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 and the blindness of partisanship. The more we appreciate the greatness of the issues, the more care ought we to take in considering them fully, in pausing before we condemn, in exercising sobriety.

I will notice a few points of detail in which the study of ecclesiastical history seems to offer peculiar difficulties to the temper of the student. First of all it particularly lends itself to a kind of picturesque and flippant treatment, for it has the elements of satire readily at hand. To one who looks at the matter from an outside point of view, the work of the Church, the lives of Churchmen, easily invite ridicule. It is easy to point to the failure of the organisation of the Church to embody for its own guidance the principles which it tries to enforce on others. It is easy to collect examples of the difference between the lives of Churchmen and their professions, the perversion of Scriptural phrases to ungodly purposes, the assertion of a worldly power for a kingdom which is not of this world. There is truth in all this and the error lies only in exaggeration. The perpetual contrast between endeavour and attainment is the central feeling inspired by the great drama of human affairs. All history is deeply tragic; it tells a ceaseless tale of failure, sacrifice and sorrow. It sets forth the smallness, the shortsightedness, the inadequacy of man to deal with the problems with which his path is strewn. The sense of pain is rarely absent from the generous mind which follows the record of man's changes. All this is true. Still feeling, however righteous in itself, cannot be given the chief place in a study which claims in any way to be scientific. Yet it lies so near the