succeeded here will be promoted to a still higher examination, we know not; we can only hope. But we do know that many will fail in this examination. "Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way * * * and few there be that find it." "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; not every one." There is no greater mistake than to suppose that every professor of the doctrine will be saved by accepting it. That, eventually, all will be saved, even if so as by fire, is a pious hope which we need not scruple to profess openly. But, so far as we know here, so far as we are certain beyond peradventure, here and to-day is the opportunity for improvement, for perfection. Here it is that each man's ideal must be striven towards, and measurably approached. This opportunity gone, we know not what shall happen. But we are certain that those whose lives are not conformed to the Divine standard before death must certainly "suffer loss." Let each work out his salvation "in fear and trembling." And let that salvation be worked out here. If there is opportunity for future sanctification, your present sanctification will be only so much gained. If there is not, you are safe. So, in any case do your duty by yourself here. It is the only businesslike course. Does this deny immortality of the soul? Nay! Immortality of the spiritual self is so sure, to those who have any spiritual knowledge, that it is no more a matter of discussion. Immortality of the conscious soul is something to be attained; something very real, something within our grasp. But beyond and above this, the spiritual germ or vortex of divine life, can never be destroyed by merely dropping the garment of the flesh. Immortality does not depend on any doctrine. It anticipated and will survive all forms of doctrines; all absurd, if authoritative, formulations. The most narrow are the first to squirm when the traditional standards are pressed home in their historical significance, not their present day interpretation. But why, it is urged, should a man forsake the Church when he is in a position in which he can do much good? In which he can preach and teach the truth-granting it to be such—to advantage from within, while from without he could never reach the same people? For the sake then of those who need the truth, who are entitled to it, stay within, and teach and preach. In fact, a man who insists on morality and spirituality has a much truer right to be within the Church than many who profess to be the most stanch supporters of it. He is much more in accord with the early methods and practice of the Church, than they. Supposing the man in question is forced to keep still about certain things; to interpret some details. What then? For the sake of those whom he can help, let him deny himself. But the answer to all this is that one of Mrs. Browning: "Leave results to God; but you be clean." Again, Matthew Arnold's words are brought up: "And when my ill-schooled spirit is aflame, Why then move? Truly, this may be applied to laymen, who may take or leave as much as they please, and can remain silent. But for the clergyman, who must continually teach and preach; who must continually commit himself, it is impossible. Another objection to a man's forsaking the Church with which he is connected is the harm which he might inflict on it, and on those persons who have honored him with their confidence, and on those principles he has most at heart. First, he will inflict but little, if any, harm on the Church by leaving it. Granted that the man in question is not conceited enough to suppose that he is some great one, history shows that however intelligent or moral the man who has left a Church, the effect has at best been temporary, local, and personal. The great majority of churchgoers, at least in the Catholic churches, though they may join a Church through personal confidence in the man who represents it to them, nevertheless make it a social, a practical part of their lives, and though congregations may temporarily be injured, in the long run those who belong to a congregation will remain with it whether the head of it is disgraced, or not. The man who leaves the Church must also remember that a great number, if not the greatest number of his supposed admirers, will never take the trouble of investigating the full merits of the case for themselves. The fact that he is disgraced will be sufficient to deprive him of the practical support of the greater number of the parishioners. Moreover, if the man happen to be only an assistant minister, his departure will hardly be noticed by those members of the congregation who are accustomed to judge a man, not according to his merits, but according to his position. Second, he will inflict little, if any harm on those who have honored him with their confidence. If they are relying for their salvation, and for their knowledge of the truth on a whosoever he be, the sooner they are taught to put their reliance on none but God, so much the better for them. Indeed, there are always some members of a congregation who seek to enter heaven on the shoulders of the minister; and the sooner these are dropped on the hard ground, so that they may learn to walk on their own feet, the better for them. And surely, if any man places his confidence in any other for any reason other than that they believe the man is looking for the truth-if, for instance, they trust in him as a business and social success, the sooner such kind of "confidence" is destroyed, the better for all. Put not your trust in princes, but in God alone. Third, he will inflict little damage on the principles he really has at heart. man, Doubtless, this is the most serious of the dangers of the course of a man who is willing to sacrifice his all for the truth. It has been already noticed that the great majority of religious people accept a given theology merely because they suppose that morality is bound up with it. And when they find a man opposing their theology, they consequently suppose that he is also opposing, consciously or unconsciously, the morality they suppose is bound up with their form of belief. Consequently the man who leaves a Church because he sees that its formularies not only do not produce morality, but contain morality only in spite of themselves, and sometimes explicitly preach immorality, will be in danger of being misunderstood by those who are sufficiently innocent of learning to identify their theology with the purest form of morality. Doubtless, to them, the man who separates himself for the sake of morality, will seem to be immoral, and to antagonize morality. But this evil effect is not the fault of the more enlightened man, but of the less enlightened people; and if any harm is done to them, it is their own fault. Doubtless there are many sincere and devout souls, who have not the ability, even if they have the will to learn better; but, after all, a man may be required to produce arguments, but not to furnish brains, too, for his hearers. If it is not their fault, then, that a bad impression is produced, it is their own misfortune. Many of the clergy-at any rate as many as have sufficiently limited acquaintance with the technical history of the Church and its formularies and the greater part of the laity, would agree with the crucial importance of morality, and other principles enunciated in this paper. But they will say, why leave the Church on the account of morality? Is not this morality what the Church is driving at? Cannot the standards of the Church be interpreted with sufficient laxity to permit the fullest preaching of such principles? Is it not, in fact, the case that most modern preachers who gain popularity or reputation are the very ones who so interpret the formularies? For my own part I should say that it may be possible for a man to do so. I would be the last man to endeavor to fasten on the Church the unfair methods of Athanasius and the ecclesiastical councils, the immoral doctrines of Augustine and Thomas of Aquino, the immoral stories and lax business principles, and the imprecatory psalms of the Hebrews, the unequaled tortures, persecutions and wars of religions, or the immorality of the historic sense of the Thirteenth Article of Religion. I should be perfectly willing to maintain that the Church "at heart," or the "true" Church is consistent with, and helpful to the most enlightened morality. I would be perfectly willing simply to avoid certain errors, absurdities and impossibilities as to matters of fact in standards and formularies. The only trouble, but the sufficient one, is, that those men who represented the Church to me when I was admitted understood it not so, being satisfied with dubbing their opinions "facts," and refusing to entertain any "theories" or ex planations, or authentifications of these so-called "facts." This is a cheap but effective means of deceiving one's own mind, and disguising bold refusal to think. Doubtless, it would be possible for me to merge their personalities into official representatives of the Church, so that although they themselves were innocent of learning or mistaken, nevertheless they acted only as agents for the supposititious "true" Church, or "heart" of the Church. But it remains that my admission was in the light of a personal contract between them and me, and I would never have been admitted except on this basis; so that, although I might now interpret my admission in some other way, yet at the time of the occurence, that was the interpretation they held. Hence I must be bound by it. If any other agent of the Church is willing to readmit me on the wholly liberal interpretation, I for my part would be willing to sacrifice much mental comfort, by using language that needed interpertation, so as to retain fellowship with the Church I love so well. But though the bishops in the Lambeth Conference promulgated a Quadrilateral, and many bishops would be willing to retain men within the Church on that basis, yet none would be willing or able, perhaps, to abide by it in admitting a man to the Presbyter-ship. This double standard was well exemplified by the proposal for reunion with other larger Christian bodies on the basis of the Quadrilateral, although no motion was made-at least no successful motion-for union with the small Reformed Episcopal Church, which was perfectly willing to accept it. The fact is that there is a great difference between the Quadrilateral as a succinct epitome of the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Quadrilateral as interpreted by the best scholarship. It was this difference which frustrated all attempts at Church unity. It is in respect to the clause, "interpreted according to best scholarship," that the shoe pinches. All clergy in the Episcopal Church are willing to accept the Bible as the sole and sufficient standard of faith. But at any rate those who admitted me to the Presbytership qualified this "sufficiency" by a certain "interpretation" of the Bible. One of them, a very saint of God, distinctly stated that only the Church's interpretation of the Bible was meant by that Article of Religion, since, said he, "men of all shades of belief have justified themselves by appeal to the Bible." but was not this begging the question? The faith is to be proved by the Bible; but the Bible is only to be used as interpreted by the faith! Imagine a cashier gravely pretending to straighten out his cash in accordance with the written record of transactions, after he had "interpreted" the record, so as to agree, even in its greatest divergencies, with the actual cash in hand! Consider the well-known fact that the Muhammadan proves that Muhammed was inspired in writing the Q'uran, by showing that there is not a single error in grammar in that whole series of incoherent and harmless vaticinations; whereas it is a well-known fact that the Arabic grammar was formed by minute and slavish deductions from the language of the Q'uran! This inconsistency is as old as Athanasius and the Arians, the latter insisting just as strenuously as the former on the Bible as the only rule, and sufficient standard of faith; but each insisted on his or their own interpretation as the only one. Yet this interpretation is legitimately a matter of scholarship only, of scientific investigation only, just as the cashier's written record must be considered in its historical sense. Such is the heliocentric theory, formerly condemned by the Church. And the Roman Catholic Church has the merit of frankness in its insistence on its own interpretation of the Bible, and consequent discouragement of reading the Bible in any other version, and apart from its own interpretations. Other churches insist just as strenuously as the Roman Catholic Church on their own interpretations of the Bible; but they dare not acknowledge this to others, or even to ourselves. I personally am willing to accept the Bible as the sole rule and sufficient standard of Faith, if I am permitted to take it for just what scholarship shall show it is worth. Let each man have his own interpretation, according to his best light, but let no man impose his own interpretation on any other man. The fault with the religious bodies mentioned above is not that they have an interpretation of the Bible, but that they force it on human beings. Each should decide as to what best scholarship is according to his own reason, and highest light. And if the faith is to be deduced from the Bible, the Bible must not be taken exclusively in the sense of the faith, but in that of the best historical scholarship obtainable. The question which drives me out of the Church is in last resort one of the right of reasonable interpretation, of the use of my best light, my reason-understanding the words I use. To insist for proof of doctrine, on the Bible interpreted according to it, is sham; and in the last resort it amounts to insisting on the doctrine without any reason beyond the fact that it is held by some particular person. The controversy is therefore not between those persons I mentioned above and me, but between them and scholarship. Cardinal Newman had seen all this. The "Via Media" is humbug; it is unsatisfactory, both in point of doctrine, and in point of rationality. He who has the courage to sweep the whole house systematically, till he finds the lost piece of silver comes to the following dilemma: (1) Either the Truth, the unshackled exercise of common-sense and reason, with consequent abandonment of mediaeval formulations-while no element of spiritual truth can be lost, since it is “truth”—or, (2) the Church and Mediaeval Formulations-with mental suicide and childish recreation with dolls and relics, and millinery, and even, on Newman's own confession, public immorality, coupled with and flowing from the death of individual responsibility through the doctrines of vicariousness. Cardinal Newman stood at the parting of the ways, and chose deliberately the |