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Rh  malady of modern society, of which the symptoms are inability to believe and clear appreciation of the mischief and miseries of disbelief. How is it to be cured? If it cannot be cured, how can its effects be prevented from crippling the whole body, social and politic? Mr. Gladstone, in the earnest preface with which he introduces the English translation of M. de Laveleye's pamphlet, uses language which seems to recommend as a specific our believing in any form of Christianity so long as it is not Ultramontanism. The advice is doubtless sincerely given, and there is a certain sense in which it may really be taken by Englishmen. M. de Laveleye helps us to know the extreme value of the Protestant Christianity which still survives in some vigour among us, and we may well draw the inference that it would be merely folly to connive at the efforts of fools or traitors to water it down into a bastard form of Catholicism. But no recommendation could be more futile than Mr. Gladstone's if addressed to the enlightened Continental opponents of Ultramontanism or to the Englishmen who sympathize with them; even if it were possible to adopt it it would be unwise. For the assumption that belief is a matter of choice is one of the most powerful weapons of the sacerdotalists. If a man once succeeds in "submitting his reason to his faith," it does not greatly matter how much he forces himself to believe. There is no perceptibly greater difficulty in believing against conviction in the water of Lourdes than in believing against conviction in revival by Messrs. Moody and Sankey. And when, on the Continent at all events, a man has once maimed his intellect by an exercise of his will, there are a thousand reasons why, if he belongs to the opulent classes, he should accept the whole body of Ultramontane doctrine. He at once takes his stand on the side of the angels, on the side of the leaders of fashionable society, and on the side of the police. Thus the conclusion of Mr. Gladstone is unsatisfactory, and that of M. de Laveleye is unsatisfactory also, and avowedly so. Still he seems to end in simple despair. What is wanting, both, in the pamphlet and in the preface, is some discussion of the great and formidable experiment now being tried in Germany. This, before all things, is a deliberate attempt to cope with the dangers which, according to M. de Laveleye, are covering the future of Europe with gloom. These dangers, if dangers they be, have evidently sprung from applications of the theory of a "free Church in a free State," or, if you choose so to put it, from the endeavour to reconcile political institutions borrowed from England with religious opinions centralized at Rome. But, though the State has hitherto got the worst of the union, it is clear that the power which bears this name can contend at an advantage with the pope, the Jesuits, and the Roman Curia if only those who direct it please. The State cannot indeed, under modern conditions, force its subjects to believe this or that, but it can derange the whole machinery by which a particular system of belief is spread abroad; it can profoundly modify the religious convictions of future generations; and, if it be wise as well as strong, it can furnish proper securities against anarchy and spoliation, and thus dispel the terrors which are the strength of sacerdotalism. The objections to the anti-clerical legislation of Germany and Prussia are of a kind which occur in crowds to Englishmen; but the question whether in Continental Europe the patrons of St. Cupertin can be effectually dealt with by the use of soft words deserves attentive consideration.

 

  — The intellectual life should be a life of patience — patience in gathering knowledge, patience in drawing conclusions, and patience in waiting for results. It may be hard sometimes to reconcile enthusiasm with patience, but they may be reconciled, and they must be, if the best results are to be achieved. The patience of the believers in a cause is no less a presage of victory than their enthusiasm; indeed, of the two it is the fuller of promise. Let cynics or fatalists say what they will, the hope of a rational ordering of human society, the hope of some future harmony of human beliefs, does spring eternal in the human breast. And the life is one that maketh not ashamed; those who possess it must avow it, and must work towards its realization. Not only in the prophet-minds of every age has it asserted itself, but in the minds of the people at large 