tative men receive the most complete intellectual training before entering upon their specially professional studies. It is less noteworthy, though still visible, among those orthodox Dissenting churches which, while they aim at giving their ministers a careful theological education, are more solicitous to keep apart the sacred and the secular elements of knowledge. And it reaches its lowest ebb in those bodies who still look upon "carnal learning" as an encumbrance to the true preacher of the gospel, and in whom, therefore, the full intellectual life of the century vibrates with but a feeble and uncertain pulse.

But are there any signs that this strange movement of thought, the existence of which is as fully admitted by those who dislike and fear it as by its most hopeful and eager friends, contains within itself an element of permanence and progress? What is there to distinguish this from other similar epochs of Christian belief, when a latitudinarian theology has obtained a certain prevalence, only to be surely beaten back when a revival of religious life has brought with it the old reliance upon traditional forms of thought? "This is but a cold wind of doubt and disbelief sweeping over the Church," say the stanch friends of orthodoxy, "nipping for the time all luxuriant growth of faith, chilling the generous sympathies of simple trust; wait awhile for the return of the Spirit's breath, and the very remembrance of these grey skies, these sleety showers, shall be blotted out. Age after age has heard the repetition of the same cavils, which are but a perpetual manifestation of the enmity of the natural mind to the things of God; let the Church stand still upon the old ground; patience alone will ensure her final victory." Others, again, who look upon these facts from a higher and a more philosophical point of view, report a radical difference between theological and all other scientific truth; that while the history of the latter is one of steady progress, and a continually larger kingdom conquered from the infinite unknown, the former is a deposit of fact, once supernaturally placed in the custody of the human mind, which cannot make it more, but exhausts all the possibilities of the case in remaining simply faithful to the first trust. And therefore, although debates arise from time to time as to the original contents of that trust, the very nature of the controversy precludes such an issue of perpetually enlarging knowledge as is characteristic of sci

entific investigation. The battle sways from side to side; a temporary prevalence is gained by this or by that principle of belief; one generation is eager in free inquiry; the next calmly rests in the arms of authority. So to-day's action carries within it the germs of reaction to-morrow, and the decisive victory implied in progress cannot be.

To enter upon the whole complex argument to which these thoughts afford an access, would be inconsistent with the special purpose of this paper; though, at the same time, we may be permitted to point out one or two characteristics of the present theological eagerness which seem to invest it with more than a temporary importance. We admit that cases may be cited in which a latitudinarian theology has been swept away by a rising tide of religious life. Something of this may be due to the fact that liberality necessarily loses the distinctive force of fanaticism; that a religious belief conscious of the lights and shadows, the perplexities and obscurities of all human knowledge of infinite realities, cannot express itself with the incisive dogmatism of a faith which confidently guages God and Eternity by its own hard and narrow philosophy. But, in truth, the latitudinarian theology which succumbs to the first summons of an earnest religiousness, no matter how unreasoning, must be itself the offspring of religious indifference. Can this be said of our present "crying for the light"? It has risen from the midst, not of an unbelieving, but of a believing age, an age for which, on the one hand, sacerdotal, on the other evangelical, theories of religion, brought to a practical outcome by honest and self-sacrificing men, have done their best. And it expresses, not the desire of our time to banish God from the world and to escape from beneath the restraints of a divine law, but the most eager yearning of pious souls for a God on whom they may surely stay themselves, and a law which shall transfigure earthly states into a kingdom of heaven. "Lord, I believe-help thou mine unbelief," is its constant burthen, a faithful note, and yet, mingled with it, one which, till the discord is resolved into a deeper harmony, seems to have a sound of faithlessness. Such a latitudinarianism as this has nothing to fear from any genuine spiritual quickening; for it has reached the point at which allegiance to Truth and service of God are discerned as part of the same manly piety.

There is, in the next place, a wide difference between the

present and all other controversies which have ever agitated the Reformed Church of England. For it has been characteristic of them, that they have been fought, so to speak, within the limits of Scripture, and have been essentially conflicts of interpretation. The method of the Protestant Reformation was an appeal from the authority of the Church to the authority of Scripture, an appeal which the Reformers honestly made as against Rome, though they did not always clearly abide by it, in relation to the ecclesiastical organizations which took her place. And as, in lapse of time, the Bible became firmly seated in the throne once occupied by the Church, theological investigation took more and more the single form of an attempt to ascertain the sense of Scripture. It was, at least tacitly, assumed that by a just use of methods of interpretation a single and self-consistent dogmatic result could be attained: the primitive Church, in settling the canon, had prescribed the area within which these methods were to be applied; nothing remained but to select the needful logical implements and to use them heedfully and fairly. Nor does it militate against this view that recent decisions in the Ecclesiastical Courts have affirmed, that heresy and orthodoxy in the Church of England are discerned, not by an appeal to Scripture, but by the test of legally established creeds and formularies. For in this case the appeal to Scripture is only pushed one step farther back. The Church drew out the sense of the Bible, once and for ever, and, expressing it in those formularies, has practically forbidden any fresh scriptural investigation in contravention of them. In truth, a clergyman in signing the Thirty-nine Articles has signified his acceptance of them as the true results of scriptural interpretation, and cannot be suffered to deduce different results from his own personal investigation. Not the less. does it remain true, that the doctrines of English Protestant Churches have been directly or indirectly founded upon a rude assumption of the authority of the whole Bible, which has practically involved a theory of plenary inspiration, more or less distinctly held. And the cardinal question implied in every controversy, whether as to the nature of God, or the theory of grace, or the scheme of redemption, has been, "What is the sense of Holy Writ?"

But the discussions which at present fill the air go deeper

than this. Men are beginning to ask, not what is the meaning, but what is the authority, of Scripture?-not what guidance does it offer to our faith, but what is the measure and justification of its claim to guide our faith at all? And yet, in spite of the fierce denunciations of conservative theologians, who hurl the cry of infidelity at all who would examine the foundations of religious belief, these questions are asked in a faithful spirit, and proceed from the desire, not to diminish the reverence due to the Bible, but to free it from the inevitable unsoundness involved in every false pretence. The first requisite for a true discernment of what is divine in the Bible, is the clear separation from it of what is human: no one knows the lustre of virgin gold who has only seen the precious ore mingled with earth and dross. If such investigations as now occupy men's minds are necessary, it is easy to see why former controversies have led to little result: the fundamental assumption on which all subsequent reasoning was built up was unstable, and every edifice of faith tottered to its base. If the element of prediction, for instance, be not rightly included in the idea of prophecy, what reason can there be for preferring one scheme of prophetical fulfilment to another? If it is involved in the very nature of theological speculation that independent minds should take up, and push to a logical extreme, different sides of Christian truth, what need to labour an exact reconciliation between Paul and James? And, on the other hand, these discussions, if not altogether supererogatory and fruitless, tend to the establishment of principles which will make a scientific interpretation of Scripture, for the first time, possible. Men will make up their minds whether the Bible is to be looked upon as a book or a literature; whether it is to be questioned as an oracle or interpreted as a record of divine manifestation and human faith. The issues of such controversies as are now begun, no wise man will venture to predict; but there is at least no reason to conclude from the history of older theological debate, that the end must needs be the triumph of ancient orthodoxy.

Another significant fact is, that the stagnant waters of theology have been stirred not so much by forces generated within themselves, as by an impulse communicated from other regions of human speculation. The rapid progress

of science within the memory of living men is an oftrepeated tale; the nineteenth century is never weary of looking in the mirror which reflects her own beauties. But while Theology, since the fierce struggles of the Reformation, has lain quietly asleep, or at best has busied herself with further applications of principles then established, Science has not only penetrated, with marvellously swift stride, into the secret places of nature, but has perfected herself in the use of methods which seem to guarantee an indefinite future progress. What has been the result of the existence of these opposite habits of thought, side by side? Philosophers have successfully drawn (whether for good or evil is a question not to be answered here) a line between their own researches and the abstract truths of theology; the discovery of law is the point at which their investigations halt; and they do not ask, whether in the regularity of nature is revealed the constancy of a living Will. But between science and theology, no longer abstract, but concrete in biblical form, it is impossible to build a boundary-wall. There are a thousand points at which they cross and clash. First came the quarrel of the Church with Astronomy and Galileo; none but an infidel could doubt the daily revolution of the sun, and to believe in the antipodes was atheism indeed. By and by, Geology, a younger science, entered the lists, and engaged in a combat in which deadly blows are still given and received. Once, the story of the creative week was carried in triumph over the necks of those who were painfully deciphering the shattered record of the world's changes; now, the wildest theories are invented to reconcile it with facts that will not be gainsayed; presently, the Hebrew tradition will be suffered to rest, untortured by adaptations, in its sublime spiritual simplicity, and the earth will tell her own tale of convulsion and development. Already the deluge has shrunk from the dimensions of a universal cataclysm to those of a Mesopotamian flood; presently we may come to believe in the primeval races which dwelt in Swiss lake-huts and by the chalky streams of France, while strange animals still roamed in Western Europe, ages before the date of Paradise. Philology, wakened in these latter days to a fresh and vigorous life, dissects the earliest Hebrew records, and deals a fatal blow at the theory of their plenary inspi