During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Christianity passed through a fire of criticism which rocked it to its foundation. To those who lived at that time, the transition from the older, and more dogmatic, form was accompanied by spiritual and moral struggles which seem to us exaggerated. The very indifference of the present age shows that the atmosphere has cleared and that new values have come to the front. A short while since, I picked up Hutton's once famous book, _Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith_, and read his analysis of the life of Cardinal Newman and his interesting criticism of Matthew Arnold. I must confess that the time-spirit of which Arnold {96} made so much has done its work. The scene is shifting from a religion which stresses a peculiar form of salvation and a career in another world to social and economic conditions and ideals. Is there not something Byronic in much of Arnold's religious poetry? Is there not too much of the pageant of the bleeding heart in his sighs of regret and farewell? Yet he realized that the old faith was dying and that man had not yet found that which could fill its place. It takes time to make an adjustment in these matters, just as it is time alone that softens the griefs of unrequited love or the loss of dear ones. And it is usually only the next generation, which has been able to make a genuinely fresh start, that settles into a new way of life. Change is a great physician because it is able to introduce new factors into the situation, and it has been at work since Arnold's day. There are, nevertheless, prophecies in his poems of another world which would before long take the place of the one that was dying; and some of us believe that, in the new democracy which is stirring into life throughout the earth, this new and more creative world is being born: "The millions suffer still and grieve, And what can helpers heal With old-world cures men half believe For woes they wholly feel? "And yet men have such need of joy! But joy whose grounds are true; And joy that should all hearts employ As when the past was new."