Interest is evidently felt in questions which I have been permitted to treat in The Sun, and after the notices and the queries which I have received there are points on which I should like, if you will allow me, to set myself right.

I. The leaning to orthodoxy with which I am gently reproached goes not beyond a conviction, drawn from the study not of theology but of history, that of all the types of character hitherto produced the Christian type, founded on a belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, appears to be the happiest and the best. At its birth it encountered alien and hostile influences; Alexandrian theosophy, Oriental asceticism, Byzantine imperialism. Later it encountered the worst influence of all, that of theocracy engendered by the ambition of the monk Hildebrand. Theocracy, not Catholicism or anything spiritual, has been the source of the crimes of the Papacy; of the Norman raids upon England and Ireland; the civil wars kindled by Papal intrigue in Germany; the extermination of the Albigenses; the Inquisition; Alva's tribunal of blood in the Netherlands; the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the persecution of the Huguenots; Jesuitism and the evils, moral and political, as well as religious, which Jesuitism has wrought. Through all this, and in spite of it all, Christian character has preserved itself, and it is still the basis of the world's best civilization. Much that is far outside the Christian creed is still Christian in character and traceable to a Christian source.

II. I fully admit that society can be regulated by a law framed for mutual protection and general well-being without the religious conscience or other support than temporal interest. But if individual interest or passion can break this law with impunity, as often they can, what is there to withhold them from doing it? What is the value of a clean breast?

III. The fatherhood of God seems to be implied in the Christian belief in the brotherhood of man. By that phrase I meant to characterise Christianity, not to embark upon the question of Theism. It does not seem possible that we should ever have direct proof through human observation and reasoning of the existence of Deity or of the divine aim and will. To some power, and apparently to some moral power, we must owe our being. We can hardly believe that creation planned itself or that the germ endowed itself with life and provision for development. But what can have been the aim of creation? What can have led to the production of humanity, with all the evil and suffering which Omniscience must have foreseen? What was there which without such a process mere fiat, so far as we can see, could not produce? The only thing that presents itself is character, which apparently must be self-formed and developed by resistance to evil. We have had plenty of "evidences" in the manner of Paley or the Bridgewater Treatises, met by sceptical argument on the other side; but has inquiry yet tried to fathom the mystery of human existence?

IV. One thing for which I have earnestly pleaded is the abolition of clerical tests, which are in fact renunciations of absolute loyalty to truth. Would this involve the dissolution of the Churches? Nothing surely can put an end to the need of spiritual association or to the usefulness of the pastorate so long as we believe in spiritual life. I think I have seen the most gifted minds, such as might have done us the highest service in the quest of truth, condemned to silence by the tests.

May 5th, 1907.