ves and Lazarus which
would commend itself to the Nihilists of to-day. The church is now
often held up to us as the great barrier against Socialism, and the one
refuge against subversive doctrines. In a well-known essay on "People
whom one would have wished to have seen," Lamb and his friends are
represented as agreeing that if Christ were to enter they would all
fall down and worship Him. It may have been so; but if the man who best
represents the ideas of early Christians were to enter a respectable
society of to-day, would it not be more likely to send for the police?
When we consider such changes, and mark in another direction how the
dogmas which once set half the world to cut the throats of the other
half, have sunk into mere combinations of hard words, can we seriously
look to the maintenance of dogmas, even in the teeth of reason, as a
guarantee for ethical convictions? What you call retaining the only
base of morality, appears to us to be trying to associate morality with
dogmas essentially arbitrary and unreasonable.

From this point of view it is naturally our opinion that we should
promote all thorough discussion of great ethical problems in a spirit
and by methods which are independent of the orthodox dogmas. There are
many such problems undoubtedly of the highest importance. The root of
all the great social questions of which I have spoken lies in the
region of Ethics; and upon that point, at least, we can go along with
much that is said upon the orthodox side. We cannot, indeed, agree that
Ethics can be adequately treated by men pledged to ancient traditions,
employing antiquated methods, and always tempted to have an eye to the
interest of their own creeds and churches. But we can fully agree that
ethical principles underlie all the most important problems. Every
great religious reform has been stimulated by the conviction that the
one essential thing is a change of spirit, not a mere modification of
the external law, which has ceased to correspond to genuine beliefs and
powerful motives. The commonest criticism, indeed, of all projectors of
new Utopias is that they propose a change of human nature. The
criticism really suggests a sound criterion. Unless the change proposed
be practicable, the Utopia will doubtless be impossible. And unless
some practicable change be proposed, the Utopia, even were it embodied
in practice, would be useless. If the sole result of raising wages were
an increase in the cons