More is not to be said regarding individuals, as much addition would mean treading too near our own time. There are others, who have appeared and exercised influence during the last fifty years; and it is not in want of appreciation that they are not mentioned.

Towards the complete establishment of the better guidance there is still much work to do. And an unpleasant part of the work that remains is the temporarily destructive action of showing the untruth of many of the combinations discovered by Literalism, or, in other words, criticising popular notions and even, with these, the detail presented by the letter of the creeds and of the Bible itself. Those who now are pointing to positive sacred truth have often, as they go along, to accomplish also a disillusioning process. But painful as is the subjection to misunderstanding which results from this, Biblical Criticism is ultimately serving truth and spiritual peace. As it advances side by side with the thought

Died, never to be seen again by any one on earth, and was buried in the ground where the trees grow."

"The cold ground," said the child, shuddering again. "No! The warm ground," returned Polly, seizing her advantage, "where the ugly little seeds turn into beautiful flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't know what all besides. Where good people turn into bright angels, and fly away to Heaven."-DICKENS, Dombey and Son (see John xii. 24).

which began with Erskine, Kingsley, Martineau, and the others, the life of a personal human soul will gain vastly in attractiveness, even as at the same time there will be shown ever more clearly that it is moving along on firm ground, never to be wrested from under it.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.

"THE supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the scripture." These words, from the Confession of Faith subscribed by the clergy of the Church of Scotland, may be said to express the earlier Protestant position. The newer Protestant position, though one might find a fresh and simpler statement of it, indicates no essential departure from the earlier as this assertion defines it. The difference between the earlier and the later may be said to lie in the applications which individuals have made of this assertion. One has to admit, indeed, that in every probability the framers of the statement had in their own minds the bias which led to the earlier application. Yet both the words and

the essence of the thought allow the newer. And the newer is the more natural of the two. The difference is that the earlier Protestants emphasised the phrase "speaking in the scripture," whereas those of the later position remove the emphasis to the two sacred words which immediately precede that phrase.

This is all the formal difference which is brought about by freely allowing the newer light to shine on the objects of faith. And if the material difference is a much vaster one, the material change is in the direction not of loss for any sympathetic person, but of firm and limitless hope for mankind.

Yet the newer position is still by many bitterly resented. And they who, in gratefulness, ask others to share with them its assurance and its interests, are met by determined and aggrieved resistance.

Why should this be so? Is the explanation to be found in a dread of the unknown and untried? Dread is, in this case, in all ways a wrong feeling. It indicates distrust in the presence of voices that themselves demand confidence. And it is condemned under all sober observation. All right estimation of the past as recorded, and of the future as promised by the newer position, encourages hope, not dread.

To begin with the consideration of Morality. All earnest persons wish, first of all, to see the moral

life of mankind preserved. And, as has been recognised above, there has indeed under Literalism been made a great moral achievement, which requires that we jealously guard it. But for the preservation of so much moral life as has been attained, there exists a mighty security in the very achievement itself which was made in the days of the old guiding agency. The very substance of that achievement is a triumphant discovery by the human race of the path of Morality-such a discovery of it that they can never possibly abandon it while their reason lasts.

There is no danger, therefore, of slipping back morally. And surely there is room for much advance morally. The achievement under Literalism went only a little way. It left prevalent, in place of moral action, a large body of action of a very opposite character,

All earnest adorers of the character of Jesus Christ will combine in the wish for some contrast between the future and the past. They will be at one in desiring that many kinds of action which were produced in the old days may never be seen again. While in truth the entry on the moral path was made signally in the time of the old light, the early attempts at a moral application were in great measure such as all enthusiasts for rectitude can