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Letter 31] by scruples) might be encouraged to be ordained in spite of some intellectual difficulties; and this fatherly encouragement from a man of authority and experience would be a great help and comfort, strengthening the young man in the conviction that mere intellectual difficulties could not interfere with his faith in Christ. Still more valuable would be the young man's consciousness that he could not be called insincere or hypocritical, since he had concealed nothing from the Bishop, who, after hearing all, had decided that there was nothing to exclude him from ordination.

I would therefore advise any man who desired to be ordained but was deterred by present scruples or the fear of future scruples, to write at an early period to the Bishop at whose hands he would be likely to seek ordination, stating his difficulties frankly and fully, and asking whether they would be considered an impediment. If he felt any touch of doubt on the subject of the miracles, I would have him make them the subject of a special question. In some dioceses I should expect the answer to be unfavourable. From others perhaps the answer would come that the Bishop was "unwilling to undertake so heavy a responsibility; each man must decide for himself whether he can honestly read the services of the Church and the lessons from the Scriptures without believing in miracles." That answer would be, in my judgment, regrettable, though not unnatural or indefensible. But even that answer would be of value, as it would be a record that, at all events, the Bishop had not been kept in ignorance of anything that the candidate ought to have revealed to him: and this in itself would be of great value in lightening for a scrupulous and self-introspective young man the burden of the questions which might sometimes arise in his mind as he read aloud in the congregation the words of the Bible or the