ogress. It is an institution like the
world itself, which has grown up by its own strength and according to
its own principle of life, full of good and evil, having as the law of
its fate to be knocked about in the stern development of events,
exposed, like human society, to all kinds of vicissitudes and
alternations, giving occasion to many a scandal, and shaking the faith
and loyalty of many a son, showing in ample measure the wear and tear
of its existence, battered, injured, sometimes degenerate, sometimes
improved, in one way or another, since those dim and long distant days
when its course began; but showing in all these ways what a real thing
it is, never in the extremity of storms and ruin, never in the deepest
degradation of its unfaithfulness, losing hold of its own central
unchanging faith, and never in its worst days of decay and corruption
losing hold of the power of self-correction and hope of recovery.
_Solvitur ambulando_ is an argument to which Mrs. Ward appeals, in
reply to doubts about the solidity of the "New Reformation." It could
be urged more modestly if the march of the "New Reformation" had lasted
for even half of one of the Christian centuries. The Church is in the
world, as the family is in the world, as the State is in the world, as
morality is in the world, a fact of the same order and greatness. Like
these it has to make its account with the "all-dissolving" assaults of
human thought. Like these it has to prove itself by living, and it does
do so. In all its infinite influences and ministries, in infinite
degrees and variations, it is the public source of light and good and
hope. If there are select and aristocratic souls who can do without it,
or owe it nothing, the multitude of us cannot. And the Christian Church
is founded on a definite historic fact, that Jesus Christ who was
crucified rose from the dead; and, coming from such an author, it comes
to us, bringing with it the Bible. The fault of a book like _Robert
Elsmere_ is that it is written with a deliberate ignoring that these
two points are not merely important, but absolutely fundamental, in the
problems with which it deals. With these not faced and settled it is
like looking out at a prospect through a window of which all the glass
is ribbed and twisted, distorting everything. It may be that even yet
we imperfectly understand our wondrous Bible. It may be that we have
yet much to learn about it. It may be that there is much that is