had
an unlimited opportunity to reform the world, while Progress has been
hindered at every turn by the insolent usurpation of its rival.

Dr. Thomson admits that he cannot find a text in the Bible against
gambling, and assuredly he cannot find one in favor of teetotalism. On
the contrary he will find plenty of texts which recommend the "wine that
cheereth the heart of God and man;" and he knows that his master, Jesus
Christ, once played the part of an amateur publican at a marriage feast,
and turned a large quantity of water into wine in order to keep the
spree going when it had once begun.

We repeat that all the Archbishop's objections to Progress, based on the
moral defects of men, apply with tenfold force against Religion, which
has practically had the whole field to itself. And we assert that he is
grievously mistaken if he imagines that supernatural beliefs can ennoble
knaves or give wisdom to fools. When he talks about "Christ's blood shed
to purchase our souls," and specifies the first message of his creed
as "Come and be forgiven," he is appealing to our basest motives, and
turning the temple into a huckster's shop. Let him and all his tribe
listen to these words of Ruskin's:--

"Your honesty is _not_ to be based either on religion or policy. Both
your religion and policy must be based on _it_. Your honesty must be
based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the
firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night If you ask
why you are to be honest--you are, in the question itself, dishonored
'Because you are a man,' is the only answer; and therefore I said in
a former letter that to make your children _capable of honesty_ is
the beginning of education. Make them men first and religious men
afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the
rottenest thing about him.--_Time and Tide_, p. 37."

These are the words of a real spiritual teacher. Archbishop Thomson will
never get within a million miles of their meaning; nor will anybody
be deceived, by the unctuous "Oh that" with which he concludes his
discourse, like a mental rolling of the whites of his eyes.

As we approach the end of his address, we begin to understand his
Grace's hatred of Progress. He complains that "intellectual progress
never makes a man conceive eternal hopes, never makes a man conceive
that he has an eternal friend in heaven, even the Son of God." Quite
true. Intellectual progress tend