itself of its rightful functions in the investigation of truth, it must be confessed that so convenient a method for settling disputes would be welcomed by all Christian men. The only difficulty is, that no proof has been forthcoming that such a method has ever been given by God to man. It is not a question of convenience, but a question of fact. The Anglican Church has never affected the awful claim of infallibility, and the Roman Church has never substantiated hers. The English Church requires that nothing need be believed as necessary to everlasting salvation but what has the warrant of Holy Scripture. In the interpretation, however, of Scripture, she lays a rational stress upon the testimony of the early Church, beginning from the time when its history was still dovetailed with that of the surviving Apostles, and ending with the last of its General Councils, according to the well-known principle of Vincentius, "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus." If this restraint upon individual licence of interpretation, regarded as a help towards not absolute, but proximate truth, be accepted as reasonable, the alienated wanderers from her fold are only asked to concede that which the early secessionists were ready to do. The threefold ministry, and the rite of confirmation, "after the example of the Apostles," would have to be regarded as at least unexceptionable portions of the Church's order and discipline, resting, if not upon Apostolic institutions, upon the legitimate exercise of her own authority. On the other hand, have our orthodox Dissenters faced the consequences to which their rejection of such authority brings them? Have they examined the tendency of modern religious thought? The rejection of that authority, which witnesses on behalf of Episcopal order and the rite of confirmation, involves the sacredness of the first day of the week and the very canonicity of the holy volume itself. For who is to determine the authority of the New Testament and the claim of the several writers to the awful attribute, never claimed on behalf of themselves, of Divine infallibility? Paul and Barnabas, uncle and nephew, have each left works behind them; who is to determine the invidious question, which of these two shall be regarded, for all time, as human and fallible, and which divine and infallible? Who shall say why three of the four Evangelists, the historian of the Acts, and St. James, the writer of one epistle, and St. Jude, of another, as well as the unknown writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (not one of whom were amongst the original Apostles), to say nothing of St. Paul, who received a special commission, should become to the end of time dictators to the consciences and creed of Christians? Who shall determine such awful questions as these, if the silent witness of the Early Church, a witness so consentient as not to have required the arbitration of a General Council, is to be spurned, and

all authority on the part of the Church, claimed by virtue of Christ's promise, is to be rejected as worthless, or regarded as an act of encroachment upon personal liberty? In claiming this prerogative on behalf of the Church, as a nurse and mother, it is not pretended that her judgment, directed though it be, according to the promise of the Father, by the Holy Spirit, is free from human error. We see through a glass darkly, for that glass is human, though the light be divine. Truth is never absolutely reached, though it is approximated nearer and nearer as the right means are faithfully used, which have been placed within the reach of men's intuitive conscience and dulyexercised reason.

To men, yearning for freedom, surely this elasticity and comprehensiveness, consistently allowing for the play of private judgment, the outward discoveries of science, and the larger exercise of human reason, should be regarded not as a mark of senile weakness inseparable from human institutions, but as the glory of ever-growing light and power. In this respect a sect or society differs from a Church if sects must exist, they should exist within, and not independently of the Church. Sects form little spheres, but spheres can only touch in one point, leaving large intervals outside. A Church should not only enfold them all in her ample circumference, but, at the same time, those large intervals of space which lie outside and between them. The Church, comprehensive in her folds, both in doctrine and work, admits, more largely than isolated sects, instead of "virtually refusing, all fresh teaching," whether of the living and indwelling Spirit, or of science and reason. Union with the Stateneed not necessarily limit the Church's freedom, and indeed, with the exception of the latest judgments delivered by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, every appeal has issued in the greater triumph of liberty. A Church cannot be so accused which finds within her fold a place for her ministers who incline to the views of Zwingle, and for those at the same time who are suspected, by their recognition of a "Real Presence," of a dangerous leaning to Rome. Such elasticity as is claimed for the Church of England is but the corollary of her abnegation of infallibility. The Church of England teaches "Baptismal Regeneration," but she does not compel, by any over-refinement of definition, her children to understand by more than that, as in natural birth, a child, without his consent, is born into the family to be educated for his earthly work, so in baptism, once more without his consent, he is born into a spiritual home, to be trained for a still higher inheritance. She teaches the doctrine of "Priestly Absolution," but where is it proved that she means by that phrase more than that, just as any private Christian may "declare" the forgiveness of sins to the penitent, her

ministers, as God's ambassadors, "declare and pronounce" absolution upon the same terms of penitence, so that the fearful may be specially comforted by the direct application of a general blessing to himself; and the spiritual leper, having shown himself to the priest, as the people's minister, may be received once more into the society of the clean? Canons and Articles are boundary fences, which the commissioned officers of the Church may not transgress. In the pulpit he may discuss with his people his own private views, so long as they do not go directly counter to the Church's standards, though he may fail to subscribe more than a general assent to her teaching. The Articles may bind him, but while he faithfully disavows the doctrine which each was intended to deprecate, he is not bound down by their outward letter, as if they claimed the same authority as Holy Scripture. He must preach the doctrine of the "Atonement," but he is not bound to accept the degrading notion of any commercial equivalent. So, again, he must recognise in his preaching that all canonical Scripture is ОeоTVEVOTоs, but his judgment is not fettered by any private theories of verbal or mechanical inspiration. He must subscribe to the doctrine of a "Divine Presence" in the Eucharist, but he may object to the introduction into the discussion of all such philosophical terms as "objective" and "subjective" as savouring of that intellectual pride which would be wiser than what is written.

But

The prospect of comprehending the various bodies of Nonconformists may appear to be most visionary. Nonconformity, however, is continually filling its ranks by emigration, and that much more than by natural increase. It is seldom, too, that the attachment to dissent lasts longer than with the second or third generation, although elsewhere fresh defections are daily renewed. The tendency of the children is to return to the Church of their forefathers. such defections as arise from principle would be cut off by the removal of the causes of offence. The return of any considerable number of the most thinking men to the Church, or the power of retaining them, would produce the same practical effect as the conversions or reversions of whole congregations. The purpose of this paper is to open the question whether less stringent terms of union are possible, which the Church may offer without sacrifice of her true principles. Such canons as the following, we believe, would involve no such sacrifice. No man shall be pronounced anathema, who reveres the Bible as emphatically the "Word of God" and the highest source of authority. The imposition of no dogma, or verbal definition of truth, shall be made a condition of membership. No dogma or canon of ecclesiastical synod shall be pronounced necessarily free from human error. The promise of Christ to be with his Church

shall be accepted as peculiarly fulfilled, when the undivided Church was permitted to meet in solemn councils. Their decrees, their creeds, and symbols shall be thought deserving of the utmost reverence, as the nearest approximation to unadulterated truth. Episcopacy shall be retained, as having the sanction of all the ages, from the death of the apostles. For were we to allow any analogy between a modern Congregational church and the churches founded by the apostles, no analogy can possibly be claimed between the churches of Galatia and Palestine, subject as they were to a common rule, and the endless incoherent sects of modern London or New York.

In any such church of the future, organised societies, like the Wesleyan, may be left to carry out their own special plans for evangelising the masses, as recognised brotherhoods. The practical advantages of reunited forces cannot be overrated. Concerted action would produce results, apart from the moral power of union, which desultory and fragmentary effort must fail to accomplish. The army of Christ cannot look for great victories, so long as its commanders never meet in council to arrange campaigns. The building, however beautiful may be its separate stones, so long as they are held together by the untempered mortar of party strife, will totter before the great hailstones of unbelief and sin. The saving of strength and resources, where they are now dissipated, would direct the Church's energies into moral deserts now left unreached. Enthusiasm would find her legitimate channels, while fanaticism would be controlled or corrected. Wholesale dissensions, the weakness and scandals of the Reformation, being removed, the English Church, once more national, not a rope of sand composed of disintegrated units held together by fluctuating opinion, but a corporate whole with a circulating life, the prophetic vine, whose branches not only draw their common life from Christ the Root, but realise an inter-dependent life among themselves, would prove the surest protest to the false pretensions of any other infallibility except the infallibility of truth and goodness. In other words, it is believed that she would show herself to be God's great instrument for the regeneration of society.

C. H. TASMANIA.

EVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

A REPLY TO PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

ΟΝ

N reading the criticism which Professor Huxley has done me the honour to make upon a little book (the "Genesis of Species") which I ventured to publish in the early part of this year, I felt that, as a subaltern in science, I was being severely reprimanded by my superior officer; that I might apprehend a sentence of degradation to the ranks, if not actual expulsion from the service. I found myself taxed, if not with positive desertion to an enemy with whom no truce is to be allowed, yet, at least, suspected of treasonable communication with a hostile army, and treacherous dalliance with ministers of Baal.

Now, recognising as I do that, in physical science, Professor Huxley is indeed my superior officer, having his just claims to respect and deference on the part of all men of science, I also feel that I am under special obligations to him, both many and deep, for knowledge imparted and for ready assistance kindly rendered. No wonder then that the expression of his vehement disapproval is painful to me.

It was not however without surprise that I learned that my one unpardonable sin-the one great offence disqualifying me for being "a loyal soldier of science"-was my attempt to show that there is no real antagonism between the Christian revelation and evolution! My "Genesis of Species" was written with two main objects:My first object was to show that the Darwinian theory is un