178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gyraen for matters of opinion ; but these cases have been very rare, 

 and the tendency to give liberty has been even-handed. The Gorham 

 case gave a similar liberty to those who denied abnormal or super- 

 natural power to one of the sacraments ; the Bennett case gave liberty 

 to those who asserted a similar power in the other. Even in cases of 

 ritual, which stand on a different ground, being matters of formal 

 regulation, there has been great unwillingness to press hardly on con- 

 scientious men, even when palpably defying the law ; and the bishops 

 have vindicated for themselves a power of stopping suits which they 

 consider vexatious. 



This action of the Privy Council corresponds with the general 

 feeling. The different sections of the clergy and their adherents 

 who made some outcry against the judgments, have gradually adopted 

 more and more of the spirit of toleration which characterizes the law. 

 To a large extent the judgments in doctrinal matters have preluded 

 an actual change of opinion. The stringent doctrine of substitution 

 as the essence of the atonement, the notion of inspiration as consist- 

 ing in verbal accuracy rather than in the general spirit of the book, 

 the belief in the everlasting perpetuation of sin and suffering, are 

 alike strange to the present generation. They may still be held in 

 some form, but probably in all cases with modifications, and they are 

 certainly not insisted on as marks of true religion. 



It may be partly the ill-success of past prosecutions for heresy, or 

 it may be a consciousness that we are none of us in such literal con- 

 formity with the standards as to warrant us in casting stones at one 

 another, or it may be some other consideration, which is the cause of 

 the present aversion from an appeal to the courts. At all events, such 

 an aversion exists. A striking proof of it has lately been furnished 

 at Oxford. The rector of the City Church, Mr. Carteret Fletcher, 

 was "delated "to the vice-chancellor for a sermon preached before 

 the university, which contained the following passages : 



1. Kot long ago it was the general belief that man had been created per- 

 fect, but that he had fallen from 'perfection into an abyss of doom, whence only 

 an elect fragment of the race would emerge; but it is now dawning on us that 

 man was created in an undeveloped state, with a splendid potential wealth of 

 faculty, and that he has advanced through long ages to his present stage, whence 

 he is destined to rise higher than imagination can follow him. In him we see a 

 rough-hewed block in course of being molded into perfect shape, and not the 

 reconstruction of the shattered pieces of a faultless image. 



2. The historical evidence ot Christ's resurrection, after traversing a gulf 

 of eighteen centuries, loses much of its convincing force in a scientific age which 

 takes its stand on the uniformity of law. But this failing of the external evi- 

 dence is more than compensated by our deeper realization of the inward proofs 

 of human immortality; by our faith in the eternity of Christ's character, as well 

 as by our consciousness of the high capacities and affections which he has called 

 forth in us, and which are " mocked by the brevity of life, and are totally in- 

 capable of exhaustion here." 



