mummeries and displays of priestly millinery_take the place of the sacrifice of contrite hearts. They see tradition exalted over knowledge and reason. They see a book exalted into an idol. They see women subjugated beneath the thumb of the priest ; men bowing down before a piece of consecrated bread, conscience subordinated to an infallible council or an infallible synod, or an infallible Pope. They see congregations running after the dogma of the silver-tongued preacher, or howling hymns in concerted discord under the hypnotic spell of the "revivalist." They see faction and domination in the ecclesiastical systems, recrimination between rival creed-mongers, and bitter warfare between sectarian parties. What wonder if from all this weltering mass of human decadence the earnest seeker after truth turns sadly away! If this be Christianity, from which the whole spirit of Jesus Christ has evaporated, then I will be no Christian. By no stretch of perverse imagination can conceive of Jesus Christ reciting the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, or prostrating Himself in the processional at St. Barnabas, or helping the "Wee Frees" by a midnight raid to capture a church from the "United Frees." "The Churchmen fain would kill their Church, as the Churches have killed their Christ." By no possibility can the earnest truth-seeker consent to degrade himself or the ideal of high spiritual destiny by seeking membership in such associations. The higher his conception of the divine greatness of Jesus Christ, the more sincere his admiration for His character, the more complete his acceptance of His life as the pattern of a perfect life in the service of man, the

can one

more impossible does it become for him to contemplate his becoming a "Christian." "Christianity' is for him, whatever its splendid past, an effete thing. In the name of all that is best, purest, holiest, most true within him, from this he must hold aloof.

And yet, in spite of all, there remains ineradically fixed a primal fact of human nature, this instinct of religion. In common with all the "Christians," to say nothing of the Buddhists, Brahmins, Moslems, Jews, the truth-seeker finds within him a soul that needs must seek after the Highest; a conviction that "He is"; an indestructible impulse to worship that which he feels to be Best. He may have gone further, as many have done, and found that in none of these religions he can discover a higher ideal of righteousness than in the ancient books of the Jews, and in none a more sublime example of human devotion than in the records of the life of Jesus Christ, whom (whether human, or superhuman, as His followers held Him to be) he feels to represent the supreme development of a human character, a presentation therefore of the divine possibilities in man. Alike in obedience to the imperative religious instinct within him, and in wondering adoration of the perfect life, may he not-nay, must he not-if he have travelled thus far in the spiritual pilgrimage, attempt at least to become himself a follower of Christ? If he be a real truth-seeker, one who has no other aim than to find and follow truth, and if he have travelled thus far, there is for him no alternative; follower of Christ he must strive to be; nay, by that very striving he has already, at however great a distance, become such.

What religion, then, is open to such a one? From inherent conviction, from very sincerity and purity of soul, from intensity of sympathy with his fellowmen he is impelled to this point: Follower of Christ, yet by every fibre of his nature repelled, revolted, restrained from that which calls itself "Christianity" and which is for him for ever impossible. Is there no place for him? Must he remain for ever outside, alone, a solitary seeker after truth?

Not solitary, for to-day there are thousands of such, seeking, perchance finding. Some of them have left the Churches in which they were rearedsome are still nominally within. Some have never belonged to any Church, having advanced to this point from the ranks of the non-religionist or of the indifferent. Still there are thousands of them. The nineteenth century opened their eyes, and made orthodox "Christianity" for ever an impossibility to them, but it has left them stranded. It has given them nothing to put into the place of that which has crumbled away. They are scattered, without leader, or teacher. Here and there they hear a sympathetic voice, sometimes from within the pale, sometimes from without.

One whom no one will charge with any leanings towards Christianity-the late Mr. Herbert Spencer -wrote at the end of his Autobiography :

"I have come more and more to look calmly on forms of religious belief to which I had in earlier days a pronounced aversion. . . Thus religious creeds, which in one way or another occupy the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy, and fails the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based on community of need: feeling that

dissent from them results from inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that solutions could

be found."

Another, within the orthodox pale, and still happily with us the Rev. H. Rashdall — has

written :

"Sooner or later we must come to outlive the Theology of the nursery. Are we doing anything to fill its place?

This

The truth is that thousands are seeking for something that has never yet been presented to them; a religion that shall not be impossible for men of thought, knowledge, and reverence. not-impossible religion has not yet been suggested, at least in terms of modern phraseology; perhaps it may not be in our time. Whenever it appears it will at least command attention; it will not repel by irreverence of handling, however frankly it deals with matters made sacred by centuries of holy association. In its enunciation there will be no trace of that cheap and flippant unbelief which is "worse than earnest credulity." But it must be based upon a frank recognition that, since the last few decades, the centre of gravity of religious thought is no longer situated where it used to be; that thought and knowledge have advanced. Surely there should equally be an advance in that reverential spirit without which so much that may be written will miss of acceptance.

I

CHAPTER II

Religio Vitae

DO not admire the temper of the Iconoclast. Iconoclasm, however necessary at times, always does some harm. It is an unblessed mood that drives the iconoclast even to his necessary work. To undo work that has been built up painfully and laboriously by older hands, however much it may have survived its usefulness, is an ungrateful task. In religious matters it is always easier to pull down than to build up and a destructive act should be undertaken only as an extreme remedy. Cooperation in construction is infinitely more useful than any destructive effort. Religion is after all not a divine comedy but a divine syntellechy and of the success of any religious movement, to say nothing of its rightness, only the after-ages can judge. The act of the iconoclast, whether deliberate or impulsive, seldom redounds to his credit. any case I do not envy the iconoclast his task. Vivisection may be right, necessary for the ultimate good of humanity, yet I will be no vivisector. I recognise that what may be right for one to do may not be right for another. Right-doing is often a question of persons and circumstances. Iconoclasm is not for me. I would not pull down a

In