Dr. Pusey's letter to yesterday's Times curiously illustrates the horror
of the High-Church party for teaching which does not bring on a "battle of beliefs." He writes to explain why he did not' vote against the Dean of Westminster as select preacher, and says that he does think "Dean Stanley, from his peculiar indefinite- ness of mind and of belief, is a pioneer of unbelief from which be himself would shrink," but that he did not vote against him, be- cause he feared that the opposition would only " aggravate the evil by increasing the enthusiasm of the young." " I said to those who organised it, ' In view of the souls of the young, I dare not join it.' " That was very prudent of Dr. Piney, and the Dean of Norwich would have been more prudent if he had said the same. But how strange is this violent dread of indefiniteness as itself the most dangerous enemy of faith ! We should have thought that indefinite teaching is quite helpless in the face of definite teaching of a strong and strongly-supported kind. It is not the neutral tint which can outshine a vivid colour by its own inherent brilliance. It is only when the definiteness is arbitrary, and comes not of nature, but of human volition, that the teacher of an indefinite gospel seems so dangerous a foe.
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