iating and
indubitable, whereas the very thing asserted on the other side is that
there have been miracles, and that the testimony is not wholly on the
negative side.

No Christian can read the following tribute to the character of Christ
without sadness that the joy of a larger faith was rejected by its
author: "Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational
criticism, Christ is still left--a unique figure, not more unlike all
his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct
benefit of his teaching. About the life and sayings of Jesus there is
a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight,
... which must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation
of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank
of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this
pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the
greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed
upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in
pitching upon this man as the ideal representative and guide of
humanity; nor even now would it be easy even for an unbeliever to find
a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the
concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our
life.... When to this we add that to the conception of the rational
critic it remains a possibility that Christ actually was what he
supposed himself to be, ... we may well conclude that the influences
of religion on the character which will remain after rational
criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion are
well worth preserving, and what they lack in direct strength as
compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the
greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction." The
confession of these last few lines refutes the whole of Mr. Mill's
elaborate argument on the worthlessness and immorality of that
religion which from his grave he lifts his sad and hollow voice to
overthrow.

LAWRENCE TURNBULL.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Not only we, the latest seed of Time--
... not only we that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the _women_ well.

Nearly a century and a half ago an English lady, out of patience with
the intolerable assumptions of the other sex, raised her voice in
behalf of her own. In 17