say that we have only to follow our conscience; we have to enlighten our conscience and keep it enlightened....  There is no greater plague of our generation than the nervous anxiety which characterises all its efforts.  We ought to be reasonably careful, and then go boldly forward in the peace of God....  Our Lord did not mean to make of His disciples a new kind of Pharisee. ....’Judge not,’ means, Do not be critical.  The condemnation of one who is always finding fault carries no moral weight.  It is those who have the lowest and vaguest standards of what is right who are often the most critical in judgment of other people....  We ought so to limit our desires that what we want for ourselves we can reasonably expect also for others....  A man who wants to do his duty must always be prepared to stand alone....  Christianity is not so much a statement of the true end or ideal of human life, as a great spiritual instrument for realising the end.

These extracts will be sufficient to show what are the characteristics of these little commentaries.  They exhibit extreme honesty of purpose, fearless acceptance of Christ’s teaching honestly interpreted, scorn of unreality and empty words, and a determination never to allow preaching to be divorced from practice.  No more stimulating Christian teaching has been given in our generation.

The valuable treatise on the Holy Communion, called ’The Body of Christ,’ is too theological for detailed discussion in these pages.  The points in which the Roman Church has perverted and degraded the really Catholic sacramental doctrine are forcibly exposed, and the true nature of the sacrament is unfolded in a masterly and beautiful manner.

A study of the whole body of theological writings from the pen of this remarkable man leaves us with the conviction that he is one of the most powerful spiritual forces in our generation.  It is the more to be regretted that in certain points he seems to be hampered by false presuppositions and misled by unattainable ideals.  His loyalty to ‘Catholic truth,’ as understood by the party in the Church to which he consents to belong, prevents him from understanding where the shoe really pinches among those of the younger generation who are both thoughtful and devout.  He makes a fetish of the Creeds, documents which only represent the opinions of a majority at a meeting; and what manner of meetings Church Councils sometimes were, is known to history.  He is still impressed with the grandeur of the Catholic idea, as embodied in the Roman Church, and will do nothing to preclude reunion, should a more enlightened policy ever prevail at the Vatican.  But this country has done with the Roman Empire, in its spiritual as well as its temporal form.  The dimensions of that proud dominion have shrunk with the expansion of knowledge; new worlds have been opened out, geographical and mental, which never owned its sway; the caput orbis has become provincial, and her authority is spurned even within her own borders.  There is no likelihood of the English people ever again accepting ‘Catholicism,’ if Catholicism is the thing which history calls by that name.  The movement which the Bishop hopes to lead to victory will remain, as it has been hitherto, a theory of the ministry rather than of the Church, and its strength will be confined, as it is now, mainly to clerical circles.