oes credit, perhaps, to
the resources of Dr. Morrison and his disciples; but it falls a good
deal short of one's idea of what a British College of Health ought to
be. In England, where we hate public interference and love individual
enterprise, we have a whole crop of places like the British College of
Health; the grand name without the grand thing. Unluckily, creditable to
individual enterprise as they are, they tend to impair our taste by
making us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character
properly belongs to a public institution. The same may be said of the
religions of the future of Miss Cobbe and others. Creditable, like the
British College of Health, to the resources of their authors, they yet
tend to make us forget what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful
character properly belongs to religious constructions. The historic
religions, with all their faults, have had this; it certainly belongs to
the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have this; and we
impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion of the future without it.
What then is the duty of criticism here? To take the practical point of
view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its works,--its New Road
religions of the future into the bargain,--for their general utility's
sake? By no means; but to be perpetually dissatisfied with these works,
while they perpetually fall short of a high and perfect ideal. For
criticism, these are elementary laws; but they never can be popular, and
in this country they have been very little followed, and one meets with
immense obstacles in following them. That is a reason for asserting them
again and again. Criticism must maintain its independence of the
practical spirit and its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the
practical spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of
the ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must not hurry on to
the goal because of its practical importance. It must be patient, and
know how to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to things
and how to withdraw from them. It must be apt to study and praise
elements that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even
though they belong to a power which in the practical sphere may be
maleficent. It must be apt to discern the spiritual shortcomings or
illusions of powers that in the practical sphere may be beneficent. And
this without any notion of favoring or injuring, in the practica