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ERROR AND SIN, WHY PERMITTED.

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or with a never-failing supply for them. If we ask why He has not done so, and why He has left it possible that men should perish of cold and famine, as thousands of our fellowcreatures have done, though we cannot completely solve the question, we can, at least, see this, that with God our comfort is subordinate to our education. It is the struggle to obtain a supply for these natural wants which has drawn forth the energies of man's nature. As Virgil tells us, the Father of all did not wish the way of sustenance to be too easy, 'curis acuens mortalia corda.' And, in point of fact, the human race has been singularly unprogressive in those tropical regions where there is little demand on man's energies; and the greatest advances in civilization have been made in the sterner climates, where the conflict with nature has early elicited the employment of man's full powers.

So, likewise, with regard to secular knowledge. God might have provided us from the first with a knowledge of all things needful; but actually He has withheld a knowledge of much. that is necessary for the safety and comfort of life. Many of the most useful parts of our present knowledge were long unknown to the world, and were reserved to stimulate and reward the pursuit of the successful inquirer. Our need of knowledge and our desire for it have been the means which God has used to develop in us all those faculties which have the discovery of truth for their object. And, as if to show how much less important in His eyes it is that we should possess knowledge than that we should be trained to seek for it, He has annexed a pleasure to the discovery of truth, distinct from, and higher than, that which attends its possession. I fear there is none of you who can have found in his study of geometry, or hydrostatics, or natural philosophy, such pleasure as Pythagoras is said to have felt at the discovery of the forty-seventh proposition of the First Book of Euclid; or Archimedes, when he rushed from the bath shouting out his €йpŋka; or Newton, when his trembling hands could scarce complete the calculation which proved that it was the same force which keeps the moon in her orbit that draws an apple to the ground. Thus God, both with regard to body and mind, has dealt with us in such a way as if it were more

important in His eyes that we should be trained to seek for the supply of needful wants than that we should actually obtain it at least, while He stimulates us to the search, and rewards us if successful, He has not exempted us from the risk of failure.

in things that If we are per

And God has dealt with us in the same way pertain to the perfection of our moral nature. plexed why He should not have excluded from His world the possibility of sin and vice, at least we can see that the virtue which has been braced and strengthened by conflict with temptation, and victory over it, is a thing of much higher order than the virtue which consists in the absence of temptation. And here, too, we perceive that God trains us and disciplines us for the higher excellence, even at the terrible risk which attends failure. Now, can it be made an objection to Revelation that it represents the Almighty as pursuing the same course with respect to religious truth that He has adopted in every other kind of truth; or, rather, were it otherwise, would there not be a presumption that such a revelation did not proceed from the Author of nature? God has made the very importance of religious truth, not a reason for releasing us from all pains of investigation, but a motive to stimulate us more intensely to discipline ourselves in that candid, truthloving frame of mind in which alone the search for truth is likely to be successful. How prejudicial an effect a contrary dispensation might have had on all our mental faculties, we have a striking proof in the different progress of mind in Protestant and Roman Catholic countries since the Reformation. And there is reason to infer that, when a Church sets up a claim for infallibility, the mischief done is not merely that such a Church can teach false doctrine without detection, but that even if a Church professing itself infallible actually did not teach a single doctrine that was not perfectly true, the religious condition of its members might be inferior to that of the members of our Church as much, and in the same way, as the civilization of a South Sea Islander is inferior to that of a European.

We can see what a benumbing effect the doctrine of infallibility has on the intellects of Roman Catholics by the absence

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UNREALITY OF UNINTELLIGENT FAITH.

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at present of religious disputes in that communion. They boast of this as a perfection; but it is, in truth, a sign of deadness, a sign of the indifference of all to the subjects in question. Why is it that the question of the Immaculate Conception, which convulsed the Christian world four centuries ago, was disposed of by Pius IX. with scarcely a murmur? It was because the people did not care about the matter. The superstitious were glad to pay a compliment to the great object of their veneration, but whether what they asserted was true, I suppose hardly ten lay Roman Catholics in Europe ever troubled their heads. And if the question brought before the Vatican Council had been of a purely spiritual nature, had the bishops been only required to affirm such a doctrine as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary-that is to say, to assert a historical fact without a particle of evidence—I do not think many would have rebelled. It was because the doctrine of the Pope's personal Infallibility had bearings on the practical business of this world; because its assertion was supposed to be intended for the preservation or recovery of the Pope's temporal sovereignty; because the claim would enable him to interfere with more effect on questions of toleration, civil liberty, marriage, and education, that so much difficulty was made about conceding it.

I cannot help quoting words written by Mr. Maskell, one of the early Oxford perverts, on the occasion of the decree of the Vatican Council. They express his natural indignation at seeing his whole Church rush blindfold into acquiescence in a decision which he knew to be false; but he does not seem to have reflected that the state of mind which can acquiesce so indifferently in any decision of authority, is the natural result of that belief in the need of an infallible guide which led himself astray. He says: There are numbers of people who take on trust, without consideration, what they are asked to believe in matters of religion; some from habit and want of discipline in their education; some from a dislike of trouble; some from what they pretend to be a proper subjection to their teachers, thus trying to throw upon others a responsibility for which themselves will have to answer to God hereafter; some from sheer carelessness and want of interest; some, once

more, because they do not comprehend what is involved in their assent. To call such an assent faith, is utterly to miscall it. There is very little faith in it. A state of mind which can admit so readily of additions to its creed would be very likely not long to withstand a demand to change it altogether.'

This extract truly describes the practical effect of stunting men's intelligence, in the hope of making their faith more lively. The faith generated by such a process is found not to be worthy of the name. If any human system were to propose to keep men virtuous, by keeping them always in the state of childhood, and never permitting them to govern their own conduct, such a system would be plainly opposed to the course which the Author of nature has preferred. Equally opposed to His method is any system which proposes to preserve men from error by keeping them in the state of childhood, and by giving them truths to be received on authority without inquiry. And it is opposed not only to the course of nature, but to the commands of Scripture, which enjoins us to be ready to give every man a reason of the hope that is in us': 'in malice, indeed, to be children, but in understanding to be men.'

A Romanist, as I have said, must acknowledge that the existence of an infallible Church does not exclude error from the world, for more than half of those who call themselves Christians unfortunately cannot be convinced of the claims of that Church on their allegiance. But, while the existence of error remains as distressing a problem to the Romanist as to us, he is deprived of the compensation which we find in the improved condition of those who have honestly sought for truth and been successful. The problem is the same to him as that of the existence of sin in the world would be to us, if, while all the vice in the world remained the same, we could find nowhere examples of any higher kind of virtue than that which consists in the absence of temptation.

THE CHURCH'S OFFICE OF TEACHING.

N

On the last day I sufficiently showed that the foundation

for their system, which Roman Catholics assume as self-evident, namely, that God has appointed someone on earth able to give infallible guidance to religious truth, admits of no proof, and is destitute of all probability. But when we say that God has not provided us with infallible guidance, we are very far from saying that He has provided for us no guidance at all. I do not think a Protestant can render a greater service to the cause of Romanism than by depreciating the value of the guidance towards the attainment of religious truth given us by the Church which Christ has founded. Hoc Ithacus velit.' This is the alternative they want to bring us to--either an infallible Church, whose teaching is to be subject to no criticism and no correction, or else no Church teaching at all, each individual taking the Bible, and getting from it, by his own arbitrary interpretation, any system of doctrine he can. Reducing us to this alternative, they have no difficulty in showing that the latter method inevitably leads to a variety of discordant error; and they conclude we are forced to fall back on the other.

But in what subject in the world is it dreamed that we have got to choose between having infallible teachers, or else having no teacher at all? God has made the world so that we cannot do without teachers. We come into the world as ignorant as we are helpless: not only dependent on the care of others for food and warmth, without which neglected infancy must perish, but dependent on the instruction of others for our most elementary knowledge. The most original