form or other is the secret of truth.  The body will not thrive on poison, or the soul on falsehood; and as the vital processes of health are too subtle for science to follow; as we choose our food, not by the most careful chemical analysis, but by the experience of its effects upon the system; so when a particular belief is fruitful in nobleness of character, we need trouble ourselves very little with scientific demonstrations that it is false.  The most deadly poison may be chemically undistinguishable from substances which are perfectly innocent.  Prussic acid, we are told, is formed of the same elements, combined in the same proportions, as gum-arabic.

What that belief is for which the fruits speak thus so positively, it is less easy to divine.  Religion from the beginning of time has expanded and changed with the growth of knowledge.  The religion of the prophets was not the religion which was adapted to the hardness of heart of the Israelites of the Exodus.  The Gospel set aside the Law; the creed of the early Church was not the creed of the middle ages, any more than the creed of Luther and Cranmer was the creed of St. Bernard and Aquinas.  Old things pass away, new things come in their place; and they in their turn grow old, and give place to others; yet in each of the many forms which Christianity has assumed in the world, holy men have lived and died, and have had the witness of the Spirit that they were not far from the truth.  It may be that the faith which saves is the something held in common by all sincere Christians, and by those as well who should come from the east and the west, and sit down in the kingdom of God, when the children of the covenant would be cast out.  It may be that the true teaching of our Lord is overlaid with doctrines; and theology, when insisting on the reception of its huge catena of formulas, may be binding a yoke upon our necks which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.

But it is not the object of this article to put forward either this or any other particular opinion.  The writer is conscious only that he is passing fast towards the dark gate which soon will close behind him.  He believes that some kind of sincere and firm conviction on these things is of infinite moment to him, and, entirely diffident of his own power to find his way towards such a conviction, he is both ready and anxious to disclaim “all right of private judgment” in the matter.  He wishes only to learn from those who are able to teach him.  The learned prelates talk of the presumptuousness of human reason; they tell us that doubts arise from the consciousness of sin and the pride of the unregenerate heart.  The present writer, while he believes generally that reason, however inadequate, is the best faculty to which we have to trust, yet is most painfully conscious of the weakness of his own reason; and once let the real judgment of the best and wisest men be declared; let those who are most capable of forming a sound opinion, after reviewing the whole relations of science, history, and what is now received as revelation, tell us fairly how much of the doctrines popularly taught they conceive to be adequately established, how much to be uncertain, and how much, if anything, to be mistaken; there is scarcely perhaps a single serious inquirer who would not submit with delight to a court which is the highest on earth.