I have not failed to consider the objection urged by you to the public discussion of these high subjects, from the danger of unsettling people's minds, and undermining the principles which, whether well founded or not, are the mainstay of their moral being. This danger exists undoubtedly: there will always be some persons who will be liable to suffer from this cause. It is the Nemesis of the false system in which they have been educated; but there would be an end to all progress if, from the fear of this temporary and partial evil, we should abstain from the discussion of truths of vital importance to mankind. Changes of opinion, however ultimately valuable, are rarely sources of unmixed good. Some degree of partial evil seems a necessary incident of the great law of progress in this world, ever working on from a lower to a higher condition of things.

I am convinced that, in religion as in all other subjects, the prevalence of what is true must ultimately be for the general good, and any temporary and partial evil that may arise from the disturbance of established opinions, or from the dissemination even of erroneous opinions in the search after truth, is more than compensated by the ultimate benefit to society that results from the discussion. There is no infallible test by which we can distinguish the true from the false, and it is only by allowing unlimited inquiry and discussion that we can have any certainty of having got at the

truth. We may regret that there is no infallible test or judge of the truth, but we must take the world as we find it. The Almighty has so ordained it, and we have only to submit. To refuse to discuss what is opposed to our cherished doctrines is to violate that law of our nature by which the search after truth is made the condition of all progress in the world.

I can sympathise with the sentiment of those favourite lines of yours—

Leave thou thy sister, when she prays,
Her early heaven and cheerful views,

Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse

A life that leads melodious days.-TENNYSON.

We cannot but feel sorrow that these cheerful views should ever be exposed to disturbance. In the seclusion of a convent it were perhaps possible to guard against the intrusion of all disturbing influences; but in the outer world, as society is now constituted, it is a thing not to be hoped for. And seeing how much there is in this mysterious world of ours that, with our present limited faculties, it is not given to us to comprehend, and how many important questions there are on which, with every disposition to arrive at the truth, some degree of doubt must necessarily rest, we cannot too soon begin to learn the lesson of acquiescing tranquilly in doubt, in those cases in which certainty is not to be attained. As Miss Emily Shirreff well remarks, in her Thoughts on Self-Culture: When the young

ence.

mind has been thoroughly impressed with the nature and extent of the difficulties in forming opinions, and of the value of probability as our only guide in so many momentous questions, it is time to inculcate a sad, perhaps, but necessary lesson, viz., acquiescence in doubt, as the inevitable condition of our earthly existWe may make to ourselves, if we please, a panoply of prejudices, and say we are satisfied and certain; but we cannot, even when we wish it, be always proof against reason, and once let our artificial defence be overthrown, we are cast into a sea of perplexities and rendered miserable because we have lost the certainty we had deemed a virtue. There is but one true refuge we must learn to bear doubt in order to exclude despair.' (P. 223.)

What cannot fail to strike anyone who bestows even a small amount of attention on what is passing around him in the world is the large amount of privation and suffering which are the lot of the great mass of the human race. Not less striking, though not so obvious at the first view, is the fact that of this suffering a great part might be avoided altogether, and nearly the whole might be alleviated, if only the necessary means, not beyond the reach of man, were resorted to. A very little observation will show that it mainly proceeds either from ignorance or neglect of the laws which God has ordained for the government of the world. The

world, or that portion of it at least in which our lot has been cast, is indeed, as Wordsworth felt in his serener moments, full of blessings,' if we would but take the appointed means to make them our own.

Disease and poverty are the two most common forms of suffering.

As to the former, it cannot be doubted that the greater part proceeds from intemperance, privation, imperfect acquaintance with the human frame and constitution, and ignorance or neglect of sanitary precautions-in short, from causes which are remediable.

As to the latter, viz., poverty, the political economists assure us that, with the almost unlimited command over mechanical force and the productive powers of Nature which advancing science has unfolded and is going on to unfold, the labouring classes, under due limitation of their numbers, might, but for the prevalence of vices which are mainly the offspring of ignorance, be fed, housed and clothed with only such a moderate amount of labour as is conducive to health and enjoyment, and as would leave to them ample leisure for the pleasures arising from moral and intellectual cultivation.

Why, then, does poverty exist? It is not an inevitable condition of human society. There is nothing in the constitution of Nature to make it impossible for all to have moderate labour and sufficient means, and to lead happy and virtuous lives. That this is not the

lot of humanity is the result of individual and social vices which might be eradicated.

It is no doubt true that the poor often, and it may perhaps be said generally, suffer from the fault of previous generations-their improvidence, intemperance, or other vices. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children: but this does not affect the truth of the general proposition. It does not show that these faults might not have been corrected at an earlier stage, or that they may not be corrected for the future. There is nothing in the constitution of things to make such an improved condition of the working classes as that suggested impossible. Not indeed that it could be realised suddenly, or before the lapse of perhaps many generations, when there shall have been time for the thorough reformation which might be effected in the masses of the people if a sound and enlightened education, physical, moral, and religious, were brought home to them.*

Why is it, then, that so much wretchedness and suffering are allowed to exist in the world? Here we are in the latter half of the nineteenth century from the

*If there be any truth in Mr. Darwin's great theory, and in the doctrine of hereditary genius propounded by Mr. Francis Galton, and illustrated with so much ingenuity and research, what improvement may we not reasonably look forward to from the influence of education in a series of generations, even to the extent of developing an improved type of the race. A present the pauperised masses of the people, living in ignorance, demoralisation and vice, are left to propagate, unrestrained, their own bad kind.