St. Paul, it is true, when writing to a Christian Community in Asia Minor, bids them “beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy.” And the unfortunate habit of Bible Christians, of tearing a text from a treatise and making it into a precept, has thrown a sort of discredit upon philosophic thinking, while the mass of mankind will always prefer rules to principles of conduct. But in vain do we clamour against intellectual complications which are the inevitable endowment of these days. Life is necessarily intricate, subtle and anxious, and Democracy has made of each man a ruler and governor in his degree. Is it possible to point to a single principle which shall be a motive and a standard of duty, which shall establish a synthetic method after the ruthless analysis of the later Victorian days? How searching that analysis has been! Fifty years ago the man in the street might rarely read the Bible, but he had a tolerably assured conviction that the Bible was infallible, however resolutely he might refuse its interpretation by an infallible church. Then “...the Essays and Reviews debate Begins to tell on the public mind, and Colenso’s views have weight.” Plain people were taught to look on the Old Testament as a library of Hebrew literature containing not only poetry and history, but romance. When Colenso’s book first appeared, Matthew Arnold deprecated its publication since it brought criticisms familiar to men of culture before the notice of the public, without considering how the beliefs of “the vulgar” might be upset. The supercilious apostle of “sweetness and light,” himself contributed largely in later years to the general confusion in men’s minds, and the New Testament criticism has been introduced to the general public by Mr. Arnold’s accomplished niece. Our friend, the man in the street, was all unprepared!