from what was untenable or could not be defended; but they did not answer the objections offered in our day, because no one brought them forward.

Butler's foes objected to Christianity, but believed in a God, and they were answered when the acute Bishop showed them that the same objections which they urged against his belief in Christ could be urged against their own belief in God. Since his time people have begun to say seriously, "Just so, and therefore we reject both." Butler has left no answer to that position.

Paley, in his "Natural Theology," had to deal with people who spoke loosely about the fortuitous concourse of atoms and chance as having made the universe, not with men who spoke carefully about matter and force, specially determined under complex and peculiar relations; and the sneer with which he dismisses (chap. v. sect. iv.) something very like the Darwinian theory, "as an hypothesis hardly deserving consideration," should warn us of the danger of going to sea against the Armada of modern science in such ships as his.

6. In the Court of Louis XIV. it was thought shocking to hint that the king could ever die, and we read that one of the greatest French preachers, having in a rash moment begun his discourse with the words, "We are all mortal," added, with a deprecating glance at the throne, except your majesty."

The idol of a conservative orthodoxy is seated on a throne as deeply undermined as was that of the Grand Monarque, and saluted daily with flattery as unblushing and insidious as that of Père Bourdaloue. "All things decay," say the preachers Sunday after Sunday, up and down the land, "except Conservative Orthodoxy."

In vain might Boileau and Molière insist after their fashion upon the impartial and pitiless law, and quote Horace to prove that Death with equal foot knocks at the door of high and low. The courtiers turned a deaf ear. In vain may warning fingers point to the decay of religious opinions once thought infallible and immortal. In vain may history blush to see the heterodoxies of yesterday installed by consent of bishops and clergy among the orthodoxies of to-day. When the present orthodoxies are threatened, the defenders of the faith will have

nothing to do with experience or history. Before them, as before Nebuchadnezzar, stands a great image, whose brightness is excellent, and whose form is terrible. Orthodox opinion is his name. Daniel may show that its foundation is but iron mixed with miry clay, and may tell of the stone cut without hands which is ready to smite the majestic idol, and break it in pieces. The people will still bow down before it, and utter the old and abject commonplace of stupidity and terror, "We are all mortal, except your majesty."

7. Now the first thing to do is to be honest. A teacher is often surprised to find that other hearts are bursting with thoughts which he has been afraid to utter for fear of shocking people. There is a time, no doubt, to keep silence, but there is also a time to speak. The time to speak is when the young are growing up without a religion, because they do not believe in the religious opinions of the old. The time to speak is when the old do not believe in their own religious opinions, but are afraid to say so, because they have nothing definite to put in their place.

All this is terrible only when silence is kept. When the truth is out about it, old and young, teacher and taught, heave a sigh of relief, and are surprised to find how the utterance of doubt has gone far to dissipate doubt itself, and reestablish faith in religion.

8. For now every one sees that each revival of religion has been preceded by the same sense of profound distrust in the old forms of doctrine. The doubt struggles, and at last finds utterance. Closely following upon the utterance comes the establishment of amended opinion, and the resettlement of religion.

Such was the action of the Prophets upon Moses, of the rabbinical lore upon the Prophets, of Christ upon the Rabbi, of the Pauline upon the narrow Jewish Christianity, of the Protestant upon the Roman Catholic Theology. And here we pause, for are we not on the eve of witnessing the action of science, historical criticism, and exact thought, upon the Catholic and the Protestant forms of Christianity?

In all this there is nothing terrible. It has been, and it will be. The times may be difficult,

to be silent about such changes as are im

pending, nay, as are already upon us, is to bury our heads in the sand. The first thing for the clergy to put down in themselves and in their congregation is the Ostrich-spirit; or, to use another figure, to pretend that there is no change, when the change is come, is like shutting your eyes in a balloon car because you notice that the rotten cords which bind you to the balloon are snapping one by one. Before the last goes, it may be worth your while to descend, or to secure your car with sound cords; but in no case at such a moment is it well to shut your eyes, and tell your companion that all is safe.

9. But the clamour for restatement grows louder each day. The old religious textbooks are discredited. Parents have not the heart to teach their children that which they have had slowly and painfully to unlearn.

A head-master of one of the greatest and most honoured public schools said to me the other day, "I cannot follow orthodoxy in my religious teaching. My elder boys read and think for themselves-they worship the new lights, Spencer, Mill, Tyndall, and Darwin."