with ideas she has been less successful. Her danger is what M. Loisy calls 'le scandale des intelligences.' No Frenchman, in particular, who has the interests of religion at heart will question his statement,

'qu'il y a, dans le catholicisme français, trop de personnes, et depuis trop longtemps, qui n'ont pas assez peur de scandaliser les savants.... N'ont-ils pas tranché pour leur propre compte, et trop vite, hélas! le problème du Christ et le problème de Dieu, tous ces laïques instruits, qui, baptisés et élevés dans l'église catholique, s'en éloignent quand ils ont atteint l'âge d'homme, parce que notre enseignement religieux leur paraît conçu en dépit de la science et en dépit de l'histoire ?'

The religious significance of what is called Liberal Catholicism is that it is an attempt to meet this 'scandale des intelligences' on the only ground on which it can be met-that of scientific knowledge of fact. Goodness, indeed, is greater than knowledge; but goodness by itself, much more the exterior observance which is so easily mistaken for it, is an insufficient basis for religion: the world of ideas transcends the actual, but the actual is the touchstone of ideas. The question of origins is vital to Catholicism. It is idle to denounce M. Loisy for raising it. He does not ask, he answers it: the question is in the air. Whatever primitive Christianity was, it was not Protestantism, exclaimed Newman triumphantly. He was right. But it was not Romanism either: it was the parent stem out of which later Christianity, Romanist and Protestant, has grown. The refusal to recognise this gives an air of unreality to average Romanist apologetic: the alternative is inevitable; either the writers are ignorant, or they are insincere. The symbolism of Christianity, invaluable as symbolism, is false and mischievous when taken for the thing symbolised. The one grace, said Martineau, which the Roman Church seems never to reach is veracity. But, for a teacher, veracity is the essential grace: the Church must reach it, or she must die.

Viewed from this standpoint, Liberal Catholicism is a struggle for life or death. To those who look for quick returns it promises little. Its results are neither tangible nor immediate. It will attract no influx of converts; it will make no appreciable impression on the masses; it brings with it no sensible or material advantage, no

political or social prestige. Some wanderers, indeed, may be recalled, some waverers kept from secession tacit or avowed. But these, though more in number than might be supposed, are the few. In general its work is indirect and gradual; it is to create in Catholicism an atmosphere in which the modern world can breathe. This is the condition of the fulfilment of the Church's mission, and indeed of her survival. Religion is immortal, but the various shapes in which she appears are mortal; the greater the scale on which these subsist the more lingering the process of dissolution; but in the long run none can defy nature, the laws by which creeds and churches live.

'Le catholicisme sera, par la force des choses, un parti, ce qu'il ne doit pas être, et un parti réactionnaire, voué à un affaiblissement incurable et à une ruine fatale, tant que l'enseignement ecclésiastique semblera vouloir imposer aux esprits une conception du monde et de l'histoire humaine qui ne s'accorde pas avec celle qu'a produite le travail scientifique des derniers siècles; tant que les fidèles seront entretenus dans la crainte de mal penser et d'offenser Dieu, en pensant simplement, et en admettant, dans l'ordre de la philosophie, de la science, et de l'histoire, des conclusions et des hypothèses que n'ont pas prévues les théologiens du moyen âge; tant que le savant catholique aura l'air d'être un enfant tenu en lisière et qui ne peut faire un pas en avant sans être battu par sa nourrice. Une formation spéciale et défectueuse crée nécessairement une mentalité particulière et inférieure, laquelle entraîne après soi l'esprit de parti, la défiance à l'égard de ce qui est vraiment lumière et progrès. La plus sage des politiques, la plus généreuse sollicitude pour les classes populaires, n'assureraient pas chez nous l'avenir du catholicisme si le catholicisme, qui, étant une religion, est d'abord une foi, se présentait sous les apparences d'une doctrine et d'une discipline opposées au libre essor de l'esprit humain, déjà minées par la science, isolées et isolantes au milieu du monde qui veut vivre, s'instruire et progresser en tout.' (‘Autour d'un Petit Livre,' pp. xxxiv, XXXV.)

The tendency of thought is to anticipate average opinion; and it is by average opinion that the world is governed. Those who identify themselves with a movement in advance of it must count the cost. No man can serve two masters: credit, success, advancement will not be theirs. Their good faith will be denied, their motives

questioned, their shortcomings-for they are human-proclaimed on the housetops, their actions misconstrued and misconceived. The good opinion and good will of their fellows will be withheld from them; they will incur the hostility, not only of the bad-that were little—but of the good, of those whose virtues they respect and whose office they revere.

'Saepe etiam sinit divina providentia per nonnullas nimium turbulentas carnalium hominum seditiones expelli de congregatione christiana etiam bonos viros. Quam contumeliam vel injuriam suam cum patientissime pro ecclesiae pace tulerint, neque ullas novitates, vel schismatis vel haeresis, moliti fuerint, docebunt homines quam vero affectu et quanta sinceritate charitatis Deo serviendum sit. . . . Hos coronat in occulto Pater, in occulto videns. Rarum hoc videtur genus; sed tamen exempla non desunt; imo plura sunt quam credi potest.' *

Nothing, we may believe, but an imperative sense of duty could induce a man to embrace the renunciations, the strife, the interior solitude which such a lot involves. The rewards of life are pleasant, the approval of those about us is an incentive to action and a tribute to achievement with which no one who knows himself or human nature will lightly dispense. But the approval of conscience-in theological language, the praise of God-is better; it must be chosen before the praise of men. And he who chooses this narrow path 'may feel a confidence, which no popular caresses or religious sympathy could inspire, that he has by a divine help been enabled to plant his foot somewhere beyond the waves of time. He may depart hence before the natural term, worn out with intellectual toil, regarded with suspicion by many of his contemporaries, yet not without a sure hope that the love of truth, which men of saintly life often seem to slight, is, nevertheless, accepted before God.'

* St Augustine, 'De Vera Religione,' chap. vi.

Art. XII.-LORD SALISBURY AND 'THE QUARTERLY

REVIEW.'

The Quarterly Review, 1860-1883.

JUST fifteen months ago, on the occasion of Lord Salisbury's retirement from public life, we reviewed in this place his fifty years' strenuous and fruitful labour in the service of the Empire. The sad task of chronicling his death, which took place last August, now devolves upon us. He was not old as compared with some of the most conspicuous of his political contemporaries; but in the mournful swiftness with which the allotted span of his life closed in upon the busy cycle of his statesmanship Death registered a silent testimony to the unsparing selfsacrifice with which he gave himself to his country.

There is a characteristic passage in Lord Beaconsfield's life of Lord George Bentinck in which 'the difficulty of treating contemporary character' is discussed. Lord Beaconsfield makes none of the author's conventional apologies. With his usual taste for paradox he declares that there is no ground for accepting the verdicts of posterity in preference to those of contemporaries, and he gives as his reason that the mist of time in the first instance and in the other the cloud of passion may render it equally hard and perplexing to discriminate.' Were this a sound judgment there would be no difficulty in finally determining, even at this early moment, the place in English history to be assigned to Lord Salisbury; for the task is as conspicuously unobscured by the 'cloud of passion' as by the 'mist of time.' There are, however, other difficulties in this appraisement besides the disturbing media indicated by Lord Beaconsfield. In the domain of constructive politics the final test of the greatness of a statesman must be the permanence of his work. Where his work is academic rather than constructive, the test must be the endorsement of his theories by experience. In both cases the final judge can only be posterity.

Let us suppose, for example, that the Lord Cranborne of the sixties had died after his resignation of the Indian Secretaryship in Lord Derby's third administration. Can we doubt that he would have been held up to his con

temporaries, by men as far apart in doctrinal politics as General Peel and Mr Lowe, as a high type of political wisdom? And yet he himself lived to disavow, as Lord Salisbury, the principles he had regarded as vital as Lord Cranborne. Again, take the case of the Berlin Treatythe most imposing piece of constructive politics associated with Lord Salisbury's name. In 1879 no homage was too extravagant to mark the epoch-making wisdom of that diplomatic compact; and, had Lord Salisbury died in that year, there can be no question that many of his contemporaries would have assigned him a position in English history which, if not greater than that which his name may eventually enjoy, would certainly have been very different. To-day, however, no one would dream of basing Lord Salisbury's fame on the foreign policy with which he associated himself in 1878. The truth is, of course, that a final judgment can only be formed in presence of all the facts; and it is only by time that the completeness of the dossier can be assured and tested.

It is a very superficial idea that a statesman's character is necessarily mirrored in the most salient acts of his life as interpreted by his public speeches. Between the acts themselves and their governing motives there may be a whole world of conditioning circumstances; while the tactics of party warfare or the exigencies of diplomacy are elements in political speeches, the full discounting value of which cannot easily be fixed by contemporary observers. It is only in the light of private documents, or statements of opinion delivered under circumstances of limited responsibility and restraint, that the essential character and fundamental motives of a statesman can be fully revealed. When materials of this kind become available for Lord Salisbury's biographer, many judgments which now appear to be firmly founded will probably have to be modified.

We cannot assume to know exactly what quantity of such material may be in existence, but it is probably very considerable. In the impressive silence of his private life Lord Salisbury wielded a pen of singular power and productivity. Although a few magazine and other articles have been rightly attributed to him, the public have never known the real extent of his authorship. Had he chosen to write his name at the foot of everything he