Take another test. Compare the _Guardian_, which represents better than any other paper the opinions of moderate Churchmen, with the papers which are most read by the French priesthood and have most influence on their opinions. Certainly few English journalists have equalled in ability Louis Veuillot, and few papers have exercised so great an influence over the clergy of the Church as the _Univers_ at the time when he directed it; but no one who read those savagely scurrilous and intolerant pages, burning with an impotent hatred of all the progressive and liberal tendencies of the time, shrinking from no misrepresentation of fact and from no apology for crime if it was in the interest of the Church, could fail to perceive how utterly out of harmony it was with the best lay thought of France. English religious journalism has sometimes, though in a very mitigated degree, exhibited some of these characteristics, but no one who reads the _Guardian_, which I suppose appeals to a larger clerical public than any other paper, can fail to realise the contrast. It is not merely that it is habitually written in the style and temper of a gentleman, but that it reflects most clearly in its criticism, its impartiality, its tone of thought, the best intellectual influences of the time. Men may agree or differ about its politics or its theology, but no one who reads it can fail to admit that it is thoroughly in touch with cultivated lay opinion, and it is in fact a favourite paper of many who care only for its secular aspects. The intellectual ability, however, included among the ministers of a Church, though one test, is by no means a decisive and infallible one of its religious life. During the period of the Renaissance, when genuine belief in the Catholic Church had sunk to nearly its lowest point, most men of literary tastes and talents were either members of the priesthood or of the monastic orders. This was not due to any fervour of belief, but simply to the fact that the Church at that time furnished almost the only sphere in which a literary life could be pursued with comfort, without molestation, and with some adequate reward. Much of the literary ability found in the English Church is unquestionably due to the attraction it offers and the facilities it gives to those who simply wish for a studious life. The abolition of many clerical sinecures, and the greatly increased activity of clerical duty imposed by contemporary opinion, have no doubt rendered the profession less desirable from this point of view; but even now there is no other profession outside the universities which lends itself so readily to a literary life, and a great proportion of the most eminent thinkers and writers in the Church of England are eminent in fields that have little or no connection with theology.