n the relation of the wires any presumption of a removal of the managers?
We know pretty well who handled the instrument: has he resigned or been[77]
turned out? Has he been put under {38} restriction? A fool may ask more
questions than twenty sages can answer: but there is hope; for twenty sages
cannot ask more questions than one reviewer can answer. I should like to
see the opposite sides employed upon the question, What are the _commoda_,
and what the _pericula_,[78] of the current approximation of Religion and
Philosophy?

All this is very profane and irreverent! It has always been so held by
those whose position demands such holding. To describe the Church as it is
passes for assailing the Church as it ought to be with all who cannot do
without it. In Bedlam[79] a poor creature who fancied he was St. Paul, was
told by another patient that he was an impostor; the first maniac lodged a
complaint against the second for calling St. Paul an impostor, which, he
argued, with much appearance of sanity, ought not to be permitted in a well
regulated madhouse. Nothing could persuade him that he had missed the
question, which was whether _he_ was St. Paul. The same thing takes place
in the world _at large_. And especially must be noted the refusal to permit
to the _profane_ the millionth part of the licence assumed by the _sacred_.
I give a sound churchman the epitaph of St. John Long; the usual
pronunciation of whose name must be noted--

"Behold! ye quacks, the vengeance strong
On deeds like yours impinging:
For here below lies St. John Long[80]
Who now must be _long singeing_."

How shameful to pronounce this of the poor man! What, Mr. Orthodox! may I
not do in joke to one pretender what {39} you do in earnest--unless you
quibble--to all the millions of the Greek Church, and a great many others.
Enough of you and your reasoning! Go and square the circle!

The few years which end with 1867 have shown, not merely the intermediate
fusion of Theology and Philosophy of which I have spoken, but much
concentration of the two extremes, which looks like a gathering of forces
for some very hard fought Armageddon. Extreme theology has been aiming at a
high Church in England, which is to show a new front to all heresy: and
extreme philosophy is contriving a physical organization which is to
_think_, and to show that mind is a consequence of matter, or thought a
recreation of brain. The physical speculators begin with a po