the way in which the instructed are to look at the services of a
Church, after they have themselves ceased to believe its faith, us a
true account of various matters which it professes to account for
truly.

It will be perceived that this is not exactly the ground of those who
think a number of what they confess to be untruths, wholesome for the
common people for reasons of police, and who would maintain churches on
the same principle on which they maintain the county constabulary. It is
a psychological, not a political ground. It is on the whole a more true,
as well as a far more exalted position. The human soul, they say, has
these lovely and elevating aspirations; not to satisfy them is to leave
man a dwarfed creature. Why quarrel with a system that leaves you to
satisfy them in the true way, and does much to satisfy thorn in a false
but not very harmful way among those who unfortunately have to sit in
the darkness of the outer court?

This is not a proper occasion for saying anything about the adequateness
of the catholic, or any other special manner of fostering and solacing
the religious impulses of men. We have to assume that the instructed
class believe the catholic dogmas to be untrue, and yet wishes the
uninstructed to be handed over to a system that reposes on the theory
that these dogmas are superlatively true. What then is to be said of the
tenableness of such a position? To the plain man it looks like a
deliberate connivance at a plan for the propagation of error--assuming,
as I say, for the moment, that these articles of belief are erroneous
and contrary to fact and evidence. Ah, but, we are told, the people make
no explicit affirmation of dogma; that does nothing for them; they are
indifferent to it. A great variety of things might be said to this
statement. We might ask, for instance, whether the people ever made an
explicit affirmation of dogma in the past, or whether it was always the
hazy indifferent matter which it is supposed to be now. If so, whether
we shall not have to re-cast our most fundamental notions of the way in
which Christian civilisation has been evolved. If not, and if people did
once explicitly affirm dogma, when exactly was it that they ceased to do
so?

The answers to these questions would all go to show that at the time
when religion was the great controlling and organising force in conduct,
the prime elemental dogmas were accepted with the most vivid conviction
of reality. I