k in Relation to the Doctrine of the Eucharist". I turn the
pages and discover that it is a study of the variations of one minute
detail of church doctrine. This learned divine--he has written many
such works, as the advertisements inform us--fills up the greater part
of his pages with foot-notes from hundreds of authorities, arguments
and counter-arguments over supernatural subtleties. I will give one
sample of these footnotes--asking the reader to be patient:

I add the following valuable observation, of Dean Goode:
("On Eucharist", II p 757. See also Archbishop Ware in
Gibson's "Preservative", vol. N, Chap II) "One great point
for which our divines have contended, in opposition to
Romish errors, has been the reality of that presence of
Christ's Body and Blood to the soul of the believer which is
affected through the operation of the Holy Spirit
notwithstanding the absence of that Body and Blood in
Heaven. Like the Sun, the Body of Christ is both present and
absent; present, really and truly present, in one
sense--that is, by the soul being brought into immediate
communion with--but absent in another sense--that is, as
regards the contiguity of its substance to our bodies. The
authors under review, like the Romanists, maintain that this
is not a Real Presence, and assuming their own
interpretation of the phrase to be the only true one, press
into their service the testimony of divines who, though
using the phrase, apply it in a sense the reverse of theirs.
The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by the
Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to
repudiate it, etc."

Realize that of the work from which this "valuable observation" is
quoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume containing
not less than 757 pages I Realize that in Gibson's "Preservative"
there are not less than ten volumes of such writing! Realize that in
this twentieth century a considerable portion of the mental energies
of the world's greatest empire is devoted to that kind of learning!

I turn to the date upon the volume, and find that it is 1910. I was in
England within a year of that time, and so I can tell what was the
condition of the English people while printers were making and papers
were reviewing and book-stores were distributing this work of
ecclesiastical research. I walked along the Embankment and s