thought that the revolt would be of long duration. And many, while they held the dangerous and unrighteous nature of the new tenets, no doubt hoped that these would not issue in their logical consequences; just as now those who most assert the antinomian character of the utilitarian philosophy are among the most ready to admit that its adherents are moral, law-abiding, and excellent But now that we can regard the controversy with the cumulative experience of three hundred years, we see how wide is the divergence of those opinions which seemed parallel at their first separation; that, while the Church is one and the same, Protestantism is not one; it has divided into a thousand parties, but the tendency in all is to get rid of such dogma as it once possessed, and more and more to denounce the outward semblance and the inward spirit of the organisation from which it sprang. The Church of England alone stands as an apparent exception, all the more remarkable because a large portion, perhaps even a numerical majority, among its clergy have in the last fifty years gradually recurred to the outward likeness of many Catholic forms, and reasserted many long-neglected doctrines. But this reaction is far more apparent than real; to render it a reality there must be authority and discipline. It is notorious that the men who carry reaction furthest scoff at discipline, since their bishops, as a rule, will have nothing to do with either their teaching or their practice; nor is there any central authority to decide who goes right in the bewildering maze. The people at large, even those who attend the churches in which ritual is inost carried out and dogma most asserted, regard the whole matter in the light of a pleasing imitation, and look on it as provisional, longing for the time when Christendom once more shall be united, by which they mean when they themselves can see their way to joining the Church of Rome. For no one seriously thinks that Rome will yield to them, recognise their orders, and allow married priests to officiate, nor would they make any concession whatever to the sects, who, without very large allowances, for which it is fair to say they do not ask, could play no part in an united Christendom. But if we take all the other Protestant sects, and the still large portion of the English Church which is not reactionary, we find as a fact that dogma has faded to a very few articles, and that these are always diminishing in number and importance. The creeds are recited in the English Church, but few doctrines are, save in the high churches, dwelt on with any insistance; in the nonconformist churches the creeds are not even recited, and the very notion of a body of all-important doctrines, each one in close interdependence on the others, is rapidly vanishing. While in all, no doubt, the excellence of a moral life is studiously upheld, enforced enforced by scriptural precept and example, supernatural aid is almost disregarded, or at least is vaguely described as the help of the Holy Spirit. How that aid is given and applied is left to each believer. He is to discover in himself the workings of that which is never defined to him; an uncertain form of words of little meaning takes the place of elaborate sacraments which of old fortified the Christian at every turn. Grace has become a sound instead of a reality, whereof the channels were once so visible that the invisible current seemed almost apparent to the senses. In the broad church portion of the Church of England, and in some of the sects outside of it, there is an increasing tendency to approximate to the theology known as Unitarian. Almost all the chapels which belonged to the old Presbyterian Church in England, to those clergy which separated themselves on the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity, have become Unitarian by insensible gradations, and in America the gulf between the sects once known as orthodox and unorthodox is not always apparent. The Unitarian body is by no means stationary, and among the leaders of thought in that community the teaching grows less and less dogmatic, tending to restrict itself to the simple enunciation of theism, and the need of a life morally correct and intellectually graceful. There are next to no Unitarian poor. The disintegration of dogma has gone further than than persons generally suppose. The adherents of all sects would be startled at the vast number of those who hold no form of religion at all, or who, if they attend worship, do so as an act of compliance, or for a season of rest, and not on any grounds of faith. There is no need to do more than assert that which is to some a commonplace, and which others can easily verify for themselves if the inquiry is not too painful. None who have marked the swift change and abandonment of faith during the last quarter of a century, the tolerance extended to those who but a few years ago would have been ostracised, the acceptance, as commonplaces of criticism, of statements which would not long since have been counted as daring infidelity, can doubt that opinion is still changing with increasing swiftness. All that lies between the Catholic Church and extreme free-thought is whirling and surging, but gradually setting into two streams, the one recurrent, the other dashing rapidly to some unknown cataract, whose roar is heard by almost all, however smoothly glides their barque. Those who are called on to take part in the strifes between the Churches may for a while shut their eyes to the fact, but few thoughtful men whose attention is drawn to it will refuse to grant, that ultimately, later or sooner, the great contest of thought must be fought, not between two varying forms of the Christian faith, nor between the Pro testant testant sects and unbelief, but between that historic Church of which the sects are but rebellious children, however they may deny their parentage, and the modern spirit, call it by what name we will. It is not fairly to be called the spirit of unbelief or atheism, for it is not dogmatic, and atheism is dogma as much as theism, but it is a spirit of patient waiting, which is content not to know. If pressed, and obliged to define itself, it says frankly that, whatever may be guessed or hoped, nothing can be concluded, accurately and positively, of which the senses cannot take cognizance, nothing beyond what is material and physical. Minds penetrated by this spirit have no desire to force the contest prematurely, which, indeed, none can hasten, which will come only, like all that is, when the time is ripe; yet none the less are they content to see the two lines distinctly forming themselves for the great battle of Armageddon, and think it well when one or another who has wavered decides to range himself under either banner. Such an one, though separated by a vast intellectual distance from the Roman position, may yet admire the pomp of that august army which comes on as of old, with banners flying and censers waving, chanting its olden hymns of faith; nor refuse his partial sympathy to the phalanx of men who do not much strive nor cry, nor let their voices be heard in the streets, but prepare their way in the lecture-room, the laboratory, and the library; yet who, when need is, their faces |