 faith and morals. '' 
 
79 
 
 immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, 
 and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary 
 to Holy Scripture. 
 
 " ' That the earth is not the centre of the universe nor 
 immovable, but that it moves and also has diurnal 
 motion, is absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically 
 considered, is at least erroneous in faith.' 
 
 " In the sentence pronounced on Galileo by the In- 
 quisition we read : — 
 
 " ' Invoking the most Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ and that of His most glorious mother Mary, ever 
 Virgin, by this our definitive sentence we say, pronounce, 
 judge, and declare that you, the said Galileo, on account 
 of the things proved against you by documentary evi- 
 dence, and which have been confessed by you as aforesaid, 
 have rendered yourself to this Holy Office vehemently 
 suspected of heresy — that is, of having believed and held 
 a doctrine which is false and contrary to the Sacred and 
 Divine Scriptures — to wit, that the sun is in the centre of 
 the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and 
 that the earth moves and is not the centre of the uni- 
 verse ; and that an opinion can be held and defended 
 as probable after it has been declared and defined to be 
 contrary to Holy Scripture.' 
 
 " Galileo himself was compelled to say, ' With a sincere 
 heart and faith unfeigned, I abjure, curse, and detest the 
 above-named errors and heresies.^ " 
 
 Any one who carefully and impartially observes 
 mankind, may see them to • be neither spotless 
 angels nor hideous demons, but beings of various 
 shades of colour (with much of sober grey), capable 
 by nature of knowing and doing what is to them 
 
8o 
 
 intentionally right or consciously wrong, at the 
 same time, greatly dependent upon many things 
 which are to them almost purely accidental — as 
 birth, climate, food, family life, education, society, 
 business, and profession. " Our life is of a mingled 
 yarn, good and ill together.'' It is an obvious and 
 irrefragable fact that all men are more or less 
 fallible and slanting, untrue to the perpendicular, 
 and that all Religious Organizations — the Pro- 
 testant Churches no less than the elder Church 
 — have made mistakes. Even the authorized 
 versions of the Old and New Testaments, which 
 are at the very foundation of the Christian Reli- 
 gion as popularly accepted, have recently under- 
 gone revision, and may be expected still farther 
 to be corrected and improved. The Rubrics and 
 the Thirty- nine Articles of the Church of England, 
 and the Confession of Eaith of the Scottish Estab- 
 lishment, it may also be anticipated, will ere long 
 either receive such modifications as will bring 
 them into harmony with modern science and reli- 
 gious thought, or, as antiquated stumbling-blocks, 
 be altogether removed.* 
 
 We cannot easily imagine anything more offen- 
 sive and corrupting to a young preacher than to 
 
 * It has been remarked by the Rev. Principal Fairbaim that 
 "even Scotland has been touched by a strange softness. Presby- 
 terian worship has grown less bald, organs and liturgies have found 
 a home in the land and church of Knox, and some of the more 
 susceptible Sons of the Covenant have been visited by the ideal of a 
 Church at once British and Catholic, where prelate and presbyter 
 should dwell together in unity." 
 
be asked to sign or give formal assent to the 
 Confession of Faith, with an expressed reservation 
 and permitted understanding that many state- 
 ments therein made are absolutely untrue. This 
 crying disgrace may be heard to-day all the way 
 from London to Edinburgh, from Glasgow and St. 
 Andrews to Aberdeen ! " It seems to me down- 
 right wicked of scholars and learned men to keep 
 their light hidden away under a bushel, and then 
 pretend that they fear the people are not ready 
 for it, as though God's Truth needed bolstering 
 up with error," exclaimed Donovan, "as though 
 to believe a hideous lie could ever be right or 
 helpful ! There's a vast amount of Jesuitry 
 among well-meaning Protestants." This duplicity 
 may well " debase, the moral currency of theology." 
 In London such conduct would not be tolerated 
 on 'Change, at the Bank of England, or by any 
 respectable mercantile firm. The British Quarterly 
 Review frankly admits that, " The present eccle- 
 siastic state of Scotland is one of the scandals of 
 Christendom." Remember that the spirit of disre- 
 gard of Church dogmas is now, however, rather 
 robust in the North, and not easily "coughed down." 
 Be, then, careful to avoid wordy warfare, and darken- 
 ing of counsel by cuttle-fish exploits in religious 
 waters. Let the Church of Scotland "Be bold 
 enough to be honest, and honest enough to be 
 bold," and a great future is still before it. 
 
 Many eminent and clear-sighted men in Scot- 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 land perceive that a change is inevitable. Dr. 
 Norman Macleod, for instance, assures us that 
 " neither Calvinism, nor Presbyterianism, nor 
 Thirty-nine Articles, nor High Churchism, nor 
 Low Churchism, nor any existing organization 
 can be the Church of the future." The Con- 
 fession of Faith is no longer in harmony with the 
 religious thought of the age, and should not be 
 made obligatory on religious belief and used as a 
 test either for offices of the Church or for Church 
 Membership. 
 
 The Churches in Scotland chiefly consist of three 
 branches, separated from each other by trivial dis- 
 tinctions and unimportant differences. They might 
 be cordially and advantageously united in the 
 bonds of a wider sympathy ahd more Catholic 
 spirit. Scotland may be Protestant without being 
 Calvinist or Puritan.* 
 
 There are yet, unfortunately, noisy ones in 
 Christendom, who wander hither and thither, pro- 
 claiming that " The Bible, and the Bible only, is 
 the religion of Protestants." And there are others 
 less noisy, but more crafty and resolute — with vast 
 spiritual pretensions — who demand that the Bible 
 plus the dim lamp of Tradition is needed to make 
 dogmas authoritative. But there is a rapidly 
 
 * The economic aspect of the question, although altogether sub- 
 ordinate, should not be entirely overlooked. Many small towns in 
 Scotland are greatly impoverished in consequence of the ecclesiastic 
 division that now prevails. 
 
83 
 
 growing party which we heartily welcome — be- 
 cause more logical and accurate than either of 
 these — who unanswerably urge that the Bible, with 
 needful excisions, is profitable for daily reading in 
 the family and schoolroom, is in accord with 
 correct taste, the higher intelligence, and the 
 moral sense* In all ultimate research in Reli- 
 gion, however, that only which is seen by each 
 person to be good and true ought to be considered 
 binding, and personally regulating to hitti. 
 
 Diverging for a moment, it gives us pleasure, 
 having freely animadverted on the untenpable claim 
 to Infallibility made by the Church of Rome, to 
 recognize the large amount of liberty now con- 
 ceded to members of her communion in relation 
 to some of the most important themes that can 
 engage, the attention of a thoughtful mind. 
 While, indeed, on the one hand, the distinctive 
 doctrines of that Church are defined and guarded 
 by its asserted Infallibility, yet, on the other, there 
 remains — if we may trust the subjoined statement 
 from an enlightened Roman Catholic periodical — 
 a wide margin, in fact, a vast domain, which the 
 cultured intellect may freely explore, following 
 wherever truth shall lead, without fear, molestation, 
 
 * A rev. gentleman was one day asked in our hearing the follow- 
 ing pertinent question : — "If the Bible were to say black is white, 
 what would you say ? " He replied, " I, too, should say that black 
 is white." Here a protracted discussion which had been carried 
 on, at intervals, during two preceding days instantly and inevitably 
 terminated. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 or censure. These remarkable words are taken 
 from the Dublin Review of Jan. 1 876, pp. 448-9 : 
 — " The Catholic Church has guaranteed the rights 
 of intellect, and has done great things to preserve 
 them intact. . . . Whether God exists, whether 
 the Infinite is knowable, whether there is a cause 
 of all things, whether the material world has been 
 created, whether any definitions of matter will 
 allow it to be the sole and sufficient cause of life, 
 sensation, and intelligence ; whether the soul of 
 man is immortal, whether the pursuing of our 
 own eternal happiness can be called selfish — all 
 these questions, according to the philosophy of 
 the Church, are under the jurisdiction of reason, 
 are strictly scientific, and may and ought to 
 be treated in a scientific manner. It is open to 
 any man who has the leisure and the necessary 
 talent, to take them up, investigate them, ,and use 
 all his experience and intelligence in their solu- 
 tion. The answers obtained may be tested, com- 
 pared, sought after by other and newer methods, 
 defended by reason, without the interpolation of 
 any emotion whatever. They may be approached 
 from above or below, and philosophy may take its 
 beginning in the science of cosmology, no less than 
 in the science of logic. . . . This is the concurrent 
 teaching of all the Catholic schools, that, at the very 
 least, it may be followed without censure attaching 
 to any one, not even from the Holy Office." 
 
 Now these are noble thoughts, well and nobly 
 
85 
 
 «xpressed, and, unless we greatly mistake, the 
 moral of them is, that even Protestant Orthodoxy, 
 in its vast variety, has yet something to learn 
 from Roman Catholic teaching. At all events, 
 we may affirm that these conditions are abso- 
 lutely necessary for the permanent existence of 
 the Church of the Future. 
 
 II. But to resume. The Churches are entering 
 upon a new career. Already a fresh leaf has been 
 turned, and another chapter commenced in our 
 religious history and life. This chapter will, we 
 may hope and expect, judiciously exclude many 
 errors " born to die,'' and dogmas well known to 
 rest upon a slippery and dangerous declivity. 
 There are yet, curiously and unfortunately, we 
 think, persons who seem to relish a little fog in 
 philosophy, difficulty in religion, and contradiction 
 in theology. They have a strange predilection 
 for a wintry gleam of perplexing opinions, a 
 raging, tempestuous sea, with rocks and quicksands 
 around them. 
 
 Let us then, at this stage, suggest for calm 
 consideration and discussion the idea of a National 
 Church resting upon this grand and simple basis : 
 — A belief in the Existence of God and in the 
 Religious Nature of Man ; and with the two great 
 Commandments, the Love of God and the Love 
 of Man, as the condition of Membership, or the 
 regulative principles of Church-life. These we 
 
86 
 
 may consider as cardinal articles of a Christian 
 Creed, and essential to the very existence of any 
 Church. All other matters, we may remark, 
 would be left free for adoption or rejection* 
 
 This Church would include the whole of those 
 who profess belief in the primary and essential 
 conditions that sublie and sustain the higher 
 forms of religion, and without which religion, to 
 abide in fulness, would be impossible. This ex- 
 tended liberty would give prompt relief, increased 
 strength and peace, would rekindle a more cor- 
 dial spirit, and beget a more active usefulness. 
 It would be in its scope and purpose, and in a 
 broad sense — National. 
 
 The prospective Church we contemplate will, 
 we trust, be averse to an acrimonious temper, 
 and be emancipated from the pettiness of profit- 
 less sectarianism. It would give free scope for a 
 
 * Freedom, we may remark, should not be thought or mistaken. 
 for an end. It is, in truth, only a necessary means to improved 
 results — an essential condition, whereby principles may have scope 
 for expansion, and eventuate in a more fully completed individu- 
 ality. Freedom is not a food on which man can feed ; to feed oa 
 liberty is to starve to death. A Churclf so absurdly and ruinously 
 free as to be without any theological basis, belief, or creed, is to- 
 ourselves absolutely unrealizable in thought. A Church without a 
 God is a phantom, a dream, an illusion. Without a belief in Deity 
 you may have a society or club, but not a Church. The rebound 
 from dogmatism on the one hand, and from "the weight of too- 
 much liberty " on the other, are, alas ! two unfortunate states into- 
 which many modern thinkers are, we regret to believe, by no means- 
 unfamiliar. 
 
87 
 
 variety of " open questions," many such questions 
 being the mere dust and cobwebs of the dark 
 ages. Such a Church would never be exposed to 
 the taunting inquiry — 
 
 " Ask every age, ask every land. 
 When did State priests for freedom stand ? " 
 
 Such a Church as this, could not be at war 
 with science (as many of our churches frequently 
 are). It would be distinguished by goodwill to 
 man, by its cultivated leaders turning affectionately 
 towards " pale misery," rather than concerning 
 themselves about the gold ring and sumptuous 
 fare. A Church, not timidly, fretfully, and sul- 
 lenly lagging behind the world of Secular Thought ; 
 but in sweet accord with the truths common to 
 many religious systems, and gladly recognizing 
 on behalf of each one within its pale the obliga- 
 tion and the sinlessness of free, fearless inquiry, and 
 the right and duty of fair and full critical research, 
 boldly refusing to admit whatever is unreasonable, 
 and demanding from each member — 
 
 " To THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE." 
 
 Such a Church would be thoroughly and in- 
 tensely practical — a Church .of devotion, culture, 
 and action. The Religious Home of the people ; 
 a staff to the pilgrim, and a place of rest to the 
 doubter ; the safeguard of knowledge ; the pro- 
 moter of virtue, and shelter of goodness. Many 
 bitter religious controversies by its influence. 
 
88 
 
 would be sweetened and amicably closed. New 
 objects of interest and use would be suggested, 
 and fresh religious vitality infused. Such a relig- 
 ious body, by its benign and uplifting influence, its 
 efficient organization and appliances, would soon 
 exert a great and beneficial power in every street, 
 court, and alley of this vast metropolis, as also 
 in our large provincial cities.* 
 
 Knowing how much the higher condition of 
 human beings is dependent upon correct moral 
 training in infancy, upon thorough intellectual cul- 
 ture, and the requirements of, at least, a mode- 
 rate decency in domestic arrangements, there is 
 presented in London, and every large town in 
 
 * The eminent Nonconformist divine, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Par- 
 ker, in a letter^ to The Times of date Sept. 18, 1880, writes : — 
 " Has not the time come when the points of union should be 
 magnified, and the points of difference be reduced to a minimum ? 
 My own impression is, that there are thousands of Christians in 
 England who have no connection with the sects, and who, strange 
 as it may appear, are not aware of their own Christianity. This 
 anomaly is to be accounted for by the fact that in the hands of 
 the sects Christianity has become a set of theological opinions 
 and definitions, instead of being left as the spirit of self-sacrifice 
 for the good of others. Christianity is not a form, it is a spirit; 
 it knows nothing of articles, catechisms, standards, and subscrip- 
 tions to tests or creeds. All these are merely human arrange- 
 ments or conveniencies, and if not kept in their proper places they 
 will do more mischief than it is in the power of Atheism to effect. 
 I do not hesitate to say that sectarian theology is the most mischiev- 
 ous influence of the age. Men who think carefully and broadly 
 will never be united on this basis ; it is too narrow, too vague, and 
 too controvertible. Is it not possible to find a point at which all 
 reverent thinkers will unite in cordial fellowship ? In my opinion 
 it is quite possible, and, if possible, it must be infinitely desirable.' 
 
89 
 
 England, an ample field of useful and delightful 
 employment to multitudes of the educated and 
 refined classes who at present have much difficulty 
 in " killing time." Thus, all neglected children, 
 and all cramped and bent down by the iron grasp 
 of poverty, or chilled by the icy touch of age 
 and sadness, might properly be cared for — washed 
 and clothed, fed, warmed and comfortably housed. 
 This, in a city where thousands of persons are 
 incommoded by a plethora of superabundant 
 wealth, is surely not too much to expect of a 
 Church organized for the pure and elevating wor- 
 ship of God. The feverish longing for periodical 
 excitement, so intense amongst the upper classes, 
 would be calmed, the frivolous eccentricities of 
 dress be restrained, manners become more sincere, 
 and the insipidity of dining-room and drawing- 
 room conversation would naturally be superseded 
 by higher aims and a nobler tone. Then the 
 painful sense of mental vacuity and ennui would 
 be exchanged for the healthful glow of intellectual 
 culture and moral vigour ; many angelic natures, 
 by the daily exercise of " the charities which 
 soothe, and heal, and bless," would bask in the 
 divine beatitudes of benevolence, and be rewarded 
 by a constant and increasing joy. 
 
 The extravagancies of ecclesiastical dress, and 
 the antic gesticulations which prevail in so many of 
 our Churches, and which are so prominent in some 
 modern developments of Ritual, are not altogether 
 
90 
 
 harmless. Rather, we should say, they must be 
 actively mischievous. As little can we consider 
 that the flagrant mistakes in Hymns and Litanies 
 are rendered more endurable by being chanted 
 and intoned, and that the blunders in many ser- 
 mons become less nonsensical and injurious when 
 with lengthened visage they are confidently spoken 
 in a sepulchral tone. We hope to be pardoned 
 the observation, that " the delivery " — as it is 
 termed, of many of our ecclesiastical instructors — 
 is as susceptible of improvement as their Theology 
 and Philosophy. The Scriptures, for example, 
 are in large measure highly dramatic, and obvi- 
 ously require the finest and most varied elocution. 
 They are usually read with a dull, pompous 
 solemnity, or a listless drawl, that often produces 
 in the hearer the well-known " sleepy-distemper." 
 In reference to this too common evil The Times 
 thus writes : — " Enter church after church in the 
 Metropolis, or elsewhere, and you shall hear the 
 prayers read by a machine, and the sermon read 
 by a drone. The supplications are solemn without 
 being serious, the exhortations have only that 
 gravity which conduces to sleep. The one is a 
 pious form, the other an unpleasant necessity." 
 
 If, for one brief moment, we might with cau- 
 tious footstep tread upon even yet more delicate 
 ground, and so tender a hint to our religious 
 shepherds, we would ask : — Would it not be well, 
 if, in their spiritual visitations, they would .strive 
 
91 
 
 to be more natural and genial, bearing in mind 
 that the power of truth and gentleness is great ? 
 Might they not also with advantage study a wise 
 economy of words, avoiding an air of too intimate 
 familiarity with the Deity, and unwarrantable 
 affirmations about Him beyond what He Himself 
 has clearly made known to mankind ? In any 
 day dreams, let us never imagine that men have 
 communion, mutual interchange of thought, with 
 the Infinite and Eternal One. Let us rather be- 
 come conversant with the useful lights of Modern 
 Science, than continue to employ the misleading 
 glimmerings of Old Tradition, which have de- 
 scended to us out of the obscurity of time. Let 
 us strive for greater Unity of Spirit, and know 
 that absolute uniformity of opinion in all things 
 is not divine, neither is it desirable. Let the 
 clergy show that they have a real kindly sym- 
 pathy and hearty interest in beneficent work ; and 
 remember that — 
 
 " To err is human, to forgive divine." 
 
 Let them carefully avoid an ultra-placid con- 
 sciousness wrapt-up in self, a frequent result of 
 overmuch study and a too solitary life. Eschew "the 
 rigid feature," and the much starched cambric. Do 
 not assume the abstracted, murky, cloistered look, 
 so repellent to the poor ; or the ungenial and un- 
 social " stand well back for I am holier than thou " 
 attitude, which so frequently renders all friendly , 
 intercourse and well-meant visits not only unwel- 
 
92 
 
 come, but often worse than useless. Rather, we 
 submit, let them be distinguished by cheerfulness, 
 gentleness, impartiality, consistency, — "let your 
 light so shine before men that they may see your 
 Good Works," — may they, by example, lead others 
 to things co-excellent, and cause them to approve 
 of and ardently desire to go and do likewise. 
 
 We may also, perhaps, venture to remark that, 
 a nature which is altogether a stranger to soft and 
 sweet delights, with discordant voice and harsh, 
 coupled with a philosophy which is blighting and 
 withering, is not well calculated to do good service 
 in the pulpit. 
 
 Cardinal Newman frankly tells us : — " There are 
 Ministers of Christ with large incomes, living in 
 finely-furnished houses, with wives and families, 
 and stately butlers and servants in livery, giving 
 dinners all in the best style, condescending and 
 gracious, waving their hands, and mincing their 
 words as if they were the cream of the earth, but 
 without anything to make them clergymen but a 
 black coat and a white tie." 
 
 If the people do not go to Church, whose fault 
 is that ? " The hungry sheep [when in the fold] 
 look up and are not fed." 
 
 Zlfe Times informs us that : — " The attendance 
 of Londoners at public worship of any description 
 
93 
 
 would be somewhat slender if every available seat 
 were filled, but if they were filled the number of 
 attendants would be about double what they are 
 now. This deficiency can be variously explained. 
 To the working man Sunday is a day of rest, and 
 often a day of holiday-making. It is not so much 
 that he is indifferent about religion, but that he is 
 careless about religious forms, and feels no loss 
 from the omission of religious observances which 
 he has never learned to regard with due respect, 
 and which are not always conducted so as to be 
 either as attractive or as useful to him as they 
 might be made. In these points, at least, we have 
 defects which admit of cure. The dry formalist 
 repels. The ranter stirs contempt. Both ex- 
 tremes must be avoided if the poor are to have 
 the message of good tidings delivered to them 
 with any effect. If they can be drawn to listen 
 to it, they will find Sunday not less a day of rest, 
 not less a holiday, than before. The problem is 
 how they are to be drawn. The future is with 
 the religious body which can find the best answer 
 for it." 
 
 The Christian World also writes : — " There is 
 no use in mincing matters. Hearers are tiring of 
 sermons. Churches, on both sides of the Atlantic, 
 are suffering from a growing sense, among the 
 people, of weariness in the exercises of public 
 worship, and particularly of weariness in listening 
 to preachers." 
 
94 
 
 Would it not be well if ministers of religion 
 were to insist less on doubtful points of doctrine, 
 and more on the important and necessary duties 
 of daily life, and help to effect a better under- 
 standing and a closer junction of theology and 
 religion with science and philosophy ?* 
 
 12. It may now, in further elucidation of our 
 subject, be seriously asked, — How shall we account 
 for the continued and frequent use of most barbaric 
 
 * We take the following extract from an address delivered at 
 Maidstone on the 28th September, 1880, by the late Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, who advises soundly on this matter : — 
 
 " Granted that the best preacher is the man who touches the heart 
 and thus influences the life ; granted that many gifts of voice, 
 manner, tendernes-; of sympathetic feeling, and terseness of expres- 
 sion are required if the words of the wise preacher are to be as 
 goads that prick the conscience, as nails driven home to the heart 
 and fastening themselves in the memory ; granted, above all, that no 
 man can preach effectively what he does not himself feel ; granted 
 that there are many gifts besides fulness of knowledge which are 
 required for good preaching ; yet without knowledge, in this age 
 especially, the sermon will often be a stumbling-block to some 
 intelligent member of the congregation. ... A wider know- 
 ledge, also, of the motives of action and of the temptations and 
 trials which beset human life will be gained by him who carefiiUy 
 reads history and biography and observes beyond the limits of his 
 own personal experience. We must not make mistakes as to the 
 common truths of physical science if we would have influence with 
 the more intelligent even of the mechanics who are brought under 
 our care. We must not be ignorant of the works of the great 
 masters in poetry and oratory if we would know and reach the 
 feelings of our people ; and it would be preposterous that we should 
 seek to guide any but the most ignorant if we knew nothing of the 
 currents of philosophical thought which are bearing on the most 
 earnest of the young around us to conclusions with which their 
 fathers never troubled themselves." 
 
95 
 
 symbols in many of our churches and chapels, and 
 this towards the end of the nineteenth century ? 
 What would be thought of a Heathen coming to a 
 Christian country, and telling of his Deity flying 
 in the air, talking with one man in a garden, 
 wrestling with another, and smelling the sweet 
 savour of an offering ? What would be further 
 thought, if he told, as a true story, that his Deity 
 began to make the world on a Sunday, that he 
 kept at work every day for nearly a week ; then, 
 finding what had been accomplished satisfactory, 
 he tookj a holiday, and rested on Saturday — that 
 he crowned this great work by creating one man 
 and one woman " very good," although with im- 
 perfection ; and that (as a not unlikely conse- 
 quence) they blundered, and were then held to be 
 " wholly defiled," " made opposite to all good," 
 and "wholly inclined to do evil." That their 
 numerous progeny could commit actual sin (con- 
 scious wrong-doing) — a thing imaginable and 
 realizable as fact ; but were also held guilty for 
 a supposed transgression committed by their 
 ancestors, and were tainted with original (prior to 
 birth) stn — a misnomer, and thing impossible ! 
 
 Suppose, this Heathen were to add, further, 
 that this awkward state of things, this moral con- 
 fusion and chaos at the origin of the human 
 race was not attempted to be improved by creating 
 another pair of beings with some modification 
 in their nature, and by presenting fruit less 
 
96 
 
 tempting, and imposing results less disastrous ; 
 further, that there existed a large majority of 
 persons called the " non-elect," of whose pre- 
 ordained condition it was affirmed that " God was 
 pleased, according to his will and holy counsel; to 
 permit, having purposed to order it to his own 
 glory,'' and in display of " his sovereign power,'' to 
 be damned — a decree including young and old 
 (not even exempting infants) — who are to be 
 burned for ever ; — surely, it requires no very vivid 
 imagination to conceive that, at this point, the 
 Heathen himself would start back amazed at the 
 description of Deity he had given, and exclaim, 
 if these things be true, then is mortal man " more 
 just than God " ; man is more kind than his Maker ! 
 Notions so horrific are sufficient to banish from 
 the human heart " the longing after immortality " 
 — were the total paralysis and ruin of the religious 
 sentiment possible. Nothing might be referred to 
 by him about a Devil, as the English people 
 prefer to allow that nonentity or now sleeping 
 entity, with sundry other kindred imaginings, to 
 lie quietly at rest. 
 
 Let us suppose this statement to be made by 
 a Heathen to some crowded meeting at Exeter 
 Hall, with a Dignitary in the chair. The Heathen, 
 after delivering his long address, would probably 
 with much gravity be informed that there was 
 nothing new or strange in anything which had 
 been related, as in this country, the greatest and 
 
97 
 
 most enlightened in the world, there are thousands 
 of professing Christains who affirm of their God 
 what the Pagan had declared of his Deity. 
 
 No wonder that the religious pulse of England 
 is spasmodic ! No wonder that a numbness pre- 
 vails amongst the thoughtful, well-to-do, and in- 
 dependent working classes, and that strong com- 
 mon-sense people stand aghast, that good men are 
 ashamed, and pious souls revolt ! 
 
 So offensive and awful to a cultivated, sympa- 
 thetic, and well-balanced mind are torture and 
 revenge, that, many excellent persons would prefer 
 annihilation (and their preference is justifiable) to 
 a so-called heaven in which there should exist 
 a distinct perpetual consciousness of even one 
 human creature being kept in torment for ever. 
 Nay, the Heathen we have introduced to our 
 readers might in the flow and glow of his emotions, 
 in the wealth of his affectionate nature, feel assured, 
 and in his earnest cogitations reasonably conclude, 
 that. Her Majesty the Queen of England, the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal of West- 
 minster, and the members of the Anti-Vivisection 
 Society would decline to choose for themselves a 
 future-life with the inevitable, but sad condition, 
 that even a Kitten — a sentient creature now pro- 
 tected by British law — should be put to a slow 
 fire, and its cries of anguish to resound in the 
 echoing corridor and whispering gallery of every 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 human consciousness during eternity. With such 
 a fatal obstacle to human happiness, ' resonant 
 hallelujahs ' and the ' rapture of satisfaction ' 
 would be impossible ! Any idea of ' beatific 
 vision ' and ' ceaseless psalmody ' would be a 
 mockery ! 
 
 It is, we trust, not too much to say that the 
 once too deeply-rooted and heartless religion of 
 Calvin is disappearing both in England and Scot- 
 land. Scientific knowledge and scholarly criticism 
 are surely and quickly eating away the very core 
 of the popular theology. " It has taken a long 
 time for the new wine to burst the stout old 
 bottles, but the bursting has come at last ! " 
 
 We are, therefore, exceedingly glad that many 
 voices, loud and significant, are now raised, de- 
 manding, " Give us a God we do not need to 
 apologize for .' Give us a God we do not need to 
 defend .' " In all good faith we sincerely ask this 
 important question — over which many rather self- 
 satisfied persons might usefully ponder, and judi- 
 ciously answer, not in haste : — Whether is the 
 philosophy of Atheism or Calvinism the more 
 dishonouring and offensive ? Is the conception 
 and belief of Atheism or the creed of Calvinism 
 the more destructive to the well-being and happi- 
 ness of man .' Is the great and good Universe of 
 Things minus Deity and immortality — awful as 
 the idea may be — or the, same Universe //«j the 
 
99 
 
 God of some not unpopular theologies, the less to 
 be desired, the more to be hated ? We are our- 
 selves, fortunately, not obliged to accept either of 
 these conclusions, and we may, therefore, the more 
 readily be permitted to put this question, to ask 
 for its serious consideration, and for a candid, 
 plain, common-sense reply. Which of the two, 
 then, is the worse ? No Deity at all, and peace- 
 ful, unconscious rest in the silent land where there 
 is no dreaming ? Or, the tyrant sovereignty of 
 the God of Calvin, with future suffering that is 
 unimproving, and endless torment which is alto- 
 gether hopeless ?* It is not a matter of surprise 
 that there are persons who congratulate themselves 
 that " they are going to die like the beasts." 
 
 13. Meanwhile, Time is marching forward with 
 quick and ever - lengthening strides. Coming 
 events already cast their broad and well-defined 
 
 * This view is forcibly expressed by Burns, the Scottish poet, 
 in the following stanza of his " Holy Willie's Prayer" : — 
 
 " O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 
 Wha, as it pleases best thysel', 
 Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, 
 
 A', for thy glory, 
 And no for ony guid or ill 
 
 They've done afore thee ! " 
 The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher pointedly asks : " How could I 
 say ' Our Father ' if I believed in the horrible doctrine that Calvin 
 has crystallized, and which stands over the world, in my judgment, 
 like the memories of the worst days of Sodom and Gomorrah, or. of 
 old pagan Rome ? " 
 
 John Wesley is said to have told a Calvinist — " Your God is my 
 devil." 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO 
 
 shadows across the vast plain of the world. And 
 " the schoolmaster abroad " is instructing the 
 children of these islands with an assiduity and 
 completeness unknown heretofore ? The Clergy of 
 the next generation, when the seeds of knowledge, 
 now being scattered broadcast over the land, shall 
 have sprung up and borne fruit, will have to address 
 audiences of educated persons. Then, our work- 
 ing classes, no less than the middle and the higher 
 sections of the community, in addition to mere 
 elementary acquirements, will be refined by Art 
 and Poetry, will be no longer strangers to History 
 and its • lessons, will know something of Physical 
 Science and its conclusions, and will possess, at 
 least, a fair acquaintance with the masterpieces, of 
 our National Literature. The Clergy will have to 
 preach to cultivated men, and cultivated women. 
 They will then be spiritual guides of those who — 
 
 " Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything." 
 
 How will the pulpit adapt itself to these altered 
 circumstances, for, adaptation there must be, un- 
 less it abrogates its useful function as a living 
 power, and subsides into the condition of a mere 
 fossil .' Will instructed, thinking men in the closing 
 years of the nineteenth century, listen placidly 
 while the theology of the sixteenth is expounded 
 for their benefit ? To borrow a phrase of Mr. 
 Froude, you might as reasonably offer — "well- 
 watered chaff to the giant dray horse." 
 
lOI 
 
 But let us not be misunderstood. It is far from 
 our purpose, and would, in fact, contradict our 
 opening remarks, to imply that the religious life 
 ■of our country is incurably diseased. On the 
 contrary, it is, we believe, sound at heart, though 
 not, at this moment, in robust and perfect health. 
 Beneath the aberrations and eccentricities of the 
 intellect, which disfigure the religious sentiment 
 of the day, it is yet pervaded by an earnestness 
 of intention, by a spirit of reverence for things 
 deemed sacred, and especially by a conviction of 
 the importance of true beliefs, which are so justly 
 opposed to a barren, blank indifferentism— that 
 caricature of a genuine philosophy, that degraded 
 offshoot of a universal scepticism. 
 
 We offer this tribute to the devout sincerity of 
 our fellow-countrymen, heartily, and cheerfully. 
 We feel that we owe them nothing less than this 
 concession. If, in these pages, the frankness of 
 our protest, when we have alluded to conceptions, 
 rites, or beliefs, by many deemed to be true and 
 sacred, but, by us, only regarded as being false 
 and pernicious — if our outspokenness has seemed 
 occasionally to verge on the harsh, or, as some 
 might complain, on the acrid — we hope it will be 
 attributed to misapprehension, or even to defective 
 taste ; in short, to anything rather than to a cold 
 and an unsympathetic spirit. May we not, then, 
 in taking leave of our readers, propitiate for these 
 •" Thoughts '' and " Suggestions " — as being the out- 
 
I02 
 
 come of a New Catholic Church — the same candid 
 and kindly consideration which we desire to bestow 
 on all arguments opposed to our own ? Why 
 should we not — each from his own individual 
 standpoint — say all that we believe fo be true, 
 boldly and honestly, and yet at the same time and 
 — indeed, before all things — charitably ? There 
 is a word in our language which happily expresses 
 our meaning ; it is the word genial. Are we striv- 
 ing to effect some Political, Social, Philosophic, or 
 Religious reform ? Let us set about our work — 
 genially. We remember a passage in a book by 
 Dr. F. W. Faber, so apposite to this matter, that 
 perhaps we cannot do better than present it as a 
 portrait, which will doubtless remind the reader of 
 many originals : — 
 
 " Weak and full of wants as we are ourselves, we must 
 make up our minds, or rather take heart, to do some 
 little good to this poor world while we are in it. Kind 
 words are our chief implements for this work, A kind- 
 worded man is a genial man ; and geniality is power. 
 Nothing sets wrong right as soon as geniality. There 
 are a thousand things to be reformed, and no reforma- 
 tion succeeds unless it be genial. . . . Men want 
 to advocate changes, it may be in politics, or in science^ 
 or in philosophy, or in literature, or perhaps in the 
 working of the Church. They give lectures, they write 
 books, they start reviews, they found schools to propa- 
 gate their views, they coalesce in associations, they col- 
 lect money, they move reforms in public worship, and all 
 to further their peculiar ideas. They are unsuccessful. 
 
103 
 
 From being unsuccessful themselves they become un- 
 sympathetic with others. From this comes narrowness 
 of mind. Their very talents are deteriorated. The 
 next step is to be snappish, then bitter, then eccentric, 
 then rude. After that, they abuse people for not taking 
 their advice ; and, last of all, their impotence, like that 
 of all angry prophets, ends in the shrillness of a scream. 
 Why they scream is not so obvious. Perhaps for their 
 own relief. It is the phrensy of the disregarded sibyl. 
 All this comes of their not being genial. Without 
 geniality no solid reform ' was ever made yet. . . . 
 Nothing can be done for God without geniality. More 
 plans fail for the want of that than for the want of any- 
 thing else."* 
 
 14. Most persons will readily acknowledge that 
 there is ample room for improvement in the 
 method and order, as well as in the spirit and tone, 
 of public worship in this country. The accom- 
 panying scheme offers suggestion for comment in 
 this direction. 
 
 The ideal of a religious service in agreement with 
 modern science and philosophy, and in harmony 
 with the feeling of reflective and devout minds,, 
 can be obtained only from a wide induction of 
 opinions, and the collation of numerous and 
 varied experiences. This subject has engaged the 
 attention of many thoughtful persons who have 
 felt the jar and strain of much that is commonly 
 called public worship. 
 
 * " Spiritual Conferences," pp. 42, 43. 
 
I04 
 
 It may be assumed, as a general principle, that 
 everything connected with public worship should 
 contribute towards the expression and the 
 strengthening of devout and elevating feeling. 
 The idea is not a novel one to religious bodies, 
 though it is not often carried out with sufficient 
 care and consistency. Happily, as to methods, it 
 is not necessary to lay down altogether new lines 
 of religious observance. Indeed, the scheme here 
 offered might be readily adapted to the order of 
 many existing services. 
 
 Religious services should be homogeneous, and 
 free from distracting and alien associations, so 
 that every part and circumstance of them shall 
 tend to keep their main object steadily in view. 
 To the eye, therefore, as well as to the ear, no- 
 thing should present itself in a place of worship 
 that does not contribute to the objects desired. 
 By this law may be determined the kind of build- 
 ing, the style of Art-representation, and the char- 
 acter of the music that should be employed. The 
 language of Art is simple, impressive, and univer- 
 sally intelligible ; hence its value as the exponent 
 and ally of religious feeling. The services are apt 
 to become cold and unattractive, in which Art 
 and " the golden spell of Eloquence," are not 
 made important mediums of expression. 
 
 As to the mode of individual devotion in a con- 
 gregation, the suggested Order of Service combines 
 
los 
 
 the three well understood forms. It is believed 
 that there would be no insuperable difficulty in 
 the way of arranging and constructing two sorts 
 of Service : — one, the chief aim of which should 
 be Devotion, and the other more adapted to 
 convey Intellectual and Moral instruction. With 
 some such arrangement for morning and evening 
 discourses and exercises, a wider range and choice 
 of topic and mode of illustration and discussion 
 than seem at present possible, or perhaps desirable, 
 would probably follow. 
 
 We are far from assuming that the pulpit is the 
 chief source of moral influence and religious in- 
 struction. The pulpit for addresses to the people 
 has long been an institution of the Church ; it has 
 been associated with public worship, and has done 
 much for the improvement of mankind. For 
 those who have little leisure, it might give the 
 substance of a volume within the limits of a dis- 
 course. On the st^ge, at the bar, in the Houses of 
 Parliament, the living voice has always possessed 
 a special charm distinct from that of the silent 
 book. More education and growing refinement 
 will not abolish the efficacy of oral teaching ; they 
 will rather elevate its tone, and widen its empire. 
 For these and similar reasons we assum.e the con- 
 tinuance of the pulpit, and the enduring usefulness 
 of the venerable usage which brings men and 
 women together in solemn assemblage, for mutual 
 encouragement in well-doing, and the utterance of 
 
io6 
 
 devout aspirations fitly conceived and worthily- 
 expressed. 
 
 It should also be considered whether, in a 
 Church like that proposed and which might be 
 opened daily like churches on the Continent, there 
 should not be short week-day services, and simple 
 devotional exercises every morning and evening, 
 besides classes throughout the week, for which 
 adequate provision could be made in the construc- 
 tion of the building. It seems to many a sad 
 waste of valuable opportunities that not a few 
 costly and noble Ecclesiastical Edifices should be 
 in use only a few hours in the week. The mem- 
 bers of a living, earnest, and truly Catholic Church, 
 awake to the necessity of aiding the religious 
 development, the moral and intellectual improve- 
 ment, and the aesthetic tastes of the general body, 
 would be careful to relieve the dreary solitude 
 within the walls of the material structure during 
 the six days out of the seven. This, perhaps, 
 might be best accomplished by providing lectures 
 on scientific and kindred subjects, to be delivered 
 by competent teachers, which should set forth the 
 power, wisdom, and goodness so manifestly dis- 
 played in the majesty of the heavens and the 
 beauty of the earth. Such addresses would be 
 made additionally attractive and useful if accom- 
 panied by suitable music, which might be ren- 
 dered in a manner both simple and grand. Ex- 
 perience has proved that large audiences readily 
 
I07 
 
 feel the elevating power of music, and that the 
 mental relief which it gives need not be confounded 
 with the gratification of a mere craving for excite- 
 ment. 
 
 To associate the idea of Divine Worship with 
 the highest well-being of man, including all that 
 is helpful towards his social, intellectual, moral, 
 and spiritual elevation, and to do this indepen- 
 dently of all merely sectarian influences, and in 
 such modes as may gain the interest of those per- 
 sons in every class, who care more for religious 
 culture than for dividing names and stereotyping 
 creeds, is quite in agreement with the spirit and 
 manner of the best modern thought. 
 
 It has appeared to the compilers of the accom- 
 panying Order of Service, that these views can at 
 present be best carried out by means of a new 
 and a free pulpit, and by the erection and mainten- 
 ance of a grand and really Catholic Metropolitan 
 Church, wherein no object should be sought in its 
 teachings and devotions but the crowning Christ- 
 like end of the whole life's dedication to the Divine 
 One, evinced in the love of Him, and in the faith- 
 ful service of man. 
 
 In parting with our readers, we would in all 
 sincerity add, that none can be more conscious 
 than ourselves of the imperfect manner in which 
 we have treated a great subject. But it has long 
 
io8 
 
 appeared to us that a deep, unsatisfied want exists 
 in the present day : — 
 
 A Public Service of Religion — Truly Catholic 
 — to express and intensify the Aspirations of free, 
 yet reverent minds. Already, since the first issue 
 of these " Suggestions," we have found ourselves in 
 frequent and unexpected contact with many who 
 cordially approve of this object, and are willing 
 to unite with others in the attempt to realize it. 
 Should this further issue stimulate in the same 
 important direction the consideration of those who 
 have gifts and culture, our humble effort will have 
 found an increased reward. 
 
 The Authors. 
 
 The following statement by the Rev. M. J. 
 Savage, Boston, U.S., respecting a place of 
 worship for the future, is so much in agreement 
 with our views that we have much pleasure in 
 placing it before our readers : — 
 
 " I want to give you, in as brief a view as is possible, 
 an outline of my ideal of a place of worship. If we had 
 no house in which we could meet, and it were left to me 
 to dictate as to what it should be, I would have some- 
 thing after the fashion which I will now suggest. I 
 would have a church beautiful in its architecture. I 
 would have one as fine as we could easily and honestly 
 
I09 
 
 afford. It should stand as the ideal of beauty and of 
 truth. It should suggest aspiration. Its very outline 
 should lead forward and lure upward the thoughts and 
 the emotions. And, then, fine music, as fine as organ 
 tone and human voice could produce. But, the main 
 thing, I would have it fuller of suggestions of the history 
 of the heroism and the glory of man than is Westminster 
 Abbey. I would have it fuller of relic and of picture 
 and of beautiful suggestive things than any Catholic 
 cathedral of the world. Busts, statues, pictures, relics 
 and reminiscences of all the grand souls of the world 
 should be in it, so that the eye should light, whichever 
 way it turned, upon some suggestion of human nobility ; 
 should see the figure or something to call up the idea 
 of the man who has served his kind in the realm of art, 
 in the realm of science, in the realm of philanthropy, in 
 all departments of life. The great men of our history 
 should be there. The air should be redolent with the 
 perfume of their remembered deeds. The air should be 
 alive and quivering with the whisper of these spiritual 
 presences, and of what they have done for men. And 
 everywhere the soul should see something to suggest 
 the highest possibility of life, something to stimulate 
 and lift up and ennoble man. And then the internal 
 activities of the church should correspond to all these 
 three departments of worship. It should be a part of 
 our work to cultivate eyes to see and hearts to feel ali 
 the infinite forms of the world's beauty." 
 
no 
 
 THE 
 
 NEW CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF GOD AND THE SERVICE 
 OF MAN. 
 
 Suggestions. 
 
 1. A collection to be made of Two Hundred 
 carefully selected hymns, which might be added 
 to in future editions. 
 
 2. A book of Religious Services, with a Supple- 
 jnent of Fifty pages of extracts from Ancient and 
 Modern religious writers. This book might also 
 be enlarged as opportunity offered. 
 
 The principle of Religious Growth to be ac- 
 knowledged, so that in the future the Services 
 would undergo such changes as the Intellectual, 
 
Ill 
 
 Moral, and Spiritual development of the Congre- 
 gation might require. 
 
 Resolve. 
 
 To build in London a handsome Gothic Church 
 to seat i,ooo persons, which shall be adorned 
 with stained glass in every window, with suitable 
 paintings and statues, and possessing a choir equal 
 to that of St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster 
 Abbey. 
 
112 
 
 PROPOSED ORDER 
 
 A PUBLIC RELIGIOUS SERVICE. 
 
 The Organ to be played while the Congregation is 
 assembling. 
 
 1. A Hymn of Aspiration ; simple tune, so that 
 all the Congregation may unite in singing. 
 
 2. A Dedication of the Congregation to higher 
 religious life. 
 
 3. A Service of Adoration, Praise, and Thanks- 
 giving to God ; or a Service acknowledging our 
 dependence on Him ; or a Service confessing our 
 unworthiness, and expressing our resolves to be 
 more kind, truthful, just, generous, faithful, pure, 
 steadfast, true unto one another. 
 
 4. Anthem. 
 
 5. A Silent Devotional Exercise, — with appro- 
 priate organ accompaniment. 
 
113 
 
 6. Two reading lessons ; one from the Bible 
 and one from some other Religious Literature. 
 Between the readings a connecting hymn may be 
 sung. 
 
 7. Anthem. 
 
 8. Sermon or Discourse. 
 
 g. A Hymn ; simple tune, like No. i. 
 
 10. Benediction. 
 
 The Organ to be played while the Congregation is 
 leaving. 
 
114 
 
 The following are the extracts previously re- 
 ferred to, showing' the conclusions of modern 
 philosophers with relation to the topics herein 
 discussed : — 
 
 Deity not an object of immediate Contemplation. 
 
 " The Deity is not an object of immediate contempla- 
 tion ; as existing and in Himself, He is beyond our 
 reach ; we can know Him only mediately through His 
 works, and are only warranted in assuming His existence 
 as a certain kind of cause necessary to account for a 
 certain state of things, of whose reality our faculties are 
 supposed to inform us." 
 
 Sir William Hamilton. 
 
 " In His essence, God is incomprehensible ; we can 
 only know that He is, not what He is. All names which 
 are intended to express the separate attributes of God 
 are appropriate only in a figurative sense, since God is 
 in truth unquaUfied and pure being. God is present in 
 the world only by His operations, not by His essence." 
 The Jewish Alexandrian Philosophy, by Ueberweg. 
 
 "To speak of an Absolute and Infinite Person, is 
 simply to use language to which, however true it may 
 be in a superhuman sense, no mode of human thought 
 can possibly attach itself" 
 
 Professor H. L. Mansel. 
 
 Free-will, Responsibility, and Duty. 
 
 " Throughout the breadth and height and depth of 
 human consciousness, Personality manifests itself under 
 
one condition, that of a Free Will, influenced, though 
 not coerced, by motives." 
 
 " The essential characteristic of volition, as presented 
 to the mind, consists in the consciousness of a power of 
 choosing between two alternate determinations." 
 
 Professor H. L. Mans el. 
 
 " Free agency may co-exist with invariable regularity, 
 it obviously cannot co-exist with necessary regularity, 
 which, consequently, is incompatible with moral respon- 
 sibility. If men are compelled by the force of circum- 
 stances, or by any other force, to move only in one 
 direction, they cannot be responsible for not moving in 
 a different direction." 
 
 William Thomas Thornton. 
 
 " If you deprive man of his free agency, you subvert 
 his nature. You may have order from him and regu- 
 larity, as you may have from the tides and the trade 
 winds, but you put an end to his moral character, to 
 virtue, to merit, to accountability." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " To deny the freedom of the Will is to make morality 
 impossible." 
 
 James Anthony Froude. 
 
 " I submit that Duty is a power which rises with us 
 in the morning, and goes to rest with us at night. It is 
 co-extensive with the action of our intelligence. It is 
 the shadow which cleaves to us go where we will, and 
 which only leaves us when we leave the light of life." 
 The Right Hon. W! E. Gladstone. 
 
 The Book of Nature and the Bible. 
 
 "Within the memory of some [say, within fifty 
 years], the common practice of theologians was to test 
 any new scientific heresy by its agreement or non- 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 
 
 agreement with the Bible ; but the time had now come 
 when what was taught in the Bible was tested by science. 
 It was upon the science of the time that the basis 
 of religion must rest, using the word ' science ' in its 
 largest sense as dealing with human nature, its religious 
 and moral, as well as in its intellectual state. The 
 Book of Nature was not now to be interpreted by the 
 Bible, but the Bible was to be interpreted by the Book 
 of Nature ; and in the future, nothing connected with 
 religion would stand that was not in accordance with 
 the great revelation of nature." 
 
 Dr. William B. Carpenter. 
 
 "In many Christians the idea of God has been 
 degraded by childish and little-minded teaching ; the 
 Eternal and the Infinite and the All-embracing has been 
 represented as the head of the Clerical interest, as a 
 sort of Clergyman, as a sort of schoolmaster, as a sort 
 of philanthropist. But the scientific man knows Him 
 to be eternal ; in astronomy, in geology, he becomes 
 familiar with the countless millenniums of His lifetime. 
 The scientific man strains his mind actually to realize 
 God's infinity. As far off as the fixed stars he traces 
 Him, ' distance inexpressible by numbers that have no 
 name.' " 
 
 Aliqius. 
 
 On Faith in the Veracity of our Faculties. 
 
 " Faith in the veracity of our faculties, if it means 
 anything, requires us to believe that things are as they 
 appear — that is, appear to the mind in the last and 
 highest resort ; and to deal with the fact that they ' only 
 appear' as if it constituted an eternal exile from their 
 
 reality is to attribute lunacy to universal reason 
 
 The infinite is no doubt the negation of the finite; 
 
 but so also is the finite of the infinite Both are 
 
 not indeed alike ' conceivable^ if by that word be meant 
 presentable in imagination ; but both are alike cogitable, 
 and take their place among the objects of assured 
 
ii; 
 
 belief at the same moment and in the same act. The 
 experience which gives to my perception a body of cer- 
 tain shape and size, simultaneously gives to my knowledge 
 the boundless space in which it lies. The definite 
 object is seen upon the infinite ground." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Martineau. 
 
 The Indefinite and the Infinite. 
 
 " Mr. [J. S.] Mill does not seem to be aware that 
 what the mathematician calls infinite the metaphysician 
 calls indefinite, and that arguments drawn from the 
 mathematical use of the term infinite are wholly irrele- 
 vant to the metaphysician." 
 
 Professor H. L. Mansel. 
 
 Body and Extension not the Same. 
 
 " There are some that would persuade us that body 
 and extension are the same thing ; who either change 
 the signification of words, which I would not suspect 
 them of, they having so severely condemned the phi- 
 losophy of others, because it hath been too much 
 placed in the uncertain meaning, or deceitful obscurity 
 of doubtful or insignificant terms. If, therefore, they 
 mean by body and extension the same that other 
 people do, viz., by body, something that is solid and 
 extended, whose parts are separable and moveable 
 different ways ; and by extension, only the space that 
 lies between the extremities of those solid coherent 
 parts, and which is possessed by them ; they confound 
 very different ideas one with another. For I appeal 
 to every man's own thoughts, whether the idea of space 
 be not as distinct from that of solidity, as it is from 
 the idea of scarlet colour ? It is true, solidity cannot 
 exist without extension ; neither can scarlet colour 
 exist without extension ; but this hinders not but they 
 are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others as neces- 
 sary to their existence or conception, which yet are 
 very distinct ideas. Motion can neither be, nor be 
 
Ii8 
 
 conceived, without space ; and yet motion is not space, 
 nor space motion : space can exist ■without it, and they 
 are very distinct ideas ; and so, I think, are those of 
 space and soUdity. Solidity is so inseparable an idea 
 from body, that upon that depends its filling of space ; 
 its contact, impulse, and communication of motion 
 upon impulse. And if it be a reason to prove, that 
 spirit is different from body, because thinking includes 
 not the idea of extension in it ; the same reason will 
 be as valid, I suppose, to prove, that space is not body, 
 because it includes not the idea of solidity in it ; space 
 and solidity being as distinct ideas, as thinking and 
 extension, and as wholly separable in the mind one 
 from another. Body then and extension, it is evident, 
 are two distinct ideas. For, ist, extension includes 
 no solidity, nor resistance to the motion of body, as 
 body does. 2ndly, the parts of pure space are insepar- 
 able one from the other ; so that the continuity cannot 
 be separated, neither really or mentally. For I demand 
 of any one to remove any part of it from another, with 
 which it is continued, even so much as in thought. . . . 
 if body be not supposed infinite, which, I think, no one 
 will affirm, I would ask, whether, if God placed a man 
 at the extremity of corporeal beings, he could not 
 stretch his hand beyond his body ? If he could, then 
 he would put his arm where there was before space 
 without body ; and if then he spread his fingers, there 
 •would still be space between them without body." 
 
 John Locke. 
 
 " If space was created, it must have been previously 
 non-existent. The non-existence of space cannot, how- 
 ever, by any mental effort, be imagined. It is one of 
 the most familiar truths that the idea of space as sur- 
 rounding us on all sides is not for a moment to be got 
 rid of — not only are we compelled to think of space as 
 now everywhere present, but we are unable to conceive 
 its absence either in the past or the future. And if 
 the non-existence of space is absolutely inconceivable, 
 
119 
 
 then, necessarily, its creation is absolutely inconceiv- 
 able." 
 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 " It is impossible to imagine that there should be no 
 space, though one might very well imagine there should 
 be space without objects to fill it. Space is therefore 
 regarded as a condition of the possibility of phenomena, 
 not as a determination produced by them ; it is a repre- 
 sentation A priori which necessarily precedes all external 
 phenomena." 
 
 " Kant's Critique," as translated by Max Muller. 
 
 " An atom is a material body which cannot be split, 
 and the endless divisibility of bodies is in direct con- 
 tradiction to this theory." 
 
 " A single grain of musk has been known to perfume 
 a large room for the space of twenty years. Consider 
 how often, during that time, the air of the apartment 
 must have been renewed and have become charged 
 with fresh odour. At the lowest computation the musk 
 had been subdivided into 320 quadrillions of particles, 
 €ach of them capable of affecting the olfactory organs." 
 
 Professor P. G. Tait. 
 
 "Let a vast sphere be described of such mighty 
 dimensions that it embraces not only all the objects 
 visible to the unaided eye, not only all the objects 
 visible in our most powerful telescopes, but even every 
 object that the most fertile imagination can conceive, 
 what relation must this stupendous sphere bear to the 
 whole of space? The mighty sphere can only be a 
 small part of space. It must bear to the whole of 
 space a ratio less than the water in a single dew-drop 
 bears to the water in the Atlantic Ocean." 
 
 Sir Robert S. Ball, LL.D., F.R.S. 
 
 " It is not simply the vast in which men have learned 
 to believe, not mere immensity, but the mystery of 
 
I20 
 
 absolute infinity. On aU sides our island home is sur- 
 rounded by a shoreless sea of space." 
 
 R. A. Proctor, F.R.S. 
 
 The Smallness and the Swiftness of Atoms. 
 
 "We have absolute proof that gases consist of par- 
 ticles of matter which are perfectly free and detached 
 from one another, and which are constantly flying about 
 in all directions. . . . An equation can be formed, by 
 which the diameter of a particle is given in terms of 
 quantities which are all at least, approximately, known. 
 This calculation has actually been made, and the re- 
 sult is that the effective diameter of a particle must 
 be something certainly not very different from one 
 250,000,000th part of an inch. Then, of course, know- 
 ing the diameter of a particle, and the average distance 
 between two contiguous particles, we can calculate how 
 many particles there are in a cubic inch of any gas 
 at the ordinary temperature of pressure. Thus we 
 can assert from measurement and calculation that the 
 number of particles in a cubic inch of air in the ordinary 
 state of the atmosphere is represented by a number 
 which is approximately about 3 X io°°. This number 
 might have been written as 3 with twenty cyphers after 
 it: [300,000,000,000,000,000,000.] If a drop of water 
 is |th of an inch in diameter, and if those numbers I 
 have just given represent the diameters of its individual 
 particles, or its grained structure, what is the size of 
 a body which bears to the whole earth the same ratio 
 as one of those particles to this drop of water ? The 
 answer is that it must be something between about the 
 size of a cherry or small plum and the size of a cricket- 
 ball. Take on the average a good-sized plum, or a 
 small orange, then you get from that the approximation 
 that as the large plum is to the whole earth, so is this 
 coarse-grained particle to the drop of water ; so that if 
 we could magnify a drop of water to the apparent size 
 of the whole earth, as seen from the distance at which 
 
121 
 
 a single plum is just visible, we could just see its grained 
 structure. 
 
 " In a mass of hydrogen at ordinary temperature and 
 pressure, every particle has on an average 17,700,000,000 
 collisions per second with other particles, that is to say, 
 17,700,000,000 times in every second it has its course 
 wholly changed. And yet the particles are moving at 
 a rate of something like seventy miles per minute. So 
 comes this curious problem — given that the direction of 
 motion of a particle is arbitrarily changed 17,700,000,000 
 times in every second, and that the particle itself is 
 moving seventy miles a minute, where would it be at 
 the end of a single minute, having started froni any 
 given place ? " 
 
 Professor P. G. Tait. 
 
 " How wonderful is the power of man ! Chained 
 down to the surface of the earth, an intelligent atom 
 on a grain of sand lost in the immensity of space, he 
 invents instruments which multiply a thousandfold his 
 vision, he sounds the depths of the ether, gauges the 
 visible immense, and counts the myriads of stars which 
 people it ; next studying their most complicated move- 
 ments, he measures exactly their dimensions and the 
 distances of the nearest of them from the earth, and 
 next deduces their masses, then discovering in the 
 seeming disorder of the stellar groupings real bonds of 
 union, he at last evolves order from apparent confusion. 
 Nor is this all. Rising by a supreme flight of thought 
 to the most abstract speculations, he discovers the laws 
 which regulate all celestial movements, and defines the 
 nature of the universal force which sustains the worlds. 
 .... The solar spectrum- which was familiar to man's 
 gaze in the rainbow, that child of showers and rain- 
 drops, long before Philosophy claimed it or utilized its 
 teachings. What nature does by means of a rain-drop, 
 physicists accomplish by means of a prism, and the 
 first teaching of the prism was, that a beam of light is 
 not a single thing, but a bundle of things called rays, 
 each with its own special mission, as if each had a 
 
122 
 
 master of its own, and had a different tale to tell or note 
 to sing. And so it has. Let all the rays in a sunbeam 
 sing in chorus, and the chord which falls on our eye, as 
 sound would fall on our ear, is white. Now, let the 
 beam be sent through the prism, and let the latter work 
 its spell j the chord has vanished. In place of it we 
 find each ray with a coloured note, and may liken the 
 glorious coloured band, which we call the solar spec- 
 trum, to the key-board of an organ ; each ray a note, 
 each variation in colour a variation in pitch ; and as 
 there are sounds in nature which we cannot hear, so 
 there are rays in the sunbeam too subtle for our eyes." 
 Guilleman's " Heavens." 
 
 The Reign of Law Universal. 
 
 " In the first place, then, we must acknowledge that 
 God governs the world by fixed laws, and does not alter 
 these laws at our wish or request. This is that great 
 truth of the order of nature which science presents to 
 us in every possible form, and with every token and 
 evidence — which experience teaches us (if we do but 
 attend to her) in every act of our lives, and which 
 nevertheless we seem to set aside or ignore, or to which 
 we yield only a forced or reluctant assent. Let us 
 eiideavour to put the thought of this clearly before the 
 mind's eye ; let us imagine some one, I will not say 
 ' a little lower than the angels,' but a natural philosopher 
 who is capable of seeing creation, not with our imper- 
 fect vision and hazy fancies, but with a real scientific 
 insight into the world in which we live. He would 
 behold the reign of law everywhere, in the least things 
 as in the greatest, in the most complex as well as in the 
 simplest, in the life of man as well as of the animals, 
 extending to organic as well as inorganic substances ; 
 m all the sequences, combinations, adaptations, motions, 
 intentions of nature, he would recognize the same law 
 and order— one and continuous in all the different 
 spheres of knowledge, in all the different realms of 
 
123 
 
 nature, through all time and over all space. Nowhere 
 would the microscope or the telescope reveal to him 
 any spring or interval in which as in some cracked jar a 
 hand or a finger might be inserted : nowhere would there 
 be an aperture in nature through which the light from 
 another world might come streaming. He would trace 
 the most seemingly capricious of earthly things, such as 
 the winds and the mists, to their ocean home ; to us they 
 are the type of human mutability, but he would know 
 that they are really subject to laws as fixed as those by 
 which the stone falls to the ground ; in the processes of 
 birth and death he would also recognize the uniformity 
 of causes which could not be set aside. He would con- 
 fess, too, that the actions of men and the workings of the 
 mind are inseparable from the physical antecedents or 
 accompaniments which prepare for them or co-operate 
 with them, and that they are ordered and adjusted as 
 part of a whole. Nor will he deny, when he looks up at 
 the heavens, that this earth with its endless variety of 
 races, and languages, and infinity of human interests 
 {each one so intense and particular at some time or other 
 to some individual man), is only to be regarded as a 
 pebble on the sea-shore or as a point in immensity in 
 comparison with the universe. And in this universe, at 
 the utmost limit to which the most powerful instruments 
 will carry the eye of man, there is still the same order 
 reappearing everywhere, the same uniformity of nature, 
 the same force which acts upon the earth. This is that 
 law — one and continuous in all times and places, which 
 may be truly said to be the visible image of God and 
 ■* her voice the harmony of the world.' " 
 
 Rev. Professor Jowett. 
 
 " To grant our prayers would, we well know, be often 
 the greatest unkindness God could do us. We know so 
 little what would make us happy or what would do us 
 good. If we saw a little truer, a little deeper, or a little 
 further, we should pray to be deUvered from the fate we 
 are now passionately praying to attain, as from the worst 
 
124 
 
 of earthly evils. To pray for this or that blessing with 
 the proviso, ' if it be good for us,' is superfluous, for our 
 Creed is that God will always give His children what He 
 sees to be good for them." 
 
 W. Rathbone Greg. 
 
 " Men praying resemble sailors who have cast anchor 
 on a rock, and who fancy that they are pulling the rock 
 to them when they are pulling themselves to the rock." 
 
 " Fortnightly Review." 
 
 " Prayer with the view of working upon God's Will is 
 idle." 
 
 The Hon. Auberon Herbert. 
 
 Nature net Self-originated. 
 
 " None of the processes of Nature, since the time 
 when Nature began, have produced the slightest differ- 
 ence in the properties of any molecule. We are there- 
 fore unable to ascribe either the existence of the mole- 
 cules or the identity of their properties to the operation 
 of any of the causes which we call natural. On the other 
 hand, the exact quality of each molecule to all others of 
 the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well 
 said, the essential character of a manufactured article, 
 and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self- 
 existent. Thus we have been led, along a strictly 
 scientific path, very near to the point at which Science 
 must stop. Not that science is debarred from studying 
 the external mechanism of a molecule which she can- 
 not take to pieces, any more than from investigating 
 an organism which she cannot put together. But in 
 tracing back the history of matter. Science is arrested 
 when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the 
 molecule has been made, and, on the other, that it 
 has not been made by any of the processes we call 
 natural." 
 
 Professor Clerk Maxwell. 
 
125 
 
 • 
 
 " Astronomers have not only determined that the sun 
 is a star, and have approximately fixed his place in 
 nature as regards size and brilliancy, but they have 
 compared its spectrum with those of the other stars 
 which people space No doubt the future pro- 
 gress of science will show that we,^ after all, are look- 
 ing through a glass darkly, and are not yet face to 
 face with the whole truth. We must all of us be 
 content to have our work criticised and expanded by 
 future work ; by researches carried on with greater skill ; 
 with more elaborate methods and higher views ; while it 
 is certain that we shall get a much higher and much 
 richer truth out of further inquiries." 
 
 " Chemistry of the Sun "— 
 
 By J. Norman Lockyer, F.R.S. 
 
 " It is important to keep before men's minds the idea of 
 the genesis of the elements ; this gives some form to our 
 conceptions, and accustoms the mind to look for some 
 physical production of atoms. It is still more important, 
 too, to keep in view the great probability that there exist 
 in Nature laboratories where atoms are formed, and 
 laboratories where atoms cease to be. We are on the 
 track and are not daunted, and fain would we enter 
 the mysterious region which Ignorance tickets " Un- 
 known." It is for us to strive to unravel the secret com- 
 position even of the so-called elements — to undauntedly 
 persevere — and still bear up right onward. ... I would 
 ask investigators not necessarily to accept or to reject 
 the hypothesis of chemical evolution, but to treat it as a 
 provisional hypothesis ; to keep it in view in their re- 
 searches, to inquire how far it lends itself to the interpre- 
 tation of the phenomena observed, and to test experi- 
 mentally every line of thought which points in this 
 direction." 
 
 Opening Address by William Crookes, Esq., F.R.S., 
 at the British Association. 1886. 
 
 " Our earth was at one time in an incandescent state, 
 a state accordingly in which neither fowls nor any other 
 
126 
 
 living thing, be it plant* or animal, such as we know it, 
 could exist ? How then did life itself originate upon 
 earth? Was the first living thing formed by natural 
 causes, by a process of evolution, from inorganic matter ? 
 And whatever may be the answer to that first question, 
 were the vast variety of forms of life which we see around 
 us formed from the first by a process of evolution in- 
 volving only the operation of natural causes such as be- 
 longed to the domain of science ? 
 
 As to the first question, all we can say is, that so far as 
 ourscientificknowledgegoes, thereis agreat gulph between 
 the inorganic and the organic kingdoms. In vain have 
 attempts been made to get the living out of the non- 
 living. It was only in the case of microscopic organisms 
 that any appearance even of success has been obtained. 
 In this case the experimental inquiry is beset with 
 enormous difficulties in consequence of the excessive 
 minuteness of the germs. But the result of the labours 
 of our best workers is such that the highest authorities 
 are, I think, pretty nearly, if not altogether unanimous, 
 in regarding the results of the experiments as altogether 
 adverse to the supposition of spontaneous generation. 
 Professor G. G. Stokes, Pres. R. S. 
 
 " The question of Spontaneous Generation is, I be- 
 lieve, practically set at rest for the scientific world. . . . 
 Place an old boot in a moist place, or expose common 
 paste, or a pot of jam to the air; it soon becomes 
 coated with a blue-green mould, which is nothing else 
 than the fructification of a little plant called Penicillium 
 glaucum. Do not imagine that the mould has sprung 
 spontaneously from boot, or paste, or jam ; its germs, 
 which are abundant in the air, have been sown, and 
 have germinated, in as legal and legitimate a way as 
 thistle-seeds wafted by the wind to a proper soil." 
 
 Professor J. Tyndall. 
 
 " I am ready to adopt it as an article of scientific 
 faith, true through all space and through all time, that 
 life proceeds from life, and from nothing but life." 
 
 Sir W. Thomson. 
 
127 
 
 The Evolution of the Individual. 
 
 " No exception is, at this time, known to the general 
 law, established upon an immense multitude of direct 
 observations, that every living thing is evolved from a 
 particle of matter in which no trace of the distinctive 
 characters of the adult form of that living thing is dis- 
 cernible. This particle is termed a germ. ... In all 
 animals and plants, above the lowest, the germ is a 
 nucleated cell, using that term in its broadest sense ; 
 and the first step in the process of the evolution of the 
 individual is the division of this cell into two or more 
 portions. The process of division is repeated, until the 
 organism, from being unicellular, becomes multicellular. 
 The single cell becomes a cell-aggregate ; and it is to the 
 growth and metamorphosis of the cells of the cell-aggre- 
 gate thus produced, that all the organs and tissues of the 
 adult owe their origin." 
 
 Thomas Henry Huxley, LL.D. 
 
 " Let us never forget that Life, as we know it here 
 below, is the antecedent or the cause of organization, 
 and not its product ; that the peculiar combinations of 
 matter which are the homes and abodes of Life are 
 prepared and shaped under the control and guidance of 
 that mysterious power which we know as vitality ; and 
 that no discovery of science has ever been able to 
 reduce it to a lower level, or to identify it with any 
 purely material force." 
 
 The Duke of Argyll. 
 
 " When a thought passes through the mind, it is asso- 
 ciated, as we have now abundant reason for believing, 
 with some change in the protoplasm of the cerebral 
 cells. Are we, therefore, justified in regarding thought 
 as a property of the protoplasm of these cells, in the 
 sense in which we regard muscular contraction as a 
 property of the protoplasm of muscle ? Or is it really 
 a property residing in something far different, but which 
 
128 
 
 may yet need for its manifestation the activity of cere- 
 bral protoplasm ? 
 
 " If we could see any analogy between thought and 
 any one of the admitted phenomena of matter, we 
 should be justified in accepting the first of these con- 
 clusions as the simplest, and as afifording a hypothesis 
 most in accordance with the comprehensiveness of 
 natural laws ; but between thought and the physical 
 phenomena of matter there is not only no analogy, but 
 there is no conceivable analogy ; and the obvious and 
 continuous path which we have hitherto followed up in 
 our reasonings from the phenomena of lifeless matter 
 through those of living matter here comes suddenly to 
 an end. The chasm between unconscious life and 
 thought is deep and impassable, and no transitional 
 phenomena can be found by which as by a bridge we 
 may span it over ; for even from irritability, to which, 
 on a superficial view, consciousness may seem related, 
 it is as absolutely distinct as it is from any of the 
 ordinary phenomena of matter." 
 
 Professor G. J. Allman. 
 
 "To attempt to reckon up the influence which Mr. 
 Darwin's multifarious work has had upon modern 
 thought and modern life in all its phases seems as diffi- 
 cult a task as it would be to count the number and trace 
 the extent of the sound-waves from a park of artillery. 
 The impetus he has given to science, not only in his 
 own, but in other departments, can only find a parallel 
 in Newton. . . . Mr. Darwin's great theory, in some 
 of its parts, may require modification ; he himself 
 latterly, we believe, did not seek to maintain it in all its 
 original integrity. As has been suggested, some greater 
 law may yet be found which will cover Darwinism and 
 take a wider sweep ; but, whatever development science 
 may assume, Mr. Darwin will in all the future stand out 
 as one of the giants in scientific thought and scientific 
 investigation." 
 
 "The Times." 
 
129 
 
 " It may be admitted that when Professor Darwin's 
 books on the ' Origin of Species,' and on the ' De- 
 scent of Man,' first appeared they were largely regarded 
 by religious men as containing a theory necessarily hos- 
 tile to fundamental truths of religion. A clearer study 
 has greatly modified any such impression. It is seen 
 that whether the creative activity of God is manifested 
 through catastrophes, as the phrase goes,, or in progres- 
 sive evolution, it is still His creative activity, and the 
 really great questions beyond remain untouched. The 
 evolutionary process, supposing it to exist, must have 
 had a beginning : who began it ? It must have had 
 material to work with : who furnished it ? It is itself a 
 law or system of laws : who enacted them ? . . . 
 There are apparently three important gaps in the evolu- 
 tionary sequence which it is well to bear in mind. 
 There is the great gap between the highest animal 
 instinct and the reflective, salf-measuring, self-analyzing 
 thought of man. There is the greater gap between life 
 and the most highly organized matter. There is the 
 greatest gap of all between matter and nothing. At 
 these three points, as far as we can see, the Creative 
 Will must have intervened otherwise than by way of 
 evolution out of existing materials — to create mind, to 
 create matter. But, beyond all question, it is our busi- 
 ness to respect in science, as in other things, every 
 clearly ascertained report of the senses, for every such 
 report represents a fact, and a fact is sacred as having 
 its place in the Temple of Universal Truth." 
 
 Rev. Canon Liddon. 
 
 " The oyster, though an inhabitant of shallow water, 
 and very limitedly locomotive when young, has sur- 
 vived all the changes since the carboniferous age, and 
 has spread itself over the whole northern hemisphere. 
 . . . Everywhere, and in all formations, they present 
 forms, which are so variable and yet so similar that one 
 might suppose all the so-called species to be mere varie- 
 ties. Did the oyster originate separately on the two 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 sides of the Atlantic, or did it cross over so promptly 
 that its appearance seems to be identical on the two 
 sides ? Are all the oysters of a common ancestry, or 
 did the causes, whatever they were, which introduced 
 the oyster in the carboniferous act over again in later 
 periods ? Who can tell ? This is one of the cases 
 where causation and development — the two scientific 
 factors which constitute the basis of what is vaguely called 
 evolution — cannot easily be isolated. I would recom- 
 mend to those biologists who discuss these questions to 
 addict themselves to the oyster. . . . The forms of 
 living things are more stable than the lands and seas in 
 which they live. If we were to adopt some of the 
 modern ideas of evolution, we might cut the gordian 
 knot by supposing that, as like causes can produce like 
 effects, these types of life have originated more than 
 once in geological time, and need not be genetically 
 connected with each otljer. But while evolutionists 
 repudiate such an application of their doctrine, however 
 natural and rational, it would seem that nature still more 
 strangely repudiates it, and will not allow us to assume 
 more than one origin for one species. 
 
 The Inaugural Address of Sir J. William Dawson, 
 President of the British Association for 1886. 
 
 " We are willing to believe that a ' new species ' has 
 been evolved from ' variety ' where this has been clearly 
 and satisfactorily shown : but not sooner. 
 
 " By new species we do not mean modification only 
 consequent upon change of climate and food, and of 
 variety, merely in organic structure caused by natural 
 selection, which have long been thoroughly well known 
 by farmers, botanists, florists, and fish-breeders, to exist in 
 vast abundance ; and here we desire to draw a broad 
 and plainly perceptible line of demarcation. But we 
 mean a set of creatures (vegetable or animal), fertile 
 amongst themselves and non-fertile with their ancestors. 
 
 Animals have a comparatively free and wide range on 
 the vast continent of America ; fishes even more so in 
 
131 
 
 the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and birds in the air 
 have not their flight restricted by wire cage-like fences. 
 The inborn laws, however, which are in the being of 
 such, permeate their natures, and prescribe their various 
 modes of action, keep their species well-defined and 
 generally distinct, if they do not altogether prohibit a 
 blending of the organisms of manifestly different species, 
 and that intermixture which would apparently tend to 
 inexplicable confusion and chaos. ' Species are per- 
 sistent in nature, the acorn always grows into an oak, 
 and each creature produces of its kind.' 
 
 " How far certain forced and apparently strained, if 
 not actually unnatural conjunctions may sometimes be 
 rendered prolific, are, as matters of fact, yet very un- 
 certain. We have reliable information that Orchids in 
 their vast variety of structure, and exquisite beauty of 
 form and tint, offer no exception to this view.* 
 
 " Dr. Lionel Beale remarks : — ' If it is necessary that 
 one, or five, or ten cells or ancestral sources of animated 
 nature require to be admitted, evolutionists should say so 
 plainly, and, at the same time, explain why they object 
 to admit 50, or 500, or 5,000. 
 
 " It would have been, we humbly submit, more in 
 the interest of science, have prevented serious misunder- 
 standing and much heated discussion, had Mr. Darwin 
 written only in proof of the evolution of variety, and 
 excluded altogether the term new species." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " On the whole we must really acknowledge that there 
 is a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage 
 in the development of man. Nay, if we gather to- 
 gether the whole sum of the fossil men hitherto known, 
 and put them parallel with those of the present time, 
 we can decidedly pronounce that there are among living 
 men a much greater number of individuals who show a 
 relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils 
 
 * Our opinion is strengthened by the authority of Mr. W. Bull, 
 King's Road, Chelsea, London, the famous grower of these plants. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 known up to this time. . . . One thing I must say 
 — that not a single fossil skull of an ape or of an 
 ' apeman ' has yet been found that could really have 
 belonged to a human being. Every addition to the 
 amount of objects, which we have obtained as materials 
 for discussion, has removed us further from the hypo- 
 thesis propounded. ... As a matter of fact, we 
 must positively recognize that there still exists as yet a 
 sharp line of demarcation between man and the ape. 
 We cannot teach, we cannot pronounce it to be a con- 
 quest of science, that man descends from the ape or 
 from any other animal." 
 
 Professor Rudolf Virchow. 
 
 " We live in an age when young men prattle about 
 Protoplasm, and when young ladies in gilded saloons 
 unconsciously talk Atheism." 
 
 The Earl of Beaconsfield. 
 
 Tlie Beauty and Growing Fitness of the World. 
 
 " In the harmony of the spheres everything is in a 
 state of mobility and perpetual transmutation. The 
 heavens are tenanted with new nebulae, and old stars 
 disappear in the abyss of immensity. On the earth 
 new generations of animals and plants arise ; while the 
 scythe of time mows down those which but lately 
 flourished there. On the one hand, the mass of ani- 
 mated matter visibly reveals its vitality ; whilst, on the 
 other side, its occult forces hide themselves and act only 
 in the most hidden recesses of the organism." 
 
 Dr. F. A. PoucHET. 
 
 " The Formation of Vegetable Mould. — When \j'e be- 
 hold a wide turf-covered expanse, we should remember 
 that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty 
 depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having 
 been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous re- 
 flection that the whole of the superficial mould over any 
 
133 
 
 such expanse has passed, and will again pass, every few 
 years, through the bodies of worms. The plough is one 
 of the most ancient and most valuable of man's in- 
 ventions ; but long before he existed, the land was in 
 fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus 
 ploughed, by earthworms. It may be doubted whether 
 there are many other animals which have played so 
 important a part in the history of the world, as have 
 these lowly organized creatures. Some other animals, 
 however, still more lowly organized, namely corals, have 
 done far more conspicuous work, in having constructed 
 innumerable reefs and islands in the great oceans ; but 
 these are almost confined to the tropical zones." 
 
 Charles Darwin. 
 
 " One is constrained to respect the perfection of this 
 world, in which our senses converse. How wide, how 
 irich ! What invitation from every property it gives to 
 every faculty of man ! In its fruitful soils ; in its navi- 
 gable sea ; in its mountains of metal and stone ; in its 
 forests of all woods ; in its animals ; in its chemical 
 ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, 
 attraction and life, it is well worth the pith and heart of 
 great men to subdue and enjoy it." 
 
 R. W. Emerson. 
 
 " There is so much beauty, majesty, and harmony in 
 the order of Nature, so much to fill, satisfy, and tran- 
 quillize the mind, that, by those who are accustomed to 
 the contemplation, the notion of an infringement of it 
 will at length be viewed as a sort of profanation and as 
 even shocking — ^as the mere dream of ignorance, the 
 wild and atrocious absurdity of superstition and enthu- 
 siasm." 
 
 "Dublin Review." 
 
 " There is no element of our sensuous nature which 
 yields us greater or more varied pleasure than the per- 
 ception of colour. Whether we look at the larger physi- 
 
134 
 
 cal wholes, the azure heaven above us, the purple sea 
 beneath us, and the green meadows by our side ; — or at 
 the smaller organic bodies, the brilliant flowers, the 
 crimson foliage of autumn, the gaudily painted butter- 
 flies, the beetles clad in burnished gold, the peacock 
 adorned with all the hues of the rainbow, and humming- 
 birds decked out in ruby, sapphire, and amethyst ; — or 
 again at the transient effects of light in the spectrum, 
 the soap-bubble, the iridescent surface of the opal, the 
 tints of eventide mirrored in the glassy lake ; — in each 
 and every case we feel a thrill of pure and unselfish 
 enjoyment, which no other mere sensuous stimulation is 
 capable of arousing in our breasts. The pleasure of 
 colour is one which raises itself above the common level 
 of monopolist gratification, and attains to the higher 
 plane of esthetic delight." 
 
 "The Colour Sense." 
 
 " The Creator has covered the earth and filled the 
 waters with beauty. Almost every animal and shell, 
 every tree and flower and sea-weed, the mountains, the 
 rivers, the oceans, every phase of day and night, summer 
 and winter — is essentially beautiful. Our sense of 
 Beauty seems to be, not so much a beneficent adap- 
 tation to our dwelling-place (like our sense of taste for 
 our food), but rather a filial sympathy with our Great 
 Father's pleasure in His lovely creation ; a pleasure in 
 which He must have enjoyed millions of years before 
 our race existed, when all the exquisite forms of animal 
 and vegetable life filled the ancient lands and seas of 
 the earliesj: geologic epochs. Nothing but a preference 
 for beauty, for grace of form, and varied and har- 
 monious colouring, inherent in the Author of the Cos- 
 mos, can explain how it comes to pass that Nature is on 
 the whole so refulgent with loveliness." 
 
 Frances Power Cobbe. 
 
 " The world is crowded with beauty. Every air-bell 
 -that dances on the water, every crystal that sparkles 
 
135 
 
 in a snowflake, each leaf, flower and fruit, each fish 
 and bird, is a thing of beauty. Not an insect in the 
 air, not a mollusc on the rock, not a creature in 
 pond or ditch, not an animal that browses on the 
 green slopes of the breezy down is destitute of inte- 
 rest, or does not exhibit in its structure the traces of 
 goodness, and the requisite provision for a happy exist- 
 ence. So universal in the world is adaptation, beauty, 
 and benevolence. But, if we look to these {qx perfection 
 we do not find it. Many improvements are left to the 
 ingenuity of man. The earth is ploughed and enriched 
 by him. Our dwellings, no longer mere mud-cabins, are 
 rendered tasteful by his genius, and fitted to human 
 •wellbeing by his wisdom — made pleasantly dry, self-venti- 
 lating, cheerfully lighted, and comfortably warmed by 
 his experimental knowledge. Our kitchen and flower 
 gardens and vineries tell of unfolding by culture. Grain 
 and barn-fowl, cattle and horses, all show wondrous 
 evolution, by skilful in-and-out breeding. Man is the 
 assisting factor in the development from a lower to a 
 higher condition. The human being is superior to all 
 other things that we observe. Our world culminates in 
 man ; hence, man is able to make useful improvements, 
 and to view all things which are not human as inferior 
 to himself." Theist. 
 
 The Love of Life — and a Future Life. ' 
 
 " We love life, because God has made it delightful 
 for us to live. How inexpressible is the joy of good 
 health ! How tenaciously do men cling to life, and 
 Tejoice in the grandeur of sea and sky, wood and moun- 
 tain, and are made glad by the contemplation of the 
 silent march of moon and stars ! Most men, women, 
 .and children, — the old and young, the rich and poor, 
 the intelligent and ignorant — may be pardoned for 
 desiring, hoping for, and expecting, a future life. In 
 the good time coming, when ' sense and worth ' shall 
 ' bear the gree,' and hopeful poets will be able to do 
 more than ask, — 
 
136 
 
 ' When shall all men's good 
 Be each man's rule, and universal peace 
 Lie like a shaft of light across the sea ? ' 
 
 this time, so devoutly to be wished, seems to be drawing 
 nearer, and when it comes it will be unnecessary that 
 religious teachers should endeavour to cajole, hood- 
 wink, and scare the EngUsh people or to overturn their 
 common sense ; by thrusting in absurd and awful 
 dogmas ; by asking them to believe in fiendish works, 
 the deeds of demons, for the daily delights and iiightly 
 splendours of the Deity ; by thinking them willing tO' 
 perform the dreary evolution Of a dismal and fatiguing 
 spiritual wandering in Purgatory, and to gratefully 
 acknowledge a Pandemonium as the everlasting home 
 of the vast majority of the human family. With Tenny- 
 son we cultivate the larger hope — 
 
 ' That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete. ' " 
 
 Theist. 
 
 Belief in Immortality . 
 
 " Those who have devoted themselves to this world 
 as the be-all and end-all, have done comparatively little 
 for its moral improvement, or its social progress, or its- 
 political growth. The men who have looked forward to 
 a future state with the certainty of a strong faith, have 
 been the men who have done the greatest amount of 
 good work for humanity. Explain it as we may, if we 
 count up the philanthropists, the reformers, the leaders 
 in all great moral enterprises, the heroes of conscience 
 have, almost without exception, been men of faith, 
 strong in their trust in God, looking forward to the 
 future life. When we come to think over the matter it 
 is easy to see why it should be so, and not other- 
 wise. 
 
 Rev. William Mitchell. 
 
137 
 
 " When we desist from the futile attempt to introduce 
 scientific demonstration into a region which confessedly 
 transcends human experience, and when we consider 
 the question upon broad grounds of moral probability, I 
 have no doubt that men will continue in the future, as 
 in the past, to cherish a faith in a life beyond the grave. 
 ... I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the 
 sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of 
 science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonable- 
 ness of God's work." 
 
 John Fiske, M.A. 
 
 Man not the Summit of Being. 
 
 " We are surrounded by wonders and mysteries 
 everywhere. I have often in the spring-time watched 
 the advance of the sprouting leaves, and of the grass, 
 and of the flowers, and observed the general joy of 
 opening life in nature, and I have asked myself this 
 question : ' Can it be that there is no being or thing in 
 nature that knows more about these things than I do ? 
 Do I in my ignorance represent the highest knowledge 
 of these things existing in this universe?' The man 
 who puts that question fairly to himself, if he be not a 
 shallow man, if he be a man capable of being penetrated 
 by profound thought, will never answer the question by 
 professing that creed of atheism which has been so 
 lightly attributed to me." 
 
 Professor J. Tyndall. 
 
 Evidence of God ; and the Vastness and Goodness of 
 Nature. 
 
 " He who thinks that he has exhausted the principle 
 of causation, when he has simply registered the facts, 
 and assigned them to their respective physical cause or 
 causes, i;eminds the author of a man, instanced by 
 Gassendi, who hearing the clock strike four, and being 
 half-asleep, exclaimed, 'That clock has gone mad: it 
 has struck one o'clock four times over !' The man was 
 
138 
 
 awake to the sound, and to the cause, but asleep to the 
 significance of the group. 
 
 " The anecdote is very applicable to a certain class 
 of thinkers who conceive that they want no divine idea 
 to account for the works of Nature, just because they 
 have the laws and the facts. There are the organs that 
 conspire to form the organism, the tissues that compose 
 the organs, the cells that compose the tissues ; what do 
 you want with design ? As who should say : Look at 
 that piano — Do you think it was contrived to subserve 
 the musician's art? Be assured that that is a superficial 
 and quite popular explanation. Strings, wood, ivory, — 
 these are its anatomical elements, and each of these 
 elements has essential and immanent properties. Thus, 
 the strings have the property of vibration, the wood 
 that of resonance, and so forth. What wonder, then, if 
 the machine should serve for the production of musical 
 sound, since the elements which compose it have the 
 properties necessary to produce that effect ! 
 
 " If this in truth be the method of physical science, 
 and not a caricature, and, if it rest there, if it do not 
 invoke a natural metaphysic to its aid — (for we all of us 
 think and talk metaphysics oftentimes without knowing 
 it) — why, preferable surely is the indoda ignoraniia of 
 Sganarelle, who thus speaks, as M. Janet cites him, to 
 the unbelieving Don Juan : ' I have not studied like 
 you, thank God, and no one could ever boast of having 
 taught me anything ; but, with my small sense — with my 
 small judgment — I see things better than books, and 
 understand very well that this world that we see is not 
 a mushroom that has come of itself in a night I would 
 ask you who has made these trees, these rocks, this 
 earth, and yonder sky above ? And whether all that 
 has made itself? Can you see all the inventions of 
 ■which the human machine is composed, without admiring 
 the way in which it is arranged one part with another ? 
 these nerves, bones, veins, arteries, these lungs, this 
 heart, this liver ? My reasoning is that there is something 
 wonderful in man, whatever you may say, which all the 
 savants cannot explain.' " " Dublin Review." 
 
139 
 
 " How a small and tender bird coming all the way from 
 Africa or Spain, after travelling the sea, finds the very 
 same hedge-row in the middle of England, where it made 
 its nest last season, is truly marvellous." 
 
 Charles Darwin. 
 
 Instinct, not example nor instruction, accounts for this 
 astounding wonder. 
 
 " How many throws of the atomic dice, it may in 
 fairness be asked, does a dashing ultra Darwinian or 
 stick-at-nothing Haeck elite conjecture would be required 
 to produce the instinct of two birds, which enables them 
 to select materials, build with safety and neatness, and 
 construct up-fittings exactly suited to the hatching, 
 growth, and comfort of their young ones, and give the 
 needed knowledge to choose out of a thousand sub- 
 stances, without any lesson of experience, the proper 
 kinds of food ? Shake the atomic dice as you may, no 
 ' fortuitous concourse of atoms ' ever did or could pro- 
 duce the parent cell possessed by flowering-plant and 
 reptile, fish and bird and mammal, and which may now 
 be supposed to exist along the vast ascending scale 
 from the humble Amoeba up to Man. In a broad or 
 general sense it may be said that, nearly all organisms 
 recognized through the unassisted eye, are distinguished 
 by sex." Theist. 
 
 " Go watch the matchless working of the power 
 That shu^ within the seed the future flower." 
 
 " The idea of an Internal Force is a conception 
 which we cannot escape if we would adhere to the 
 teaching of Nature. If, in order to escape it, we were 
 to consent to regard the instincts of animals as exclu- 
 sively due to the conjoint action of their environment 
 and their physical needs, to what would we attribute the 
 origin of their physical needs — their desire for food and 
 safety, and their sexual instincts ? If, for argument's 
 «ake, we were to grant that these needs were the mere 
 result of the active powers of the cells which compose 
 
140 
 
 their tissues, the question but returns — ^whence had these 
 cells their active powers, their aptitudes and needs ? 
 And if, by a still more absurd concession, we should 
 grant that these needs and aptitudes are the mere 
 outcome of the physical properties of their ultimate 
 material constituents, the question still again returns, 
 and with redoubled force. That the actual world we 
 see about us should ever have been possible, its very 
 first elements must have possessed those definite, 
 essential natures," and have had implanted in them 
 those internal laws and innate powers which reason de- 
 clares to be necessary to account for the subsequent 
 outcome. We must then, after all, concede at the end 
 as much as we need have conceded at the outset of the 
 inquiry." g^_ George Mivart. 
 
 " Take, for example, the broad facts and beliefs in- 
 volved in the doctrine of Development, or Evolution 
 as it is more generally termed. There is not a single 
 fact in the entire range of that doctrine which does not 
 bear witness to the workings of a God-like Power in 
 Nature animating, moulding and forming this universe 
 and all its parts — living and non-living — through the 
 operation of well-directed and beautifully harmonized 
 laws. Watch the development of the flower from its 
 bud, and note the wondrous unfolding of complicated 
 sets of organs from the simple structure and tissues of 
 the bud. Day by day there is evolved before us the 
 complex from the simple, the special from the general ; 
 and could we trace the hidden working of the forces 
 which direct the sap-streams to the point of develop- 
 ment, we might witness hour by hour the evolution of 
 cells and structures in a manner unparalleled save in 
 other departments of living nature. From a simple 
 germ arises not only the flower ministering to our highest 
 sense of enjoyment, but the entire plant adding to the 
 beauty and fulness of this fair earth. Can a spectacle 
 such as this, or such as that witnessed in the 
 development and evolution of the animal from its 
 
141 
 
 primitive germ, move us to no thoughts of a power 
 working through system and order ? — a spectacle and 
 phenomenon utterly unthinkable if you separate them 
 from the idea of Intelligent Causation. Well may the 
 Laureate tell us that — 
 
 ' In many a figured leaf enrolls 
 The total world since life began : ' 
 
 and well may we ask what ideas exist in the doctrine of 
 Evolution as a whole which run counter to the idea of 
 God's existence, and of His power and laws ? " 
 
 Dr. Andrew Wilson. 
 
 The Glories of the Star-lit Heavens. 
 
 " On a dark, clear night the glories of the stellar 
 depths seem revealed in their fullest splendour. Yet how 
 small a portion is seen. ' These are but a part of God's 
 ways ; they utter but a whisper of His Glory.' If the 
 eye could gain gradually in light-gathering power, until 
 it attained something like the range of the great gauging 
 telescopes of the Herschels, how utterly would what we 
 see now seem lost in the inconceivable glories thus 
 gradually unfolded. Even the revelations of the tele- 
 scope, save as they appeal to the mind's eye, would be 
 as nothing to the splendid scene revealed, when within 
 the spaces which now show black between the familiar 
 stars of our constellations, thousands of brilliant orbs 
 would be revealed. The milky luminosity of the Galaxy 
 would be seen aglow with millions of suns, its richer 
 portions blazing so resplendently that no eye could bear 
 to gaze long upon the wondrous display. But with 
 every increase of power more and more myriads of stars 
 would break into view, until at last the scene would be 
 unbearable in its splendour. The eye would seek for 
 darkness as for rest. The mind would ask for a scene 
 . less^oppressive in the magnificence of its inner meaning ; 
 for even as seen, wonderful though the display would 
 be, the glorious scene would scarce express the millionth 
 part of its real nature, as recognized by a mind con- 
 
142 
 
 scious that each point of light was a sun like ours, each 
 sun the centre of a scheme of worlds such as that globe 
 on which we ' live and move and have our being.' 
 
 " Who shall pretend to picture a scene so glorious ? 
 If the electric light could be applied to illumine fifty 
 million lamps over the surface of a black, domed vault, 
 and those lamps were here gathered in rich clustering 
 groups, there strewn more sparsely, after the way in 
 which the stars are spread over the vault of heaven, 
 something like the grandeur of the scene which we have 
 imagined would be realized — but no human hands could 
 ever produce such an exhibition of celestial imagery. 
 As for maps, it is obviously impossible by any maps 
 which could be drawn, no matter what their scale or plan, 
 to present anything even approaching to a correct pic-. 
 ture of the heavenly host." ^ ^ proctor, F.R.S. 
 
 " All round the sun, disseminated in immensity, the 
 stars majestically lend life to the vault of heaven. Their 
 s,plendour, the dazzling spectacle which they display to 
 our eyes, fill the soul with a sense of humility and 
 nothingness. It is in the valleys of the glowing Thebais, 
 never wetted by a drop of water, that we ought to yield 
 ourselves up to such contemplations. One enjoys these 
 nights which are eternally serene ; and under their 
 magnificent dome the stars, these immortal flowers of 
 heaven, as St. Basil calls them, raise the spirit of man 
 from the visible to the invisible. ... 
 
 If we wish to compare the weight of the sun with that 
 of the earth, astronomy weighs them with as much pre- 
 cision as though each were placed in one of the scales 
 of a balance. The weight of the sun is — 
 
 2,096,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. 
 That of the earth is 5,875,000,000,000,000,000,000." 
 
 Dr. F. A. PoucHET. 
 
 " We now know that our earth is but a fraction of 
 one out of at least 75,000,000 worlds." 
 
 Sir John Lubbock. 
 
143 
 
 " Turn your thoughts for a few moments to the starry 
 heavens, as nightly disclosed to the astronomer's gaze 
 by those gigantic telescopes and their appliances, which 
 are among the chief wonders of modern inventive skill. 
 In certain portions of the heavens more stars pass aci-oss 
 the small visible field of the instrument each minute 
 than you or I have ever distinctly seen with unaided 
 vision, shining over the whole concave surface of the 
 sky. I say nothing of the incalculable distances of 
 each from each, or of each from our earth. Yet modem 
 research has taught us that each of these innumerable 
 lights is a sun, similar in its constitution to our own — 
 nay, often a combination of two suns, each revolving 
 round its companion sun, and each revolving beyond all 
 question after the order of these same Keplerian laws 
 which regulate our own. Moreover, there can be no 
 doubt that close to each of these companion suns there 
 revolves a system of planetary worlds, nestling within 
 the protective influence of the dominant attraction. 
 Further still, and what interests us most, is the fact that 
 our planetary system and our own sun are themselves 
 units in this vast associated group. Yet this incalculable 
 array of associated systems of worlds is not a chaos but 
 a kosmos : a kosmos replete with order and beauty and 
 law. The sublimity of its beauty is familiar to us all, 
 and labour and ingenuity have gradually disclosed some 
 portions of its orderly arrangements. 
 
 "And now, not in .contrast — still less not in derisive 
 contrast — turn your thoughts to that little sand-glass 
 which necessarily limits, and maybe paralyses the due 
 accomplishment of my present task. The sand therein 
 you know is the dkbris of ancient continents, existing 
 ages upon ages ago, and teeming with life and happiness 
 and beauty upon this our globe long anterior to the 
 advent of man. The why and the whither of this 
 amazing prodigality of duration as much baffle and 
 evade us as do the stars, And next think of the 
 materials which constitute the glass, that curious trans- 
 parent envelope which contains the sand. Every par- 
 ticle of one of these materials has passed through the 
 
144 
 
 tissues of creatures, living, no doubt, a pleasurable exist- 
 ence in some prinnseval waters ; while the other material 
 aided the life and the growth of the beautiful flora which 
 adorned its shores. Of this prodigality of resource and 
 variety in Nature, its why and its whither, surprise, baffle 
 and evade us. But it is not so much the sand, or the 
 glass containing it, to which I desire to draw your atten- 
 tion ; but it is rather to something else within the glass 
 — viz., the atmospheric gaseous substances, which, 
 though invisible, are to my mind far more marvellous, 
 and in one sense far more stupendous, than are the 
 incalculable numbers and the subtle arrangements 
 observable in the starry heavens. For modern science 
 has revealed to us the existence, within that glass, of 
 myriads of myriads of myriads of entities—the mind 
 becomes stupefied in reckoning up their numbers — yet 
 moving amongst each other with velocities measurable 
 by no terrestrial standards, but approaching rather the 
 velocities of the planets, and dashing against each other 
 and against the sides of the glass, produce by their 
 orderly conflicts, all those varied efforts which we classify 
 under the names of atmospheric pressure, heat, and 
 light, and electricity. Moreover, each one of these in- 
 numerable atoms has its distinctive and characteristic 
 weight, infinitesimal though it be. Each from primseval 
 time has been endued with its own unalterable individu- 
 ality, its definite likes and dislikes, and its own associa- 
 tive energy. Such is the wondrous constitution revealed 
 to us by the ingenious diligence of modern research, of 
 the aeriform substances constituting the atmosphere 
 within that glass." 
 
 Rev. Professor Pritchard. 
 
 Comets. 
 
 " It is not a little remarkable that some of the 
 materials present in a comet are identical with sub- 
 stances which are familiar on the earth. The most 
 notable instance is the element carbon. . . . We know 
 that carbon is one of the most abundant and the most 
 
HS 
 
 important of the elements. We see it as the chief con- 
 stituent of all vegetable life : we find it to be invariably 
 present in animal life — and, indeed, in all organic sub- 
 stances. It is an interesting fact that this element, of 
 such transcendent importance on the earth, should now 
 have been proved to be present in these wandering bodies. 
 ... To say that carbon is a constituent of comets is, 
 indeed, to attribute to that element a presence through- 
 out the length and breadth, the depth and the height, 
 of the material universe. There is no quarter of the 
 heavens from which comets may not appear. They 
 exist in such profusion that, as Kepler said, there may be 
 more comets in the sky than there ar^ fishes in the ocean ; 
 and as to the distance to which comets recede in their 
 wanderings, or from which they may be drawn into our 
 system, its calculation bafHes all astronomical measure- 
 ment. . . . Far away in the depths of space, at a dis- 
 tance so remote that from it our earth and the other 
 planets are all invisible, and from which even our sun 
 has been dwarfed to the magnitude of a mere star, lies 
 the future comet. Throughout the mighty abyss which 
 intervenes between the comet and the sun, the law of 
 gravitation reigns. Under its influence the comet begins 
 to approach the sun. The force is so enfeebled by the 
 effect of distance that at first the movements of the 
 comet are very slow. Years roll on : the comet is still 
 found to be approaching, and the motion, though still 
 extremely slow, has made some slight improvement. 
 Centuries roll on, and thousands of years roll on, and 
 now the comet is seen to be rapidly approaching. The 
 distance decreases and the speed increases. The 
 attraction of the sun has now increased greatly, 
 owing to the diminished distance ; and the comet at 
 length, with an appalling velocity, amounting to hundreds 
 of miles a second, whirls around the sun, and in a few 
 hours commences its retreat. . . . The comet retreats 
 precisely as it approached. . . 
 
 " We have seen how modern science has dissipated 
 the fear and the superstition with which, in earlier 
 ages, the advent of a comet was regarded. We no 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 longer regard a comet as a sign of impending calamity ; 
 we may rather look upon it as an interesting and a 
 beautiful visitor, which seems to please us and to instruct 
 us, never to threaten or to destroy." 
 
 Sir Robert S. Ball, LL.D., F.R.S. 
 
 " Generally speaking, the preservation of the happi- 
 ness of sensitive creatures appears to be the great object 
 of creative exertion and conservative providence. The 
 expanding of our faculties, both bodily and mental, is 
 accompanied with pleasure, the exercise of those powers 
 is almost always attended with gratification ; all labour 
 so acts as to make rest particularly delicious ; much of 
 labour is enjoyment ; the gratification of those appetites 
 by which both the individual is preserved and the race 
 is continued, is highly pleasurable to all animals ; and 
 it must be observed that instead of being attracted by 
 grateful sensations to do anything requisite for our good 
 or even our existence, we might have been just as cer- 
 tainly urged by the feeling of pain, or the dread of it, 
 which is a kind of suffering in itself Nature, then, re- 
 sembles the lawgiver who, to make his subjects obey, 
 should prefer holding out rewards for compliance with 
 his commands rather than denounce punishments for 
 disobedience. But .nature is yet more kind; she is 
 gratuitously kind ; she not only prefers inducement to 
 threat or compulsion, but she adds more gratification 
 than was necessary to make us obey her calls. How 
 well might all creation have existed and been continued, 
 though the air had not been balmy in spring, or the 
 shade and the spring refreshing in summer ; had the 
 earth not been enamelled with flowers, and the air 
 scented with perfumes ! How needless for the propaga- 
 tion of plants was it that the seed should be enveloped 
 in fruits the most savoury to our palate, and if those 
 fruits serve some other purpose, how foreign to that pur- 
 pose was the formation of nerves so framed as to be 
 soothed or excited by their flavour ! We here perceive 
 Design, because we trace adaptation. But we at the same 
 
147 
 
 time perceive Benevolent Design, because we perceive 
 gratuitous and supererogatory enjoyment bestowed." 
 Henry Lord Brougham. 
 
 " After I saw clearly the system of divine administration 
 of the world through natural laws, instead of clashing 
 and discordant sentiment, I attained to harmony and 
 peace of mind. Instead of looking only to heaven to 
 find God, I saw Him in every institution of nature. I 
 heard His voice, and saw His power, wisdom, and good- 
 ness in me and around me ; my Causality and moral 
 sentiments were reconciled, and this was not a mere 
 speculative belief. I felt myself living every moment in 
 the presence of God, and this state of mind is my con- 
 stant experience and delight. Twenty times a day death 
 is present to my thoughts, and even in my happiest 
 moments I contemplate it with satisfaction, without 
 any reference to a future state whatever, as a mere de- 
 mission of this mortal body when its power of usefulness 
 and enjoyment are exhausted. Every step I advance in 
 the knowledge of nature and of human life deepens the 
 impression of the incalculable good effects which the 
 sentiment of Veneration could produce were it employed 
 to rouse the other faculties to seek out God in nature, 
 to discover His will, and to enforce on them the necessity 
 and advantage of obeying it. In such a worship the 
 Veneration of the profound thinkers could participate. 
 They would become the leaders and pioneers of new 
 views of divine grace ; and the pulpit would become the 
 glorious fountain of practical truth, devotion, justice, 
 and humanity, with exhaustless stores of knowledge for 
 the intellect, and glowing themes for the sentiments." 
 
 George Combe. 
 
 Church-Theology in its Relation to Science. 
 
 " In so far as Church belief is still committed to a 
 given kosmogony and natural history of Man, it lies 
 open to scientific refutation, and has already received 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 from it many a wound under which it visibly pines away. 
 It is needless to say that the new ' book of Genesis ' 
 which resorts to Lucretius for its ' first beginnings,' to- 
 protoplasm for its fifth day, to ' natural selection ' for its 
 Adam and Eve, and to evolution for all the rest, con- 
 tradicts the oM book at every point ; and inasmuch as it 
 dissipates the dream of Paradise, and removes the tragedy 
 of the Fall, cancels at once the need and the scheme of 
 Redemption, and so leaves the historical Churches of 
 Europe crumbling away from their very foundations. If 
 any one would know how utterly unproducible in modern 
 daylight is the theology of the symbolical books, how 
 absolutely alien from the real springs of our life, let him 
 follow for a few hours the newest movement of ecclesi- 
 astical reform, and listen to the reported Conferences at 
 Bonn, on the remedies for a divided Christendom." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Martineau. 
 
 " The Churches are now face to face with the gravest 
 questions that have confronted Christianity since her life 
 began; questions not simply doctrinal, political, or 
 social, but fundamental and final, — whether men are to 
 be Christians any more, or indeed in any tolerable sense 
 theists. These questions initiate, as it were, difficulties, 
 which diffuse themselves everywhere, stealing into the 
 best disciphned homes, pervading the most rigorously 
 organized and jealously guarded Churches, pervading 
 the atmosphere in which thought lives and breathes, 
 touching our finest spirits with the slow paralysis of doubt 
 or the hesitancy which is the death of all enthusiasm. 
 The men have not created the difficulties, or raised the 
 doubts ; they have sought and found the men ; they are 
 the creation of the time, and spring from the charac- 
 teristics and achievements of its thought, its wider know- 
 ledge, its vaster outlook, its new methods of interpreting 
 nature and history, its deeper insight into the ways of 
 Nature's workings, and into the affinities of man and his 
 universe. They are wholly misunderstood when traced 
 to an evil heart of unbelief, or any taint of sin of will, or 
 
149 
 
 any other source than honesty and integrity of intellect, 
 the determination to be as clear and scrupulous in the 
 realm of spirit and faith as in the region of experience and 
 experiment. Scientists who have studied Nature and 
 become so possessed by the idea of law and energy, con- 
 tinuity and development, as to feel unable to reconcile 
 them with the older ideas of God and His creative 
 method, are men whom the Churches are bound to help 
 to a solution." 
 
 Rev. Principal Fairbairn. 
 
 " It would be well for the philosopher to take in his 
 laboratory such old-fashioned authors as Butler, and 
 Paley, and Coleridge, and honestly test in his personal 
 experience the faith which he doubts, before he finally 
 rejects it. Better still would it be if, in the study of 
 every manse throughout England, there were found a 
 well-used microscope, and on the lawn a tolerable tele- 
 scope ; and, best of all, if those who possess influence in 
 our national Universities, could see their way to the 
 enforcement of a small modicum of the practical know- 
 ledge of common things on the minds of those who are 
 to go forth and do battle with the ignorance and failings 
 of our population, and to spread light throughout the land. 
 A little knowledge of the ancient elements — fire, air, 
 earth, and water — would save many a young clergyman 
 from the vanity of ridiculous extremes, and from the 
 surprise of the more wisely and widely-educated among 
 his flock. For, depend upon it, whatever may be our 
 suspicions or our fears, the pursuit of the knowledge of 
 the works of Nature will increase, and increase with an 
 accelerated velocity ; and if our clergy decline to keep 
 pace with it, and to direct it into wholesome channels, 
 they and their flocks will be overtaken, though from 
 opposite directions, by the inevitable Nemesis of dispro- 
 portion. I, for one, believe not so much in the right as 
 in the duty of every man to make the best of the faculties 
 wherewith his Maker has entrusted him ; and I meet with 
 a grateful and a hopeful thought in all those unexpected 
 accessions to our knowledge of God in Nature which 
 
ISO 
 
 in recent times have come to us in almost overwhelming 
 abundance." 
 
 Rev. Professor Pritchard. 
 
 " The problem of Christianity to-day was not merely 
 nor mainly one of evangelization. Everywhere there 
 were thousands of intelligent and serious-minded persons- 
 who were outside the Churches because the Churches 
 had set before them their truths in a form which their 
 reason and their conscience could not accept. They 
 were outside the Churches, but not outside of Chris- 
 tianity. Christianity was in the air they breathed, in 
 the whole structure of modern society, in their laws and 
 literature. Men calling themselves Agnostics and Posi- 
 tivists owed their lofty ideals of truth and beauty to the 
 eighteen centuries' influence of the Gospel of Christ, 
 and the strength and beauty of their life to the fact that 
 they were the children of an unbroken succession of 
 Christian men and Christian women. ... If the 
 Churches knew their own mission they would extend 
 their hospitality to inquirers as well as to believers, they 
 would not treat as vagrants and tramps those who might 
 be angels unawares, nor be guilty of the strange incon- 
 sistency of swearing by the heretics of yesterday and 
 swearing at the heretics of to-day. It was in the 
 interests of Christian faith that he pleaded for a com- 
 prehensive Church The religion of Jesus Christ 
 
 was the best secularism, the best socialism, and the best 
 religion of humanity." 
 
 Rev. John Hunter. 
 
 " Though Religion cannot dictate Morals, any more 
 than it can dictate Philosophy or Science, yet it may 
 and must uphold Morals. Just so much every Polity,, 
 while measuring moral right by the judgment of collec- 
 tive mankind. We cannot pretend that this judgment 
 will ever be absolutely final ; but any modification 
 applies to details chiefly, and in every age is exceptional. 
 Certain broad foundations remain immovable, such as,. 
 
that men are hot machines destitute of self-control; 
 that Praise and Blame, Punishment and Reward, have 
 their reasonable places ; that Moral Interests are higher 
 than Material ; that Virtue is better than Health or 
 Ease ; that Self-sacrifice for others is nobler than Self- 
 seeking ; that Justice is of all qualities paramount and 
 indispensable, and is the right of all God's creatures." 
 Francis William Newman. 
 
 Hopeful Aspects of Modern Christianity. 
 
 " The world is certainly not less religious than it was 
 in the time of Constantine ; on the contrary, it is incom- 
 parably richer in the qualities which make religion a 
 thing of the heart and the hand rather than of contro- 
 versial ingenuity and verbal memory. The clergy of all 
 the Churches follow the precepts of the Gospel far more 
 closely than the ignorant, superstitious, fanatical, and 
 often sanguinary bands of monks and priests who were 
 at the beck of every ambitious Emperor or Prelate. 
 But the world has sailed past the cloudland of theologi- 
 cal subtleties which was then piled round religion until 
 it almost hid its purity and majesty from view. The 
 intellect of the age is busy with a multitude of problems 
 which had not even risen above the horizon in time of 
 the great Councils. Political men refuse to let the 
 metaphysical refinements of the sects affect the conduct 
 of the State, and religious toleration is their practical 
 reply to theological anathemas. The multitude do not 
 know the very existence of those difficulties which dis- 
 turb the studies of clerical antiquaries. The clergy 
 themselves present the practical rather than the meta- 
 physical side of religion, and even so eminent a preacher 
 as Dr. Liddon would fail to make the subtleties of the 
 Bonn Conference interesting to the crowds who admire 
 his eloquence in St. Paul's. So practical is the temper 
 of our age and our country, that the Church of England 
 has held together one generation after another in spite 
 of a theological disunion which represents almost every 
 
152 
 
 shade of belief between the Puritans of Geneva and 
 the full-blown dogma of Rome. The Roman Catholic 
 Church, which has the wisdom of the serpent, if not 
 the harmlessness of the dove, has read the signs of the 
 times by making, not a metaphysical, but an essentially 
 practical dispute the subject of the only Council which 
 she has summoned since the Reformation. Quarrels 
 about the nicer shades of Trinitarian orthodoxy she 
 would have left to exhaust themselves in her theological 
 schools, or have silenced by the rebukes of the Curia ; 
 but when the insubordination of German theologians 
 threatened to bring visible disorder into her ranks she 
 felt it necessary to put the despotism of her chief beyond 
 a doubt, and hence she declared him to be infallible." 
 
 "The Times." 
 
 " Seeing what an inquiring age we live in, and the 
 
 attention which is devoted as well to history and 
 
 geography as to physical sciences and the phenomena 
 
 of light and heat, I watch with increasing interest the 
 
 development of the mind and capacities of the nation. 
 
 Although by my age I properly belonged to the times 
 
 gone by, I cannot but look forward to the times which 
 
 are to come ; not only with old Whig aspirations for the 
 
 cause of political and religious freedom all over the 
 
 world, but with the hope that the Christian religion may 
 
 obtain a wider reception and Christian morality be 
 
 developed in a purer light and with a more general 
 
 observance. ,-, , „ 
 
 Earl Russell. 
 
 " At no previous period in the history of the world 
 has Christianity, as represented in the Gospels, or in the 
 lives and works of the best of its followers, exercised so 
 powerful an influence on public affairs as in the last 
 thirty years ; and I make this assertion without in the 
 least forgetting the endless wars and troubles of that 
 period. In legislation, in administration, in our way of 
 carrying on war, in our treatment of inferior races, in 
 our social relations, in our amusements, in our literature, 
 
153 
 
 in everything we are, though Heaven knows, still far 
 enough from it, nearer nevertheless to the Christian 
 ideal than we ever have been before ; and it is interest- 
 ing to observe that the results of the very highest 
 statesmanship and of the very highest forms of Chris- 
 tianity are often most curiously near each other." 
 
 M. E. Grant Duff, M.P. 
 
 " It seems clear to me, from all which is occurring in 
 Europe at this moment, from the signs in the Papal 
 Church, in our own Church, in the universal talk and 
 minds of men, whether for it or against, that the knell 
 of the letter of Christianity itself has struck, and that it 
 is time for us to inaugurate and enthrone the spirit. I 
 was in hopes, when Pius the Ninth first made his 
 appearance in Europe, that a great as well as good 
 man had arisen, competent to so noble a task. Young 
 Italy, let loose from prison, fell at his feet ; and I think, 
 that had he persevered in what made it to do so, all 
 Europe would have fallen at his feet, and the Papal power 
 have thus profited by its greatest and only remaining chance 
 of retaining the sceptre of the Christian world. But the 
 new Pope was frightened at being thought one of the 
 ' New Christians ' (as Lamartine called them) ; he has- 
 tened to issue a bull, declaring the unalterableness of 
 every Papal dogma ; and the moment he did that, he 
 signed the death-warrant of his Church. Dogma, what- 
 ever may be the convulsive appearances to the contrary 
 in certain feeble quarters, has ceased to be a vital 
 European principle ; and nothing again will ever be 
 universally taken for Christianity, but the Religion of 
 Loving Duty to God and Man. No hell. No unfather- 
 liness. No monstrous exactions of assent to the 
 incredible. No impious Athanasian Creed. No creed 
 of any kind but such as proves its divineness by the 
 wish of all good hearts to believe it if they might, and 
 by the encouragement that would be given to them to 
 believe it, in the acclamations of the earth. The world 
 has outgrown the terrors of its childhood, and no 
 
IS4 
 
 spurious mistake of a saturnine spleen for a masculine 
 necessity will induce a return to them." 
 
 Leigh Hunt's " Autobiography." 
 
 " A well-pronounced acclaim has latterly gone forth, 
 and has already reached the ears of priests, — 
 
 ' As near to heaven we stand as you ! ' 
 
 No empty puerile forms ; no quasi-magical art ; no 
 laying on of hands upon ' timber-tops ' — a veritable 
 ' imposition ; ' no poppy pillows, which soothe dull wits 
 to slumber ; no coarse and vulgar familiarity with God,, 
 which deadens piety ; no ' patent medicines and mysteri- 
 ous prescriptions ' to soften hard doctrines and stimulate 
 stupidity ; no extreme unctions ; no substitution of pre- 
 tentious Greek and Hebrew terms in place of simple 
 common-sense ; no jobbing away and falsifying of human 
 rights and duties ; no audacious ' absolution ' patch- 
 work. None of these things will belong to the Church 
 of the Future ; but, instead thereof, strength of character, 
 individual worth, persistence in well-doing, the love and 
 practice of truth, justice, kindness, charity. These, we 
 maintain, are the qualities necessary to carry society 
 steadily, successfully, and triumphantly forward." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " It is needless to close our eyes to the fact that the 
 progress of Christian, scientific, and critical inquiry 
 during the present century has suggested difficulties 
 which were unfelt when our great defences of Christi- 
 anity were composed. We need not, therefore, wonder 
 that they are inadequate to meet them." 
 
 "The Bampton Lectures for 1877." 
 
 " In proportion as England has become, and in pro- 
 portion as it will yet more become, a truly free and 
 truly educated people, able of itself to bind what ought 
 to be bound, and to loose what ought to be loosed, irt 
 
that proportion will the belief in priestly absolution 
 vanish, just as the. belief in wizards and necromancers 
 has vanished before the advance of science. As alchemy- 
 has disappeared to give place to chemistry, as astrology 
 has given way to astronomy, as monastic celibacy has. 
 given way to domestic purity, as bull-fights and bear- 
 baits have given way to innocent and elevating amuse- 
 ments, as scholastic casuistry has' bowed before the 
 philosophy of Bacon and Pascal, so will the belief in 
 the magical offices of a sacerdotal caste vanish before 
 the growth of manly Christian independence, and 
 generous Christian sympathy." 
 
 The Very Rev. Dean Stanley. 
 
 " Nothing seemed plainer than that the growth of the 
 scientific and critical spirit within the past three centuries- 
 had been killing the superstitious spirit, as a strong- 
 young tree killed the old tree by whose side it had 
 sprung up. It was not more certain that darkness, 
 melted away before the rising of the sun than that the 
 traditions and superstitions of Rome were, over the 
 world, in course of vanishing, slowly it might be, but 
 still vanishing, before the steadily growing enlighten- 
 ment which was more and more becoming the inheri- 
 tance of the nations. But popery was not only a system 
 of religious superstition, it was also a system of political 
 oppression. Fully carried out, it would subject the life 
 of every man to the will of the Church, dictate laws, 
 appoint governments, abrogate or introduce customs,, 
 limit the province of thought, and, in general, shape 
 human life according to its own notions and caprices.. 
 The Pope was, according to his own view, the vicegerent 
 of God, and in that capacity entitled to require the 
 obedience of all mankind : but it needed no illustration 
 to show that those elevated claims derived no counte- 
 nance from the present course of the world's history.. 
 Not the most sanguine Ultramontanist could suppose 
 that the Pope's chances of controlling the civil govern- 
 ments of the world were at present very great. There 
 
IS6 
 
 was no appearance of those days returning when 
 Alexander VI. parcelled out the unknown countries of 
 the world between the Spaniards and the Portuguese. 
 The tide of history was setting in a different direction ; 
 nations were pressing on towards the realization of 
 democratic freedom ; men were everywhere throwing off 
 those ancient ideas which represented government as 
 something divinely commissioned to compel their sub- 
 jection, and were striving more and more to have the 
 appointment of their own rulers, or a voice in it ; and of 
 those whom they were ever likely to think of as suitable 
 for that purpose, the very last would certainly be the 
 bishop of Rome and his priestly college. The history 
 of the human race was a history of progress, an endless 
 series of attempts to reahze its ideal. With respect to 
 each attempt, mankind were satisfied with it for a time ; 
 but by-and-by they outgrew it ; then they cast it away as 
 useless, and adopted some other form which suited 
 their more advanced conception of things. So it was 
 in science, in arc, in religion. Popery must share the 
 fate of all imperfect systems : it had had its day, and 
 served its turn. In its time it was a mighty power, and 
 in some respects a power for good ; but it must yield to 
 the inexorable law of human progress, and there seemed 
 as little chance of men going back to Romanism as a 
 suitable expression of the religious sentiment, as there 
 was of their going back to Druidism or the Ptolemaic 
 astronomy." 
 
 Rev. Professor Wallace. 
 
 Dean Stanley on the Religion of Shakespeare. 
 
 " There is much idle talk in the present day about 
 secular and religious. Is there any one who will venture 
 to shut out from any scheme of education the writings 
 of Milton and Shakespeare ? Is there any one who will 
 be able to say that the writings of Milton or Shakespeare 
 are not in the highest sense religious, if by religious we 
 mean that which gives a higher and wider idea of the 
 nature of God, and a deeper, clearer insight into the 
 
1 57 
 
 nature of man ? No ! We say that Shakespeare had a 
 deep sense of the awfulness and greatness of God, of 
 the tender and soothing influences of the Christian 
 faith. We say that the words of the Bible were most 
 familiar to him — that the words and rites of religious 
 ordinances had a hold upon him, but more than this we 
 do not know. We ask whether he was a Roman Catho- 
 lic or a Protestant. Whether he was a Calvinist or an 
 Armenian. We ask whether he was a Puritan or a 
 High Churchman. We ask, but we ask in vain. Some 
 expressions may lead to one side, some to the other, 
 but the whole result is that this greatest of merely 
 human teachers, the wisest and greatest of merely 
 human writers, is simply above and beyond and beside 
 all those party distinctions. That he who of all men 
 knew most of human nature cannot, without a manifest 
 absurdity, be classed with any single religious division of 
 any kind whatever. From the fact that he was married 
 and buried in the parish church of Stratford-on-Avon we 
 may infer that he belonged to the National Church. It 
 is one of the excellences of the English Church that a 
 spirit like Shakespeare can belong to it without being 
 compelled to answer any question or to enrol himself 
 under any flag. It was in Shakespeare's time that the 
 Church embraced all Englishmen, and in this best and 
 highest sense of the word, and in this sense only, he 
 was an English Churchman. But I repeat that of his 
 particular opinions his works tell us nothing. And the 
 fact that this is so, and that we, notwithstanding, bear 
 with him and admire him, is a standing proof to us that 
 their paltry distinctions are not so important as we 
 usually endeavour to make them — that the highest idea 
 of the Church of Truth, of a National Church, is that 
 which takes no heed of them. There will, we trust, be 
 a time hereafter, when they will vanish away altogether. 
 But there are times, even now, when in the highest 
 and greatest minds they have vanished altogether even 
 here." 
 
158 
 
 Religion — its Root and Function in Human Nature. 
 
 " A race or tribe entirely destitute of the religious 
 instinct has yet to be found." 
 
 " The Faiths of the World." — Blackwood's Mag. 
 
 " So far as I can judge from the immense mass of 
 accessible evidence, we have to admit that the belief in 
 spiritual beings appears among all low races with whom 
 we have attained to thoroughly intimate acquaintance, 
 whereas the assertion of absence of such belief must 
 apply either to the ancient tribes, or to less or more 
 imperfectly described modern ones." 
 
 Edward B. Tylor. 
 
 "That all men care for the Gods is as true in our day 
 as in the days of Homer. Wherever we go, from the 
 highest culture to the lowest barbarism, we find religion 
 as a weft running through the warp of history, and 
 recognise it as that element which gives to man in the 
 midst of creation his spiritual elevation and dignity." 
 
 " Edinburgh Review." 
 
 " That God exists is the faith which permeates and 
 supports many a daily life. It is often the ' rest and be 
 thankful ' to both the head and heart of the industrious, 
 struggling, and humble wayfarer through afflictive life, 
 as well as of the tempest-tossed voyager of our toiling 
 world. This belief tends to confer strength and sweet- 
 ness — ' love, joy, and peace,' — ^upon mankind." 
 
 Theist. 
 
 " I was, am, and can be only a Christian Catholic in 
 the wide literal sense. I have been that these five-and- 
 twenty years at least. Heaven keep me from being less 
 as I grow older ; but I am no more likely to become a 
 Roman Catholic than a Quaker, Evangelical, or Turk." 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
159 
 
 " The facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as 
 the facts of physics." 
 
 Professor J. Tyndall. 
 
 "To civilized man the idea of God arrives with in- 
 struction, which does but fructify a pre-existing germ. 
 Without instruction, the idea is certainly not developed 
 in the individual mind with the same inevitableness with 
 which the mind develops the idea of self. But taking 
 the whole of humanity, we may say that the idea of 
 •God is as proper to the race as that of self to the indi- 
 vidual. A human being cast from infancy upon absolute 
 solitude, might not have the idea of Divinity in any 
 sense or shape awakened within him. If he did, it 
 would in all likelihood be not the monotheistic idea, 
 but some low form of polytheism or fetishism. Yet even 
 that would be impossible without an innate aptitude for 
 Theism in the soul. Without a prepared niche in 
 human nature, no image occupying the place of Deity 
 and receiving divine honours would ever have been set 
 up. It is idle to talk of fear as possessing the deific 
 power. Fear can make bugbears, but can never con- 
 vert the bugbear into a God." 
 
 " THEOLOGICAL Review." 
 
 " Wherever we look, we see that all the resources of 
 art, infantine or full-grown, are most fully employed in 
 the service of religion. Painting, sculpture, music, the 
 thousand minor arts of decoration and dress all com- 
 bine to do honour to the gods of the country. From 
 the West African fetish, through the Polynesian shrines, 
 the Indian topes, the Chinese pagodas, the Mexican 
 and Peruvian temples, the mysterious colonnades of 
 Egypt, the massive architecture of Babylon or Nineveh, 
 the Hellenic Parthenons, the Italian Capitols, to the 
 modern mosques of Islam and the towering Cathedrals 
 of Christendom, we find the highest artistic handicraft 
 of every age and race lavished upon the dwelling-place 
 of the national deities. The few traces of aesthetic 
 
i6o 
 
 feeling in the Hebrew Scriptures are connected with the 
 workmanship of the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the 
 hieratic dress. I have pointed out elsewhere how large 
 a part the religious sentiment has borne in the genesis of 
 the sublime : it must here suffice thus briefly to hint at 
 the impetus which it has given to the kindred feeling of 
 the beautiful. Whether we look at the endless painted 
 images of Karnak or at the stained windows of Salis- 
 bury, we must recognize the enormous influence of 
 religion in the growth of disinterested aesthetic feeling." 
 
 Grant Allen. 
 
 " We go back six thousand years, and find the Sphinx, 
 as to-day, looking toward the rising sun, and pondering 
 the problem of human destiny. 
 
 " The pyramid-builders come, and erect those neigh- 
 bouring piles to preserve their bodies when dead for 
 that glorious destiny in which they trust. 
 
 "The long procession of the Pharaohs passes, and 
 each inscribes indelibly on rocky walls his faith in the 
 great God who holds human destiny in His hands. 
 
 " Moses comes, and leads out of Egypt the chosen 
 people to prepare the way for the expected Messiah. 
 
 "The Assyrians and the Persians come, and, while 
 seeking their destiny in the course of the stars, pay 
 homage to the same great hope. 
 
 "The Greeks come, and even amid gross licentious- 
 ness and idolatry, erect magnificent temples, in attestation 
 of a belief in human destiny which, however degraded, 
 still survived. 
 
 " The Romans come, and in this mystic land lay aside 
 their legal codes, and add their testimony to the same 
 great truth. 
 
 " The Arab comes, and, as morning and evening he 
 gazes into the East, sees the visions of the glorious 
 Mecca of his hopes for which the Sphinx has looked so 
 long. 
 
 " The Christian hermits come, and make the storied 
 stones of the Pharaohs re-echo with their triumphant 
 
i6i 
 
 songs. These are lessons of the grandeur, the glory, 
 and the immortality of the spiritual life of man." 
 
 Professor Josiah P. Cooke. 
 
 " I do not hesitate to say that the first and paramount 
 aim of religion is, not to prepare for another world, but 
 to make the best of this world, or, more correctly stated, 
 to make this world better, wiser, and happier. It is to 
 be* good and do the most good we can, now and here, 
 and help others to be and do the same. It is to seek 
 with all our might the highest welfare of the world we 
 live in, and the realization of its ideal greatness, and 
 nobleness, and blessedness." 
 
 Rev. Principal Caird. 
 
 " It is a great mistake for the Christians, as a whole, 
 to maintain that they have nothing to learn from the 
 Hebrews, the Heathen, the Buddhists, and the Maho- 
 metans ; though the Christians are in many respects 
 superior to these other sects of the world, yet they have 
 much to teach us. It is a mistake for the Protestant to 
 say that he has nothing to learn from the Catholic : the 
 Catholic — though far behind the Protestant — has many 
 things to impart to us. And it is a mistake for the 
 Unitarian, or Universalist, to declare that he has nothing 
 to learn from the Trinitarian and Partialist. As yet no 
 one of these great world sects. Christian, Heathen, 
 Hebrew, Buddhist, Mahometan, has the whole Human 
 truth ; and in Christianity no one sect has the whole of 
 Christian truth. But the Christian Churches have 
 broken with Science, and are afraid of new thought. 
 This is somewhat less true of the Protestant than of the 
 Catholic priesthood. They have broken also with fresh 
 Morality, and are afraid of that. And so the Christian 
 Church to-day is very much in the same condition that 
 Heathenism and Judaism were at the time when Paul 
 first went to Rome." 
 
 Theodore Parker. 
 M 
 
1 62 
 
 " The modern religion finds a vast work ready for its 
 hands — a work which will compel it to give itself some 
 organization. The children of modem civilization are 
 called to follow in the footsteps of Paul, of Gregory, of 
 Boniface, of Xavier, Eliot, and Livingstone ; , but they 
 must carry not merely Christianity in its narrow clerical 
 sense, but their whole mass of spiritual treasures to those 
 who want them. Ixt us carry the true view of the uni- 
 verse, the true astronomy, the true chemistry, and the 
 true physiology to Polytheists still lapped in mythological 
 dreams ; let us carry progress and free-will to fatalist 
 nations, and to nations cramped by the fetters of primi- 
 tive custom ; let us carry the doctrine of a rational 
 liberty into the heart of Oriental despotisms. In doing 
 all this — not, indeed, suddenly or fanatically, nor yet 
 pharisaically, as if we ourselves had nothing to learn — 
 we shall admit the outlying world into the great civilized 
 community, into the modern City of God." 
 " Natural Religion," 
 
 By the Author of " Ecce Homo." 
 
 " All religions are Oriental, and, with the exception of 
 the Christian, their sacred books are all written in 
 Oriental languages. The materials, therefore, for a 
 comparative study of the religious systems of the world 
 had all to be supplied by Oriental scholars. But far 
 more important than those materials, is the spirit in 
 which they have been treated. The sacred books of 
 the principal religions of mankind had to be placed 
 side by side with perfect impartiality, in order to discern 
 the points which they shared in common, as well as 
 those that are peculiar to each. The results already 
 obtained by this simple juxtaposition are full of impor- 
 tant lessons, and the fact that the truths on which all 
 religions are agreed far exceed those on which they 
 differ has hardly been sufficiently appreciated. I feel con- 
 vinced, however, that the time will come when those who 
 at present profess to be most disquieted by our studies, 
 will be most grateful for our support ; for having shown 
 
i63 
 
 by evidence, which cannot be controverted, that all 
 religions spring from the same sacred soil — the human 
 heart ; that all are quickened by the same Divine Spirit 
 — the still small voice ; and that, though the outward 
 forms of religion may change, may wither and decay, 
 yet, as long as man is what he is and what he has been, 
 he will postulate again and again the Infinite, as the 
 very condition of the Finite ; he will yearn for some- 
 thing which the world cannot give ; he will feel his 
 weakness and dependence, and in that weakness and 
 dependence discover the deepest sources of his hope, 
 and trust, and strength." 
 
 Professor Max Muller. 
 
 " He who proclaims the existence of an Infinite — 
 and nobody can evade it — asserts more of the Super- 
 natural in that affirmation than exists in all the miracles 
 of all religions ; for the conception of the Infinite has 
 the twofold character of being irresistible and incompre- 
 hensible. ... As long as the mystery of the Infinite 
 weighs on the human mind, temples will be raised to 
 the worship of the Infinite, whether the God be called 
 Brahma, Allah, or Jehovah ; and on the floor of those 
 temples you will see kneeling men absorbed in the idea 
 of the Infinite." 
 
 M. Pasteur. 
 
 " Every year brings new knowledge of the religions 
 of the world, and every step in knowledge brings out the 
 sympathy between them. They all show the same aim, 
 the same symbols, the same forms, the same weaknesses, 
 the same aspirations. Looking at these points of unity, 
 we might say there is but one religion under many 
 forms, whose essential creed is — 
 
 THE Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood 
 
 OF Man 
 
 — disguised by corruptions, symbolized by mythologies, 
 ennobled by virtues, degraded by vices, but still the 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 
 
 same. Or if, passing to a closer analysis, we observe 
 the shades of difference, we shall find in these varying 
 faiths the several instruments which perform what Cud- 
 worth calls ' The Symphony of Religions.' ... To say 
 that different races worship different Gods, is like saying 
 that they are warmed by different suns. The names 
 differ, but the sun is the same, and so is God. As there 
 is but one source of light and warmth, so there is but 
 one source of religion. To this all nations testify alike. 
 We have yet but a part of our Holy Bible. The time 
 will come when, as in the Middle Ages, all pious books 
 will be called sacred scriptures — Scriptura SacrcB. From 
 the most remote portions of the earth, from the Vedas 
 and the Sagas, from Plato and Zoroaster, Confucius and 
 Mohammad, from the Emperor Marcus Antoninus and 
 the slave Epictetus, from the learned Alexandrians and 
 the ignorant Galla negroes, there will be gathered hymns 
 and prayers and maxims in which every religious soul 
 may unite — 
 
 the magnificent liturgy of the human race." 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 
 
 " Evolution is not synonymous with Darwinism. The 
 whole immensely exceeds the part. Darwinism forms 
 but a small chapter in the history of a far vaster and 
 more comprehensive movement of the human mind. 
 In its astronomical development Evolution had already 
 formulated itself with perfect distinctness before the 
 period with which we have had specially to deal." 
 
 Grant Allen. 
 
 (See Darwinism, p. 128.) 
 
i6s 
 
 " We commend a perusal of ' Thoughts on Theism ' to all inter 
 ested in religious philosophy. " Eastbourne Gazette. 
 
 " The compilers of this able and suggestive treatise have recog- 
 nized and endeavoured to meet a manifest need of the times ; that 
 arising from the failure of reconciling the enlightenment of the 
 nineteenth century vs'ith the culte of the sixteenth. " 
 
 Sussex Daily News. 
 
 " Dealing with religious progress and. advance, it contains matter 
 and suggestions which should be read, especially by members of 
 Assemblies and all interested in the foundations of religion." 
 
 Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " Is well worthy of perusal, as it deals in a broad and healthy 
 spirit with the most important questions that can occupy the mind 
 of man in any age, and particularly in such a transitional age as 
 the present." T/ie Echo. 
 
 " A meritorious contribution to the literature relating to the 
 Church of the future. . . . The pamphlet should be read by 
 the curious both in the orthodox and heterodox camps." 
 
 Dimdee Advertiser. 
 
 " All the subjects are dealt with in a manner which will recom- 
 mend themselves to the attention of thoughtful readers." 
 
 Brighton Guardian. 
 
 "Its pages are enriched with numerous extracts from the most 
 eminent divines, metaphysicians, and scientists of modern times. 
 It ought to be read by all who take an interest in philosophical and 
 theological speculations." Shreivshury Free Press. 
 
1 66 
 
 " Clergymen of all denominations, and intelligent laymen every- 
 where, would do well to procure this pamphlet, and think over the 
 problems and suggestions which are so plentifully scattered through 
 its interesting pages. " Dunfermline Press. 
 
 " Free, unfranchised thought is Catholic, but not Roman Catho- 
 lic. . . . Free inquiry, free speech, a free press exposing and 
 keeping in check fanaticism, cannot fail to trample out religious 
 differences." TAe Truthseeker. 
 
 "There are thousands at the present day who hold views com- 
 pletely in accord with those expressed in this pamphlet, but think 
 themselves in a sense isolated because they cannot accept orthodox 
 doctrines. To such we commend this work. They will be as- 
 tonished to find themselves allied in thought to such a noble army, 
 and will be cheered by the,near prospect of a grand reformation in 
 the religious world." Folkestone Express. 
 
 ' ' ' Thoughts on Theism is a thoughtful pamphlet of eighty pages, 
 filled with liberal ideas, and pointing out some of the steps to be 
 taken in building the church of the future. It is especially valuable 
 in its quotations indicating the spirit of unrest in all the churches 
 and the drift of thought in the best minds. It has had a wide 
 circulation in England, and would prove helpful to the liberal 
 cause here." Boston Commonwealth, U.S. America. 
 
16/ 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Action is excellence, 63 
 Aliquis, 116 
 Allen, Grant, 160, 164 
 AUman, G. J., 128 
 Anthropomorphism, 26 
 " Antiquarian " quoted, 59 
 Argyll, Duke of, 50, 62, 127 
 Arnold, M., 32 
 Atheism, 21 
 Atheist, 17 
 Atoms, 120 
 Atonement, 15 
 
 B. 
 
 Ball, Sir Robert, 119, 146 
 Bampton Lecture, 154 
 Barry, Rev. W., back of title 
 Beaconsfield, Earl, 132 
 Beard, Rev. C, 33 
 Beecher, Rev. Ward, 99 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 37 
 Bible, 15, 82, 83, IIS 
 "Blackwood," 158 
 
 Blasphemy, 30 
 Body, 117 
 
 British Association, 10 
 " British Quarterly," 81 
 Brougham, Lord, 147 
 Burns, 99 
 
 Caird, Principal, i6i 
 ,, Professor, 37 
 Calvin, 98 
 Cameron, Dr., 56 
 Canterbury, Archbishop of, 94 
 Carpenter, Dr., n6 
 Cause, 20 
 
 Cell in Chemistry, 40 
 Certainty, Philosophic, 60, 77 
 Chance, 45, 48 
 Chandler, H., 68 
 " Chambers's Jourfial," 70 
 " Chemistry of Common Life,'' 59 
 Christ, Great Teacher, 75 
 " Christian World," 93 
 Christianity, 151 
 Clarke, Samuel, 28 
 Church, Idea of, 85 
 
1 68 
 
 Church Millinery, 71 
 
 „ Reform, 89, 106 
 
 ,, Service, 103 
 Clergy of future, 100 
 
 ,, to understand their age, 75 
 Cobbe, F. P., 134 
 Colour, Pink, 134 
 Combe, George, 147 
 Comets, 144 
 Confessions, Faith, 81 
 Cooke, Josiah P., 161 
 Crookes, W., 125 
 Cruelty, Animals, 50 
 Curteis, Canon, 35 
 Cyril of Jerusalem, 32 
 
 D. 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 133, 139 
 Dawson, Sir J. W., 130 
 Deity, 144, see God 
 Divinity, 47 
 Donovan, 81 
 Drummond, 41 
 " Dublin Review," 84, 133 
 Duff, M. E. Grant, 153 
 Duty, 46 
 
 Earth fiat, 11 
 "Ecce Homo,'' 162 
 Eliot, George, 18 
 Elocution, 90 
 Emerson, R. W., 133 
 Evolution, 129 
 Exeter Hall, 96 
 Extension, 117 
 
 F. 
 
 Fairbairn, Principal, 80, 149 
 Faith, 116 
 Fantasy, 71 
 
 Finite, 23, see Infinitude 
 Fiske, John, 26, 54, 137 
 Flint, Professor, 40, 50 
 Forms, 71 
 
 "Fortnightly," 31, 124 
 Freedom, Religious, 18, 86 
 Freethinkers, 18 
 Free-will, 114 
 Froude, 106, 115 
 Futurity, 135 
 
 G. 
 
 Genesis, 12 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 115 
 God (see Deity), 21, 23 
 
 „ Idea of, 25 
 
 „ without apology, 98, 137, 163 
 Godhead, 25 
 Greg, W. R., 124 
 Guilleman, 122 
 
 H. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Wm., 24, 36, 114 
 Harrison, Frederic, 35 
 Hat, Story of, 70 
 Heavens, 141 
 Hedge, Dr. F. H., 50 
 Hell, Road to, 19 
 Herbert, Hon. A., 124 
 Hertford, Rev. B., 72 
 Higginson, T. W., 164 
 
169 
 
 Highlander's gun, 63 
 Hooper, Richard, 34 
 Hunt, Leigh, 153 
 Hunter, Rev. J., 150 
 Huxley, T. H., 127 
 
 Immensity, 20 
 Immortality, 136 
 Infallibility, 83 
 Infidelity, 10 
 
 Infinitude, 19, 21, 28, 117 
 " Inquirer," 32, 55 
 
 J- 
 
 Jevons, Professor W. S., 49 
 Jowett, Rev., 123 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, 37 
 Knowledge, 6 
 
 Laing, S., 51 
 
 " Langham Magazine," 31 
 
 Law, Reign of, 47, 61, 122 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 77 
 
 Liddon, Canon, 129 
 
 Life, 135 
 
 "Literary Churchman," 70 
 
 Locke, John, 118 
 
 Lockyer, J. N., 125 
 
 Love of God, 74 
 
 Lubbock, Sir J., 142 
 
 M. 
 
 Macaulay, 1 8 
 
 McCosh, Dr., 22 
 
 Mackay, Dr. , back of title 
 
 Macleod, Dr. N., 82 
 
 Magic, 57 
 
 Man, 19, 63, 137, 163 
 
 Man in the Moon, 59 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 78 
 
 Mansel, H. L., 114, 115, 117 
 
 Martineau, Dr., 20, 34,46, 72, ii". 
 
 148 
 Martineau, Harriet, 31 
 Maudsley, Dr. Henry, 58 
 Maxwell, C, 124 
 Mil, J. S., 37, 75 
 Millim, 23 
 Milton, 75, 92 
 Mind, 36 
 "Mind," 31 
 Mitchell, W., 136 
 Mivart, St. George, 48, 78, 140 
 Mould, 132 
 Miiller, Max, 119, 163 
 
 N. 
 
 Nature, 13, 14, 45, 73, 115, 124 
 New Catholic Church, 1 10 
 Newman, Cardinal, 54) 77) 9^ 
 Newman, F. W., 150 
 " Nineteenth Century," 78 
 Nought, 20 
 
 O. 
 Old Testament, 13 
 
170 
 
 ■"Pall Mall Gazette," 67 
 
 Parker, Rev. Dr. Joseph, 88 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 161 
 
 Pascal, 24 
 
 Pasteur, M., 163 
 
 Pentateuch, 15 
 
 Pilgrimages, 11 
 
 Pouchet, F. A., 49, 53, 132, 142 
 
 Praise, 72 
 
 Prayer, 64, 70 
 
 Preface, 5 
 
 Priests, 87 
 
 Pritchard, Professor, 144 
 
 Proctor, R. A., 120, 142 
 
 Pulpit, 105 
 
 'Quarterly Review," 24 
 
 R. 
 
 Railways, Hell, 19 
 Redthom Apple, 58 
 Remedies, 63 
 
 Richardson, Dr. B. W., 55 
 Roman Church, 12, 15, 16 
 Row, Rev. Prebendary, 54 
 Royal Institution, 66 
 Ruskin, J., 158 
 Russell, Earl, 152 
 
 S. 
 
 Sais, Sanctuary of, 35 
 
 Savage, Rev. M. J., 32, 108 
 
 Scepticism, loi 
 
 Science, 11, 147 
 
 Scotland, 82 
 
 Service, Religious, 112 
 
 Shakespeare quoted, 63, 71, : 
 
 his religion, 156 
 Sidgwick, Professor H., 51 
 Spencer, Herbert, 32, 68, lig 
 "Spiritual Conferences," 103 
 Stanley, Dean, 155, 156 
 Stokes, G. J., 126 
 Suffield, Rev. R. R., 31 
 Summary, 7 
 Swedenborg, E., 35 
 
 Tart, P. G., 119, 120 
 
 Tennyson, 6 
 
 TertuUian, 64 
 
 Theism, 21 
 
 Theist, 16, 34, 51, 52, S3, 68, 115, 
 
 1.31. 136, 139. 154. 158 
 " Theological Review," 159 
 Theology, 147 
 Thompson, Sir W., 126 
 Thornton, W. F., 115 
 ''Times," 54, 90, 92, 128, 152 
 Torment, Eternal, 15 
 Truths of Reason, 46 
 Tulloch, Principal, 52, 74 
 Tylor, E. B., 158 
 Tyndall, Professor, 30, 126, 137, 
 
 159 
 
171 
 
 u. 
 
 Ueberweg, 114 
 Unconditioned, 23 
 Upton, Professor, 28 
 
 V. 
 
 Virchow, R., 132 
 Voice, Human, 105 
 
 W. 
 
 Wallace, Professor, 156 
 
 Weather, Prayers for, 64, 67 
 
 Wesley, John, 99 
 
 Will, God's, be done, 72 
 
 Wilson, Dr. A., 141 
 
 Wordsworth, 14 
 
 World, 132 
 
 Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, Milford Lane, Strand, London, W.C. 
 
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 By Professor F. A. Lange. 
 
 Authorized Translation from the German by Ernest C 
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 Translated from the Second German Edition, by Marian 
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 Second Edition, post 8vo, pp. XX.-340, cloth, 7s. 6d. 
 
 PHASES OF FAITH; 
 
 OR, 
 
 PASSAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF MY CREED. 
 
 By F. W. Newman. 
 
 With Reply to Professor Henry Rogers, Author of the 
 " Eclipse of Faith." 
 
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 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION 
 
 TO THE 
 
 SPREAD OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS. 
 
 By C. P. Tiele, 
 
 Dr. Theol., Professor of the History of Religions in the 
 University of Leiden. 
 
 Translated from the Dutch by J. Estlin Carpenter, M.A. 
 
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THE SOUL; 
 HER SORROWS AND HER ASPIRATIONS. 
 
 An Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul, 
 as the True Basis of Theology. 
 
 By F. W. Newman. 
 
 Tenth Edition. Post 8vo, pp. xii.-i62, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN 
 GERMANY : 
 
 A Fragment. By Heinrich Heine. 
 
 Translated hy John Snodgrass, Translator of " Wit Wisdom, 
 and Pathos from the Prose of Heinrich Heme." 
 
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 LESSING : HIS LIFE & WRITINGS- 
 
 By James Sime, M.A,. 
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 ORIENTAL RELIGIONS, & THEIR RELATION 
 TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 
 
 By Samuel Johnson. 
 I. — India. 
 
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