large-minded Utilitarian. He will have
nothing to do with a transcendental basis of morals; and the dogmatist
who dislikes cross-examination is out of his court. Dogmatic
authority, he says, stands only on its own assertions; and if you may
not reason upon them, the inference is that on those points reason is
against them. You may withdraw beyond this range by sublimating
religion into a philosophy, but then it loses touch with terrestrial
affairs, and has a very feeble control over the unruly affections of
sinful men. Newman himself resorted to scientific methods in his
theory of Development, that is, of the growth and evolution of
doctrine. We may agree that these destructive arguments have much
logical force, yet on the other hand such certitude as empiricism can
provide brings little consolation to the multitude, who require some
imperative command; they look for a pillar of cloud or fire to go
before them day and night, and a land of promise in the distance.
Scientific exposition works slowly for the improvement of ethics,
which to the average mind are rather weakened than strengthened by
loosening their foundations; and religious beliefs suffer from a
similar constitutional delicacy. Conduct is not much fortified by
being treated as a function of character and circumstance; for in
religion and morals ordinary humanity demands something impervious to
reasoning, wherein lies the advantage of the intuitionist.

Mr. Stephen, however, is well aware that empirical certitude will not
supply the place of religion. In his concluding pages he states,
fairly and forcibly, the great problems by which men are still
perplexed. Religion, as J. S. Mill felt, is a name for something far
wider than the Utilitarian views embrace.

'Men will always require some religion, if religion corresponds not
simply to their knowledge, but to the whole impression made upon
feeling and thinking beings by the world in which they must live.
The condition remains that the conception must conform to the
facts; our imagination and our desires must not be allowed to
over-ride our experience, or our philosophy to construct the
universe out of _a priori_ guesses.... To find a religion which
shall be compatible with all known truth, which shall satisfy the
imagination and the emotions, and which shall discharge the
functions hitherto assigned to the churches, is a problem for the
future.'

The U