those who either enrol themselves as members, or who, members by birth, do not withdraw from it.

Is it not true that the articles, creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, agreed upon by the different church authorities, are too often the outcome of party strifes or concessions, of negations or of dissections, which could not have taken place until from the form all life had departed?

Were it otherwise, it must be owned of the church in our day that her "trumpet gives an uncertain sound." I say not this to her disparagement. So far is she behind the intellect and conscience of the age, that unrest, dissatisfaction, debate, and questionings, are most hopeful signs.

I have not forgotten that the Bible, also, is the history of a Church.

But what a faithful history!

What is the edifying portion of the Bible but a record of the struggles, expostulations, and prayers of the faithful souls in the midst of "crooked and perverse generations, always resisting the Holy Ghost?"

Dean Stanley has been criticised for exalting the

prophet at the expense of the priest; but surely the Scripture record will bear him out in so doing. Can the last act with which the curtain falls on the Jewish priesthood ever be forgotten? It was the church, and not the world, which crucified the Son of God.

I know that, for the Bible, criticism has still a great work to do in separating the chaff from the wheat; and that, while Bishop Colenso and others are doing their best in it, Bibliolaters are doing their worst to alienate from it sincere and intelligent minds.

It is spoken of as an "authority," claiming "dominion over our faith;" whereas it needs a previous faith, or it becomes "a letter which kills," instead of a "spirit which gives life.”

Let us hear Luther, often called the defender of the authority of Scripture-as if the reformer, whose grand doctrine was "justification by faith," which, being rightly interpreted, means the doctrine of self-reliance as opposed to church authority, "could" have "done other" than differ as he did from the Waldenses, who gave to the Bible the position which Romanists gave to the church, viz., one of legal authority.

"These are his own words:".

"Romanists say, Yes; but how are we to know what is God's word?-what is true and what is false? We must learn this from popes and councils. Very well; let them determine and define what they will, I say, thou canst not confide in them, nor satisfy thy conscience by them. Thou must determine for thyself. God must whisper in thy heart, 'This is God's word;' otherwise all is at sea. God has preached this word by the apostles, and causes it still to be preached; but even if the angel Gabriel proclaimed it from heaven, it would do me no good; I must have God's own word for it, and I must know this, as surely as that two and three make five."*

The Bible may be best characterised as a "helper of our joy." The least awakening of conscience makes its meaning clearer; all aspiration finds expression there; the promises and blessings are for the sincere and upright souls; its mysteries are those "the guileless find so plain."

No wonder Goethe predicted that the Bible would come to be prized more and more by all wise men.

Instead, however, of being prized, it is often perverted; and while its fundamental truth is that

*Walch's edition of Luther's Works.

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religion and righteousness are one, deductions from isolated texts are made in support of "creeds which have for their basis, the sacredness of injustice."

Amidst so many conflicting "authorities," we cannot wonder that doubt, deep as the foundations of religion itself, exists in the present day, and with it misery. Nowhere is it felt as such more keenly than in woman's heart. Her wider culture, exciting thought and speculation in every direction, while it increases power for good, extends the knowledge of evil, and intensifies the suffering, ever doubled in her heart by sympathy. Idealism and aspiration throw but into darker shadow the actual which surrounds her.

Work for the world she fain would do, but to do it helpfully she has need of wisdom-to do it hopefully she has need of faith; and ever deepening is the earnestness with which "her heart and her flesh cry out for the living God."

To such a cry the frivolities of ritualism and the platitudes of evangelicalism return answer but in mockery. They point to heaven, but the unhappy votary (as Mr. Froude has described poor Mary Tudor), "looking up, sees only her own creed painted to imitate and shut out the sky."

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Often is she troubled with the sad misgiving

"What! shall Thy people be so dear
To Thee no more?

Or is not heaven to earth as near

As heretofore?"

Carlyle has called this nineteenth century of ours "a wilderness;" but his voice in it has awakened hope and faith in many, by words like these:—

"Is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me? * * * This is Belief; all else is Opinion,-for which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried. * * * Neither shall ye tear out one another's eyes struggling over 'Plenary Inspiration;' try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration each of you for himself. One Bible I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay, with my own eyes I saw the God's Hand writing it. * * *",

"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer."*

"Duty!" To do any other than our duty would seem in many favoured circles an impossibility.

*Sartor Resartus.