superficial shiftings to which it is exposed; for there is a continually deteriorating influence at work in the heart upon the truth, which is planted there as exotic and not indigenous; and even when we omit the spirit of absolute rebellion within us which aims at its extinction, yet still the faintness, the indifference, the backslidings, the immeasurable distance between its heavenly and our fallen nature-these surely are reasons enough to account for the fact that the subjective development of that truth in man, imperfect in the best ("for now we see through a glass darkly"*), likewise exhibits, in the thousand differing phases of character, a thousand progressive degrees of imperfection. 8. The ship retains her anchorage yet drifts within a certain range, subject to the wind and tide. So we have for an anchorage the cardinal truths of the Gospel determined by the consent of the Church in all ages, and nowhere more fully or simply recognised than in this island. One who speaks to his brethren in her communion, under the peculiar circumstances of the day, should simply wish to be a fellow-labourer with them, and that all should be mutually helpful in realising to the hearts of its members the full force of its truths. For the progress of truth through the character is slow, and it requires time for its full establishment, long after it has been sincerely and vitally received. It is a task of common interest, to learn better the lesson we must all feel that we have so im 1 Cor. xiii. 12. perfectly acquired, namely, that which shows how we may least inadequately fulfil all the conditions of that blessed and glorious life which we have in Jesus Christ, and how most effectually oppose its powers to the powers of the fallen and evil life that belongs to our own selves. As 9. Now this may be done partly upon a principle of general progression in the Church; for it might be that the Church should grow, in certain kinds at least of knowledge, and yet retain all her essential principles without change, as an oak unfolds the life which it has carried seminally within it from the acorn. the treasures both of spiritual experience and intellectual acquirement are accumulated by the labours of successive generations, it may be said we have more assistance, and ought therefore to make more progress. In short, a priori, a case might perhaps be made to show that while the spirit of the Church must ever remain the same, the mind of the Church might be from age to age continually strengthened and matured and enlarged. Let those, however, who see that such has been actually the fact, declare it: I see it not, and therefore dare not assert it. And perhaps we do not enough consider that a spirit more simple and an understanding less practised, are often preferable to that state in which a limited possession of knowledge has engendered an unlimited presumption of knowledge; and that not merely the absolute but also the relative state of the heart and the mind determine the true condition of the man, and of the Church. 10. Let us take, for example, that which we com monly and proudly term the dark period of the thirteenth century. Assume, on the one hand, as much as you will respecting the superior standard of average attainment among men, in knowledge and religion at the present day: still I say the balance is not wholly cast in our favour. It was a strong expression, I think of the late Mr. Irving, that the soil of the Christian Church had more vigour at the time when it was capable of throwing up such plants as the minds of Luther and Melancthon, than warms it at this moment. And so I would say of the darker period of this thirteenth century. Look at the minds of the men, for example at the mind of Dante, which it moulded. Regard the comprehensive grasp with which he seized the seen and the unseen world, the entire range of ideas and facts, even the possible or imaginary forms of our future existence; and while interweaving typically with his bold creations the great events and interests of his time,† exhibited along with a richness of fancy and a depth of passion in which he has had few poets for his rivals, an understanding edged for analysis like Aristotle, a spirit of childlike and ecstatic devotion like Augustine or Thomas à Kempis, and a strength of sublime intuition, that highest of human faculties, in which he seems to stand alone. Shall we, can we see again any such form and fashion of a man? Are there the mate * Another remarkable instance may be found in Roger Bacon, the Franciscan monk, educated at Oxford (see Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, i. 323); and a third in Thomas Aquinas. + See the ingenious but exaggerated theory of the work of Professor Rossetti, "Sullo spirito antipapale." rials for feeding and for training such a spirit? Among our foot-prints will there be found by posterity una simile Orma di piè mortale ?* His works are like the huge spears and swords that are shown in some of our old baronial castles, which none can wield; and if the gigantic physical stature of ancient times be fabulous, is it equally untrue that the higher ranges of intellect, according to the prediction of Lord Bacon, have been reduced, and that our modern pride must begin to suspect and qualify some of its claims to superior excellence? 11. It may not improbably be the case that, so far as respects religion, we are actually progressing in some particulars while we retrograde in others. The Church may be engaged in developing the ideas which she possesses, and in bringing the bud to be the flower; or she may be, on the other hand, condensing what has been too much rarefied in a heated atmosphere, directing its power to a definite and palpable object, and seeking, through compression, to attain a more energetic action. She may be imploring her members to look into their own convictions, and to examine faithfully whether they do not either comprise, or imply, or loudly call in aid those ideas which it is her desire to exhibit; whether they be not seminally there contained, or whether they be not by consistency of reasoning involved, or whether they be not * Manzoni's Ode on the Death of Napoleon. urgently needed to give form and body, completeness, unity, permanence, to the deep principles of personal religion which those whom she addresses bear in their heart of hearts, and for which they are justly and reasonably jealous. 12. We are not led to suppose that those who first followed Christ on earth, or even those who first joined his Church after his death, in the early stages of its progress and before heresy was rife, adopted any great number of propositions intellectually canvassed, apprehended, understood, before they became joined in the sacred unity of the Lord's mystical body. But being so joined, they had a guarantee that, as they advanced into a deeper knowledge of the things of God, with enlarging knowledge they should still have a coextensive unity, unless indeed the heart grew gross with pride, and brought forth its evil fruits, division and error. For the truths of religion being certain and unchangeable, they afford as unexceptionably true a ground of unity to those who know most as to those who know least, and it is the evil nature alone within us which has multiplied heresies upon the earth under pretence of knowledge. They therefore who hold from the Church of England their views of the truths of Scripture, and believe that in her they have a faithful expositress of the truths of Catholic Christianity, though they may not have travelled over the entire cycle of those truths together, yet if they have the same love and the same desire, the same belief in the great doctrines which she teaches, and in her faithful |