Turning now from the results on Judaism itself and on Christianity at large of a great Jewish Reformation, we may indulge in some reflections on the possible bearings of such an event on that not inconsiderable number of persons who, all over Europe, are hanging loosely upon or dropping silently away from the Christian Churches. I am not speaking of those who become Atheists or Agnostics and renounce all interest in religion, but of those who, like Robert Elsmere, pass into phases of belief which may be broadly classed under the head of Theism. These persons believe still in God and in the life to come, and hold tenaciously by the moral and spiritual part of Christianity, perhaps sometimes feeling its beauty and truth more vividly than some orthodox Christians who deem the startling, miraculous, and “apocalyptic” part to constitute the essence of their faith. But this “apocalyptic part,” and all which Dr. Martineau has called the “Messianic mythology,” they have abandoned. Of the number of these persons, it is hard to form an estimate. Some believe that the Churches are all honeycombed by them, and that a panic would follow could a census of England be taken in a Palace of Truth. Not a few in the beginning and middle of this century quitted their old folds, and under the names of “Unitarians,” “Free Christians,” and “Theists” have thenceforth stood confessedly apart.[24] But of late years the disposition to make any external schism has apparently died away. The instinct, once universal, to build a new nest for each brood of faith seems perishing among us. The Church-forming spirit, so vigorous of old in Christianity and in Buddhism, is visibly failing, and making way for new phases of development, of which the Salvation Army may possibly afford us a sample. Among cultivated people subtle discrimination of differences and fastidiousness as regards questions of taste are indefinitely stronger than that desire for a common worship which, in the breasts of our forefathers, who “rolled the psalm to wintry skies,” and dared death merely to pray together, must have mounted to a passion. Englishmen generally still cling to public worship, but it is chiefly where an ancient liturgy supplies by old and holy words a dreamy music of devotion, into which each feels at liberty to weave his own thoughts. Wherever the demand is made for prayers which shall definitely express the faith and aspirations of the modern-minded worshipper, there the subtleties and the fastidiousness come into play, and, instead of being drawn together, men sorrowfully discover that they are made conscious by common worship of a hundred discrepancies of opinion, a thousand disharmonies of taste and feeling. In all things, we men and women of the modern Athens are not “too superstitious,” but too critical; and in religion, which necessarily touches us most vitally, our critical spirit threatens to paralyze us with shyness. The typical