each case to mean a very different thing. The
difference between these men, however, will seem almost unanimity, if we
compare them with others who, so far as logic and authority go, have
just as good a claim on our attention. There is hardly any conceivable
aberration of moral licence that has not, in some quarter or other,
embodied itself into a rule of life, and claimed to be the proper
outcome of Protestant Christianity. Nor is this true only of the wilder
and more eccentric sects. It is true of graver and more weighty thinkers
also; so much so, that a theological school in Germany has maintained
boldly '_that fornication is blameless, and that it is not interdicted
by the precepts of the Gospel_.'[39]

The matter, however, does not end thus. The men I have just mentioned
agree, all of them, that Christ's moral example was perfect; and their
only disagreement has been as to what that example was. But the
Protestant logic will by no means leave us here. That alleged
perfection, if we ourselves are to be the judges of it, is sure,
by-and-by, to exhibit to us traces of imperfection. And this is exactly
the thing that has already begun to happen. A generation ago one of the
highest-minded and most logical of our English Protestants, Professor
Francis Newman, declared that in Christ's character there were certain
moral deficiencies;[40] and the last blow to the moral authority of
Protestantism was struck by one of its own household. It is true that
Professor Newman's censures were small and were not irreverent. But if
these could come from a man of his intense piety, what will and what do
come from other quarters may be readily conjectured. Indeed, the fact is
daily growing more and more evident, that for the world that still calls
itself Protestant, the autocracy of Christ's moral example is gone; and
its nominal retention of power only makes its real loss of it the more
visible. It merely reflects and focalises the uncertainty that men are
again feeling--the uncertainty and the sad bewilderment. The words and
the countenance, once so sure and steadfast, now change, as we look at,
and listen to them, into new accents and aspects; and the more earnestly
we gaze and listen, the less can we distinguish clearly what we hear or
see. '_What shall we do to be saved?_' men are again crying. And the
lips that were once oracular now merely seem to murmur back confusedly,
'_Alas! what shall you do?_'

Such and so helpless, even n