RECENTLY a young candidate for the ministry in the Presbyterian denomination was refused credentials by his examining superiors because he did not believe that Adam and Eve and some other Biblical characters ever had a literal existence. Later, this refusal was revoked, and it was announced that the young man would be received into the ministry on the proviso that he would have not give expression to his heretical views in the pulpit; and on this condition he accepted the office. The point was not unnoticed by Catholic journals, and one of them remarks:— It is a strange, an anomalous position in which this young man wittingly puts himself; nor are those who were the authorities to pass upon his candidacy any better placed from the view-point of courage and consistency. The same journal then cites these words by a Protestant clergyman, Rev. Edward Cummings, of Boston, as showing the fatal effect of such inconsistency upon a healthy spiritual life:— What man of affairs would tolerate in business the ambiguity and pretense and mental reservation that are encouraged in our churches to-day? I am convinced that people are more honest and straightforward in thought and speech than their religious teachers. In order to retain connection with religious bodies, men and women must often submit—and are often urged to submit—to subterfuges and humiliating appearances of conformity which are not in good form in other departments of life. To our shame, it must be confessed that it would be difficult to devise a less helpful training in the great virtues of honesty, clear thinking, and plain speaking than that which many of our religious denominations furnish to-day. There is much in this to explain why so little of the power of godliness is manifested in connection with the preaching of the present day.