I opened it and found it to be a series of
semitheological, semi-social essays, purporting to have been written
by six or seven different people, and viewing the same class of
subjects from different standpoints.
People had not yet forgotten the famous "Essays and Reviews," and
Ernest had wickedly given a few touches to at least two of the
essays which suggested vaguely that they had been written by a bishop.
The essays were all of them in support of the Church of England, and
appeared both by implied internal suggestion and their prima facie
purport to be the work of some half-dozen men of experience and high
position who had determined to face the difficult questions of the day
no less boldly from within the bosom of the Church than the Church's
enemies had faced them from without her pale.
There was an essay on the external evidences of the Resurrection;
another on the marriage laws of the most eminent nations of the
world in times past and present; another was devoted to a
consideration of the many questions which must be reopened and
reconsidered on their merits if the teaching of the Church of
England were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another
dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class destitution;
another with the authenticity or rather the unauthenticity of the
fourth gospel; another was headed "Irrational Rationalism," and
there were two or three more.
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