appear to enjoy equally with the Orthodox Church the prerogative of perpetuity.

After this it seems almost needless to refer to the further and great aggravations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But to find a way of escape from their significance, surely implies a marvellous faculty of shutting the eyes to facts. The Continental Reformation is now nearly four hundred years old. It underwent in the sixteenth century much vicissitude. But, on the whole, sects and parties have settled down. The boundaries of sect now undergo no great changes. Protestantism unable to make good its footing south of the Alps, and numerically feeble in France, yet remains upon the whole, after this long experience, a hard, inexpugnable, intractable, indigestible fact. In some countries, as in Scandinavia, it enjoys even exclusive possession. Who can fail to be struck with the fact, that the distinctions between the fugitive and the permanent seem to be in a measure broken down? It was not so of old. The Gnostic, the Arian, the Donatist, the Monophysite, where are they? When we compare their meteoric passage over the scene, with the massive and by no means merely controversial Protestantism of Northern Europe, are we not led to the conclusion that there must be some profound and subtle difference in the causes which have issued in such a signal contrariety of results? It does not seem altogether like the case of the wicked man, flourishing for a moment like the green bay tree, but presently sought for and nowhere to be found.

And if this be true as to the Protestantism of Continental Europe, is it not even more vividly true of the singularly active and progressive Protestantism (other

than Anglican) of Great Britain? I speak of that Protestantism-Presbyterian, Methodist, Independent, and the rest which has not only built itself steadily upward, without aid, speaking generally, from any other than internal and voluntary resources, but has reproduced itself in America, endowed there also with much of this same reproductive energy, and has dotted nearly all barbarous countries with the light of its Christian Missions.

I have not here spoken of the Church of England, which holds a remarkable, and, in some degree, a peculiar, position of its own in Christendom. But I must admit that, at periods not wholly beyond my memory, and in appreciably large portions of the country, it has appeared as if the hands principally charged with the training of souls for God, were the hands mainly or only of Nonconformists. If in the abstract it be difficult to find justification for English Nonconformity, yet when we view it as a fact, it must surely command our respect and sympathy. If so we cannot dare to curse what God seems in many ways to have blessed and honoured, in electing it to perform duties neglected by others, and in emboldening it to take a forward part, not limited to our narrow shores, on behalf of the broadest interests of Christianity. Here, indeed, I may speak as one who in some degree at least knows that whereof he is talking. I have seen and known and but too easily could quote the cases, in which the Christian side of political controversies has been largely made over by the members of the English Church to the championship of Nonconformists. I take it, for example, to be beyond all question that, had the matter depended wholly on the sentiment and action of

the National Church, the Act for the extinction of negro slavery would not have been passed so soon as in the year 1833.

There are civil cases when, though we may not be able to say the rebel is in the right, yet we can clearly see that the possessor of power who drove him to be a rebel, is far more profoundly in the wrong. It may perhaps be that something of a similar situation has been brought about in the Christian Church, and that antichristian ambitions, working under some thin Christian garb, have in a certain sense sapped and mined foundations, in such manner that, through long addiction to and tyrannical enforcement of unreasonable claims, it has eventually become impracticable to procure the allowance of any just weight to claims which are reasonable.

If there be anything of force or justice in the foregoing remarks, they lead us directly and undeniably to an important consequence.

Nothing can be more plausible, or at first sight stranger, than the case which can be made for itself by the spirit of proselytism; although our Saviour made a reference to it which cannot be encouraging to its more reckless votaries. Let us see what that case really comes to. Truth, it will be truly said, is the possession most precious to the soul of man. If I am so happy as to possess the truth, as the question supposes it, am I to stand by inactive, and see my neighbour perish for the lack of the sustenance which it supplies? The case, without doubt, is susceptible of startling presentation. But let us look into it a little more closely. Who assures me that this truth of yours, on which you so naturally rely, is certified by any other witness, than

*

the witness of your own private spirit? You will hardly pretend that it has come to you with the stamp and seal of a Divine revelation, or that you are entitled to proclaim, like one of the ancient prophets, "Thus saith the Lord." Holy Scripture provides us with instances of the danger of substituting the witness of another person's private spirit for our own. Your supposed certainty is but your sincere persuasion; a great warranty without doubt for yourself, but none whatever for me your neighbour. Unless, indeed, you can show me that you have received from on high, a commission to instruct mankind in that which you have learned yourself; but such a commission, which, if it is to rule me, must be exhibited in a manner which I can understand, you do not attempt to show. And thus, or in some way like this, it is that the hot proselytiser ought to learn to pay some of that respect to the convictions of his neighbours, which he pays so largely to his own.

Let us show a little more particularly why and wherefore such respect ought to be paid.

When the proselytisert begins his operations, his first act is to plant his battering-ram, stronger or weaker as the case may be, against the fabric of a formed belief. It may be a belief well formed or ill; but it is all which the person attacked has to depend upon, and where it is sincere and warm, even if unenlightened, the proselytiser, properly so called, seems to have a special zest in the attack. His purpose is to batter it down, to cart

* 1 Kings xiii.

† Some sensible remarks on this subject will be found in the correspondence of Cowper, where possibly they would not be looked for.

away the ruins, and then to set about building up something else, which he has inwardly projected, in its stead. His purpose is constructive: but his activity is bent in the first instance to destroy. He little knows how easy is the last-named operation, how difficult the first. When he has broken to pieces the creed or system at which his great guns are aimed, what right or power has he to dig new foundations for a mind which is in no way bound to his allegiance? He has led his victim out into the desert, to choose for himself amidst a thousand paths. It is with a just, though not an exclusive, regard to these principles, as I conceive, that the wisest men have proceeded.

It was my lot to visit Munich in the autumn of the year 1845 for a purpose purely domestic. This purpose required me to call upon Dr. Döllinger, then (I may almost say) the favourite theologian of the Latin Church in succession to Möhler, and undeniably a person of essentially large, historic, and philosophic mind. He gave me his time and thoughts with a liberality that excited my astonishment, and I derived. from him much that was valuable in explanation and instruction, nor did he scorn my young and immature friendship. For the Church of England, and for its members, among whom I counted, the period was one of disaster and dismay; it was the hour of Newman's secession; the field of controversy was dark with a host of fugitives. But in that trying hour, Dr. Döllinger, while he patiently laboured to build me up in Christian belief, never spoke to me a single word that smacked of proselytism. He would not (so I suppose) destroy the half truth, as the first step to the introduction of (what he would think) the whole. I should define