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of all human invention," writes Mr Mahaffy, "is to become conventional, then cramped, then effete. It is to be revived only by breaking with venerable traditions and going back to nature, to natural man and natural things, for new inspiration." 1 Excellently observed. The little mind who loves itself will write and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road from universal benevolence." 2 See how this frightful evil of conventionality, which is too often but another rendering of insincerity, has blighted religious teaching and cursed religious life. To this day thousands of men are constantly engaged in teaching only what they themselves have been taught, not what they, in sincerity of soul, have found out to be true. It might in truth be said that, in some of our theological schools, the students are positively taught not to think beyond what they are taught, that their education is completed when they leave the school. The result is that thousands of our Churchmen, of all denominations, are but another kind of organgrinders. However good they may be in other respects (and let it be gladly granted that there are excellent fellows among them), we do but find them, for the most part, grinding, from week to week, the poor hurdy-gurdy of theological conventionality. Throughout Christendom there is a very large orchestra of them continually playing an appalling sequence of the most hopeless tunes. How can such performances do any good! How can they touch the souls of men! How, in such circumstances, can churches be anything but a failure?

5. The dogma of human worthlessness and of hereditary damnation.-Take, for instance, the one 1 'History of Greek Literature,' Vol. i. p. 7. * Goldsmith, 'Works,' Vol. vi. p. 6.

dogma of human worthlessness-not sinfulness, be it observed, which is painfully apparent to us all, but absolute worthlessness and hereditary damnation-a dogma which, with some others, vitiates the whole body of Christian Theology. I take it to be one of the most disastrous and soul-blasting insincerities ever breathed by Satan and received by men, the deadly root of infinite jungles of error and pestilence. Just think of it. Here is a man writing in a book, or serenely declaring from a pulpit, that we are all God-condemned and incapable of any native worth from the moment of our birth! Reflecting upon his grim announcement, can we escape from the conclusion that he is merely retailing a stupid conventional falsehood which he himself has been taught, and in no wise a doctrine which he himself has manfully worked out from the evidence before him? Yet I suppose that it is one of the dogmas entertained and more or less cherished by all the orthodoxies, inclusive even of the Mahometan.1 Now just try to believe it that we are all in a state of "original Sin," or hereditary damnation—that, in short, we are all hereditarily damned! I venture to say that we can no more accept this dogma of hereditary damnation than we could accept one of hereditary Salvation. Ethical Law and ethical computation necessarily require that the life and conversation of the individual be taken as the basis of his spiritual status, both present and future. The very thought of hereditary guilt would be laughed out of Bow Street, London, and much more, I venture to surmise, out of the Bow Street of New Jerusalem. Really, our orthodoxies should all sincerely repent themselves of their follies, and drastically reform themselves.

1 As to Mahomet's views, see Sale, 'Koran, Prel. Discourse,' pp. 69-70.

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6. No man should dare to teach any doctrine which he does not hold by heart-conviction.-Let it be repeated that when a man declares such a dogma as that of hereditary damnation as an article of his religious belief, it is impossible to take him seriously. There is no heart-conviction in it, no infusion of moral cogency. A bill stuck on a wall says what has been stamped on it; so, all too frequently, the parson. Now it should be held that no man has any right, as a professed teacher, merely to play the part of a bill on a wall; no man should dare to teach anything which he does not hold by personal conviction.1 It is simply stupid and sinful and disastrous to do so, unless he notify at the same time that he is only saying what he has been told to say. With what strength and grace shall any gentleman in Crockford preach honesty, say, in secular business, if he himself be constantly found speaking without conviction, or shuffling in his premises, shuffling in his theology?

7. Ludicrous situations created by clergymen insincere in their Theology.-Let a man question himself and others more and more, and make sure of the ground of his doctrine. By this method of procedure he will best reveal both the Knowledge and the ignorance of both parties. It has been rightly said of the pre-Reformation Church that the life had been eaten out of its services; that there was no reality in its creed; that the prayers were learned by rote; that the sermons were mechanical and perfunctory; that the people sat

1 “Truth must be ground for every man by himself out of its husk, with such help as he can get, indeed, but not without stern labour of his own."-Ruskin, 'On the Old Road,' Vol. ii. p. 278. Surely so. Every ship must be moored by its own anchor. I am not saved by what you believe, but by what I believe, and the converse. The hope of man lies in the individual, not in the corporation.

in darkness while spiritual and intellectual stupor settled like densest fog upon the Church.1 In a word, priest and people had been bludgeoned into stupidity by theological dogma-into a state of sheer spiritual coma. Let the churches of to-day take warning from those ghastly times, and strive to abolish theological insincerity. Notice the grotesque situation which it creates for itself. Here is a parson preaching, say, the dogma of hereditary damnation, that we are all born under "the wrath and curse of God." If he or his congregation really believed it, they would, of course (every one of them), be shaking with fear; but mark, the very parson himself is quite calm over the infinitely calamitous dogma which he is propounding; and the whole congregation is quite calm likewise, despite the infinite calamity under which it proclaims them to be sitting! How, in such circumstances, can either parson or people be credited with sincerity? Both parties pretending to regard themselves as in a state of natural perdition, yet maintaining all the while (every man, woman, and child of them) an equal pulse-beat and a countenance of perfect equanimity! If it were not so serious, the whole scene would be wildly ludicrous, and shake the very "midriff of Despair" with laughter.

8. Squalid socialistic wretches credited with sincerity. Nor is the noble adjective sincere debased in its application to dark-souled ecclesiastics only. Even in our own country any discontented and squalid wretch who gabbles himself into notoriety, any paltry blackguard schemer who has gained a following of ignorant men, any dusky ruffian inciting to "land-hunger " and the murder of landlords, and generally steering his course by the light of Hell-fire, even such as he are actually 1 Skelton, 'Maitland of Lethington,' Vol. i. pp. 199-205.

voted "sincere " in some quarters! 1 The dingy anarchist, hating honest labour, paralysing industry, envying the good of others, eyes constantly fixed on his neighbours' pockets, curdling the sweet milk of human affection into sulphuric acid, blowing up and mangling innocent men, women, and children with his infernal bombseven him our euphemistic and extremely polite age sometimes clothes with the ascription of sincerity, and congratulates itself in the act, on its liberality!" The word is murdered every day in cold blood.

9. By such usage the moral vocabulary is debased. -It is deplorable. In a world of sin and folly such as this, it may be anticipated that ugly things will be continually happening, that grievous obstacles will be continually cropping up to obstruct human progress; but it ought not to be extravagant to hope that, amongst reputable persons, words of moral import may not be lightly used; that the Moral Vocabulary may not be debased; that bold and broad manifestations of wickedness and folly may not be regarded as demonstrative of "sincerity."

10. And Literature is of no account unless it be steeped in sincerity.-Whilst the presence of sincerity or insincerity is more or less easily to be noted in the activities we have been discussing, and whilst those activities are blissful or baneful to the world according to the spirit which inspires them, the presence of sincerity or insincerity in Literature is scarcely less easily determinable. I have heard a good carpenter exclaim, on surveying 1 The " patriot " Mitchell, for instance, whom Mr M'Carthy calls "the one formidable man among the rebels of '48." This patriot," says the same writer, "settled for a while in Richmond, Virginia, and became an ardent advocate of Slavery and an impassioned Champion of the Southern rebellion."- History of our own Times,' Vol. i. pp. 339-40.