and suffer the disease which makes such ravages; should descend into the shades and face the spectres.  No one can deny the risk of dwelling on such thoughts as he must dwell on; but if he feels warmly with his kind, he may think it even a duty to face the risk.  To any one accustomed to live on his belief it cannot but be a hard necessity, full of pain and difficulty, first to think and then to speak of what he believes, as if it might not be, or could be otherwise; but the changes of time bring up ever new hard necessities; and one thing is plain, that if ever such an investigation is undertaken, it ought to be a real one, in good earnest and not in play.  If a man investigates at all, both for his own sake and for the sake of the effect of his investigation on others, he must accept the fair conditions of investigation.  We may not ourselves be able to conceive the possibility of taking, even provisionally, a neutral position; but looking at what is going on all round us, we ought to be able to enlarge our thoughts sufficiently to take in the idea that a believing mind may feel it a duty to surrender itself boldly to the intellectual chances and issues of the inquiry, and to “let its thoughts take their course in the confidence that they will come home at last.”  It may be we ourselves who “have not faith enough to be patient of doubt”; there may be others who feel that if what they believe is real, they need not be afraid of the severest revisal and testing of the convictions on which they rest; who feel that, in the circumstances of the time, it is not left to their choice whether these convictions shall be sifted unsparingly and to the uttermost; and who think it a venture not unworthy of a Christian, to descend even to the depths to go through the thoughts of doubters, if so be that he may find the spell that shall calm them.  We do not say that this book is the production of such a state of mind; we only think that it may be.  One thing is clear, wherever the writer’s present lot is cast, he has that in him which not only enables him, but forces him, to sympathise with what he sees in the opposite camp.  If he is what is called a Liberal, his whole heart is yet pouring itself forth towards the great truths of Christianity.  If he is what is called orthodox, his whole intellect is alive to the right and duty of freedom of thought.  He will therefore attract and repel on both sides.  And he appears to feel that the position of double sympathy gives him a special advantage, to attract to each side what is true in its opposite, and to correct in each what is false or inadequate.