| February 28th, 1908
A CORRESPONDENT sends us a cutting from a North country newspaper, giving an account of a lecture by the Rev. R. H. Benson, on “Some religious changes in the sixteenth century.” A Bishop, Dr Casartelli, who presided at the entertainment, remarked that Father Benson was strong in historical novels, and it was a vein which he hoped he would not abandon. We agree that he should continue to give his attention to fiction. For his facts he appears, on his own confession, to regard the man-in-the-street as an authority. “I have”, he said, “great faith in the man-in-the-street, but he is either ridiculously wrong or ridiculously right upon many points, but on the whole he takes a reasonable and sane view of matters, and his opinion is valued very deeply indeed.”
It appears that this reasonable and sane authority, if he were suddenly asked what happened in the sixteenth century, would probably say that the Roman Catholic Church was swept away and that the Protestant Church then began. But the same man-in-the-street, if he were asked the way to the church, would certainly not direct you to the Romanist chapel, nor even ask you whether, by any chance, you wanted to find a Romanist building. We agree that he is either ridiculously wrong or ridiculously right upon many points, but as he is more likely to be ridiculously right about a present fact than upon a matter of history which he has neither the skill nor the patience to investigate, we are inclined to think him ridiculously wrong in his answer to Father Benson’s question.
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