Be" orthodox" if you can be intelligently and sincerely, but otherwise follow Jesus even to Gethsemane and the Cross. "What is that to thee? follow thou me."

Said a popular critic to one of our greatest nineteenthcentury poets, in criticism of a poem he was about to publish, "That will never do." The poet replied, "It must do ; I know very well that it will be unpopular, but it must do." The martyr-spirited clergyman of the Church of England, whom everybody knows as author of The Eternal Hope, published and circulated that "heretical" volume, (in his own words) "perfectly well aware of the gravity of what I was doing. At last it had become my duty to express my convictions unmistakably. 'While I was musing the fire burned, and at last I spoke with my tongue.' I felt constrained to publicly repudiate doctrines which had been almost universally professed and proclaimed by Christians for fifteen hundred years. I knew that to do so was an act that would cost me dear . . that I could not escape the most savage animadversions. The odium theologicum is as virulent and anti-Christain in this day as it ever was. The religious newspapers are often as unfair and remorseless as the Inquisition itself. . A leading clergyman of London said to me, 'You have spoken out what nearly everyone of us secretly believe'; and yet it soon began to rain denunciations. I was assailed in scores of pamphlets; annihilated in hundreds of reviews; lectured against by University professors; anathematized by Anglicans, Baptists, and Methodists. The refutations, the replies, the revilings would alone fill a small library. Such is the 'eternal spirit of the populace'

the anathema Maranatha of tra

ditional and partisan theologians.”

Such is a single one out of very many recent illustrations. To proclaim and try to promulgate (or even to quietly profess) opinions that are not "orthodox" (i. e., popular) is almost as much of a reproach, requiring a martyr-spirit to endure, in the Church of to-day as in that of the so-called Dark Ages; and among Christians almost as persistently as among Moslems, Buddhists, and other Pagans. It is the

same old intolerance of Orthodoxy that has prevailed through all the ages back to the Sabbath Day upon which transpired this which follows:

“And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath; and rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong."

Let us all pray for that heroic grace of Jesus-A righteous disregard of popular opinion.

LXVI. THE GOLDEN MEAN OF CONTROVERSY.

THERE is a world of wisdom in the homely words of that landlord (portrayed in one of our finest modern works of Fiction) who used to close the hot and prolonged debates of the famous literary patrons of his Inn with the exclamation, "Ye are both right and both wrong, gentlemen! the truth lies 'atween ye, the truth lies 'atween ye." It was only a plainer way of stating the old lesson of Scylla and Charybdis-hold to the mid-stream, avoid extremes, occupy the Golden Mean.

The author of this volume is, and long has been a believer in the Golden Mean of all intelligently and sincerely controverted opinions. In all intelligent and sincere controversy each side and every side presents both partial Truth and partial Error. Indeed a fraction or fragment of Truth taken for the whole Truth is Error: and the only way to overcome this kind of Error is to add fraction to fraction, fragment to fragment by the eclectic or inclusive (instead of the radical or exclusive) method.

Controversy ceases when extreme (that is exclusive) positions are abandoned. When each says to all and all say to each, "Truth is broader than any of our systems, broader than all our systems and includes them all; come and let us reason together"-then destruction ends and construction begins.

In polemic periods extremes are forced upon those who

eagerly desire to destroy some particular error: but when that error is destroyed, those who eagerly desire to construct Truth in its place abandon extremes, and select their material for construction from both sides and all sides. That is, they become eclectics and are no longer partisans. They discard self-made or party-made systems and as soon as they do this, find to their joy that "everything fits in." Truth as seen from all sides-everybody an observer, everybody a helper, everybody a "Witness for the Lord "-is what they now care for. They have ceased to defend systems and seek nothing but Truth. And Truth is infinite; co-extensive with the Infinite One, of whom it is the eternal and universal Logos, or Word, or Revelation.

This, in Religion as in every other department of human thought, is the constructive method. This is Eclecticism, or the Golden Mean. Such has been the method of this volume.

The author, adhereing to no party or sect, has sought to draw from all parties and all sects whatever is pure, and beautiful, and good. He believes that the common truths of all Religions constitute True Religion; that this is what Jesus the Christ and his Apostles taught; and that this is genuine Christianity. Each party or sect observes but a single side of infinite-sided Truth. Assured of this no wise observer will confine himself to a party or a sect. Yesterday he stood with one group and, as a Seer, tried to see what they saw; to-day he stands with another; to-morrow he will stand with another; and so he will continue to do, if he be truly wise, "World without end. Amen." The broadest of the "Broad Churches" is the only one that he will belong to; and that must be so broad as to include in its cordial fellowship every earnest seeker and sincere lover of Truth beneath the sun. When it fails to be this, he will protest, agitate, dissent—at whatever risk of opprobrium, of poverty, or of being "cast out." He will gladly suffer the loss of all things and "count them but dung" rather than be separated from that love of God which was in Christ Jesus toward all who seek for Righteousness and Truth.

His must be the Church of the Communion Office in the Book of Common Prayer-" the blessed company of all faithful people." This is an invisible company; and rather than be separated in sympathy and spiritual communion from even one of these he will prefer to be cast out, from the visible Church. For he who stands with God stands never alone, but has the happy assurance that the blessed majority are all about him. "And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

Such is true Churchmanship and true Christianity.

LXVII.-FRAGMENTS.

1. Risings and Fallings of Man.

HUMAN History always has been and doubtless will long continue to be a succession of risings and fallings of Man, a series of "Paradise" lost and regained. In the language of Evolutionary-science-" Struggles for Existence" resulting in more or less lofty attainments, followed by Inaction and consequent decline: "Survival of the Fittest" in some ennobled characters who create and lead an epoch, then a "falling away or reversion and degeneration of the masses. Such ever has been Human History, and such doubtless it will long continue to be; not of necessity, nor of the will of God, but simply because the inviolable law universally prevails that, going upward requires effort and to cease from effort is to go downward. It is difficult to rise, it is easy to fall. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread all the days of thy life." To cease from effort even for a day is to revert, and to revert means degeneration or going downward.

"This law the immortal gods to men have set

That, none arrive at Virtue but by sweat."

This is recognized as a universal law, ceaseless and inviolable. Effort propels and inaction repels-alike in body, mind,

and soul: the more vigorous the effort the more rapid the ascent, the more complete the inaction the more rapid the descent.

The cardinal vice, the "besetting sin" of Human Nature is Indolence: physically this is true, mentally still more true, and spiritually truest of all. It was this Indolence that caused the first highly evolved man and woman (whom History tells us about) to degenerate. They ceased to aspire and to struggle, then they fell: and a period of reversion and decay succeeded both to them and to their posterity.

This is the old story of Adam and Eve and The Fall of Man. The story began, though we have no written or traditional records of it (plenty of geological and similar records) countless ages before the evolution of " Adam and Eve"; and it has been going on, with uneceasing alternations of risings and fallings ever since.

In "Adam's" rise we rose all;

In "Adam's" fall we fell all.

For countless ages to come this will be the summarized History of Mankind, as it has been for countless ages past. Such is the corporate relation (taught by Science as fully as by Scripture) of descendants to ancestors and of ancestors to descendants forever and forever. There are no separate interests, there is no such thing as individual salvation. The human race, (from the first Amoeba-to-ape-developed man up to "Adam" and from "Adam" up to the last Kingdom-of-Heaven-established-on-Earth generation), is so bound together that-All must rise together and together fall. In this sense it is true that in the first Adam's fall we sinned all," and in the second Adam's rise we all rose. That was "death," this was resurrection from the dead." "As in Adam all died, so in Christ are all made alive." "I, if I be lifted up will draw all men with me upward." The Amoeba (or whatever other lowest form of individualized life) aspiring, and struggling to ascend, starts upon the path of "Eternal Life" and carries all its progeny upward with it. The Ape (or whatever other higher form of evolving