preached after his death, as a place "where spirits surely
unlearn many a bias, many a self-wrought blindness, many a heedless
error." Hell is therefore a place of purgation, which is certainly an
infinite improvement on the orthodox idea of eternal and irremediable
woe, however it fall(s) below the conception that the Creator has no
right to punish his own failures.

Let the reader note who makes these admissions of the intellectual
and moral death of the "baser forms" of Christianity. It is not an
irresponsible _franc-tireur_ of the Black Army, nor an expelled soldier
like Mr. Voysey, nor a resigned soldier like Dr. Momerie. It is the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest dignitary of the Church of
England.

His Grace does not reflect--he cannot afford to reflect--that as the
dead theology of to-day was the living theology of the past, so the
living theology of to-day may be the dead theology of to-morrow.

The Archbishop still dogmatises, even in this sermon on the Spirit of
Inquiry. In opposition to the man of science who knows of no limits
to nature, he declares that "There is a _sum_ of created things, and
therefore a real end (however far off) to what can be known of them."
In a certain sense, truly, there _is_ an end to what can be known of
nature, for human knowledge must ever be relative and not absolute. But
the Archbishop's limit is not qualitative in man; it is quantitative
in the universe. Herein he goes beyond the bounds of knowledge, and
indulges in the very dogmatism for which he reprehends the materialist.

It is dogmatism also to assert that "the soul has every reason to
believe itself absolutely eternal." Absolutely is a word of vast
significance. How can it apply to "the soul"? Were "the soul" to subsist
eternally in the future, it could not be _absolutely_ eternal if it once
began to be. "Every reason" is also too comprehensive. Dr. Benson may
think he has good reasons for "the soul's" immortality, but he must be
aware that divines of his own church have held the contrary doctrine.

Before the Spirit of Inquiry, says Dr. Benson, every other religion
than Christianity fades away; though he has admitted that some parts of
Christianity, the "baser forms," have shared the same fate. Every fresh
conquest of the Spirit of Inquiry has "brought out some trait in the
character, or some divine conception in the mind of Jesus of Nazareth."
This sweeping statement is supported by "three very clearly marke