get a year’s reading at theology while he supported himself by taking pupils; but that was probably the utmost of his preparation. Soon after reaching his twenty-third year he was ordained. And now, for the first time, leaving school and college, he begins to realize what life means, and to think for himself. Can we wonder that this “thinking for himself” produces considerable changes of thought? If he is healthy, and active in his parish, and has not much time for reflection and reading, the changes will be long deferred, and he will be scarcely conscious of them: but if he has any mind at all in him, and gives it the least exercise, it is hardly possible that an able and honest student of the Bible at the age of forty-six, when he comes to compare the opinions of his manhood with those of his youth, will not find that he has ceased to believe, or at all events to be certain of, the historical accuracy of a good deal which he accepted with unquestioning confidence at the age of twenty-three. Changes of this kind are inevitable, and they ought not to be feared. Yet perhaps the fear of them deters some of the more thoughtful young men from presenting themselves for ordination. They know that they believe in such and such facts now, but, say they, “Many sincere and thoughtful persons dispute the truth of these facts; and what will be my position some ten years hence if I find that I am driven to deny what I now affirm?” What one would like to be able to reply, in answer to such an appeal, would be, that the worship of Christ does not depend upon the truth of a few isolated and disputable pieces of evidence, but upon the testimony of the conscience based upon indisputable (though complex) evidence; so that, if the man’s conscience remains the same, he need not fear lest the fundamental principles of his faith will be shaken by any historical or scientific criticism. From the terrestrial point of view, Christ is human nature at its divinest. Whoever therefore in the highest degree loves and trusts and reveres human nature at its divinest, he naturally worships a representation of Christ, even though he may never have heard of the name. Now life will bring a young man many disappointments and disillusions and paradoxes: but no one, who has once worshipped Christ in this natural way, need fear (or hope?) that life will ever bring him anything more worthy of representing human nature at its divinest, anything therefore more worthy of worship, than Jesus of Nazareth. The only danger is, that one may cease to be able to love and trust and revere the objects that deserve these feelings. There is indeed that danger, just as there is the danger that one may cease to be able to be honest. But what young man, in mapping out his future, would make insurance against such a moral paralysis? A man ought no more—a man ought still less—to contemplate the possibility of becoming unable to worship Christ, than the possibility of becoming unable to revere a kind