speech, the Comtist too ambiguous in his language, the literary admirers and eulogists of Christ too invertebrate in their Scepticism, for the adherents of this school. Hence, they not only deny the supernatural, but vehemently oppose all that tends in this direction. To this class of Sceptics, Jesus Christ is no longer the great Moral Teacher and Example of Goodness; they hate Christ, and try by every means in their power to make others do the same. They attempt to discredit His teaching, question the perfection of His morality, and sneer at the precepts He uttered. They are never weary of speaking against Old Testament Prophets and Preachers, the Apostles of Christ they ridicule, and all Churches and Christians they despise. They identify Christianity with Priestcraft, and represent it as the support and mainstay of all social and political tyranny. The priestly' army of occupation' of all creeds they regard as the deadly foes of progress, and, in the interests of human freedom, they profess to oppose the religion of Jesus. We do not care to quote from the writings of this school, for to most people its language, we hope, would be offensive, and to many blasphemous. At the same time we must not ignore its existence, nor must we underrate its social and political, as well as religious, significance. There are many to whom the outspoken denials of this school will be more welcome than the covert attacks of politer men. They are not able to enter into, or to appreciate, the critical discussion of the time; they care little for the poetic representations of the followers of the religion of Humanity; reverence for a Power, at once unknown and unknowable, will appear to them as extravagant as any claim made on behalf of Christianity; the 'poetic reserves,' so much lauded by a Renan, they do not much admire They take note of the fact that critics are said to reject the supernatural, that scientists decline to be guided by the Book of Genesis; looking at things from this standpoint, they are ready to appreciate a bolder, if perchance a more brutal, handling of these high themes. And when, by cunning lecturers, Christianity is represented as the foe of progress, its adherents the up

holders of social and political injustice, and its triumph as the knell of freedom, need we wonder if they applaud?

man.

Perhaps it is well that the moral aspects of this controversy should come before us in these bolder forms; 'worship or stone Him!' this seems a blunt way of putting the alternatives open to honest men, yet it has the merit of being at once swift and decisive. No third course is, we believe, ultimately open to The failure of the Critical School to solve, on Sceptical principles, the problems with which it has been dealing makes this manifest. The moral weakness of other so-called solutions only serves to deepen the impression. When we find bolder spirits in all the great centres of population, willing and ready to apply these negations to the questions of social and political life, to reconstruct society on a purely Atheistic basis, to banish from life, not only the sublime truths of Christianity, but also its moral ideals and principles, we may be better able to see the drift of much of the other unbelief of our time. 'A universe without a presiding Intelligence is not in any true sense a moral universe.' If the construction of such an ideal universe be the great aim of the intellectual rejectors of Christianity, need we wonder that their bolder comrades should discard the moral restraints so long associated with the religion of Jesus Christ? If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink;' if Christ be no Son of God, but a mere creation of the poetic imagination of gifted men ;1 if man was not made in the image of God, but simply evolved without any supernatural control or direction from some 'ape-like ancestor;' if when he dies he returns to dust, and is no more for ever, why should he live under conditions, and act under inspirations, that are the outcome of faith in the supernatural? Sceptics who value the moral element of Christianity, who are anxious that we should make Christ's character our ideal, while rejecting His Divine origin

1 Later on we shall show the untenableness of this view. Meanwhile, we are assuming that the more 'muscular' opponents of Christianity accept this view of the case. That they do this, however uncritically, we cannot doubt.

and authority, may protest against this theory of life; to the masses of the people it will ultimately appear more rational than theirs, and it is for our good that the moral tendency of unbelief should be thus seen. Not Sceptics, but men with faith in God, faith, too, in the sacredness of conscience and in immortality, created the civilization of which we are justly proud, and the highest elements of our civilization, not to say our religion, can be conserved only by men of faith.1

1 See Laveleye's 'Protestantism and Catholicism in their bearing upon the Liberty and Prosperity of Nations.'

CHAPTER III.

SOME OF ITS CAUSES.

'And peradventure in the after years,

When thoughtful men shall bend their spacious brows

Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere

To ruffle their smooth manhood and break up

With lurid lights of intermittent hope

Their human fear and wrong, they may discern

The heart of a lost angel in the earth.'

Lucifer in 'A Drama of Exile.'

'Scepticism, with its innumerable mischiefs, what is it but the sour fruit of a most blessed increase, that of Knowledge; a fruit, too, that will not always continue sour.'-CARlyle.

'Doubt and unbelief assail for the most part, not the pure essence, but the corrupted forms of Christianity.'-PROFESSOR CHRISTLIEB.

ATHEISM, says Professor Blackie, is a 'disease of the speculative faculty, which must be expected to reappear from time to time. It indicates, in fact, a chaotic state of mind analogous to that physical chaos which makes its epiphany betwixt the destruction of an old world and the creation of a new.'1 Whatever we say about the learned professor's philosophy of the origin of Atheism, we must admit that extreme unbelief is an abnormal state of things. Man is naturally not a Sceptic, but a believer. 'Trust in testimony is the pivot of human affairs; the whole fabric of our civilization rests upon faith, and the relations of man with his fellow are pleasant and helpful, just in proportion as he believes and trusts. Hence, when we meet with either units or masses who are known as

2

1 'Natural History of Atheism,' p. 3.

2 Dr. Conder, 'Basis of Faith.'

unbelievers, we at once inquire into the origin and meaning of their distrust or Scepticism.

We have not met, in the course of our studies on this subject, with any very complete classification of the causes and occasions of Scepticism. Probably, most thinkers feel that anything like an exhaustive treatment of the subject is impossible. That there are general causes of unbelief operating very widely amongst us, all may see and acknowledge; all the causes and occasions of Scepticism can be known only to the Searcher of Hearts. Minds are so differently constituted, and the 'environments' of our moral and intellectual life are so different, that what leads one to unquestioning faith may produce in another a tendency to doubt.

much like a truism, The physician is not diseases; he seeks to

There are some who make short work of all such inquiries, by referring all kinds of Scepticism at once and directly to the depravity of the human heart. Unbelief, wherever and under whatever conditions it is found, is simply one of the manifestations of the evil heart in man which leads him to depart from the living God. Doubtless there is truth in such a view of things, but the truth is too general, too indeed, to be of much service to man. content with saying that man is liable to study and to understand each separate form of disease, in order that he may trace it to its root, and, if possible, remove its causes. That man is liable to disease, that he lives in a world where germs of disease float about in the very atmosphere, are most important truths, yet they are too vague to be of much practical benefit. We must know more about the conditions under which these germs come into contact with the organs of the human body, and lead to such painful results. So we must not be content merely with tracing unbelief to the depravity of the human heart; this is a constant quantity' in human nature, belonging to apologist as well as Sceptic, to the infidel who denies, and the dogmatist who denounces him. We have need of great wisdom in dealing with such a theme, so that we may do justice, on the one hand,