age,--from the kingdom of God." Scepticism and religious questioning are, then, no sins; they are not irreligious. But surely they do vex the Church. What shall the Church do about them? In the first place, we should not try to suppress them. Nor should we tell religious inquirers to shut their eyes and put the poppy pillow of faith beneath their heads and go to sleep again, and dream. They have got their eyes wide open and they are determined to know whether those sweet visions which they had on faith's pillow are any more than illusions. Nor will they be satisfied and cease to think, by having a creed of three hundred or fifteen hundred year's antiquity recited to them. The modern intellects that have taken Homer to pieces, and excavated Agamemnon's tomb, and unwound the mummy wrappings of the Pharaohs, that have weighed the stars and chained the lightnings, are not to be awed by any old-time sheepskin or any council of bishops. They demand the facts in the case; fresh manna to satisfy their heart hunger; the solid realities of personal experience. No. It is too late to-day for the churchmen to play the part of Mrs. Partington, and sweep back the Atlantic tide of modern thought with their little ecclesiastical broom. The old ramparts are broken through and we must give the flood its course. The only spirit to meet it in is that of frankness and friendliness. Let us not foster in these questioning minds the suspicion that there is any part of religion that we are afraid to have examined. We smile at the bigoted Buddhist who, when the European attempted to prove by the microscope that the monk's scruples against eating animal food were futile (inasmuch as in every glass of water he drank he swallowed millions of little living creatures), smashed the microscope for answer, as if that altered at all the facts. But are not many of the heresy-hunters in Christendom quite as foolish in their efforts to smash the microscope of higher criticism, or the telescope of evolution, and suppress the testimony which nature, and reason, and scholarship every day present afresh? Let us, therefore, give liberty, yes, even sympathy, to these perplexed souls who are struggling with the great problems of religion.