ey are in harmony in so large a part of
their occupations, the points of remaining difference lose their venom.
Those who thought they hated each other, unconsciously find themselves
friends; and as far as it affects the world at large, the acrimony of
controversy has almost disappeared.

Imagine, if you can, a person being now put to death for a speculative
theological opinion. You feel at once, that in the most bigoted country
in the world such a thing has become impossible; and the impossibility
is the measure of the alteration which we have all undergone. The
formulas remain as they were on either side--the very same formulas
which were once supposed to require these detestable murders. But we
have learnt to know each other better. The cords which bind together the
brotherhood of mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do not any
more fly apart or become enemies, because, here and there, in one strand
out of so many, there are still unsound places.

If I were asked for a distinct proof that Europe was improving and not
retrograding, I should find it in this phenomenon. It has not been
brought about by controversy. Men are fighting still over the same
questions which they began to fight about at the Reformation. Protestant
divines have not driven Catholics out of the field, nor Catholics,
Protestants. Each polemic writes for his own partisans, and makes no
impression on his adversary.

Controversy has kept alive a certain quantity of bitterness; and that, I
suspect, is all that it would accomplish if it continued till the day of
judgment. I sometimes, in impatient moments, wish the laity in Europe
would treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated
their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without
knowing what they were quarrelling about.

As the principals were being led up to their places, one of them
whispered to the other, 'If you will shoot your second, I will shoot
mine.'

The reconciliation of parties, if I may use such a word, is no
tinkered-up truce, or convenient Interim. It is the healthy, silent,
spontaneous growth of a nobler order of conviction, which has conquered
our prejudices even before we knew that they were assailed. This better
spirit especially is represented in institutions like this, which
acknowledge no differences of creed--which are constructed on the
broadest principles of toleration--and which, therefore, as a rule, are
wisely protected from