tand, for it is perilous to tamper with convictions in order to maintain
a position.

It is easy to see how, in Maurice's own case, what power has been thrown
away in this tantalizing task. Had he started fresh, with no creed for
him to conform to, with no position to maintain, he would have been a far
more vigorous thinker than he has ever been. But he has ever had to come
back to the Church--to the doctrines and teachings of men. A Church that
shall embrace the religious life and thought of England, coexistent with
the nation, after all is but a dream. Were there such a Church, Maurice
would hold no mean rank in it. But the State Church is not such, and
cannot be such, unless its articles and creeds be glossed over with a
Jesuitry not more ingenious than fatal to all moral growth. But each
generation tries the hopeless task. The men of intellect and purpose in
the Church have felt themselves in a false position, and have laboured to
get out of it. They have trusted to one and then another. For a long
time Mr. Maurice has been the coming man. The Church was once more to be
a power--to have the nation's heart--to enlist the nation's intellect on
its side. Writing in his usual bitterness, Carlyle says:

'The builder of this universe was wise,
He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles!
The plan he shaped his worlds and _aeons_ by,
Was--Heavens!--was thy small Nine-and-Thirty Articles.'

Mr. Maurice has accepted this language as sober truth, and has made that
truth the pole-star of his ministerial life.

Most of our readers know Lincoln's-inn-fields. It abounds with lawyers.
In one part of it surgeons are plucked, and in another, clients. It has
a small chapel not far from Chancery-lane, and if the residents of
Lincoln's-inn-fields attended it, there would be but little room for
strangers. However, this is not the case, and thus I managed to get in.
It is a curious old place. It was built by Inigo Jones; and the then
popular and admired, but now forgotten, Dr. Donne, preached the
consecration sermon. The walls have reechoed to the oratory of Secker
and Tillotson. The windows are of stained glass, and one of them,
containing St. John the Baptist, was executed at the expense of William
Noy, the famous Attorney-General of Charles I. In the crypt, underneath
the chapel, are buried, Alexander Broome, the cavalier song-writer;
Secretary Thurloe, who had chambers in the Inn; and th