demonstrably incompatible with our present views on human life and the world.” To understand what is peculiar in the majority of liberal communions which always stop halfway, it is necessary to observe that they are generally the work of ecclesiastics who have broken with the dominant church, and that they preserve to the end some suggestion of their former belief; they can no more think, except in the terms of the formulæ of some dogma, than we can speak in the words of a language with which we are unacquainted; and even when they endeavour to acquire a new language they speak it always with an accent which betrays their nationality. For the rest they feel instinctively that the name of Christ lends them a certain authority, and they find it impossible to abandon their profession and its emoluments. In Germany, and even in France, over and above the liberal Protestants, who in the latter place are few in number, former Catholics have sought to abandon orthodox Catholicism, but they have not dared to abandon Christianity. The case of Father Hyacinthe[59] is sufficiently well known. It is in vain for those who are born Christians to try their hand at logic, and to make an effort to rid themselves of their faith. They make one think, in spite of one’s self, of a fly caught in a spider-web, who has freed one wing and one leg, and only one. [59] Dr. Junqua, whose name almost became celebrated a few years ago, also tried to found a church, the Church of Liberty; those who entered were at liberty to believe almost anything they liked, not even the atheist, properly so called, being excluded. The church in question was to have been purely symbolic: baptism it was to recognize as the symbol of initiation into Christian civilization; confirmation as the symbol of an enrolment among the soldiers of Liberty; and the eucharist, that is to say a religious love feast, as the symbol of the brotherhood of man. It is to be added that these sacraments were not obligatory and that the members might abstain from them entirely if they chose. Still, they would be members of a communion. Their faith would be designated by a common name, they would be in relations with a priest who would comment in their presence on texts of the New Testament, and would talk of Christ if he and they believed in Him. The church of Dr. Junqua might easily have succeeded in England with Mr. Moncure Conway and the secularists. [Sidenote: Neo-Christianity.]