added, and nothing any more to be taken from it.  At this moment, however, the most vigorous minds appear least to see their way to a conclusion; and notwithstanding all the school and church building, the extended episcopate, and the religious newspapers, a general doubt is coming up like a thunderstorm against the wind, and blackening the sky.  Those who cling most tenaciously to the faith in which they were educated yet confess themselves perplexed.  They know what they believe; but why they believe it, or why they should require others to believe, they cannot tell or cannot agree.  Between the authority of the Church and the authority of the Bible, the testimony of history and the testimony of the Spirit, the ascertained facts of science and the contradictory facts which seem to be revealed, the minds of men are tossed to and fro, harassed by the changed attitude in which scientific investigation has placed us all towards accounts of supernatural occurrences.  We thrust the subject aside; we take refuge in practical work; we believe perhaps that the situation is desperate and hopeless of improvement; we refuse to let the question be disturbed.  But we cannot escape from our shadow, and the spirit of uncertainty will haunt the world like an uneasy ghost, till we take it by the throat like men.

We return then to the point from which we set out.  The time is past for repression.  Despotism has done its work; but the day of despotism is gone, and the only remedy is a full and fair investigation.  Things will never right themselves if they are let alone.  It is idle to say peace when there is no peace; and the concealed imposthume is more dangerous than an open wound.  The law in this country has postponed our trial, but cannot save us from it; and the questions which have agitated the Continent are agitating us at last.  The student who twenty years ago was contented with the Greek and Latin fathers and the Anglican divines, now reads Ewald and Renan.  The Church authorities still refuse to look their difficulties in the face:  they prescribe for mental troubles the established doses of Paley and Pearson; they refuse dangerous questions as sinful, and tread the round of commonplace in placid comfort.  But it will not avail.  Their pupils grow to manhood, and fight the battle for themselves, unaided by those who ought to have stood by them in their trial, and could not or would not; and the bitterness of those conflicts and the end of most of them in heart-broken uncertainty or careless indifference, is too notorious to all who care to know about such things.