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364 spiritual, and to retain the latter when the time may come that shall force them to give up the former. In a similar spirit you should deal with the Ascension and the Incarnation, not pointing out the difficulties involved in the material belief of those dogmas, nor saying a word to disparage those who believe in them, but doing your utmost to bring out the spiritual truths and invisible processes which are represented by those dogmas. Surely such a self-restraint as this is not more than may fairly be demanded from any honourable man, I will not say from a Christian, but from a gentleman. Your congregation are in their own parish church; they are bound by conventional respect and by deeply-rooted reverence for tradition and for the House of God, not to manifest any such open disapprobation of your teaching as would be freely permissible at a public meeting; you are their servant, and the servant, the paid servant, of the National Church; and yet you have them at your mercy while you stand in the pulpit. Profound consideration may fairly be expected from you for their prejudices, as you may please to call them; and all the more because they are, as it were, in possession of the church, while you are an innovator, holding what must—at all events for some time to come—appear to the multitude an entirely new doctrine: they "stand on the old ways."

If the teachers of natural or non-miraculous Christianity could be trusted to preach in this spirit, they might, I think, do a good work as ministers in the Church of England, without injury to themselves, and with much advantage to the nation. If not, they must come out of the Church for the purposes of teaching; and that, I fear, would result in mischief both for the Church and for the State. I believe that not a few of the educated clergy are either suspending their belief about miracles, or have decided against them;