SCIENCE AND THE BISHOPS. 357 



what Is called genius, whether it show itself in the saint, the artist, or 

 the man of science. One calls it faith, another calls it inspiration, a 

 third calls it insight ; but the " intending of the mind," to borrow 

 Newton's well-known phrase, the concentration of all the rays of intel- 

 lectual energy on some one point, until it glows and colors the whole 

 cast of thought with its peculiar light, is common to all. 



I take it that the Bishop of Manchester has psychological science 

 with him when he insists upon the subjective efficacy of prayer in 

 faith, and on the seemingly miraculous effects which such intending 

 of the mind upon religious and moral ideals may have upon character 

 and happiness. Scientific faith, at present, takes it no further than the 

 prayer which Ajax offered ; but that petition is continually granted. 



Whatever points of detail may yet remain open for discussion, 

 however, I repeat the opinion I have already expressed that the Man- 

 chester sermons concede all that science has an indisputable right, or 

 any pressing need, to ask, and that not grudgingly but generously ; 

 and, if the three bishops of 1887 carry the Church with them, I think 

 they will have as good title to the permanent gratitude of posterity as 

 the famous seven who went to the Tower in defense of the Church 

 two hundred years ago. 



Will their brethren follow their just and prudent guidance ? I 

 have no such acquaintance with the currents of ecclesiastical opinion 

 as would justify me in even hazarding a guess on such a difficult topic. 

 But some recent omens are hardly favorable. There seems to be an 

 impression abroad — I do not desire to give any countenance to it — 

 that I am fond of reading sermons. From time to time, unknown 

 correspondents — some apparently animated by the charitable desire to 

 promote my conversion, and others unmistakably anxious to spur me 

 to the expression of wrathful antagonism — favor me with reports or 

 copies of such productions. 



I found one of the latter category among the accumulated arrears 

 to which I have already referred. 



It is a full, and apparently accurate, report of a discourse by a per- 

 son of no less ecclesiastical rank than the three authors of the sermons 

 I have hitherto been considering ; but who he is, and where or when 

 the sermon was preached, are secrets which wild horses shall not tear 

 from me, lest I fall again under high censure for attacking a clergy- 

 man. Only if the editor of this Review thinks it his duty to have in- 

 dependent evidence that the sermon has a real existence, will I, in the 

 strictest confidence, communicate it to him. 



The preacher, in this case, is of a very different mind from the 

 three bishops — and this mind is different in quality, different in spirit, 

 and different in contents. He discourses on the a priori objections to 

 miracles, apparently without being aware, in spite of all the discus- 

 sions of the last seven or eight years, that he is doing battle with a 

 shadow. 



