It is alike interesting and satisfactory to reflect that practical morality in civilized life is much the same for all earnest men, however they differ in their theories as to the origin of moral ideas and the kind of motives and sanctions to be insisted on for right action.  It is true that the theologians and supernaturalists have erected their scaffolding around the building of social and human morality, vowing that it will not stand without.  Yet it remains steady when the scaffolding is warped by the winds of doctrine or uprooted by advancing knowledge.  The spirit that has built it is free from the perverted enthusiasms which crusade against freedom, put thought in fetters, and sanctify persecution.  It lends no support to the other spirit that would dominate minds and consciences by formulae that lie outside the court of reason.  These things are of clericalism, and it was clericalism to which Huxley ever found himself in opposition, for it “raises obstacles to scientific ways of thinking, which are even more important than scientific discoveries.”  But all associations for promoting that sympathy which is at the foundation of human society need not be infected with clericalism.  If such a step were otherwise expedient, even the State might do something towards that end indirectly:—­

I can conceive the existence of an Established Church which should be a blessing to the community.  A Church in which, week by week, services should be devoted, not to the iteration of abstract propositions in theology, but to the setting before men’s minds of an ideal of true, just, and pure living; a place in which those who are weary of the burden of daily cares should find a moment’s rest in the contemplation of the higher life which is possible for all, though attained by so few; a place in which the man of strife and of business should have time to think how small, after all, are the rewards he covets compared with peace and charity.  Depend upon it, if such a Church existed, no one would seek to disestablish it.

But, while sympathy is the basis of society and enthusiasm the greatest motive power of humanity, there remains something more to be considered.  The man who could appreciate the value of the personal consolations brought by the Bible-woman to the poor and down-trodden, and the infinitely comfortable assurance of the mystic, firm as hypnotic conviction, that he is the direct associate and instrument of the Almighty, whether submissive or arrogant, from Stephen to the Bab, from Cromwell and Gordon to Bismarck and his Imperial associates, such a man might well say:  “I wish I could be so magnificently self-confident, so untroubled by doubt.  But I can’t, for I have to ask:  Is it true?; and I find that these persons base themselves upon very questionable grounds.”

True, that in regard to the place of good and evil in this world the best theological teachers—­