reek and Latin fathers and the Anglican
divines, now reads Ewald and Renan. The Church
authorities still refuse to look their difficulties in the
face: they prescribe for mental troubles the established
doses of Paley and Pearson; they refuse dangerous
questions as sinful, and tread the round of commonplace
in placid comfort. But it will not avail. Their
pupils grow to manhood, and fight the battle for
themselves, unaided by those who ought to have stood by
them in their trial, and could not or would not; and
the bitterness of those conflicts and the end of most of
them in heart-broken uncertainty or careless indifference,
is too notorious to all who care to know about
such things.

We cannot afford year after year to be distracted
with the tentative scepticism of essayists and reviewers.
In a healthy condition of public opinion such a book as
Bishop Colenso's would have passed unnoticed, or rather
would never have been written, for the difficulties with
which it deals would have been long ago met and disposed
of. When questions rose in the early and middle
ages of the Church, they were decided by councils of
the wisest: those best able to judge met together, and
compared their thoughts, and conclusions were arrived
at which individuals could accept and act upon. At
the beginning of the English Reformation, when
Protestant doctrine was struggling for reception, and the
old belief was merging in the new, the country was
deliberately held in formal suspense. Protestants and
Catholics were set to preach on alternate Sundays in
the same pulpit; the subject was discussed freely in the
ears of the people, and at last, when all had been said
on both sides, Convocation and Parliament embodied
the result in formulas. Councils will no longer answer
the purpose; the clergy have no longer a superiority of
intellect or cultivation; and a conference of prelates
from all parts of Christendom, or even from all departments
of the English Church, would not present an
edifying spectacle. Parliament may no longer meddle
with opinions unless it be to untie the chains which it
forged three centuries ago. But better than Councils,
better than sermons, better than Parliament, is that
free discussion through a free press which is the best
instrument for the discovery of truth, and the most
effectual means for preserving it.

We shall be told, perhaps, that we are beating the
air, that the press is free, and that all men may and
do w