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would not the deterrent effect of the criminal law

be even less than it is? But this is by no means all. In addition to this disadvantage, Christian priests have one and all placed a greater one in their own way as teachers of morality, by their doctrine of repentance and consequent salvation. When, like St. Alphonso de' Liguori, or Mr. Spurgeon, they teach that any amount of crime and sin can be expunged in a moment by sincere contrition and turning to God, even in the last hour, they remove from the cause of morality in this world all the force and urgency of their exhortations, and transfer them to celestial happiness beyond the grave. If they had been able to preach that good works, and good works only, would take men to heaven, they would have occupied a relatively strong position. If they could have said to men, "It matters not how sorry you are for having done amiss, you must smart for it all the same," they would have had a powerful lever to keep men in the right way. But they were tied down by the terms of the divine deed and testament, and forced to use very different language. The lamentable doctrine of Original Sin, and all that flowed from it, the washing away of sins, flight from the wrath to come, forced them to show that, after all, heaven was open, if certain conditions were complied with, heartfelt repentance,

turning to Jesus, confession of sins, receiving the sacrament; and that, in that case, previous crime or virtue made no difference; all men justly lay under the sentence of God's wrath, and if he chose to pardon, it was only out of the unspeakable riches of his grace. It was not for man to make terms. So that by exaggerating human depravity and making all men worthy of hell, they came to admit very bad characters into heaven. And quite rightly, from one point of view. Salvation was their object, not morality. They have not aimed at it, and they have not attained it.

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT CHRISTIANITY HAS DONE.

IN attempting to estimate the past, we are exposed to two opposite temptations, either of which may lead us into serious error. We may be so impressed by the recent advance of knowledge, and the enlarged power of man over nature, the pomp and brilliancy of modern material progress, that we turn with disdain from the humbler science and performance of our ancestors, and, comparing their poverty with our own riches, complacently draw flattering conclusions to our own advantage. This disposition is a common mark of energetic but uneducated minds, of people who have made their way in the world by force of character, and who nourish a sort of grudge against learning and scholarship. On the other hand, it is a tone so repulsive to minds which have made themselves acquainted with the past, that these are apt to fall into the opposite extreme, and to see with over-clearness the seamy

side of the present. The wealth and noisy progress of the present do not impress persons of this type with much respect. They pronounce them to be vulgar and commonplace, and purchased at far too great a cost; nay, by the ruin of numerous lovely and precious things, which the present age does not miss, only because it is too deeply buried in sordid cares and frivolous pleasures to know anything about them. If one class points to the triumph of industry and the victories of steam, the other draws attention to the meanness of our Art, and the foul defacement of natural beauty, and even the pollution of the air we breathe and the water we drink by factories, tall chimneys, and the ubiquitous screaming tyrant, the railroad. The admirers of the present look out upon the world which it is their intention to subdue, as conquerors. They are always for "opening up" new countries, which they say conduces to trade and the spread of civilization. The lovers of the past reply that the march of socalled civilization should rather be called the spread of ruin, vice, and disease; that the traders look upon the world rather as buccaneers than as honest men, that they regard it as their oyster which they mean to open with a steam hammer. The interchange of taunts and reproaches goes on in amabic response, as of peasants in an idyll, and no doubt will not

readily be brought to a close. It is referred to here in order to exhibit the difficulty of a task which, at one time or another, we are nearly all of us compelled to undertake, to estimate and fairly judge the past, if for no other purpose than lighting up and enabling us to direct the present.

A clear perception of the road we have travelled is one of the best indications of our probable course in the future, whether that course be a straight line or a curve. It is obvious, if society be an organism, and few nowadays would deny the fact, that, in order to understand it, we must study its life, behaviour and habits, on the most extended scale. The present is a transitory phase, which is as insufficient for this purpose as a day or an hour would be for the biological study of one of the higher animals. Both those who wish to break with the past and ignore its teaching as so much dross-the revolutionists; and those who on various grounds can think of nothing better than an impossible return to it-the reactionaries; will find, and indeed have found already, though the extremes of neither party are very docile to the lessons of experience, that knowledge alone can throw light on our path, and that to take sentiment or passion as our guide is to court catastrophe. Revolutionists, who are too impatient and headstrong to wait for