No doubt. But does Mr. Pattison then really mean to tell us that the proper tribunal before which the Creeds, (for example,) of the Catholic Church,--our Communion and Baptismal offices,--the structure of our Calendar, and so forth,--should "_stand their trial_, and be _freely canvassed_," is, "_coram populo_?" A "rough and ready test," this, of Truth, I grant; aye, a _very_ "rough" one. But was it ever,--can it ever be,--a _fair_ test? Let us hear Mr. Pattison out, on the subject of Religion:-- "When it is stiffened into phrases, and these phrases are declared to be objects of reverence but not of intelligence, it is on the way to become _a useless encumbrance; the rubbish of the past; blocking the road_. Theology then retires into the position it occupies in the Church of Rome at present, an unmeaning frostwork of dogma, out of all relation to the actual history of Man." (pp. 297-8.) It cannot be necessary to discuss such sentiments. With Mr. Pattison personally, I _will not_ condescend to discuss them,--until he has divested himself of that "useless encumbrance," and ceased to employ daily "that rubbish of the past," which yet the two letters he subjoins to his name indicate, in the most solemn manner, his reverence for; and which alone make him _Reverendus_. But speaking to others,--speaking to _you_, my friends,--let me point out that "the tendencies of _irreligious_ thought in England, 1860-1861," are _indeed_ in a direction where the Prayer-Book is found to be _effectually_ "blocking up the road." (pp. 297-8.) Mr. Pattison is simply dreaming,--haunted by the phantoms of his own brain, and talking the language of the den,--when he complains that "the Philosophy, now petrified into tradition, may once have been a vital Faith; but now that" it is "withdrawn from public life," has ceased to be a "social influence." (p. 298.) And when he would exalt the last century at the expence of the present, (pp. 298-9,) he shews nothing so much as the morbid state of his own imagination,--the disordered condition of his own mind. He has blinded himself; and he will not or he cannot see in the healthier tone of our popular Divinity,--in the increased attention to the study of Holy Scripture,--in the impulse which Liturgical inquiries have received since Wheatly's useful volume appeared;--or again, in the immense number of Schools and Churches which have been recently built,--in the marvellous change for the better which has come over the Clergy of the Church of England within the present century,--in the vast development of our Colonial Episcopate within the last few years,--in the rapid increase of Institutions connected more or less directly with the Church,--and I will add, in the conspicuous loyalty of the nation;--a practical refutation of his own injurious insinuations; a blessed earnest that God has _not_ forsaken us; and that we shall _yet_ be a blessing to the World! The people of England, I am