On Compromise. John Morley

see their way to subscribing Anglican articles and administering Anglican rites. At any rate, they admit that the use of his judgment is a duty incumbent on the individual, and a duty to be discharged without reference to any external considerations whatever, political or otherwise. This is an elevating, an exhilarating principle, however deficiencies of culture may have narrowed the sphere of its operations. It is because a State Church is by its very conception hostile to such a principle, that we are justified in counting it apart from the private Churches with all their faults, and placing it among the agencies that weaken the vigour of a national conscience and check the free play and access of intellectual light.

      Here we may leave the conditions that have made an inquiry as to some of the limits of compromise, which must always be an interesting and important subject, one of especial interest and importance to ourselves at present. Is any renovation of the sacredness of principle a possible remedy for some of these elements of national deterioration? They will not disappear until the world has grown into possession of a new doctrine. When that comes, all other good things will follow. What we have to remember is that the new doctrine itself will never come, except to spirits predisposed to their own liberation. Our day of small calculations and petty utilities must first pass away; our vision of the true expediencies must reach further and deeper; our resolution to search for the highest verities, to give up all and follow them, must first become the supreme part of ourselves.

      FOOTNOTES:

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