Mr. Mansell tells us that in the things of God reason is beyond its depth, that the wise and the unwise are on the same level of incapacity, and that we must accept what we find established, or we must believe nothing.  We presume that this dilemma itself is a conclusion of reason.  Do what we will, reason is and must be our ultimate authority; and were the collective sense of mankind to declare Mr. Mansell right, we should submit to that opinion as readily as to another.  But the collective sense of mankind is less acquiescent.  He has been compared to a man sitting on the end of a plank and deliberately sawing off his seat.  It seems never to have occurred to him that, if he is right, he has no business to be a Protestant.  What Mr. Mansell says to Professor Jowett, Bishop Gardiner in effect replied to Frith and Ridley.  Frith and Ridley said that transubstantiation was unreasonable; Gardiner answered that there was the letter of Scripture of it, and that the human intellect was no measure of the power of God.  Yet the Reformers somehow believed, and Mr. Mansell by his place in the Church of England seems to agree with them, that the human intellect was not so wholly incompetent.  It might be a weak guide, but it was better than none; and they declared on grounds of mere reason, that Christ being in heaven and not on earth, ’it was contrary to the truth for a natural body to be in two places at once.’  The common sense of the country was of the same opinion, and the illusion was at an end.

There have been “Aids to Faitti” produced lately, and “Replies to the Seven Essayists,” “Answers to Colenso,” and much else of the kind.  We regret to say that they have done little for us.  The very life of our souls is at issue in the questions which have been raised, and we are fed with the professional commonplaces of the members of a close guild, men holding high office in the Church, or expecting to hold high office there; in either case with a strong temporal interest in the defence of the institution which they represent.  We desire to know what those of the clergy think whose love of truth is unconnected with their prospects in life; we desire to know what the educated laymen, the lawyers, the historians, the men of science, the statesmen think; and these are for the most part silent, or confess themselves modestly uncertain.  The professional theologians alone are loud and confident; but they speak in the old angry tone which rarely accompanies deep and wise convictions.  They do not meet the real difficulties; they mistake them, misrepresent them, claim victories over adversaries with whom they have never even crossed swords, and leap to conclusions with a precipitancy at which we can only smile.  It has been the unhappy manner of their class from immemorial time; they call it zeal for the Lord, as if it were beyond all doubt that they were on God’s side, as if serious inquiry after truth was something which they were entitled to resent.  They treat intellectual difficulties as if they deserved rather to be condemned and punished than considered and weighed, and rather stop their ears and run with one accord upon any one who disagrees with them than listen patiently to what he has to say.