, systematic, unrelieved, in regard
to that which ought, if acknowledged at all, to deserve the highest
reverence among all things on earth, in regard to an institution which,
with whatever faults, he himself in words still recognised as the Church
of God, was an indefensible and an unwholesome paradox. The analogy is a
commonly accepted one between the Church and the family. How could any
household go on in which there was at work an _animus_ of unceasing and
relentless, though possibly too just criticism, on its characteristic
and perhaps serious faults; and of comparisons, also possibly most just,
with the better ways of other families? It might be the honest desire of
reform and improvement; but charity, patience, equitableness, are
virtues of men in society, as well as strict justice and the desire of
improvement. In the case of the family, such action could only lead to
daily misery and the wasting and dying out of home affections. In the
case of a Church, it must come to the sundering of ties which ought no
longer to bind. Mr. Ward all along insisted that there was no necessity
for looking forward to such an event. He wished to raise, purify, reform
the Church in which Providence had placed him; utterly dissatisfied as
he was with it, intellectually and morally, convinced more and more that
it was wrong, dismally, fearfully wrong, it was his duty, he thought, to
abide in it without looking to consequences; but it was also his duty to
shake the faith of any one he could in its present claims and working,
and to hold up an incomparably purer model of truth and holiness. That
his purpose was what he considered real reform, there is no reason to
doubt, though he chose to shut his eyes to what must come of it. The
position was an unnatural one, but he had great faith in his own
well-fenced logical creations, and defied the objections of a homelier
common sense. He was not content to wait in silence the slow and sad
changes of old convictions, the painful decay and disappearance of
long-cherished ties. His mind was too active, restless, unreserved. To
the last he persisted in forcing on the world, professedly to influence
it, really to defy it, the most violent assertions which he could
formulate of the most paradoxical claims on friends and opponents which
had ever been made.

Mr. Ward's influence was felt also in another way; though here it is not
easy to measure the degree of its force. He was in the habit of
appeal