ental troubles the
established doses of Paley and Pearson; they refuse dangerous questions
as sinful, and tread the round of commonplace in placid comfort. But it
will not avail. Their pupils grow to manhood, and fight the battle for
themselves, unaided by those who ought to have stood by them in their
trial, and could not or would not; and the bitterness of those
conflicts, and the end of most of them in heart-broken uncertainty or
careless indifference, is too notorious to all who care to know about
such things.

We cannot afford year after year to be distracted with the tentative
scepticism of essayists and reviewers. In a healthy condition of public
opinion such a book as Bishop Colenso's would have passed unnoticed, or
rather would never have been written, for the difficulties with which it
deals would have been long ago met and disposed of. When questions rose
in the early and middle ages of the Church, they were decided by
councils of the wisest: those best able to judge met together, and
compared their thoughts, and conclusions were arrived at which
individuals could accept and act upon. At the beginning of the English
Reformation, when Protestant doctrine was struggling for reception, and
the old belief was merging in the new, the country was deliberately held
in formal suspense. Protestants and Catholics were set to preach on
alternate Sundays in the same pulpit; subjects were discussed freely in
the ears of the people; and at last, when all had been said on both
sides, Convocation and Parliament embodied the result in formulas.
Councils will no longer answer the purpose; the clergy have no longer a
superiority of intellect or cultivation; and a conference of prelates
from all parts of Christendom, or even from all departments of the
English Church, would not present an edifying spectacle. Parliament may
no longer meddle with opinions unless it be to untie the chains which it
forged three centuries ago. But better than councils, better than
sermons, better than Parliament, is that free discussion through a free
press which is the best instrument for the discovery of truth, and the
most effectual means for preserving it.

We shall be told, perhaps, that we are beating the air--that the press
is free, and that all men may and do write what they please. It is not
so. Discussion is not free so long as the clergy who take any side but
one are liable to be prosecuted and deprived of their means of living;
it is no