punishes them, it acts strictly as a religious persecutor. It is the expression of the intolerance of a moral dogmatism. The man who gives a sentence of penal servitude for a revolting moral offence, and the licenser who prohibits a play because of its violation of decency, are respectively in the exact logical position of an ecclesiastical persecutor. If, then, there is any degree of immorality which the law will be justified in prohibiting, any speculative opinions which will lead to such immorality must surely fall equally within the law's cognisance. The most tolerant of men would probably not wish to tolerate the opening in Piccadilly of a public temple to Priapus, nor even the delivery of lectures in which men were urged to his practical worship, let the speculative ground of this teaching seem never so sound and rational. Or let us take the theory of medicine. A quack is at perfect liberty to theorise about such matters as much as he pleases, and to publish his theories. But if the publication of such theories could be proved to infallibly result in the sale of poisonous drugs, the law would very soon step in, and the publication would be prohibited. We may come nearer home than this. What is the education of any child but a system grounded on intolerance and carried out through persecution? If a Protestant mother keeps a Jesuit out of her house, that, in its own degree, is a religious persecution. If a father burns a licentious book, lest his boy shall read and be corrupted by it, in burning that book he, so far as is practicable, burns the author of it. Law-suits often arise, in these days, between parents of different religions as to which shall have the religious care of the children. What is it that, on either side, each parent claims? It is the right to a religious persecution on the child's behalf.

Finally, if persecution should still seem such a barbarous thing to contemplate, and such a sinister thing to anticipate, let us again remember what is its only possible end and its only legitimate condition. Regarded in its usual and more extended sense, it can fulfil its own end only when it represents the conviction of the vast majority; and if ever it be again had recourse to in the future, let us consider what that conviction it represents will be. It will be the deliberate and the solemn conviction of every one worth considering in the world; it will be a conviction led up to or sustained by every branch of human study, every exercise of the human intellect, and the need of every human emotion that humanity agrees to reverence. In other words, a religion, to persecute in the future, will need to represent and embody the entire intellect, morals, and force-in other words, the whole higher humanity-of the nation that arms it for this purpose. Until some religion does that, persecution is a thing we need none of us fear; when it does that, it is a thing that we shall all of us welcome.

Meanwhile, as far as the Catholic Church goes, she watches the

evils round her, and at once deplores and makes the best of them. She knows that it must needs be that offences come; but she knows, too, that these offences may work together for good; nor does she refuse to profit by many that do not follow after her. Whatever is good outside herself, she is theoretically capable of taking into herself and assimilating; whilst the intellectual spectacle of the present, and the intellectual experience of the past, are combining to alike intensify her condemnation of error and to melt her anger towards the victims of it.

It may be well, perhaps, to conclude this paper-the last of my present series-by stating that my criticisms of Catholicism are not the criticisms of a Catholic, but of a complete outsider-of a literal sceptic-who is desirous, in considering the religious condition of our time, to estimate fairly and fully the character and the prospects of the one existing religion that seems still capable either of appealing to or of appeasing it.

W. H. MALLOCK.

VERIFY YOUR COMPASS.

Or the many ethical errors to which humanity is prone, is one which is curiously common, and yet against which, as curiously, we are little on our guard. It is difficult to correct because it is not easy to recognise. It is not that we are habitually given to follow our impulses that error is too universal to be astonished at, or written about. It is that we are so apt to be proud of our failings, to worship our weaknesses, to canonise our defects, to mistake the beacon which should warn us off the rocks for the lighthouse which was designed to direct us into port-to enthrone in our blindness the very qualities and fancies and predilections which we ought sedulously to watch, and severely to imprison-to dress them up as idols and then worship them as gods-to glorify them with a hallowed name, and then to obey them with a devoted loyalty which is almost touching, and which would be admirable were it not so easy, so mischievous, and so tenacious. We take, as our guide in life, some Will-of-the-Wisp which is the mere miasma of our fancies and our passions, and follow it as if it were the Pillar of Fire which was sent to point our course amid the pathless desert and the forest gloom. We do this in all sincerity—often indeed almost unconsciously; nay, it may even be that those who fancy themselves virtuous, and who pass as virtuous in others' estimation, are specially liable thus to swerve from the true line; and then when we have gone far astray and have done much wrong, some of us pause amazed and aghast, and a few-very few indeed-perceive their error and repent. Probably of all qualities which have done most business in this way, one of the most notable and most rarely recognised is that which goes by the name of Conscientiousness. In noting the curious amount of mischief this has wrought in the world, as well as the smiling self-approval and inflated complacency of the perpetrators, we are provoked to inquire whether this may not be the most active of the faults which contrive to get themselves canonised as virtues, or at least knighted or coroneted as such, by an inconsiderate and hasty public.

We have most of us the misfortune to be connected, or at least acquainted, with a man who is a slave to his conscience,' and who

prides himself on being so. The Italians have a special word for this particular sort of pride; they call it pavoneggiarsi-to peacock oneself. Probably we shall agree that of all our circle of associates such a man is often the most provoking, unmanageable, incalculable, and occasionally the most cantankerous. He does not reason on ordinary principles; he does not act on commonly received doctrines; he is not guided by the axioms or habits which govern the conduct of the mass of men. You never know where he may turn up; and when he has turned up anywhere, you can scarcely ever move him. 'He must,' he tells you, act uprightly-fiat justitia ruat cælum. He must do whatever his conscience directs' -and sometimes his conscience whispers very odd commands. Sometimes, also-which is more to our present purpose-other voices usurp the functions of conscience, forge its exact signature, speak in its name, and imitate its very tones.

Often what a man takes for the dictate of conscience is nothing more than a whiff of impulse, a caprice, a crotchet, which an undisciplined mind cannot distinguish from the deliberate decision of a competent intelligence; and the more impetuous the impulse, the more sudden and vehement the caprice, the more it is likely to represent itself to his imagination as a sacred command of the monitor within. There are some persons who can no more discriminate between a desire and a duty than others who have a mere smattering of arithmetic can cast up a long addition sum right. Yet these are precisely the characters most prone to be dogged and persistent in their noxious blunder, and to dress it, both to themselves and to the world, in the gaudiest guise. How frequently do we meet with men incapable of injustice or cruelty themselves, who will defend the most scandalous instances of both if perpetrated by women whom they love, and maintain that chivalry' forbids them to do otherwise; or who, if they themselves had wronged a fellow-creature, would be prompt with the amplest apology, but who would repudiate as pusillanimous the suggestion of enforcing similar atonement when a wife is the offender.

In most instances of this sort, mental confusion or defect must bear the blame, because it really is the origin of the faults which are laid at the door of conscientiousness, and unrighteously suffered to pass under its name. But in five cases out of six, mere conceit is the fons et origo mali; and in such the deceitful veil should be rudely torn away-not the less rudely because the deceit is often self-deception, and genuine self-deception too. We are all of us probably familiar with men-usually young men, or narrow-minded men, often mere prigs and puppies-who affect a course of action, or a standard of right and wrong, at variance not only with that of the general world (which might often be permissible enough and even praiseworthy), but with that of those whom they are bound to defer

to, and cannot but respect, whom in their secret hearts perhaps they do respect not only fathers and mothers whose character they cannot fail to reverence, whose experience they must recognise as at least affording a primâ facie probability of wisdom, and whose views they know to be the very reverse of inconsiderate or low-moralists by profession, whose tone and thoughtful depth only the most presumptuous could dare to question. They venture to condemn where their teachers would acquit, and to admire where these teachers would reprobate or deplore; to become enthusiasts in a cause which older and wiser men regret and which in riper manhood themselves are certain to abandon. They are conscientiously' resolute in acting up to their own convictions, fancying all the while that they are more deep and far-sighted than others, when in truth it is only that they are more inexperienced, and pluming themselves on the simplicity and purity of their vision, while their shallowness and narrowness are leading them astray. Life abounds in specimens of this class, and the character is a favourite one with novelists.' They are often cured, but usually too late. They sometimes repent of their errors, frequently outgrow them, but not till they have done endless mischief, and inflicted incalculable pain, and perhaps embittered and embarrassed their whole after life. Meanwhile the plea of conscience, and the supposed obligation of obeying the orders it issues as those of a despot by divine right, enable them to escape alike condemnation and contrition.2

Mrs. Gaskell's beautiful novel Ruth affords an excellent instance. Ruth, innocent and beautiful, left an orphan and without connections, is turned out of doors at sixteen by a rash and hasty mistress, in whose establishment she had been placed to learn dress-making; and not knowing whither to turn in her despair, is persuaded by a gentleman, who had already half-engaged her youthful fancy, to accept shelter and assistance from him. She goes astray, scarcely if at all conscious that she is doing wrong, but from a gentleness of nature that never dreams of resisting the influence of those she loves. . . . The process by which her character is purified and elevated, and her fault redeemed through the influence of Mrs. Benson and her passionate attachment to her child, is described with a fidelity to the deeper secrets of our nature as beautiful as it is unique. Among the members of Mr. Benson's congregation is a wealthy and influential merchant, Mr. Bradshaw the very distilled essence of a disagreeable Pharisee; ostentatious, patronising, self-confident, and self-worshipping; rigidly righteous according to his own notion, but in our eyes a heinous and habitual offender; a harsh and oppressive tyrant in his own family, without perceiving it, or rather without admitting that his harsh oppression is other than a grand virtue; yet driving by it one child into rebellion, and another into hypocrisy and crime, and arousing the bad passions of every one with whom he comes into contact; having no notion of what temptation is, either as a thing to be resisted or succumbed to, for the simple reason that all his temptations-those of pride, selfishness, and temper-are yielded to and defended as virtuous impulses ; prone to trample, and ignorant of the very meaning of tenderness and mercy. This man, reeking with the sins Christ most abhorred, turns upon the unhappy Ruth (who, after six years, had become governess in his house) as soon as he learns her history, with a brutal violence and a coarse unfeeling cruelty which we need not scruple to affirm constituted a far greater sin than poor Ruth would have committed if her lapse from chastity had been persistent and deliberate, instead of being halfunconscious, transient, and bitterly and nobly atoned for.