The average young man who enters the ministry of the Church of England has been reasonably mothered by a university education; and when he takes the plunge it is not total immersion. His mother--his Alma Mater--still holds him by the heel. It is in consequence, with a sort of heel of Achilles that he enters upon divinity; and over this he draws a stocking with a large hole in it just where the wear of the heel comes hardest. That stocking (containing forty stripes save one) is the Thirty-nine Articles. It has been loosely knit, it is warranted to shrink the longer he wears it, and the hole in consequence gets larger. There you have the weakness of the Church of England. Nobody to-day in his senses is prepared to die for the Thirty-nine Articles. Yet to hold ministry in the Church he has to swear by them, and thus at the very beginning of his ministerial career discreditable conduct is imposed on him. It is no wonder that upon that basis the Church of England is permeated with unbelief in the things that it professes. A Church, a religion, may be full of credulity, bigotry, superstition--and with all those things it may yet have a true and a living faith: it may breed martyrs and inquisitors in equal numbers and with equal facility; but, in order to do so it must have at its back something definite and distinctive that its members are prepared to die for. And if it has not that, it is bound to become before long a discredited institution. It is an interesting and a hopeful trait in human nature that it will only believe obstinately, continuously, and in spite of persecution, in those things which seem greatly to matter. When they no longer seem to matter, belief falls away from them. And, broadly speaking, we have come to see that things do not greatly matter unless they affect life and conduct. “The Kingdom of Heaven” is within you; and if your doctrinal test does not produce good ethical results, you begin to doubt--not the Kingdom of Heaven--but the doctrine on which it was made to depend. Similarly, if a doctrine obviously lays itself open to grave abuse, or presents strong temptation to the infirmities of human nature, you begin to doubt whether it is so heavenly in origin as it pretends to be. The doctrine held by some cannibal African tribe that the bride’s mother shall provide the wedding-breakfast in her own person, is so clearly a truckling to the prejudice against mothers-in-law--which exists even in this country--that such a religious tenet immediately becomes suspect, and we guess that it emanates not from the gods but from their maker, man.