conclusion, object to "assent" to alchemy? He ought to look through the eyes of the past upon the statements of the past. He ought to import the historical method. To any one who might protest that he repeated in his chemical creed doctrines he could not verify in his laboratory, it would be enough to reply, if Mr. Haweis's argument has any validity—" Not more speculation, but more history is what we want."

No chemist would consent to occupy a chair in any University, however famous and however ancient, if he were compelled to employ in his lectures formulæ he distinctly regarded as obsolete and antiquated.

A line of argument which so completely breaks down when applied to the teaching of science, can hardly be sustained when the study of religious truth and the exercises of religious faith come into question; unless, indeed, the office of a clergyman is surrounded with responsibilities of a lower type than those of a professor, and what we believe concerning the everlasting God is of less importance than what we believe about the elements of which the worlds are composed.

I have left myself no space in which to examine the second question raised in this discussion-viz., the general question as to the necessity or advantage of a creed as a basis of Church fellowship. I may be permitted, however, in conclusion, to notice one or two points in which theories regarding the proper constitution of a Church come into contact with the obligations involved in Subscription.

Mr. Forsyth is, I think, entirely successful in demonstrating that if a Church have a doctrinal basis at all, it ought to be distinctly formulated and authoritatively adopted. No plan human wit could devise is calculated to engender more painful personal disputes, and to give freer play to pettier influences, than to exact orthodoxy" from a minister of religion, and yet to furnish

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him with no clear information as to what that "orthodoxy" is. A congregation, under such circumstances, readily becomes an assembly of heresy-hunters, while its minister has no fair chance of meeting the accusations levelled against his teaching. Better far to have Thirtynine Articles, with an appeal possible to a Court of Law to determine their sense, than a "tacit understanding," with an appeal to a private committee.

But when Mr. Forsyth falls back upon a creed as a modus vivendi he enmeshes himself in the net of his own arguments.

Short as is the creed he would prefer to the state of things existing in his denomination, it presents every difficulty, theoretical as well as practical, of the "tacit understanding," which he so justly condemns. He wishes it to contain the great historical facts, and not the great speculative facts. Questions regarding the historical facts of the Bible, however, are the very questions on which, at this moment, there is the largest divergency of opinion, and the greatest necessity for a Church to prove itself possessed of an inclusive rather than an exclusive spirit. A Church that draws any sharp line at all about historic facts, excludes not only learned critics but devout Christians from its membership and ministry; and if the line be not sharply drawn the possibilities of endless controversy exist.

Another series of difficulties would arise from the "speculative facts" which are supposed by many to be intimately connected with the "historical facts" of Christianity; and a man could, with equal justice or injustice, be condemned as a speculative heretic on historical grounds, or as an historical heretic on speculative grounds.

Suppose the words which Mr. Forsyth states would be sufficient for many, "say, this Association exists for setting forth the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," to be adopted; I ask, Would it mean, or would it not mean, that a

Unitarian could become a member of the Congregational Union?

Would not any doubt left upon this point call into activity the official committees, whose influence Mr. Forsyth so gravely deprecates? But Mr. Forsyth speaks of retaining the words "only Son" to describe Christ "to satisfy those who would exclude pronounced Unitarians."

As a Unitarian, I may be permitted to say that I can imagine no subject more laden with subtle issues, more perplexing, more intricate, than the determination of the exact points of difference between a pronounced and an unpronounced Unitarian.

My conclusion on the whole matter is, that the obligations of Subscription are the obligations of bonâ fide belief in any Articles of Faith presented for acceptance; and that the recital of a creed in the course of public worship ought to imply the personal acknowlegment of its dogmas. The claim for intellectual freedom in a Church which presents Articles of Faith as legal standards by which its clergy must be judged, and intermixes dogmatic utterances with its prayers, is altogether untenable. Those who believe in a non-subscribing Church have no fitting home within a Church based upon Subscription. There is no defence for freedom of religious thought except in the case of a Church which, from generation to generation, depends upon the living sympathies of its members.

HENRY W. CROSSKEY.

Ο

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION AND ITS

MORALITY.

NE profession amongst all those exercised in this country has importantly shifted its position during the past century. The Army, the Navy, the Church, and the Bar stand much where they stood in the days of the Plantagenets; but Edward IV.'s "Corporation of BarberSurgeons" has made a wonderful ascent from its pristine status, passing up from Henry VIII.'s "Incorporated Society of Surgeons" to the "College of Surgeons," in the reign of Victoria.* A parallel elevation has taken place at the same time in the other branch of the medical profession which previously occupied (so far as its rank and file were concerned) a very humble position, even while a few eminent men in each generation rose to wealth and honour. At last the ignoble squabbles of the surgeons with the physicians, and of both with the apothecaries, are hushed, and the united professors of the Healing Art have lifted themselves as a body altogether to a higher plane than they ever before occupied. By dint of cohesion and generalship they form a compact phalanx, and have obviously suddenly arrived at the consciousness of corporate power. The

* The Incorporated Surgeons grew out of the Barber-Surgeons, and in its turn became the origin of the College of Surgeons. In 1797, Lord Thurlow, in opposing the Bill for the incorporation of the latter, was rude enough to observe that "by a law still in force the barbers and the surgeons must each use a pole," and that the pole of the surgeons must terminate in a gallipot and a red rag. He would be a bolder Chancellor than Thurlow who, in 1881, would not tremble on the woolsack ere he reminded the surgeons of our day of the pole and the gallipot.

Medical Council, already far ahead of Convocation, has become a little Parliament, destined soon to dictate to the larger Senate of the kingdom, not only concerning its own interior affairs, but also concerning everything which can by possibility be represented as affecting the interests of public health. As medical officers in parishes and unions, factory and prison surgeons, public vaccinators, medical officers of health, inspectors of nuisances, and very commonly as coroners, the doctors are daily assuming authority which, at first, perhaps, legitimate and beneficial, has a prevailing tendency to become meddling and despotic. In the Army and Navy, the surgeons, long unfairly deconsidered, now haughtily claim equally unreasonable precedence. Even the Government of the country appears unequal to the task of contending with the profession since Sir Richard Cross succumbed to the deputation which invaded the Home Office many hundreds strong, and reduced him to the humilitating concession of turning his own Vivisection Bill from a measure to protect animals into one to protect physiologists. The tone of bullying adopted by the medical Press when the same Government presumed at its own discretion to appoint a Registrar-General who happened not to be a doctor, was apparently intended to strike terror into the hearts of any Ministry which should venture again on such a step; and the same may be said of a more recent effort to overawe the present head of the Local Government Board when he desired to limit the penalties to be inflicted on the heretic victims of these modern Inquisitors, the parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated. In all newspaper correspondence, indeed, wherein medical men express their views-notably in the grand battle which has raged for a twelvemonth round the walls of Guy's Hospital-a new tone of dominance, not to say arrogance, is perceptible; nor do many lay writers on the press or speakers in public meetings venture to allude to the