to indulge in rank hypocrisy.
He, accordingly, adopted a studied and ambiguous phraseology, which for
long imposed upon the religious public, who put their own interpretation
upon his mystical utterances, and gave him the benefit of any doubts. In
the "Life of Sterling" he threw off the mask, but still was not taken at
his word. Had there been a perfect tolerance of all opinions he would
have begun as he ended; and his strain of composition, while still
mystical and high-flown, would never have been identified with our
national orthodoxy.

I have grave doubts as to whether we possess Macaulay's real opinions on
religion. His way of dealing with the subject is so like the hedging of
an unbeliever that, without some good assurance to the contrary, I must
include him also among the imitators of Aristotle's "caution". Some
future critic will devote himself, like Professor Mohl, to expounding
his ambiguous utterances.

[EVIL OF DISFRANCHISING THE CLERGY.]

When Sir Charles Lyell brought out his "Antiquity of Man" he too was
cautious. Knowing the dangers of his footing, he abstained from giving
an estimate of the extension of time required by his evidences of human
remains. Society in London, however, would not put up with that
reticence, and he had to disclose at dinner parties what he had withheld
from the public--namely, that, in his opinion, the duration of man
could not be less than fifty thousand years.

These few instances must suffice to represent a long history of
compelled reticence on the part of the men best qualified to instruct
mankind. The question now is--What has been gained by it? What did the
condemnation of Socrates do for the Athenian public? What did the chief
priest of Eleusis hope to attain by indicting Aristotle? Unless we can
show, as is no doubt attempted, that the set of opinions that happen to
be consecrated at any one time, whether right or wrong, were essential
to the existence of society,--then the attempt to improve upon them was
truly meritorious, instead of being censurable. If the good of society
as a whole is not plainly implicated, there remains only the interest of
the place-holders under the existing system, as opposed to the interest
of the mass of the people, who are, one and all, concerned in knowing
the truth.

Again contracting the discussion to the narrow limits of the title of
the essay, I must urge the special injury done to mankind by
disfranchising the whole clerical cl