class="pgmonospaced">     1 Omychund v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 29.

     2  D'Costa. D'Pays, Amb. 228.

     3 Hansard cxvi. 381.

     4 Lord Raymond's reports 282, Wells v. Williams.

     5 Ramkissenseat v. Barker, 1 Atkyns 61.

     6 Coke's reports, Calvin's ease.

For more than a century and a-half the Roman Catholic had in practice harsher measure dealt out to him by the English Protestant Christian, than was even during that period the fate of the Jew or the unbeliever. If the Roman Catholic would not take the oath of abnegation, which to a sincere Romanist was impossible, he was in effect an outlaw, and the "jury packing" so much complained of to-day in Ireland is one of the habit survivals of the old bad time when Roman Catholics were thus by law excluded from the jury box.

The Scotsman of January 5th, 1889, notes that in 1860 the Rev. Dr. Robert Lee, of Greyfriars, gave a course of Sunday evening lectures on Biblical Criticism, in which he showed the absurdity and untenableness of regarding every word in the Bible as inspired; and it adds:

"We well remember the awful indignation such opinions inspired, and it is refreshing to contrast them with the calmness with which they are now received. Not only from the pulpits of the city, but from the press (misnamed religious) were his doctrines denounced. And one eminent U.P. minister went the length of publicly praying for him, and for the students under his care. It speaks volumes for the progress made since then, when we think in all probability Dr. Charteris, Dr. Lee's successor in the chair, differs in his teaching from the Confession of Faith much more widely than Dr. Lee ever did, and yet he is considered supremely orthodox, whereas the stigma of heresy was attached to the other all his life."

And this change and gain to humanity is due to the gradual progress of unbelief, alike inside and outside the Churches. Take from differing Churches two recent illustrations: The late Principal Dr. Lindsay Alexander, a strict Calvinist, in his important work on "Biblical Theology", claims that "all the statements of Scripture are alike to be deferred to as presenting to us the mind of God ".

Yet the Rev. Dr. of Divinity also says:

"We find in their writings [i.e., in the writings of the sacred authors] statements which no ingenuity can reconcile with what modern research has shown to be the scientific truths—i.e., we find in them statements which modern science proves to be erroneous."

At the last Southwell Diocesan Church of England Conference at Derby, the Bishop of the Diocese presiding, the Rev. J. G. Richardson said of the Old Testament that

"it was no longer honest or even safe to deny that this noble literature, rich in all the elements of moral or spiritual grandeur, given—so the Church had always taught, and would always teach—under the inspiration of Almighty God, was sometimes mistaken in its science, was sometimes inaccurate in its history, and sometimes only relative and accommodatory in its morality. It assumed theories of the physical world which science had abandoned and could never resume; it contained passages of narrative which devout and temperate men pronounced discredited, both by external and internal evidence; it praised, or justified, or approved, or condoned, or tolerated, conduct which the teaching of Christ and the conscience of the Christian alike condemned."

Or, as I should urge, the gain to humanity by unbelief is that "the teaching of Christ" has been modified, enlarged, widened, and humanised, and that "the conscience of the Christian" is in quantity and quality made fitter for human progress by the ever increasing additions of knowledge of these later and more heretical days.