The Church herself should
approach as nearly to that of Laodicea as was compatible with her
continuing to be a Church at all, and each individual member should
only be hot in striving to be as lukewarm as possible.
The book rang with the courage alike of conviction and of an
entire absence of conviction; it appeared to be the work of men who
had a rule-of-thumb way of steering between iconoclasm on the one hand
and credulity on the other; who cut Gordian knots as a matter of
course when it suited their convenience; who shrank from no conclusion
in theory, nor from any want of logic in practice so long as they were
illogical of malice prepense, and for what they held to be
sufficient reason. The conclusions were conservative, quietistic,
comforting. The arguments by which they were reached were taken from
the most advanced writers of the day. All that these people
contended for was granted them, but the fruits of victory were for the
most part handed over to those already in possession.
Perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in the book was
one from the essay on the various marriage systems of the world. It
ran:
"If people require us to construct," exclaimed the writer, "we set
good breeding as the corner-stone of our edifice.
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