Waning Influence of the Churches.

I have thought it necessary to indicate the distinction between religion and theology at some length, as I think it furnishes a fundamental principle in accounting for the anomalous position of the; Church of to-day, and affor is a genuine criticism on that part of Judge Higinbotham's lecture which deals with the "Waning Influence of the Church." In fact I think that there are signs in the lecture which would make it seem probable that this is the position which Judge Higinbotham would himself have taken, had his judgment not been warped by a still lurking shadow of theology—namely, a belief in the divine government of the universe. It seems to me that the worship of ideals is the only religion compatible with a theory of universal development; and the principles assigned by the lecturer as causes of the waning power of the Churches, I would consider not to be fundamental causes at all, although they might help, but to be merely signs of that waning influence. The anthropomorphic conceptions of the deity conflicting with the results of modern science, the conflict of creeds and their superposition on the purer doctrines of the founder of Christianity, and the incompetence of the Christian clergy, assigned by the lecturer as reasons to account for the anomalous position of the Church, are, as I have said, rather signs than causes of its degeneracy. The real cause seems to me to lie in the fact that theology is a shattered ideal—that since the time when Christianity was a genuine religion, men's minds, men s emotions and aspirations have developed into something higher and nobler, society has reached a higher groove in the scale of progress and can no longer be satisfied with the old apparitions. It requires some higher ideal to strive after—a religion which will again minister to its welfare and its wants, one that will be in harmony with its higher stage of development.