passages written than in this book about the corruptions of that Christianity which yet the writer holds to be the one hope and safeguard of mankind.  He is not afraid to pursue his investigation independently of any inquiry into the peculiar claims to authority of the documents on which it rests.  He at once goes to their substance and their facts, and the Person and Life and Character which they witness to.  He is not afraid to put Faith on exactly the same footing as Life, neither higher nor lower, as the title to membership in the Church; a doctrine which, if it makes imperfect and rudimentary faith as little a disqualification as imperfect and inconsistent life, obviously does not exclude the further belief that deliberate heresy is on the same level with deliberate profligacy.  But the clear sense of what is substantial, the power of piercing through accidents and conditions to the real kernel of the matter, the scornful disregard of all entanglement of apparent contradictions and inconsistencies, enable him to bring out the lesson which he finds before him with overpowering force.  He sees before him immense mercy, immense condescension, immense indulgence; but there are also immense requirements—­requirements not to be fulfilled by rule or exhausted by the lapse of time, and which the higher they raise men the more they exact—­an immense seriousness and strictness, an immense care for substance and truth, to the disregard, if necessary, of the letter and the form.  The “Dispensation of the Spirit” has seldom had an interpreter more in earnest and more determined to see meaning in his words.  We have room but for two illustrations.  He is combating the notion that the work of Christianity and the Church nowadays is with the good, and that it is waste of hope and strength to try to reclaim the bad and the lost:—­

Once more, however, the world may answer, Christ may be consistent in this, but is he wise?  It may be true that he does demand an enthusiasm, and that such an enthusiasm may be capable of awakening the moral sense in hearts in which it seemed dead.  But if, notwithstanding this demand, only a very few members of the Christian Church are capable of the enthusiasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not qualified to perform?  Would it not be well to recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail human nature what human nature cannot render?  Would it not be well for the Church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary duties?  When the Bernard or the Whitefield appears let her by all means find occupation for him.  Let her in such cases boldly invade the enemy’s country.  But in ordinary times would it not be well for her to confine herself to more modest and practicable undertakings?  There is much for her to do even though she should honestly confess herself unable to reclaim the lost.  She may reclaim the young, administer reproof to slight lapses, maintain