4 00 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



the instinct which has led so many countries towards a 

 double legislative chamber, and ourselves, till at any 

 rate quite recently, to a double system of jurisprudence, 

 law and equity, was not arrived at without having passed 

 through the stages of reason and reflection. There are 

 a variety of delicate, almost intangible, questions which 

 belong rather to conscience than to law, and for which 

 a Church is a fitter tribunal at any .rate for many ages 

 hence than a parliament or law court. There is room, 

 therefore, for both a State and a Church, each of which 

 should be influenced by the action of the other. 



I do not say that I personally should like to see the 

 Church of Rome as at present constituted in the position 

 which I should be glad to see attained by an ideal 

 Church. If it were in that position I would attack it to 

 the utmost of my power; but I have little hesitation in 

 thinking that the world with a very possible feasible 

 Church, would be better than the world with no Church 

 at all; and, if so, I have still less hesitation in con- 

 cluding, for the reasons already given, that it is to 

 Eome we must turn as the source from which the 

 Church of the future is to be evolved, if it is to come 

 at all. 



For the new, if it is to strike deep root and be perma- 

 nent, must grow out of the old, without too violent a tran- 

 sition. Some violence there will always be, even in the 

 kindliest birth; but the less the better, and a leap greater 

 than the one from Judaism to Christianity is not desir- 

 able, even if it were possible. Asa freethinker, therefore, 

 but also as one who wishes to take a practical view of 

 the manner in which things will, and ought to go, I 



