he has a wide field over which his oratory may range. It cannot all be barren from Dan to Beersheba. In the second place, according to the Independent Religious Reformers, the great want of our times is such as they are. “It is well known,” they tell us, “that although the orthodox religious establishments are earnestly supported, they cannot gain the hearts of the people. The intelligence of England has outgrown the old creeds and formulas. Theism is secretly approved by thousands.” The time, then, is ripe for such a mission as Dr. Perfitt proposes. The hour has come, and he is the man. It is not in his negative and critical aspect that he is to be judged. In the position in that respect he has assumed there is no novelty. Unfortunately, the Church of England, like all established churches, more or less lays itself open to the most irreverent criticism. The new wine cannot be put in the old bottles. We can quite agree with him that “the majority of the clergy have no just conception of what, according to the nature of things, they are called upon to do;” that St. Paul would find himself sadly out of place were he called upon to preach to the congregation of a fashionable suburban church; and that there would indeed be a flutter and commotion raised were “the Archbishop of Canterbury, cutting himself adrift from the level of Belgravia, to stand out before men denouncing woe upon the butterflies of fashion and the Dundrearies of Parliament as Jesus denounced the Scribes and Pharisees of old.” But the saying these things does not constitute a man the founder of a new and better sect. Mr. Froude tells us “the clergyman of the nineteenth century subscribes the Thirty-nine Articles with a smile as might have been worn by Samson when his Philistine mistress bound his arms with the cords and withs.” It is scarcely possible to write a bitterer thing of the clergy, yet Mr. Froude is not, so far as we are aware, an Independent Religious Reformer. Even of the Church of which such hard things may be said, and justly said, we may argue that its theory of the identity of Church and State is a noble one, and that the dream of such men as “the judicious Hooker,” of Coleridge, of Dr. Arnold, is that of all who, in stately cathedral or humble conventicle, pray Sunday after Sunday to the common Father, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done upon earth as it is in heaven.” Man is a religious animal; the heart is true to its old instincts. There is no peace for his soul, no rest for the sole of the foot, no shelter for him in the storm, no brightness in the cloud, no glory in the sun, no hope in life, no life in death, unless he can believe, adore, and love. But we have forgotten Dr. Perfitt. Well, we need be in no hurry. If you go to Newman Street you will find very few people there by eleven. The exclusively religious service, as one of the hearers informed us it was, generally commences at a quarter past, where in the large hall about a