ROME AND PANTHEISM. 401 



neither expect to see the religions of the world come 

 once for all to an end with the belief in Christianity 

 which to me is tantamount to saying with Home nor 

 am I at all sure that such a consummation is more desir- 

 able than likely to come about. The ultimate fight 

 will, I believe, be between Kome and Pantheism ; 

 and the sooner the two contending parties can be 

 ranged into their opposite camps by the extinction of 

 all intermediate creeds, the sooner will an issue of some 

 sort be arrived at. This will not happen in our time, 

 but we should work towards it. 



When it arrives, what is to happen ? Is Pantheism 

 to absorb Eome, and, if so, what sort of a religious for- 

 mula is to be the result ? or is Eome so to modify her 

 dogmas that the Pantheist can join her without doing 

 too much violence to his convictions? We who are 

 outside the Church's pale are in the habit of thinking 

 that she will make little if any advances in our direct- 

 tion. The dream of a Pantheistic Eome seems so wild as 

 hardly to be entertained seriously ; nevertheless I am 

 much mistaken if I do not detect at least one sign as 

 though more were within the bounds of possibility than 

 even the most sanguine of us could have hoped for a 

 few years back. We do not expect the Church to go 

 our whole length ; it is the business of some to act as 

 pioneers, but this is the last function a Church should 

 assume. A Church should be as the fly-wheel of a 

 steam-engine, which conserves, regulates and distributes 

 energy, but does not originate it. In all cases it is more 

 moral and safer to be a little behind the age than a 

 little in front of it ; a Church, therefore, ought to cling 



