There are, without doubt, positions when the application of these principles is difficult. The spirit of liberty, like the wind, bloweth wherever it listeth. There are often people like clergymen, riveted, as it were, to an absolute faith; but even among them, a noble mind rises to the full extent of the issue. A worthy country priest, through his solitary studies and the simple purity of his life, comes to a knowledge of the impossibilities of literal dogmatism; and must he therefore sadden those whom he formerly consoled, and explain to the simple folk those mental processes which they cannot comprehend? Heaven forbid! There are no two men in the world whose paths of duty are exactly alike. The excellent Bishop Colenso showed an honesty which the Church since her origin has not seen surpassed, in writing out his doubts as they occurred to him. But the humble Catholic priest, surrounded by timid and narrow-minded souls, must be quiet. Oh! how many close-mouthed tombs about our village churches, hide similar poetic reticence and angelic silence! Do those who speak when duty dictates, equal, after all, in merit, those who in secret cherish and restrain the doubts known only to God? Theory is not practice. The ideal should remain the ideal, for it may become soiled and contaminated by contact with reality. Sentiments appropriate enough to those who are preserved by their innate nobleness from all moral danger, are not as suitable to those who are of a lower grade. It is only from ideas strictly limited that great actions are evolved; and this is because human capacity is limited. A man wholly without prejudice would be powerless and uninfluential. Let us enjoy the liberty of the sons of God; but let us also beware that we are not accomplices in diminishing the sum-total of virtue in the world--a result which would necessarily arise, were Christianity to be weakened. What, indeed, would we be without it? What would replace the noble institutions to which it gave birth, such as the association of the Sisters of Charity? How cold-hearted, mean, and petty mankind would become! Our disagreement with those who believe in positive religions, is, after all, purely scientific; we are with them at heart; and we combat but one enemy, which is theirs as well as ours--and this enemy is vulgar materialism.