needs two
guides--one to show him exactly how much they have altered, whether two
points or two hundred, as well as _which_ two or two hundred; another to
teach him how far these original changes may have carried with them
secondary changes as consequences into other parts of the Christian system.
One of the known changes, viz. the doctrine of popular election as the
proper qualification for parish clergymen, possibility is not fitted to
expand itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the
infinity which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the
rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine and
application of _spirituality_, seems fitted for derivative effects that
are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-intrusionists--not only
that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate body of
Dissenters, until they have published a "Confession" or a _revised_
edition of the Scottish Confession.

IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the _ultimate_ consequences
of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.--First in
order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment; and
that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion, and a
shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each case is
separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing _outside_ of the
church, the church herself suffers wrong in her authority. Through the
contagion of sympathy stealing over men _inside_ of the church, peril
arises of other shocks in a second series, which would so exhaust the
church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her virtually dismembered
and shattered for all her great national functions.

As to that evil which acts through opinion, it works by a machinery, viz.
the press and social centralization in great cities, which in these days
is perfect. Right or wrong, justified or _not_ justified by the acts of
the majority, it is certain that every public body--how much more then, a
body charged with the responsibility of upholding the truth in its
standards!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion by any feud, schism,
or shadow of change among its members. This is what the New Testament, a
code of philosophy fertile in new ideas, first introduced under the name
of _scandal_; that is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the
weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable