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so irresistible in practice, as an idea once fully accepted as principle. And now undenominationalism seems to sway the public mind, in the manner of ideas like these. Men do not examine it. They assume it. And by that assumption they test and judge all rival theories.

Our contention, then, is in the region of ideal principles. Ideals do not always show their full import at the first. But they work themselves out with a relentless exactness, from which, sooner or later, there is no escaping. False ideals carry their own fatal nemesis. The materialistic hypothesis, or the utilitarian, or the fatalistic, or the agnostic, work, in one way or another, bitter havoc in the powers of the spiritual life. And similarly it is to be feared,—or something more than feared,—that undenominationalism once established as sovereign principle,—plausible though it may seem, and obviously just and delightful to the average imagination at the moment,—would mean ultimately the decay and death of all specific religious conviction, and therefore also, at the last, of all really religious character.