ering upon the possession of his
intellect, with a sense of responsibility for his belief,
and more anxious for truth than for success in life,
finds when he looks into the matter that the Archbishop
has altogether misrepresented it; that in fact,
like other official persons, he had been using merely a
stereotyped form of words, to which he attached no
definite meaning. The words are repeated year after
year, but the enemies refuse to be exorcised. They
come and come again from Spinoza and Lessing to
Strauss and Renan. The theologians have resolved no
single difficulty; they convince no one who is not
convinced already; and a Colenso coming fresh to the
subject, with no more than a year's study, throws the
Church of England into convulsions.

If there were any real danger that Christianity would
cease to be believed, it would be no more than a
fulfilment of prophecy. The state in which the Son of
Man would find the world at his coming he did not say
would be a state of faith. But if that dark time is ever
literally to come upon the earth, there are no present
signs of it. The creed of eighteen centuries is not
about to fade away like an exhalation, nor are the new
lights of science so exhilarating that serious persons
can look with comfort to exchanging one for the other.
Christianity has abler advocates than its professed
defenders, in those many quiet and humble men and
women who in the light of it and the strength of it
live holy, beautiful, and self-denying lives. The God
that answer by fire is the God whom mankind will
acknowledge; and so long as the fruits of the Spirit
continue to be visible in charity, in self-sacrifice, in
those graces which raise human creatures above
themselves, and invest them with that beauty of holiness
which only religion confers, thoughtful persons will
remain convinced that with them in some form or other
is the secret of truth. The body will not thrive on
poison, or the soul on falsehood; and as the vital
processes of health are too subtle for science to follow;
as we choose our food, not by the most careful chemical
analysis, but by the experience of its effects upon the
system; so when a particular belief is fruitful in
nobleness of character, we need trouble ourselves very little
with scientific demonstrations that it is false. The
most deadly poison may be chemically undistinguishable
from substances which are perfectly innocent. Prussic
acid, we are told, is formed of th