ut the combinations of our
day unless he read the writings both of the priest and the philosopher: and
if any one should hold the first word offensive, I tell him that I mean
_both_ words to be _significant_. In reading these writings, he will need
to bring both wires together to find out what it is all about. Time was
when most priests were very explicit about the fate of philosophers, and
most philosophers were very candid about their opinion of priests. But
though some extremes of the old sorts still remain, there is now, in the
middle, such a fusion of the two pursuits that a plain man is wofully
puzzled. The theologian writes a philosophy which seems to tell us that the
New Testament is a system of psychology; and the philosopher writes a
Christianity which is utterly unintelligible as to the question whether the
Resurrection be a fact or a transcendental allegory. What between the
theologian who assents to the Athanasian denunciation in what seems the
sense of no denunciation, and the philosopher who parades a Christianity
which looks like no revelation, there is a maze which threatens to have the
only possible clue in the theory that everything is something else, and
nothing is anything at all. But this is a paradox far beyond my handling:
it is a Budget of itself. {37}

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.

Religion and Philosophy, the two best gifts of Heaven, set up in opposition
to each other at the revival of letters; and never did competing tradesmen
more grossly misbehave. Bad wishes and bad names flew about like swarms of
wasps. The Athanasian curses were intended against philosophers; who, had
they been a corporation, with state powers to protect them, would have
formulized a _per contra_. But the tradesmen are beginning to combine: they
are civil to each other; too civil by half. I speak especially of Great
Britain. Old theology has run off to ritualism, much lamenting, with no
comfort except the discovery that the cloak Paul left at Troas was a
chasuble. Philosophy, which always had a little sense sewed up in its
garments--to pay for its funeral?--has expended a trifle in accommodating
itself to the new system. But the two are poles of a battery; and a
question arises.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper,
Where is the peck of pepper Peter Piper picked?

If Religion and Philosophy be the two poles of a battery, whose is the
battery Religion and Philosophy have been made the poles of? Is the change
i