Among all of these--and they comprise in all classes the overwhelming majority--the place of a Philosophy or a Literature must be taken by a Religion. And the question of the survival of a Religion--in the most liberal interpretation of the term--is the question of the survival of any extra-material ideal in the civilisation of the twentieth century. In this, the last of our researches into “the Condition of England,” generalisation is more than ever difficult. Religions which appear dead are so often discovered to be only sleeping, variations in faiths and devotions are so frequent between youth and age, a dark fortune and a bright, that it is quite impossible to accept any mere superficial demonstration of development or decay. Statistics of church-going, varying from generation to generation, such as those of a recent census in London, may indicate a fluctuation in faith, or an alteration in social custom. Impressions of individual observers, such as the researches of Mr. Charles Booth and his assistants into the religious life of the Capital, may at the best be the impressions gathered from various separated workers set in the midst of silent untestifying millions. In every age the sterner moralist has proclaimed a national apostasy, and witnessed with astonishment a world repudiating its ancient pieties. In every age the prophecy of immediate collapse has been falsified by the events of history. More than a hundred and fifty years ago the least sensational of all great Christian apologists declared that in England “it is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted that Christianity is not so much a subject for inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious.” “And accordingly,” he continues in famous words, “they treat it as if, in the present age, this was an agreed point amongst all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule as it were, by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.” Yet the “pleasures of the world” find themselves still interrupted by a faith which, with its grave dug and its epitaph set up, unexpectedly refuses to expire. Any variation or section of it, whose end has been confidently predicted, will suddenly flare up again into violent life and upset all the calculations of its undertakers. In 1830 “the acutest characters of the time,” says Mr. Wilfred Ward, “considered that the Church of England was on its death-bed.” “It was folding its robes,” was Mozley’s verdict, “to die with what decency it could.” “The Church as it now stands,” wrote Arnold, “no human power could save.” But to-day on any impartial judgment the “Established Church” whatever gains or losses it may have received in the long struggle with indifference and unbelief, would never be threatened with any such suggestions of immediate destruction. Sidney Smith in 1827 could