and Darwin were specially insolent and incompetent men? The thesis, however, raises a serious moral problem in connexion with religion, and we must ask, what is the proper attitude for an individual who, while strongly attached to Christianity, finds himself, after careful inquiry, unable to accept the current dogmas? He may fully admit the truth of Mr. Gladstone's proposition, and think that the general probabilities point to some defect or obliquity in his own judgment. Nevertheless, he cannot believe or pretend to believe that which appears to him, perhaps wrongly, to be disproved by all the direct evidence. If the Church will not accept him in this frame of mind, then he has no choice but to step forth and become dissentient. Ought he then to be silent, and to smother in his own breast what appears to him, perhaps mistakenly, to be the truth? That he ought to think long and deeply, and seek a higher guidance than his own transient likings, hardly requires to be said; but it may be laid upon his conscience that truth is not in his own keeping, and that he is bound by something far different from self-will to make public the grounds of his judgment. We know something of the alleged consensus of the past; but we do not know the consensus of the future, and our poor judgment may go some little way towards its formation. The only consensus which is of real value is found in the spontaneous concurrence of free judgments; and a Church which sincerely values the truth will insist on the duty of exercising free inquiry and private judgment, and save these from the evils of presumption and self-will by placing them under the holiest sanctions, and representing them, not as an outrage on reverence and submission, but as an act of high responsibility and devout consecration. That self-will and party spirit have entered only too largely into the divisions of Christendom need not be denied; but these are the accidents of human weakness and sin which attend all our activity; and on the whole men have been driven into separation

by loyalty to conviction humbly and prayerfully formed, and by a dread of defiling their conscience and silencing the inward voice of God.

Secondly, those who have been driven, sorely against their will, into separate positions, affirm that the fault lies with the Church of the majority, because it has imposed tests of its own contrivance, which are totally different from the tests prescribed by Christ. The tests laid down by Christ are doing the will of God, having love one towards another, being humble, pure, charitable, self-denying. This judging of men simply by their spiritual qualities runs through the whole of his teaching, and the only thing that he repels as quite alien to him is persistent wickedness and selfishness. Of his requiring belief in a vast system of dogma there is not a trace. Those whom he welcomed as the blessed of his Father were the merciful who, in lowly service, sought to lighten the weight of human woe, while he drove away the workers of iniquity who shouted 'Lord, Lord,' and professed to have prophesied and wrought miracles in his name. So an Apostle declares that the kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit,1 and pronounces a benediction on all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity;2 and the only thing that excites him into the utterance of an anathema is the insistence on prescribed forms and exclusive terms of communion, as though the Spirit of Christ were not sufficient. How utterly the Church has departed from this principle need hardly be said; for its deflection is written in letters of blood on the sad page of Christian history. The famous rule. quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, would make a clean sweep of the whole system of dogma and ecclesiasticism, not necessarily as untrue, but as not valid for terms of communion. It applies to the Spirit of Christ alone, as, under God, the one universal and central object of Christian homage, with sovereign sufficiency, when received into the 2 Eph. vi. 24.

1 Rom. xiv. 17.

heart, for wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.1 In him we are all one; and the Church's unity is the unity of the Spirit.

The second note of the Church is holiness. This belongs to its essential idea, so that where holiness is entirely absent there is no Church of Christ. Nevertheless, this does not imply that every individual member of the Church is holy in the strict ethical sense. But so far as a man is truly Christian he is conscious of the Spirit of holiness within him, so that beneath that Spirit's revealing light he is able to survey life from the point of view of holiness, and, prompted by his inspiration, to aspire after perfect sanctification in thought, affection, and conduct. And so the Church assembles to shake off the trammels of earth, to adore the holy Lord of Life, and to hear what the Spirit saith. To this note no particular Church can lay exclusive claim. It is apparent in all denominations, though perfect in none; and any single congregation is truly Christian just in proportion as this note is dominant.

The third note, catholicity, belongs in an eminent degree to the Church as we have defined it, for, far from excommunicating the half of Christendom, it includes all who, with any degree of sincerity, profess and call themselves Christians; and not only so, but it recognizes that larger Church of God, which consists of all who reverently worship him and seek after spiritual righteousness. Taking the Spirit of Christ as its criterion, it judges of men everywhere, without as well as within the specific Church of Christ, by their possession of that Spirit, and recognizes the spiritual kindred of Christ in those of every age and clime who have made the will of God the rule of their life, and manifested lovingkindness toward their brethren. Christ broke down the barriers that separated good men from one another, and displayed the universal spirit of consecrated humanity; and so far as we erect fresh barriers, and seek to limit the

1 See I Cor. i. 30.

kingdom of God by conditions which are not moral or spiritual we cease to share his catholicity.

Lastly, the Church, as we have defined it, is apostolic in this sense, that its existence is due to the labours of the Apostles, and that it rests upon the one foundation which Paul declared to be the only one that could be laid, that it accepts the teaching of Peter that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him,'1 and that in a large sense it follows the teaching of the Apostles generally. I say 'in a large sense,' because it is apparent from the New Testament that apostolic teaching was not absolutely uniform, and that the Apostles as a body held eschatological views which history has not justified. We must add that a Church, to be truly apostolic, ought to exhibit apostolic simplicity, and to follow the Apostles more zealously in the spirit than in the letter. As we have seen, the Roman Church, which is imitated by the Highchurch party in England, goes beyond this description, and claims the possession of Divine authority, because it is governed by the Holy Spirit through an apostolic ministry. The meaning of this last phrase is that the orders of her clergy come by unbroken succession from the Apostles.'2 The Roman Church alleges that the apostolic See belongs by pre-eminence to Rome, so that communion with Rome. makes the Church's mission-that is, her authority to teachapostolic. Other sees of Apostolic foundation have fallen away into heresy . . . . Sects may preserve the Apostolic succession of bishops, and so may have true orders; but no sect can have Apostolic mission and so be Apostolic, because all mission is lost the moment that a separation from the Roman See is effected.' These words are nearly equivalent 2 Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, p. 176. The Greek Church insists with no less emphasis on the necessity of Apostolical succession through the episcopate. The bishop is a living image of God upon earth,' and is the 'fountain of all the mysteries of the Catholic Church, through which we obtain salvation.' Ὁμολογία Δοσιθέου, Ορος 10.

1 Acts x. 35. 3 Ibid.

to the decision of the recent Pope, Leo XIII, who refused to recognize Anglican orders on the ground that bishops ‘separated from Peter and his successors lose all jurisdiction.' It is difficult to criticize this doctrine of the Apostolic authority of the Church; for it is declared to be an article of faith, and it is virtually admitted that it rests upon no evidence which is open to the scrutiny of ordinary intelligence. I am far from denying that if it were indissolubly blended with the whole of the religious life, and had no convincing evidence against it, this might be a valid ground for taking it on trust. But in fact it has no apparent connexion with the intimations of the religious spirit, and the inference which is drawn from it that all the sects outside the Roman communion are led by the spirit of the devil' appears very like blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And again, if there is no evidence for it which can appeal to the intellect, the whole history of dogma seems to be strongly against it. Let us only compare the vast pile of ecclesiastical dogma with the simple creed which in early times was supposed to represent the Apostles' belief, and which in its main lines goes back to a very early period. Yet from this document, which the Church has never ventured to cast aside, the dogmas of the Trinity, of the incarnation, of the Deity of Christ, of the personality of the Holy Spirit, of the fall of man, of original sin, of the atonement, of the sacraments, of the authority of the Church, of Apostolical succession, of the inspired Bible, are all absent.1 Surely this is strong evidence that these doctrines, over which men have fought like savage beasts, and filled their mouths with cursing and bitterness, formed no part of the essentials of primitive Christianity. That there has been an unbroken succession. of bishops from the time of the Apostles is quite credible, and that the bishops of the Apostolic Churches for a long

1 This is frankly admitted, or rather insisted upon, by Loisy, though he does not enumerate all the doctrines which I have mentioned. Autour d'un petit livre, p. 202.