ys shows us how; but it is difficult for conscience to
escape being continually reminded of the duty. And it is in these two
things that the value of Mr. Maurice's writings mainly consists. The
enforcing of them has been, to our mind, his chief "mission," and his
most valuable contribution to the needs of his generation.

In this volume they are exhibited, as in his former ones; and in this
he shows also, as he has shown before, his earnest desire to find a way
whereby, without compromising truth or surrendering sacred convictions
of the heart, serious men of very different sides might be glad to find
themselves in some points mistaken, in order that they might find
themselves at one. This philosophy, not of comprehension but of
conciliation, the craving after which has awakened in the Church,
whenever mental energy has been quickened, the philosophy in which
Clement of Alexandria and Origin, and, we may add, St. Augustine, made
many earnest essays, is certainly no unworthy aim for the theologian of
our days. He would, indeed, deserve largely of the Church who should
show us a solid and safe way to it.

But while we are far from denouncing or suspecting the wish or the
design, we are bound to watch jealously and criticise narrowly the
execution. For we all know what such plans have come to before now. And
it is for the interest of all serious and earnest people on all sides,
that there should be no needless and additional confusion introduced
into theology--such confusion as is but too likely to follow, when a
design of conciliation, with the aim of which so many, for good reasons
or bad ones, are sure to sympathise, is carried out by hands that are
not equal to it. With the fullest sense of the serious truthfulness of
those who differ from us, of the real force of many of their objections
and criticisms on our proceedings, our friends, and our ideas, it is
far better to hold our peace, than from impatience at what we feel to
be the vulnerable point of our own side, to rush into explanations
before we are sure of our power adequately to explain.

And to this charge it seems to us that Mr. Maurice is open. There is
sense and manliness in his disclaimer of proselytism; and there is a
meaning in which we can agree with his account of truth. "If I could
persuade all Dissenters," he says, "to become members of my Church
to-morrow, I should be very sorry to do it. I believe the chances are
they might leave it the next day.