dogmas into maxims of individual conduct. Must we fall back in hopelessness upon this "scheme, weighed in the balance and found wanting by Englishmen three centuries ago, not 'proved to be more satisfactory or more uniting by any recent experience? Or shall the letter ' of the Bible be claimed by every sect or school that is uppermost as a weapon for persecuting

and slaying all other sects and schools? Or 'shall a combination of sects and schools use it 'for restraining examination into the facts of God's universe?'

Is GOD the Revealer? Greeks, Romanists, Protestants, all say that He is. The Creeds affirm it; the existence of the Church implies it. Can He reveal? Can He make us know what He is; how we are related to Him; what we are? This is the question. If it is resolved negatively, 'He cannot reveal; there is something in the constitution of our minds which

makes it impossible that He should show us 'what He is, what we are, how we are related 'to Him,' then I do not see that it signifies much how we settle the question about the Bible, tradition, the infallible human authority. All are equally deceiving us. All are pretending to tell

us something which they cannot tell us. All are merely repeating phrases which begin in nothing, and end in nothing. We have, then, only to ask which party plays its tricks best, which shuffles the false cards most dexterously.

I believe that the Bible and the Creeds, the holiest traditions of the Church in all ages, the holiest Greeks, Latins, Protestants in all ages, are agreed in this one testimony: that God has revealed, and does reveal, to men that which they want to know; that He only does, or can, reveal anything. Every Reformation has been a protest on behalf of this principle: an effort to shake off, not faith, but denials, not authority, but the rebellion of Popes, of Doctors, of sects, of a religious world, against the Divine authority: a determination to recover the Divine teaching which had been lost. If Bishop Colenso had made this protest, this effort, this determination, with what joy would some of us have followed in his steps! I have expressed in a former letter the pleasure which his preface gave me, because it echoed the words of that prophecy which is read as the Epistle for the Tuesday before Easter,-Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth His servants, that walketh in darkness, and hath

no light; let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself upon his God. If he had gone on to exhort us, one and all, to abstain from kindling a fire and compassing ourselves with sparks, not to invent theories which shut out God's light from ourselves and from other men-how should we have listened to him as to a father in God, owning that dignity in him all the more readily because he had none of the dignity of earthly greatness and wealth to mix with it and confuse it! But he has kindled these sparks; he has invented theories; he has taught us to distrust God's past revelations, those which are the preparations for His revelation of His Only Begotten Son, those which are our encouragements to hope for the perfect Revelation of Him when all our partial glimpses shall be completed, all our dim anticipations satisfied.

To such guidance we cannot commit ourselves. But every fresh disappointment of this kind, every confutation of any dreams we might have formed of earthly leaders, are only reasons for more entirely trusting the cause of God's Church and of His Truth to Himself. Whatever becomes of our lights, His will shine more and more to the perfect day. And that Light, I am

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convinced, will illuminate the path of the physical as well as of the moral student. The Heavens shall declare the glory of God, when man is taught that he was made of the dust of earth, that he is meant to bear the image of the Eternal God.

Ever yours affectionately,

F. D. MAURICE.

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LETTER XII.

THE LAW COURTS.—THE PEOPLE OF GOD.ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.

MY DEAR FRiend,

It will occur to you to ask-in fact, you have asked-How do these interpretations of yours accord with the decisions of our Ecclesiastical Courts? I am not so careful about that question as about some others; but I will answer it frankly, certainly without considering how far the answer may affect my own security.

In the cases of Mr. Rowland Williams and Mr. Wilson we saw a most conscientious, able, and kind-hearted Judge perplexed between the claims of modern zeal for the Bible and the authority of old books, compiled in times which reverenced the Bible far more than we do, and were supposed to have guarded its rights more jealously. Ultimately he decided, in deference