consequently decrease, and the number of the givers get smaller and smaller until accumulation, which is the life of the modern world as distinguished from the ancient, would be blighted. The industrial classes would be reduced to servitude, enormous fortunes would be gathered by fraud, speculation, cruelty, and progressive society would relapse into sterility. Fortunately the minister could not persuade people to adopt this fatal policy. Fortunately, in this particular, niggardliness went hand in hand with common-sense. That the churches, under the lead of the ministers, have done a vast deal in the direction of charity, so far from being denied or disputed, is cordially allowed and even maintained. Indeed, this has been their chief function, and they have discharged it with immense zeal and astonishing results. But that it was an "ideal" profession is, as I said, a recommendation to the ministry. It is a broad foundation for spiritual-mindedness, for unworldliness. True, the habit of dealing with abstract topics, of holding commerce with purely speculative themes, of entertaining mere theories which cannot be verified, of going back to what are called "first principles," imparts a curiously vague, dreamy, impersonal, impalpable character to the minister's intellect, rendering it unfit to treat concrete questions of life or morals; for this reason he is not often successful as a man of business, a practical politician, a manager of affairs, his cast of mind disqualifying him for close consideration of details. The duty of answering unanswerable questions, too, of solving problems that are insoluble, of replying positively to what, from the nature of things, he cannot know, gives him a kind of ingenuity which is not genuine insight, but consists in subtle turnings, windings, in making fine distinctions and splitting hairs, and inventing ingenious interpretations, rather than in keen insight or straightforward analysis. He must seek ways of escape from his pursuers, and, when no other offers, hide in the thicket of mystery or run up the tree of faith. He must, if possible, have an explanation ready, and, if he has none, he must fall back on authority, and be impressive, addressing the sentiment of awe which is usually alive in every bosom, or, in the last resort, asseverating the truth of revelation, and thus silencing the debate he cannot continue. If neither conscience is satisfied, his own or his interlocutor's, there is no remedy save in submission. He makes no attempt to clear up his conceptions, or, if he does, ends at last in vacuity or discontent. His neighbor, unconvinced, concludes that this is a clerical subterfuge, and so far loses confidence in a profession he cannot understand. Probably he does not do it justice, but the effect is the same,--a rooted depreciation such as would not be felt towards a layman who simply said that he had no answer.