Hopeful aspects of modern Christianity.

"The world is certainly not less religious than it was in the time of Constantine; on the contrary, it is incomparably richer in the qualities which make religion a thing of the heart and the hand rather than of Controversial ingenuity and verbal memory. The clergy of all the Churches follow the precepts of the Gospel far more closely than the ignorant, superstitious, fanatical, and often sanguinary bands of monks and priests who were at the beck of every ambitious Emperor or Prelate. But the world has sailed past the cloudland of theological subtleties which was then piled round religion until it almost hid its purity and majesty from view. The intellect of the age is busy with a multitude of problems which had not even risen above the horizon in time of the great Councils. Political men refuse to let the metaphysical refinements of the sects affect the conduct of the State, and religious toleration is their practical reply to theological anathemas. The multitude do not know the very existence of those difficulties which disturb the studies of clerical antiquaries. The clergy themselves present the practical rather than the metaphysical side of religion, and even so eminent a preacher as Dr. Liddon would fail to make the subleties of the Bonn Conference interesting to the crowds who admire his eloquence in St. Paul's. So practical is the temper of our age and our country that the Church of England has held together one generation after another in spite of a theological disunion which represents almost every shade of belief between the Puritans of Geneva and the full-blown dogma of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church, which has the wisdom of the serpent, if not the harmlessness of the dove, has read the signs of the times by making, not a metaphysical, but an essentially practical dispute the subject of the only Council which she has summoned since the Reformation. Quarrels about the nicer shades of Trinitarian orthodoxy she would have left to page 67 exhaust themselves in her theological schools, or have silenced by the rebukes of the Curia; but when the insubordination of German theologians threatened to bring visible disorder into her ranks she felt it necessary to put the despotism of her chief beyond a doubt, and hence she declared him to be Infallible."

"The Times.

"Seeing what an inquiring age we live in, and the attention which is devoted as well to history and geography as to physical sciences and the phenomena of light and heat, I watch with increasing interest the development of the mind and capacities of the nation. Although by my age I properly belong to the times gone by, I cannot but look forward to the times which are to come; not only with old Whig aspiration for the cause of political and religious freedom all over the world, but with the hope that the Christian religion may obtain a wider reception and Christian morality be developed in a purer light and with a more general observance."

Earl Russel.

"At no previous period in the history of the world has Christianity, as represented in the Gospels, or in the lives and works of the best of its followers, exercised so powerful an influence on public affairs as in the last thirty years; and I make this assertion without in the least forgetting the endless wars and troubles of that period. In legislation, in administration, in our way of carrying on war, in our treatment of inferior races, in our social relations, in our amusements, in our literature, in everything we are, though, Heaven knows, still far enough from it, nearer nevertheless to the Christian ideal than we ever have been before; and it is interesting to observe that the results of the very highest statesmanship and of the very highest forms of Christianity are often most curiously near each other."

M. E. Grant Duff, M. P.

"It seems clear to me, from all which is occurring in Europe at this moment, from the signs in the Papal Church, in our own Church, in the universal talk and minds of men, whether for it or against it, that the knell of the letter of Christianity itself has struck, and that it is time for us to inaugurate and enthrone the spirit. I was in hopes, when Pius the Ninth first made his appearance in Europe, that a great as well as good man had arisen, competent to so noble a task. Young Italy, let loose from prison, fell at his feet; and I think, that had he persevered in what made it to do so, all Europe would have fallen at his feet, and the Papal power have thus profited by its greatest and only remaining chance of retaining the sceptre of the Christian world. But the new Pope was frightened at being thought one of the 'New Christians' (as Lamartine called them); he hastened to issue a bull, declaring the unalterableness page 68 of every Papal dogma; and the moment he did that, he signed the death-warrant of his Church. Dogma, whatever may be the convulsive appearances to the contrary in certain feeble quarters, has ceased to be a vital European principle; and nothing again will ever be universally taken for Christianity, but the Religion of Loving Duty to God and Man. No hell. No unfatherliness. No monstrous exactions of assent to the incredible. No impious Athanasian Creed. No creed of any kind but such as proves its divineness by the wish of all good hearts to believe it if they might, and by the encouragement that would be given to them to believe it, in the acclamations of the earth. The world has outgrown the terrors of its childhood, and no spurious mistake of a saturnine spleen for a masculine necessity will induce a return to them."

Leigh Hunt's "Autobiography."

"It is needless to close our eyes to the fact that the progress of Christian, scientific, and critical inquiry during the present century has suggested difficulties which were unfelt when our great defences of Christianity were composed. We need not, therefore, wonder that they are inadequate to meet them."

"The Bampton Lectures for 1877."

"In proportion as England has become, and in proportion as it will yet more become, a truly free and truly educated people, able of itself to bind what ought to be bound, and to loose what ought to be loosed, in that proportion will the belief in priestly absolution vanish, just as the belief in wizards and necromancers has vanished before the advance of science. As alchemy has disappeared to give place to chemistry, as astrology has given way to astronomy, as monastic celibacy has given way to domestic purity, as bull-fights and bear-baits have given way to innocent and elevating amusements, as scholastic casuistry has bowed before the philosophy of Bacon and Pascal, so will the belief in the magical offices of a sacerdotal caste vanish before the growth of manly Christian independence, and generous Christian sympathy.

The Very Rev. Dean of Westminister.

"Nothing seemed plainer than that the growth of the scientific and critical spirit within the past three centuries had been killing the superstitious spirit, as a strong young tree killed the old tree by whose side it had sprung up. It was not more certain that darkness melted away before the rising of the sun than that the traditions and superstitions of Rome were, over the world, in course of vanishing, slowly it might be, but still vanishing, before the steadily growing enlightenment which was more and more becoming the inheritance of the nations. But Popery was not only a system of religious superstition, it was also a system of political oppression. Fully page 69 carried out, it would subject the life of every man to the will of the Church, dictate laws, appoint governments, abrogate or introduce customs, limit the province of thought, and, in general, shape human life according to its own notions and caprices. The Pope was, according to his own view, the vicegerent of God, and in that capacity entitled to require the obedience of all mankind: but it needed no illustration to show that those elevated claims derived no countenance from the present course of the world's history. Not the most sanguine Ultramontanist could suppose that the Pope's chances of controlling the civil governments of the world were at present very great. There was no appearance of those days returning when Alexander VI. parcelled out the unknown countries of the world between the Spaniards and the Portuguese. The tide of history was setting in a different direction; nations were pressing on towards the realization of democratic freedom; men were everywhere throwing off those ancient ideas which represented government as something divinely commissioned to compel their subjection, and were striving more and more to have the appointment of their own rulers, or a voice in it; and of those whom they were ever likely to think of as suitable for that purpose, the very last would certainly be the Bishop of Rome and his priestly college. The history of the human race was a history of progress, an endless series of attempts to realize its ideal. With respect to each attempt, mankind were satisfied with it for a time; but by-and-by they outgrew it; then they cast it away as useless, and adopted some other form which suited their more advanced conception of things. So it was in science, in art, in religion. Popery must share the fate of all imperfect systems: it had had its day, and served its turn. In its time it was a mighty power, and in some respects a power for good; but it must yield to the inexorable law of human progress, and there seemed as little chance of men going back to Romanism as a suitable expression of the religious sentiment, as there was of their going back to Druidism or the Ptolemaic astronomy."

Rev. Professor Wallace.