estimated rightly the moral values at issue. Whether this or that event took place or not is a matter not of moral but of historical interest; but, when belief in a doubtful or unhistorical event is imposed upon the conscience, the question becomes moral.

'God is not wisely trusted when declared unintelligible. 'Such honour rooted in dishonour stands; such faith unfaithful makes us falsely true.

'God is for ever reason; and His communication, His Revelation, is reason.' (Ib. ii. 65.)

We may not, the Greek philosopher reminds us, predicate what is shameful of the Deity; and 'Doth God' (asks the prophet) 'need your lie?' These axioms give us the space and freedom needed for movement. We could not do with less; we need not ask for more.

The practical conclusion of the book is more open to question. In Richard Meynell' another solution is proposed for our own time; but it is simply not the case that scholarly Churchmen of the eighties either had to, or did, 'depart and go into exile.' The date of the Book of Daniel is too slender a foundation to bear such a superstructure; nor can it be admitted for a moment that 'a congregation has both a moral and a legal right to demand an implicit belief't from its minister in a particular interpretation of a a particular Scripture narrative. In the Church of England no such right is vested either in a particular congregation, or in a diocesan conference, or in Convocation, even if the House of Laymen be thrown in. The legal right is for the law— that is, the King in Council; the moral for the conscience of the community at large, not that of any section of it, clerical, lay, or mixed, to decide.

Nor can we think, with Mrs Ward, that Liberal theology occupies a stronger position in the Church now than when Robert Elsmere' was written. A comparison, from this point of view, between the Churchmanship of to-day and that of the eighties does not work out wholly to the advantage of that of to-day. The temper of the Victorian Church was, not indeed absolutely, but relatively larger than that of our own time. Tait and Thirlwall were the most prominent bishops of their

generation; the influence of such scholars as Jowett and Stanley was widely felt. Among the laity there were fewer who made a hobby of ecclesiasticism, but there were also fewer who were indifferent; religion was stronger both as a personal conviction and as a social convention than now. The particular questions before our generation were, as yet, below the horizon; they had not reached the general mind. But the sectarian standpoint, now taken for granted, was exceptional. The Bible meant more than the Church, and reason more than authority, though the one was unscientifically interpreted and the other inadequately conceived. Enlargement of view has been accompanied by narrowing of spirit.

To those who regard the Church as National first and Anglican second, the outlook to-day is not without features which inspire misgiving. The constitution of the English Church is, fortunately, such that it is impossible for her to commit herself by a binding decision in any subject matter. That great safeguard of liberty and religion, the Royal Supremacy, preserves her from this danger; it ties the hands of her clergy, if it does not bridle their tongues. But the forces which produced the Oxford Movement, however negligible in the world of thought, have not ceased to be strong on their own ground-in the Church, and in public affairs where they touch the Church. Here they have never been so powerful as now. The great weight of lay opinion, inside as well as outside the Church, is against them. But this opinion is inarticulate. The minority is clamorous and insistent; and the official machinery is in its hands. It is natural, therefore, human nature being what it is, that it should have the ear of the episcopate-on whose more than Gamaliel-like caution' the latest historian of the English Church comments *-and of ministries, more particularly of ministries which rest on an equilibrium of interests. Such a ministry is unwilling to alienate possible support or to provoke avoidable friction. In secondary matters it follows the line of least resistance; 'the violent bear it away.'

* F. Warre-Cornish, 'The English Church in the Nineteenth Century,' ii, 117.

The Nonconformists are opposed on principle to Establishment. For them the Church is a denomination; and they are prepared to deal with it on the basis of Voluntarism. Meanwhile they and theirs throw sops to Cerberus; Liberal politicians have played of late years even more than their opponents into the hands of the High Anglican school. They see, for they are shrewd observers, that this means Disestablishment in the near future. What they do not seem to see is the blow that Disestablishment, brought about in this way, would be to Protestantism and rational religion at home and abroad. Hoc Ithacus velit.' The residuary legatee of the English Church is Catholicism, and, in the long run, the logical and inevitable embodiment of Catholicismthe Church of Rome. Were the nation moving in this direction, time and the growth of knowledge would be the only remedies. The paradox of the present position is that a marked revival of Protestantism in religion and thought should synchronise with the acute medievalising of what is historically the foremost of the Protestant Churches. The most disquieting features of the process are, probably, the deliberate attempt to establish a separate spiritual jurisdiction, and the disposition in certain quarters to bring personal and private pressure to bear upon the solution of questions which the law has not decided, and which it is thought undesirable that the law should be called upon to decide. The remedy lies with those whose civil and religious rights are threatened. 'The courts are open, and there are deputies; let them implead.'

'Helbeck of Bannisdale,' perhaps Mrs Ward's finest book, and Eleanor' describe Catholicism in England and in Italy respectively. The record of the old English Catholics as a body is an honourable one. In the sixteenth century they were made, as the French Catholics have been in the twentieth, the scapegoat of Christendom; their interests were sacrificed to the intrigues of party and to the policy of Rome. The loss was not material only. It was hard, as in the case taken by Mrs Ward, to see the acres diminish and the family fortunes decline. It was harder still to feel the impoverished blood, the decaying energy, the position won in the past slipping

away.

ness.

'What was it that so gripped the mind in the story of this Catholic family? Surely not their strength, but their weakIt was their passivity, so to speak-their lying at the mercy both of the militant intriguing Catholicism which used and exploited them, and of the militant Protestantism which made them suffer; it was this which touched us.' ('Helbeck,' Pref. pp. xiii, xiv.)

Much was lost in the process-taste, temper, education, the arts and refinements of life. But much was retained and intensified-loyalty to what was believed to be truth, a certain fragrance of devotion, and an unconquerable will. The feature of the book that is most true to life is the equilibrium maintained between the loss and the gain. Not all Helbeck's nobility of temperament saved him from certain obvious and displeasing weaknesses, which 'revealed a new element in his character, something small and ugly, that was like the speck in a fine fruit, or, rather, like the disclosure of an angry sore beneath an outward health and strength.' The feud between the Church and criticism is of long standing. But it is pleasant to know that there were Catholics who did justice both to the intention and the execution of the book.

'While Father Clarke, in the "Nineteenth Century," was hotly and bitterly attacking the book as unjust to Catholic faith and practice, my father, the most devout and obedient of Catholics wrote to me-" This, I think, should gratify you. A Dublin priest whom we really know to be a good man, and a man of some culture, called a day or two ago. He said that he had just finished 'Helbeck,' and had read it with very great interest and admiration. What touched him was the beauty of Laura's character, the atmosphere of absolute purity and moral goodness' in which she lives and moves, and the compatibility of which with the 'Everlasting No,' which her intellect had embraced, he had before doubted." (Ib. Pref. p. xviii.)

'Eleanor' introduces us to a Catholicism of a very different type. The scale on which the Church exists and acts is larger than that of any other religious society. In England even, side by side with the dignified and austere Catholicism of Helbeck,' we have that of 'Casting of Nets'; in Italy we have the officialism of the Curia, Obey, my friend, obey! There is no more to be said '; the à peu près of Mme Variani, and the cynicism of

the rétrograde éclairé, represented by Manisty, but commoner in than outside the Church.

6.66

"Is that fair?-to stand outside slavery-and praise it?" Why not?-if it suits my purpose." (Eleanor,' p. 158.) The distinctive note of clericalism, as a party, is here. For its programme and methods M. Laberthonnière's 'Positivisme et Catholicisme' may be referred to. By anyone who would estimate the religion of the Latin countries the position, paradoxical as it seems, must be taken into account.

In Eleanor' the Modernist controversy meets us. Father Benecke, like so many scholarly priests, is suspended and deprived of the sacraments for saying 'what every educated man in Europe knows to be true (p. 389). A conflict of this nature is bound to arise when a religion of feeling passes out of its original shape and becomes, over and above this, a religion of ideas. For the first ideas with which it associates itself will be rudimentary, and will at the same time have a tendency to become stereotyped, because a certain fixity is a condition of their apprehension by the popular mind. The further this stereotyping process has been carried, the more acute is the conflict between the old and the new. So long as a Church has not withdrawn herself from the stream of life, 'solvitur ambulando' is a fair answer. Facts are more than theories. The Westminster Confession, to take an example, is uncompromising; but the Churches of the Westminster Confession interpret it, pass Declaratory Acts, and live. But the constitution, the formulas, and (what is more important than either) the genius or law of the Roman Church exclude such solutions, and tie her to her past. And this in sensu præteriti'; the logic of the system is too closely knit to admit of accommodation; it is 'all or nothing'; 'either-or.' The fallibility of the Infallible may be demonstrated, but the demonstration is inadmissible. For the Church the Pope remains infallible; hence a deadlock. Lord Acton puts it forcibly. 'It has never been my fortune to meet with an esoteric Ultramontane. I mean, putting aside the ignorant mass, and those who are incapable of reasoning, that I do not know of a religious and educated Catholic who really believes that the See of Rome is a safe guide to salvation. . . . In short, I do Vol. 217.-No. 432.

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