Those, in other words, who consider any question of outlay, in connection with Christian worship, as a sordid impertinence. And, on the other hand, there are those-and it may be wise to remember that, in our own newer society, they are the vast majority-whose somewhat dry utilitarianism resents vast expenditure in architecture, except for purposes of mere accommodation. Between these two classes there is a third, who do not undervalue the aesthetic in relig ion, nor overvalue utility. They look to see in American cathedrals the dawn of the architecture of the future,—an architecture which shall be equally independent of slavish devotion to mediæval models and of supreme regard to a dry utility. Is it not possible to have a church architecture which shall recognize the fact that ours is (or ought to be) a teaching Church, and its edifices so constructed that people can see and hear in them; and, at the same time, an architecture which shall not be so eager to provide mere accommodation for seeing and hearing, as to reproduce the aspect of the play-house in the sanctuary? This is the architectural problem of the hour, to devise a structure in which a common-sense reference to practical utility shall be combined with grandeur, reverence, beauty, and solemnity of aspect. The cathedral can perform no more important function than to contribute to the solution of that problem.

In conclusion, we may not forget that a cathedral, like any other human institution, is liable to abuse; that, in connection with cathedrals in the past, there have been some very grave abuses. But none of those abuses are graver than those which history records in connection with the episcopal office, or with the working or neglect of parishes. And our advantage is this, that, at every step of our progress in organization, we have the example of the Church of England to warn and to instruct us. That example teaches us alike what to imitate and what to avoid. That there are errors to be avoided, it is idle to deny. Untrammelled though we are by any inherited complications, we may easily create others which shall be as grave and embarrassing. To build and set in operation a cathedral in our great centres of population, will require rare wisdom and tact and patience. For good or for evil, the parochial organizations in such great centres are too powerful to be defied or ignored. If the cathedral attempts rivalry with them, it will inevitably encounter disaster and defeat. Whatever the clergy may acquiesce in, the lay clement in our churches will never consent to, nor coöperate in, the erection among them of a huge towering centre of ecclesiastical power, to be administered in any narrow, extreme, or extravagant spirit. If it shall be reared for the good of the people, and in a

generous and manly sympathy with the wants of our time, then the prayers and benedictions of all good men will go along with it; but if it shall be built only to advance the interest of some narrow school, to realize the dreams of ambitious visionaries; if, in a word, it is reared only to be the mausoleum of dead men's bones and of dead ideas, in forgetfulness that this is neither the thirteenth century nor the eighteenth, but the nineteenth, then it will prove to be but a dreary and impotent anachronism,-a folly in its conception, and in its realization a crime.

ADDRESS delivered at the Distribution of Prizes in the Liverpool College by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, First Lord of the Treasury. John Murray, Albemarle street. 1873.

MR.

London:

R. GLADSTONE seems, in this address, to have provoked the ire of his sceptical critics, by his allusions to their intellectual habits as much as by anything which fell from him. Unbelievers do not seem to be aware that the mind may have loose habits, as well as the stomach or the tongue. But why it may not be as true of the mind, that it can have bad habits, as it is true of anything purely physical, is (a sceptic must pardon the confession) as much of a mystery as half the impossibilities he prates about, as if he were himself a Delphic oracle or a recognized pope.

And one of these habits we hold to be a sorry estimation of faith, -a dyspeptic inability to digest sound doctrine about faith, as if it were a weakness or a discredit or a declension to say that we believe rather than know; that we take things upon trust, and are not quite as positive about them as if familiar with their inward essence and final cause.

This disgust for faith is not, however-and we maintain the point with confidence-the mark of a strong mind, but of a weak one; not of a towering intellect, but of a grovelling one. Lord Bacon, for example, had none of it; not one particle. On the con

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trary, he affirmed, very calmly and very firmly, that it was worthier to believe than to know; for in belief we looked up, and had the bending humility of angels; in knowledge we looked down, and stiffened into the pride of Satan.1 Knowledge puffeth up," said St. Paul, in the presence of self-conceited Grecians, who looked upon themselves as actual lordlings of wisdom among "articulatespeaking men." They characterized themselves as such, till the Apostle responded and wrote, "The Greeks seek after wisdom;" as if wisdom were the grand aim of their lives, and its fancied attainment their exclusive conquest.

And, doubtless, they were not seekers only, but successful seekers, as the world then went. For philosophy, which at first meant the love of wisdom, and afterward the possession of it, was supposed to have found a home in Greece, which it had not found and could not find elsewhere in "the round world."

Yet, what was the result of this state of things, when a new system like the Christian came athwart the customary lines of Grecian expatiation, and asked a hearing? Aye, what? Though Christianity proclaimed itself as a public miracle, as a thing "not done in a corner," but confronting and challenging examination, as a demonstrable fact. Why, it was condemned summarily and entirely, after the most hasty and superficial examination. Still, on what ground? On the insufficiency or impertinency of its evidences? Oh, no. But as if it had no reputable claims at all; as not even good sense or tolerable self-consistency; as mere and downright foolishness. One might suppose that Christianity, with its confident appeals to fact and notoriety, might at least have undergone some scrutiny, might have passed through some ordeal, might certainly have enjoyed a hearing, while endeavoring to put in what was in olden time styled a fair "apology." No such toleration was accorded it. The Greek was exemplarily a Gnostic, i. e., a knowing one,—a supremely knowing one in his own estimation; and anything which chimed not with his prejudgments-dovetailed not into his imaginations was turned out of doors, at an instant's warning, as an impudent and unendurable intrusion. The Christian was to him a miserable fool, and nothing else; and, without a moment's consideration, he could slam a door in his face, as if he were no better than a common vagabond.

The Jew of those times differed from the Greek, not as a victim of self-conceit, but of iron prejudices and hoodwinking bigotry.

'Montagu's Bacon, ii. 258, 259.

Christianity was to him not another system of philosophy or morals, but another religion. A religion, too, competing with and transplanting his own, and as therefore an obstacle to the progress and expansion of Judaism, which must be thrust aside, as if something lying across and filling up a road, and rendering it impassable by travellers. Hence Christianity was to him, as an Apostle said, “a stumbling-block," over which, unless removed, he might be precipitated from a regular causeway, and hurled down a dangerous offset. Accordingly, he did not turn his heel on Christianity, and neglect it. He did battle with it; and rested not until he had nailed its Founder to a cross, and extinguished Him and His system too, as he supposed, by that one vindictively destructive act.

So Christianity was assailed by the cultivated Greck, as having nothing in it worth believing; and by the Scribe-taught Jew, as displacing all that was worth believing; as if, should it be encouraged and indulged in, superseding Judaism and its best excellences, and rendering them "old, and ready to vanish away."

But, really, Christianity ought not to have been disparaged because of its expressed claims to faith, and to faith of high devotion and absorbing sway. For faith, and faith in abundance, not to say in plenitude, was required by both ancient philosophy, as a scholastic system, and Judaism, as a religious establishment. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and even Epicurus, were popes in their own way of thinking, and in their demands upon the deference of their auditors. Ipse dixit is represented to have been one of the indigenous productions of their days, and to have been quite as much of an ultimatum with an Athenian lecturer, as with Pio Nono, after he had been erected into the grandest of Muftis by the ecclesiastical divan of 1870. And as to the Scribes and Pharisees of Judaism, perhaps our Lord never put forth higher or more unwelcoine proof of the supremacy of His pretensions, than when He preached His Sermon on the Mount, and coolly ran counter to so many of the favorite decisions of Jewish doctors. They would have allowed Him to be a prophet, and a great prophet, if He had taught in accordance with their habitual rulings. But when He subverted their system to its foundations, by quietly putting moral commandments over ceremonial ones, they rose against Him as a revolutionist, and did their utmost to have Him executed under an indictment for blasphemy.

And so-incredible and ill-mannered as the allegation may seem to some-it is not true that the scientist and the Ultramontane do not both ask for faith, and very much in the same style of asking,