has forced upon many individuals important religious conclusions. They have felt that in the dispute between the representative theologians and the prominent scientists the latter on many points present the most reasonable arguments. They are convinced that, in questions still doubtful, the scientist, besides his superiority of method, has the advantage of having placed a number of starting-points fairly beyond dispute. They accept Darwin's theory of natural selection as a simple and clear solution of the history of life, and find it impossible to receive the opposite doctrine of special creations. In their belief, geology, revealing the stupendous age of our earth and countless past races of vegetable and animal existence, has reduced the six days' creation and the Noachic genealogies to legends. Cosmology, with them, intensifies the argument of geology. Astronomy ignores the

waters above the firmament' and the stayed sun of Gibeon. Physiology and Mechanics, which give quantity, mea. surement and material laws to nerve and will-force, and show them capable of transposition into heat, electricity, gravity, abolish a hundred theories concerning responsibility, freedom and the nature of immortal life. Utilitarianism, the pleasure-theory of Ethics, has been only half successful, not because its principle is untrue, but because by friends and opponents only half understood; and this, too-the finding of a blood-relation, in one aspect, between pleasure and good, and between will and the feelings, is occasioning wholesale collapse among a

certain class of speculations on the conscience, guilt and sin. Then there is Comparative Mythology tracing the pedigree of the Genesis legends distinctly to Assyria; and Comparative Religion discovering sweet rules of righteousness at the roots of Buddhism, and noble lives and maxims in China before Our Lord, and the worship of one great' Father-in-Heaven' by the earliest Aryan ploughmen, and psalms like David's in Chaldea, and everywhere tendencies, likenesses, affinities, to the loftiest truths of Christianity; and discovering that Christianity itself has the same kind (not degree, however) of defects as all those other religions, as if One had left them there to show its connection with His plan. And next arises Historical Criticism, with renewed, combined, persistent researches into the apostolic and subapostolic ages, lighting up a score of Gnostic systems and influences which affected the Church itself; constructing pictures of the great Schools of Palestine, and of the national misfortunes and other events which deflected the New Testament documents, and even of Persian and Babylonian society and the times of the Maccabees. With Historical comes Literary Criticism, demonstrating that the wrecks of the same original Gospel-story form the body of the three first Evangels, that it varies in each, that it contains no account of the Resurrection, that it has been added to and displaced by many hands, that its narrations are almost wholly miraculous in its earlier part, but grow clear as it approaches the Supper and Crucifixion-that dif ferent endings are tacked to it in every

Gospel and different beginnings in Matthew and Luke, and that these contain more of myth and less of fact than the main story. Innumerably more things—a countless mass of facts --does Literary Criticism, without descending to philological puerilities, reveal to the impartial mind. It seems as if every petty science had also its bitter drop for the cup of Divinity. Philology, Philosophy, Logic, even Pure Mathematics, combine to add trouble. And most significant is, that the objections from natural science are grounded on the simplest logic, and, unlike objections from Metaphysics, bear easy stamps of truth. Miracles, likewise, we can no longer hold. They have not only against them the precedent improbability of discordance with well-known laws, but are oftenest reported in the most superstitious times and credulous places; where alone they yet linger. They disappear in exact proportion to the progress of civilization. They have been claimed as evidence by the most degraded systems. No demoniacs live now. There are neither ghosts nor witches, nor risers from the dead. New sciences establish the whole argument of Hume to this extent. We are forced back, innatural matters, to find no workings of God except through his ever-present laws. 'But' demand of us whatever theologians may still have expected of us as friends, where then is your support for Supernatural Revelation; the Trinity; and the Resurrection, which you cut from the end of the Gospels; and Redemption, if there be no free-will; and the Divinity of Christ?'

We see no support for them; the proofs are too clearly against them. And not only can it be shown that they are mainly illogical among themselves but they can be traced to their sources of mistake. Take one-the Divinity of Christ. Followed impartially along the writings of the age, it proves a descendant of Philo of Alexandria's theory of the Word, in combination

with Christ's earnest appropriation to Himself of the Fatherhood of God calling Himself His Son as He wishes the disciples to do for themselves. It was contributed to by the reverent early traditions regarding Him, and by the incorporation of Philo's theory by the Jews with their own Messianic expectations. Its associate doctrine, the Trinity, is but that which happened to be chosen by the Church out of many Gnostic ones. Hermas, for instance, brother of Pope Pius, in the second century, wrote a book called 'The Pastor,' long read for edification in the churches. A parable is told in it concerning a servant who tilled the vineyard so faithfully in the absence of his Lord that the Lord made him co-heir with his Son; and it is explained that the Son is the Holy Ghost who had existed from before the world with the Father, while the servant is Jesus who so well established the work of God on earth and so pleased the Holy Spirit which descends within good men that these two had taken counsel to receive Him into their number.

What are these dogmas but the beautiful and strange conceptions of imaginative times? This conclusion they press upon us; which again verifies itself in accordance with the best requirements of Logic, in every succeeding deduction. Not that those dogmas were puny or inconceivable as a system, but their bases of fact fall so clearly into place under simple and methodical sciences.

By such, and ten thousand corroborative conclusions, gathered not so much from specialist arguments as from a general search for facts, we have had borne home to us the conviction that something was wrong with theology; and the majority have been tempted to consider Christianity itself a fabric of misconceptions.

But are not a few facts obvious on the other side? Amidst all the misconceptions innumerable would a single one bear the construction that

Christianity is wilfully false? The answer even of enemies has been given in the universal rejection of the Resurrection Theory of Fraud. Of like fate is Renan's suggestion that Jesus was compelled by expediency to accept reputation as a miracle-worker.

1. Then those misconceptions have been mistakes and not falsehoods. Much myth there is in the Gospels and in Genesis and other books, but myth is not a lie. It is but naturally distorted truth, subject to laws of distortion (like the laws of reflection of light) which are beginning to be discovered, and the patient study of which will gradually recover the entire truth.

2. In the meantime has myth so hopelessly disturbed the Bible that its general contents, even now, mislead any reader slightly instructed in the nature of such influences? Are not such influences even absent from the greater part? Cannot a commonsense man so instructed acquire a correct idea of the life of Christ, His sayings, difficulties, sorrows, work and death with much more ease than he can of the great propositions of Natural Science?

The Bible, then, is, on the whole, a book not difficult to understand. Even commentators on it would require to spend more labour on the study of those sciences which throw light upon it than they have spent over the riddles of Divinity. It is this portion which the Germans have well begun but English attempts are on the more important track in seeking a way not so much to exhibit the lore as to preserve the life.

3. But now, though straightforward (1) and simple to comprehend (2), does it contain matter worth while? Yes. It contains the only possible future religion. And great men of this latter age who have studied history and human needs have affirmed or admitted-according to their other views-that mankind cannot attain to goodness without reli

gion (esp. Froude, Essays on Science and Theology,). The proofs of this proposition have been so often lately set forth that it requires but mention. It is, therefore, just as necessary to retain the Bible as we found it reasonable to alter theology.

Upon the whole question the outline of solution is this: 1. That righteousness is indispensable. 2. That the mass of men cannot attain to righteousness without a religion. 3. That they cannot reach it by means of a philosophy. 4. Nor by means of a mixture of religious systems. 5. But only by some single system. 6. That among religions the best imperatively excludes the others. 7. That only a true system can be entertained. 8. And that to b permanent it must be expressive of the highest truths.

Christianity I believe to possess the common-sense advantage of fulfilling these conditions. I believe it to be the best of systems-a superiority given it by evolution through natural causes, with God working by means of them, and with the usual wonderful results of high evolution. And I believe it by its fundamental preference of the spirit to the letter, to be expressive of the entire gist and possible extent of truth. And I believe its great special doctrines to be

true.

The creed may be clearer on consideration of two questions: I. What is a religion II. What reasons exist for holding Christianity to be true

I. A religion is a system of means found capable in practice of bringing men to righteousness. And righteousness is conduct directed to secure the greatest harmony of all conscious natures with all things. Those to whom the most important of all things' is Deity, generally define a religion 'a worship of Deity' in some form. Ethics is the theoretic science of righteousness. Religion and law-to use the latter for illustration of the firsthave the relation to ethics of practical sciences, engaged with the efficient

means of righteousness. Law is the abstract science of external means. Religion of internal. The former regards the outward act, and is incapable of arriving at pure righteousness, which depends upon intention; but religion dealing principally with intention itself, is capable of accomplishing essential righteousness. Each of them has for subject-matter many (concrete) systems-codes and religions—in different stages of improvement, from Papuan tabu to Roman jurisprudence, from Shinto to Christianity.

What is a practical science? What is the distinction between practice and theory. The former consists of conduct adapted simply to things and events as they actually occur. It follows the maze of life and nature

the subtilty of things'-without attempt at analysis. The one requirement of a practical rule is, not that it shall be the expression of a casual law, nor be couched in terms of precision, nor bear any relation to scientific system-but only that it will work-not that its Deduction shall be clear, but that its Verification shall, to use the terms of Mill. The one re

quirement of a practical observation is, that it prove true when required. I may hold whatever view I please concerning free-will; may consider myself a sheer automaton moved by physical forces, but in practice I must recognize that I can withhold myself with perfect ease from knocking my knuckles on the door, and I have consequently a practical free-will. And so about every such question. We have one safe end of it if we know it in practice. Apply this to some ideas on religion. The way to lead men to goodness, say some, is to instruct them in morality, purity, truth; but the worship of Buddha's Tooth has proved as fruitful. Every ethical philosophy, again, but in greater degree if its ethics are true, has a religion deeply bound with it, the mere contemplation of good ideas producing some warmth of desire in the mind

which acts as a means of righteousness. These ideas, however, being abstract, are difficult to conceive without study and attention, and are always less vivid than objects from life (see Bacon on 'Art of Memory,' Advt. of Lg.). Being consequently not fitted to the conditions of mankind in its varied characters, classes, occupations and historical ups-and-downs, ethical philosophies are valueless as universal religions (hence wrong as religions, for he who chooses his cult should do so keeping in view its influence on all men). This is why even Stoicism failed at Rome, and early Taoism in China, and why Confucianism there has lost the lower ranks.

With mixtures of systems, like the Brahmo Somaj, the difficulty is partly the same, but partly also that they lose the force of concentration. To dilute force is to lose means and efface claim to rank as a religion.

Practice has been the test, and moulder of Christianity being the form of Natural Selection with which Evolution has acted upon religions. Hundreds were the systems of superstition, philosophy and religion proper, from which Christianity emerged the chosen -the complex, result of many centuries fulfilling in its assemblage of superiorities, the ultimate conditions. Contemplate its machina of peculiar methods, emotions, and appeals to a grand example, of which Christ is the soul and chief-that intensely attracting figure, burnt into history - the greatest human genius devoted to the noblest human object, born in the most fitting age, living a pure and strikingly eventful life, teaching sublime and piercing truths, and dying for principles out of love to God his Father and to men. Ever since the ages have been rolling up for his religion another force-a vast prestige. His way is the best way-for most men the only. It asks but an unprejudiced trial for even the contemptuous moralist to find his correct life quickened in a degree he will not deny. As well

may one invent another Man as another Christianity.

But what if, while effectual, its means and dogmas be false? Are, for instance, the ethics of Christ in accordance with the ethics of fact? Has not Kant shown right and wrong to be intuitions of the reason? Or Hume, Sidgwick and Spencer, that they are based upon pleasure and pain? And from one of these principles must not each thinker start, who wishes to arrive at the rest?

Not necessarily. For whatever right or wrong be, we feel and see them for the most part easily enough in practice. The great thing in studies of our nature is the proper interpretation of it. For this delicate questioning some men are fitter than others-geniuses, ever true. And that Christ was such, we have verifications in the way his words interpret to our natures what we had not noticed was their voice. Upon this study he turned intense illumination of great powers, reaching results corroborated even by the clumsier independent solutions of Buddha and Confucius-men far less great than he. I recognize in him a delicate instinct, which, not withstanding recent discussions, will, I think, be proved in every case correct as to its decisions on righteousness.

God and Immortality are the other two dogmas, of which we should like to feel quite sure. Of them, too, natural theology must consolidate the proofs from science and history. But I hold that their most important testimony is that of Christ himself, and the vigorous successions of geniuses, who spent their powers in examining, discovering and improving their practical forms, and handed them down to the Artist, a celestial legacy. The right they have to authority here depends partly on the nature of the questions (whose difficulty consists in his co-ordination of deductions, rather than in the necessity of many inductive examples), and partly on the general character of genius. Logicians, dazzled by the su

periority and ease of regular induction within its proper sphere, have overlooked the value of other descriptions of investigation. Regular induc tion has only been subduing the fields of knowledge into sciences (i.e. demonstrating their causal laws) by degrees. While sciences have been taking shape, there ran ahead into tracts yet unsubdued an instrument more fit to cope with chaotic states, namely Genius, the precursor of Science, which for many fields makes a very good instrument indeed, but, in this case, crowning a consensus of metaphysical and historical reasonings, possesses convincing value. It is to such questions the same solvent as the common-sense of ordinary men to ordinary situations of life. Genius is, in fact, but exalted common-sense, which again is but another term for good judgment. The greater the genius, the more trustworthy the solvent. Christ's achievements in ethics prove his genius great, under circumstances which permit us to test it.

The Hebrew method of investigation was the natural method of Genius. It has been universally depreciated and misunderstood, but happened, in this case, to possess the conditions of a useful logical plan. It did not much occupy itself, like Greek reasoning, with propositions and words, but rather carried in the mind those pictures and impressions of things themselves which lie at the back of all the formulas and signs of speechby which logicians indeed correct their ideas. The great minds of Israel so equipped went up and down the universe of facts, asking of doctrines and assertions the simple questions, 'Is this true? Is that true?' and closely comparing the essential alleged facts with the facts pictured by memory in the mind. There were difficulties certainly. The labyrinth of words was exchanged for the lay brinth of things. A strict national habit of truth was the necessary atmosphere, and imagination is difficult to restrain. Furthermore,