and better individualism, which demands freedom for all individuals to think, to criticise, and to act untrammelled by any 'inherent sacredness,' which maintains democracy in the government, and which requires altruism of all, high or low, that has preserved the church, and will ever save it, if saved it is to be. And I am wholly unable to see how a 'christian priesthood' is any less 'constituted and commissioned of God' or any less' a veritably divine ambassadorship from the Court of Heaven,' if both its origin and its authority are derived from 'the instinct or necessity which leads all human societies to provide for an orderly subdivision of labour.' It seldom seems to occur to 'christian philosophers,' that God may conceivably work in and through nature, and that circumstances which create a necessity or give life to an instinct may be as truly providential and as truly accordant with the divine plans and methods as the utterances and declarations of a church council.

The conclusion to which we are forced is that there is even less danger in the case of the church to be apprehended from what Bishop Littlejohn and his friends mean by Individualism' than there is in the family and in the state. This individualism is only subversive of a far more dangerous and deleterious manifestation of individualism, and has, besides, a direct tendency to promote that freedom of thought and inquiry needed to secure more light, to attain the self-development in liberty which is essential to selfcontrol, which is the beginning and the sine qua non for altruistic conduct. And, on the other hand, we are quite persuaded of the truth and force of the remarks of John Greenleaf Whittier, which Bishop Littlejohn quotes in a note, as an instance of the audacity of individualistic thought. These are golden words :

'EVERYTHING VALUABLE TO THE SOUL HAS ITS CORRESPONDING NEED IN THE SOUL. AUTHORITY AS A GROUND AND ELEMENT OF RELIGION MUST WHOLLY DISAPPEAR. THE TEACHINGS OF CHRISTIANITY WILL BE ON THE NEEDS OF MAN, AND THE CLAIMS FOR CHRIST WILL BE BASED ON THE PERFECT CHARACTER OF HIS LIFE AND TEACHINGS, AND NOT ON HIS AUTHORITY.'1

I sincerely hope that in the discussion which I now bring to a close, I have shown patience with bishops and doctors of divinity. I have endeavoured to be both respectful and fair. It is not easy to argue with people and educate them at the same time. Indeed, so far as the bishops and doctors of divinity are concerned, I

N. S. Times, October 4, 1880.

certainly should not expect to educate them. They deem it sufficient, in reply to criticism, to iterate and reiterate the doctrines and arguments they learned in their youth; and to attempt to teach them anything new would be like attempting to instruct a struldbrug of upwards of a century. But, at the same time, we cannot avoid a reverence for those living among us, who from the progress of the world have been left as anachronisms. Provided it does not make us more tender of their opinions, this is commendable. Certainly, though destructive criticism is necessary, it need not obliterate personal respect, and if it be respectful to the persons, it is generally and more justly entitled to weight, and is productive of better results. Men are not always obtuse when we think them to be, even if they are incapable of changing their opinions. If we find it necessary to pass strictures upon those whose expressions have received great weight and high respect, it should be done in the humility of searchers for truth who will be bold and unsparing in criticism if occasion require it, but yet reverent in spirit toward the men who have spent their lives in building up the temples which, having served their purpose, are passing into decay. Noble thinkers and workers have given their energy to the propagation of ideas and measures which, though well in their season, belong to the civilisation of buried centuries. The victory of their cherished ideas might, indeed, have been the triumph of truth; but as the tide swept on it sought new channels and left them behind, as the changeful river, cutting through the yielding sands, leaves the town on its banks an inland city. Their glory hence becomes a glory of the past, but not the less a real glory, though in the march of progress they are left behind. It is not an uncommon spectacle to see in our great cities some building, an old landmark, a relic of departed magnificence, after it has filled its place for years, and perhaps been a pride and boast, at last yield to the hammers of the workmen, who, caring naught for the sacred associations, ruthlessly and remorselessly knock one brick from another until no vestige of its unity remains; but when from the chaotic mass of ruins there arises the granite warehouse or the marble palace, who will not say that rightly the dust returned to dust and justly the old gives place to the new ? So also with the edifices reared by the human mind. So, too, indeed, with human existence itself. When fate has wrought its will by us, we, too, give way, and our time for departure has Wise and good men so situated we see often, and among

come.

bishops and doctors of divinity too, men of silver hair, whose life is in the past, who appear to have nothing in common with the destructive to-day, but upon whom we look as upon messengers from a distant land, men whose hopes lie beyond the baths of all the western stars; ' about whom plays the light which seems to us the mellow radiance of the setting sun, to them the auroral flash of a brighter dawn. They have done their work. It is for us, indeed, to criticise that work, but we are also privileged to honour the workers. By-and-bye, perhaps, others will do the same for the newer achievements of to-day. Little comfort there may be in thus seeing the fondest idols of our creation broken in pieces. Yet though human means all the time be failing, and man's work all the time crumbling into ruin, 'out of motion, and change, and admixture' all things spring in never-ceasing and still advancing evolution. The flower fades, the fruit ripens, the seed falls to the ground, but from it springs a fairer flower and a richer fruit.

If

ye lay bound upon the wheel of change,

And no way were of breaking from the chain,
The heart of boundless being is a curse,

The soul of things fell Pain.

Ye are not bound! The soul of things is sweet,
The heart of being is celestial rest;

Stronger than woe is will; that which was Good,
Doth pass to Better-Best.

PART V.

THE SOCIALISTIC FALLACY.