We have heard much of the Broad Church for many years, till the designation is almost as familiar to our ears as that of the High Church or of the Low Church; but the Broad Church of former times,—some twenty years ago, we will say, when the ecclesiastical world was all on fire because the then Prime Minister was minded to give a mitre to a certain professor of divinity at Oxford,—held doctrines² very far indeed behind those to which the liberal parsons of these days have made progress. The ordinary Broad Church clergyman of that era was one who showed himself to be broad by his tolerance³ of the doubts of others, rather than by the expression of doubts of his{120} own. He was not uncomfortably shocked at finding himself in company with one who was weak in faith as to the Old Testament⁴ miracles, and listened with placid⁵ equanimity⁶ to discussions which went on around him to show that our ancient Bible chronology was defective⁷. But now we have got much beyond that. The liberal clergyman of the Church of England has long since given up Bible chronology, has given up many of the miracles, and is venturing forward into questions the very asking of which would have made the hairs to stand on end on the head of the broadest of the broad in the old days, twenty years since. There are bishops⁹ still living, and others have lately died, who must have been astonished to find how quickly their teaching has had its results, how soon the tree has produced its fruit.

The free-thinking clergyman of the present time is to be found more often in London than in the provinces, and more frequently in the towns than in country parishes. They are not many in number, as compared with the numbers of all parsondom in these realms; but they are men of whom we hear much, and they are sufficiently¹⁰ numerous to leaven{121} the whole. There are many things, gone recently altogether out of date, which the

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