138 Contemporary Evohition. 



are often held with great tenacity, although forming no 

 part of what the Church affirms as divinely revealed. 

 This it is which is the region of conflict, and it is strewn 

 over with weapons more or less hastily caught up by 

 assailants as possessing a fatal efficiency and afterwards 

 abandoned in disappointment. Not that the weapons 

 were pointless or their wielders unskilful, but that by 

 the destruction of an encumbering delusion they conferred 

 benefits on the cause which was the real object of their 

 attack. In England, both the assailants and the sup- 

 porters of popular Christianity are peculiarly liable to 

 become involved in such contests. They are thus liable 

 because of the often startling ignorance of Christian 

 dogma amongst the former, and the prevalence of a 

 certain peculiar superstition amongst the latter. This 

 superstition is the somewhat grotesque belief that the ever 

 freshly surging questions of theology presenting them- 

 selves in new aspects in each succeeding age are to be 

 answered by revelation indeed, but through a printed 

 book, and not through some living authority capable of 

 addressing to each succeeding epoch its specially fitting 

 response. Nevertheless, not in England alone, but 

 throughout the civilised world, such conflicts have raged 

 from time to time, and two noteworthy ones may be here 

 suitably adverted to. 



It is not probable that physical science will again be 

 the occasion of so great a disturbance to prevalent " pious 



