in understanding themselves they have thrown aside the convenient habit of dividing the rest of the world into vast homogeneous classes, and have recognized the dignity and importance of each individual of the race. This is most vividly reflected in the literature of the present day. We find in the romantic movement an expression of the renewed interest in man and nature: this interest was mainly felt at first simply in their picturesqueness; modern realism shuns the picturesque, as one form of the romantic exaggeration, and endeavors to treat human life as the man of science treats the objects of his study.

It would be singular if religion remained untouched by these movements. There would be no precedent for its escape from the common fate of all branches of thought. The Reformation was a democratic revolution. That its original fervor died out, and was succeeded by imitation of the forms that it had bitterly fought, is well known. When, toward the end of the last century, the great outburst of Methodism startled the Church of England out of its lethargy, it was not so clear as it is now that religion was experiencing the same change that was making over politics and literature. The campaigns of the Salvation Army, so far as they have more than mere temporary importance, give proof that lower social circles are feeling the general excitement. Can we suppose that the most important subject of man's thought is disregarded at the present time? Far from it; we see in the modification of the demands it makes on society a great change in religious feeling. We may observe the general relaxation of formal bonds in the more liberal ground that is taken by even the more conservative sects, and in the fact that the others insist rather on righteous living than on rigid belief.

May not some of this spirit of toleration be due to the recognition of the fact that laxity of belief does not necessarily connote immorality? Are not society and theology tending toward a generally acceptable modus vivendi? Is not ecclesiasticism dwindling before the change which has made itself felt in politics and literature, that is, before the growing importance of the individual? If this phrase meant that the individual has simply grown in conceit, the result would be absolutely intolerable; but if it implies that there has been greater development in the notions of right and wrong, and a more general recognition of the rights of conscience rather than of an outside force, the change, if it exists, may not be for the worse. The examination of these questions is a difficult matter. Some will answer them, without delay, in accordance with their already fixed opinions; and any one who gives them any consideration must be ready to acknowledge the difficulty of judging the present in anything like a satisfactory way. Contemporary life obviously lacks the perspective which is necessary to set in their proper place what is important and

to form a tolerably satisfactory conclusion.

It is an easy definition of the literature of the last century its tone was didactic. From the "Spectator "to the "Ramble abounds with the soundest instruction in morality, yet it ma worth while to notice that this is generally about the very rudin of decorum. The "Spectator," for example, defended matri from the ribald attacks of the comic writers; it preached sound concerning education, and it by no means neglected minor ma such as "that huddled economy of dress which passes under the eral name of a mob, the bane of conjugal love, and one of the rea means imaginable to alienate the affection of a husband, espe a fond one (No. 302). Elsewhere mention is made of misbeh at church; improper conversation in public vehicles is denou these are the domestic and somewhat rudimentary lessons incul amid a great deal of social instruction concerning witchcraft, the of dueling, the beauties of the arts, etc. The work of the "S tor" was summed up not inaccurately in these lines of an ad which are given in Drake's "Essays," illustrative of the "Tatler, "Improving youth, and hoary age,

To be a soft and easy knot.

The ladies, pleased with thee to dwell,
Aspire to write correct, and spell."

There is a certain anti-climax in this outburst of praise, but the merit of accuracy, and it is easy to see how great are the ad made since the beginning of the last century in what we ma social morality.

Richardson, too, was didactic; but no reader of "Pamela avoid seeing that the heroine clings to her virtue quite as mu the reward she expects to win in this world as from any high tive. The dangers portrayed in "Clarissa Harlowe" are som remote in this more decorous age; and Sir Charles Grandiso curious combination of heroic romance and catlike domesticity. life that Fielding draws seems to us all very remote. Miss Edge again, took charge of the education of her contemporaries by w a series of novels, each one of which exhibited the evil effects minor vice and the advantages of the opposite virtue. In all h ries, clever though they are, there is a great deal of the teachin which Frank was dosed.

When at length society was tamed, hospitality did not mean ing with your guest till one or both of you fell under the tab

own trials, and that a very admirable person who always told the th and shut the door after him, who was deaf to flattery and to ss temptation, might yet be an extremely disagreeable companion. › demand something more of those with whom we live than the certy that they will not stab us or burn the roof over our heads, and is not enough that they abstain from breaking the commandments. e require profound respect for one another's rights, and we perceive selfishness, in all its intricate shapes, an evil that was overlooked, cept in its more violent forms, by those who were eager in the cont against more heinous offenses. Society now busies itself with at we may call the statute law of ethics, the greater principles begenerally observed by common agreement. Vice, to be sure, is t extinct, but intemperance, for example, is frowned upon by society her than tolerated and sanctioned, as has been the case in the past. the novels of the day, which are the most faithful records of connporary life, the problems that are discussed are those that directly ncern the individual conscience. George Eliot's work is full of such estions, and, like many great writers, she has set the standard before e reader ahead of what it is in fact, so that it is, as it were, a goal ward which we are striving with what strength we may have. In is respect she resembles Goethe, who pushed forward the outer lines criticism to a point which the main body of his successors is only adually reaching.

Compare, for example, Miss Edgeworth's chilly prudence with eorge Eliot's tender sympathy with suffering, and the advance that as been made becomes clear. What would Miss Edgeworth have ought of such a statement as this "That element of tragedy, hich lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself to the coarse emotion of mankind. . . . If we had a keener vision nd feeling of all ordinary human life it would be hearing the grass row and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar hich lies on the other side of silence"? Yet, of course, George liot is far from despising the minutiae of domestic life; she makes it he setting of the most delicate ethical problems. It is character and ot incidents that she studies; not the glowing crimes that make the ascination of the melodrama, but rather the corruption or weakness at gives them birth. She traces the growth of sin in the human cart with a vividness that is really appalling. Who has ever read Romola" without feeling that his own vanity, boasting, and shuffling erformances are branded in the chronicle of Tito's slow moral decay? n "The Mill on the Floss," again, we have a typical representation of form of domestic tyranny that can be matched in every household hat we know. In "Middlemarch we follow the struggle of gener

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in the wrecked conscience of him who commits them. It is not 1 since fiction saw a hero in a murderer, who had at least the meri boldness; now the analysis has been carried a step further, and no ists acknowledge, what we all know, that there may be evil-doers are comparatively innocent, but that there is little to be said in be of a being sodden with selfishness, even if he do not offend aga criminal law.

This distinction which the novelist draws between crime and w edness is one that society itself is making, otherwise the nov would not perceive it, and the growing interest in the discussio the subject corresponds with the general increase in the value of individual. Laws, we may perhaps say, concern masses; moral ruption is a personal matter that eludes the legislator. The ordin citizen is law-abiding by nature and education; he does not con the statute-book and trim his life in such a way as to avoid the of the constable; the policeman is his ally, not his foe. This alt tion in men's way of modeling their lives has not been without e on the position of the Church. Sermons are still preached that remote from close connection with human interests, but there are m instances of the attempt that is making to save religion from the rot of ecclesiasticism. Doctrinal exposition is giving place to sim explanation of right and wrong, and to aid in the government of 1

What was once a hierarchy is becoming a democracy. We s proof of this in the way in which books of casuistry are left stran for the entertainment of the curious. Society has nothing more to with those huge folios in which the leaders of the Church torme themselves to devise possible sins for which they constructed ingen reproofs. This treatment of the problems of sin reminds us of barren and intricate exercises of the logicians who were contempo with the casuists. Nowadays no one dreams of consulting a boo find out how wicked he has been, any more than an orator who wi to influence his hearers practices with x, y, and z—the skeleton of syllogism-to ascertain how he shall move the feelings of his audie A man trusts to his conscience, to the sentiments of his neighbor tell him what his conduct shall be. The possession of the test of 1 and wrong has spread from a class to society at large. In the way, with every year less stress is laid on the cosmogony of the Testament, and more on the ethics of the New. It is no longer manded that we believe in the literal truth of Genesis, or in the varying reconciliations, as they are called, with which theologian not to be left behind by modern thought.

These modifications of ecclesiasticism-that is to say, the re tion of dogmatism coincident with a general comprehension of

resented by the decay of aristocracy and the spread of democracy. "The theory of the Church," Mr. Stopford Brooke says (“Faith and Freedom," Boston, 1881, page 333), "is an aristocratic theory, and it has ministered to that imperialistic conception of God which in theology has done as much harm as despotism or caste system of any kind has done to society." In England the Church exists as a part of the general aristocratic system of a country in which non-conformity is detested mainly as a social stigma; in America we see the clearest proofs of the altered circumstances, and these are visible on every side. The formal side of ecclesiasticism loses its force, while ethical teaching gives and receives fresh life. Dogmas linger a couple of centuries behind what people really believe, and even the most conservative are far more liberal than they try to be, or than they say they are. Even the most fervent Roman Catholic refuses to believe that his Protestant friend is doomed to eternal damnation.

If theology is willing to satisfy itself with furthering right living and right thinking, its future is bright; if it demands assent to irreconcilable dogmas, it must in time disappear like everything which rests on sheer authority. Yet probably no age will ever be confronted with this direct question; the present one has come near it, and, while a century ago the general discussion was tabooed by the cautious, lest the whole social system should be swept by the board, it is now seen more or less clearly that men can think variously about dogmas without relapsing into barbarism. In time this will be generally acknowledged-what we now feel in our hearts-that the eternal laws of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, of truth and falsehood, are safe from the bungling of copyists, the destruction of wars, and the confusion of commentators.

This, however, is taking us from the question immediately before us, which is the relation that religion bears to contemporary thought. We can judge of what may be in store in the future only from the past and the present. If we fail to detect any modification of older ways of thought, there is no firm ground for prophecy about what is yet to happen. Yet we have seen Christianity molded into a church by the force of the current Roman ideas; we have seen feudalism triumphant in things terrestrial and things celestial; we have seen new freedom come into religion as into the rest of the world with the Renaissance, and we have seen a renewed reaction into old ideas following this freedom, as we see mediævalism in the fantastic robes and many candles of the Church when, in its turn, it was affected by the Romantic movement. In the wider freedom that begets science we see new tolerance for freedom of thought, and this freedom of thought can not fail to undermine some of the artificial constructions of the