the full-grown man becomes free from the mother who has borne and nourished him. He will, doubtless, always gratefully welcome the tradition of the past; but he feels within himself a higher principle which gives him the right to amend and the power to increase, in some degree, the inheritance he has received from his fathers. No one is either a man or a Christian on any other condition. The solution of the problem named above is to be found in these considerations. A tradition which desires to be absolute, which misunderstands and stifles individual inspiration, is not only an usurper--it also fails in its mission, which is to make adult Christians, Christians who are inwardly inspired and autonomous. It is like those tyrannical mothers who, if they could, would keep their sons in a perpetual minority. On the other hand, the children, even when they have attained their majority, should not despise their parents and disdain the counsels of experience and of age. Individual inspiration is apt to lead to self-sufficiency and sectarianism; it loses sight of the link of solidarity which unites the generations, and the social continuity in which alone progress is made in the religious life, as in the life of civilisation. The first defect, the tyrannical usurpation of tradition, predominates in the Catholic Church; the opposite defect, that of the intransigeance of individual convictions and of Illuminism, is the plague of Protestant communities. The truth would be found in a middle course, and in the organisation of a traditional Church stable enough to receive and keep the heritage of the past, large and flexible enough to permit in it the legitimate expansion of the Christian consciousness and the acquisition of new treasure. To this ideal, Catholicism cannot resign itself without succumbing to death. Protestantism aspires to it without reaching it; and yet nothing is more really in the logic of its principle. No Protestant Church professes to be infallible. Its most solemn Confessions of Faith have only a provisional value. The spirit of reform breathes in it without truce, continually. The principal task of the community, as of the individual, is to amend itself, to advance in knowledge and in virtue. A Church which should exclude this spirit of reform would cease to be a Protestant Church. And, of course, the duty of reform implies the legitimacy of criticism, of an appeal to the Gospel better understood, of a constant effort to bring the real up to the ideal. The only matter of importance is to decide aright on the principle or criterion according to which this criticism shall be made.