it at
the philosophers, would have a turn with the theologians. Theirs is the
real cloud-land. In spite of the inherent conservatism of human nature
in theology, you cannot keep up the old landmarks. Nay, such is the
perverseness of human nature, that the more you try to do so the less
chance there seems of your succeeding. To the reign of the Saints
succeeded the madness and the profligacy of the Restoration. Lord
Bolingbroke always said it was Dr. Manton's Commentary on the 119th
Psalm, which his mother, much against his inclination, compelled him to
read, which made an infidel of him. Holyoake, the leader of the
Secularists, was brought up in the Sunday School at Birmingham. Thomas
Cooper, the author of the 'Purgatory of Suicides,' was a Methodist local
preacher. William Johnson Fox, who has done as much as any man to
destroy orthodoxy in persons of intelligence and position in society, was
at one time pastor of an Independent church. Sterling was long a
clergyman of the Church of England, and poor Blanco White traversed every
point of the religious compass, earnestly seeking rest, and unfortunately
finding none.

Is there, then, no religious truth? Is man ever to be surrounded by
doubt--to be ever void of a living faith--from age to age to turn an
anxious eye above, and there see

'no God, no heaven, in the void world--
The wide, deep, lampless, grey, unpeopled world'?

Is it all dark cloud-land when we have done with this fever we call life?
Religion is man's attempt to answer this question. A church is an
attempt to answer it in a certain way. The true church is the church
which gives the true answer. But who is to decide? 'The Catholic and
Apostolic Church,' says one; 'the Bible,' says another. But, then, who
is to decide as to which is the Catholic and Apostolic Church, or as to
what the Bible says? In all these cases the final appeal must be made to
the intellect of man. But man's intellect grows with his growth, and
strengthens with his strength. I am not to-day, either in body or in
mind, what I was yesterday. To-morrow I shall be a different man again.
Changing myself, how can I subscribe an unchanging creed? 'Excelsior' is
my motto. I believe that

'through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.'

And it is vain, therefore, that you seek to tie me to a creed, or to
stereotype what should be