THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION.

WHEN We consider the immense change which, in other matters where tradition and convention were the obstacles to all change, has befallen the thought of this country since the Continent was opened at the end of the great war, we cannot doubt that in religion, too, the mere barriers of tradition and convention will finally give way, that a common European level of thought will establish itself, and will spread to America also. Of course there will be backwaters, more or less strong, of superstition and obscurantism; but I speak of the probable development of opinion in those classes which are to be called progressive and liberal. Such classes are undoubtedly the multiplying and prevailing body both here and in America. And I say that, if we judge the future from the past, these classes, in any matter where it is tradition and convention which at present isolates them from the common liberal opinion of Europe, will, with time, be drawn almost inevitably into that opinion.

The partisans of traditional religion in this country do not know, I think, how decisively the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion on the Continent has pronounced against the Christian religion. They do not know how surely the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion in this country tends to follow, so far as traditional religion is concerned, the opinion of the Continent.

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They dream of patching up things unmendable, of retaining what can never be retained, of stopping change at a point where it can never be stopped. The undoubted tendency of liberal opinion is to reject the whole anthropomorphic and miraculous religion of tradition, as unsound and untenable. On the Continent such opinion has rejected it already. One cannot blame the rejection. 'Things are what they are,' and the religion of tradition, Catholic or Protestant, is unsound and untenable. greater force of tradition in favour of religion is all which now prevents the liberal opinion in this country from following Continental opinion. That force is not of a nature to be permanent, and it will not, in fact, hold out long. But a very grave question is behind.

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Rejecting, henceforth, all concern with the obsolete religion of tradition, the liberalism of the Continent rejects also, and on the like grounds, all concern with the Bible and Christianity. To claim for the Bible the direction, in any way, of modern life, is, we hear, as if Plato had sought to found his ideal republic 'upon a text of Hesiod.' The real question is, whether this conclusion, too, of modern liberalism is to be admitted, like the conclusion that traditionary religion is unsound and obsolete. And it does not find many gainsayers. Obscurantists are glad to see the question placed on this footing: that the cause of traditionary religion, and the cause of Christianity in general, must stand or fall together. For

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they see but very little way into the future; and in the immediate present this way of putting the question tells, as they clearly perceive, in their favour. In the immediate present many will be tempted to cling to the traditionary religion with their eyes shut, rather than accept the extinction of Christianity. Other friends of religion are busy with fantastic projects, which can never come to anything, but which prevent their seeing the real character of the situation. So the thesis of modern liberals on the Continent, that Christianity in general stands on the same footing as traditionary religion and must share its fate, meets with little direct discussion or opposition. And liberal opinion everywhere will at last grow accustomed to finding that thesis put forward as certain, will become familiarised with it, will suppose that no one disputes it. This in itself will tend to withhold men from any serious return upon their own minds in the matter. Meanwhile the day will most certainly arrive, when the great body of liberal opinion in this country will adhere to the first half of the doctrine of Continental liberals ;-will admit that traditionary religion is utterly untenable. And the danger is, that from the habits of their minds, and from seeing the thing treated as certain, and from hearing nothing urged against it, our liberals may admit as indisputable the second half of the doctrine too: that Christianity, also, is untenable.

And therefore is it so all-important to insist on what

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I call the natural truth of Christianity, and to bring this out all we can.-Last Essays.

THE DISSENTERS AND THE CRISIS.

DISSENT, as a religious movement of our day, would be almost droll, if it were not, from the tempers and actions it excites, so extremely irreligious. But what is to be said for men, aspiring to deal with the cause of religion, who either cannot see that what the people now require is a religion of the Bible quite different from that which uny of the churches or sects supply; or who, seeing this, spend their energies in fiercely battling as to whether the Church should be a national institution or no? The question, at the present juncture, is in itself so absolutely unimportant! The thing is, to recast religion. If this is done, the new religion will be the national one; if it is not done, the separating the nation, in its collective and corporate character, from religion, will not do it. It is as if men's minds were much unsettled about mineralogy, and the teachers of it were at variance, and no teacher was convincing, and many people, therefore, were disposed to throw the study of mineralogy overboard altogether. What would naturally be the first business for every friend of the study? Surely, to establish on safe grounds the value of the study, and to put its claims in a new light where they could no longer be denied. But if he acted

as our Dissenters act in religion, what would he do?

Give himself, heart and soul, to a furious crusade against keeping the Government School of Mines.-Literature and Dogma

RITUALISM.

THIS is the real objection both to the Catholic and to the Protestant doctrine as a basis for conduct ;-not that it is a degrading superstition, but that it is not sure; that it assumes what cannot be verified.

For a long time this objection occurred to scarcely anybody. And there are still, and for a long time yet there will be, many to whom it does not occur. In particular, on those 'devout women' who in the history of religion have at all times played a part in many respects so beautiful but in some respects so mischievous,—on them, and on a certain number of men like them, it has and can as yet have, so far as one can see, no effect at all. Who that watches the energumens during the celebration of the Communion in some Ritualistic church, their gestures and behaviour, the floor of the church strewn with what seem to be the dying and the dead, progress to the altar almost barred by forms suddenly dropping as if they were shot in battle,-who that observes this delighted adoption of vehement rites, till yesterday unknown, adopted and practised now with all that absence of tact, measure, and crrect perception in things of form and manner, all that slowness to see when