hole, the preponderance in it of those
influences which make for faith. It is his triumph to achieve as much
faith as possible in an age of negation. Doubtless, it is part of the
ideal of the Anglican Church that, under certain safeguards, it should
find room for latitudinarians even among its clergy. Still, with
these, as [67] with all other genuine priests, it is the positive not
the negative result that justifies the position. We have little
patience with those liberal clergy who dwell on nothing else than the
difficulties of faith and the propriety of concession to the opposite
force. Yes! Robert Elsmere was certainly right in ceasing to be a
clergyman. But it strikes us as a blot on his philosophical
pretensions that he should have been both so late in perceiving the
difficulty, and then so sudden and trenchant in dealing with so great
and complex a question. Had he possessed a perfectly philosophic or
scientific temper he would have hesitated. This is not the place to
discuss in detail the theological position very ably and seriously
argued by Mrs. Ward. All we can say is that, one by one, Elsmere's
objections may be met by considerations of the same genus, and not less
equal weight, relatively to a world so obscure, in its origin and
issues, as that in which we live.

Robert Elsmere was a type of a large class of minds which cannot be
sure that the sacred story is true. It is philosophical, doubtless,
and a duty to the intellect to recognize our doubts, [68] to locate
them, perhaps to give them practical effect. It may be also a moral
duty to do this. But then there is also a large class of minds which
cannot be sure it is false--minds of very various degrees of
conscientiousness and intellectual power, up to the highest. They will
think those who are quite sure it is false unphilosophical through lack
of doubt. For their part, they make allowance in their scheme of life
for a great possibility, and with some of them that bare concession of
possibility (the subject of it being what it is) becomes the most
important fact in the world.

The recognition of it straightway opens wide the door to hope and love;
and such persons are, as we fancy they always will be, the nucleus of a
Church. Their particular phase of doubt, of philosophic uncertainty,
has been the secret of millions of good Christians, multitudes of
worthy priests. They knit themselves to believers, in various degrees,
of all ages. As