Augustine may well guide us in these later days; "I have learned I confess to pay such deference to the canonical books of Scripture, and to them alone, that I most firmly believe that none of their writers have ever fallen into any error in writing. And if I meet with any thing in them which seems to me to be contrary to truth, I doubt not that either the manuscript is in fault, or that the translator has missed the truth, or that I myself have not rightly apprehended it."

In these prefatory remarks I have been trying to shew you that the Bible is unlike all other books, and that very many things may be said of it, with perfect truth, which cannot, as I have before observed, be said of any other book. It stands at an immeasurable distance from every other in its versatility, and in its unity; in its high morality, and in its sublime theology; in its exquisite and unfailing adaptations to mankind, and in its direct and fearless appeals to the highest conscience and reason of man. How is it that this book surpasses all others in the admiration and homage it has received from the great, the wise, and the good? How is it that it has survived the most determined and persistent combinations for its damage and removal? Its friends answer, because it is God's Book, and has upon it the broad refulgent stamp of Divinity. An invisible and vital guardianship surrounds it, and its enemies may as well attempt to pluck the sun from the firmament, and upheave the pillars of the universe, as destroy the Bible. "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the Word of our God shall stand for ever."

II.

ALIQUIS. Have you any further clue to the secret of scepticism in these days? Would you state what you deem the cause of opposition to the Christian faith and records?

NEMO. Your query would lead me to the consideration of the natural history of religious doubt. There are degrees of an unfriendly attitude towards God's Book. Perhaps I should not call them all unfriendly attitudes. Unbelief, scepticism, infidelity; are three words which it would be well to discriminate. I would speak of them in the order just given; unbelief, the not accepting the truth of the Gospel, leads to scepticism, which is a state of doubting and questioning, and too frequently ends in confirmed infidelity. Hence we see the peril of indifference to the claims and invitations of the Gospel. How many in this position are found an easy prey to doubt and temptation?

ALIQUIS. But is belief, or unbelief, a moral question, and a matter for either approbation or blame? When a proposition is presented to a man, he believes or disbelieves it, according as the thing appears to him probable or improbable, true or false. How can he be responsible for the way in which it strikes him, or for the judgment he forms?

NEMO. I am frequently told by young men that they cannot help doubting and disbelieving on Biblical and religious subjects, and they deem it unreasonable that unbelief should be the object of God's displeasure, or faith of His approbation. But on this point the testimony of Holy Scripture is clear. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not shall not see life." "If ye believe not that I am He," said the same Blessed Redeemer, "ye shall die in your sins." Then remember how solemnly St. Paul cautions his brethren; "Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God." It is evident that the opinions you have just broached are at direct variance with the whole tenor of the Gospel of Christ. That Gospel plainly states that our pardon and salvation depend on our faith. We have before agreed, I suppose, that the emotions and desires of the heart play an important part in guiding our thoughts and judgments. Every one of us by nature possesses "an evil heart," a wrong moral bias, a tendency to evil. Therefore, if the mechanism of the human intellect be not in a virtuous and healthy condition, it is likely to judge erroneously, and hold to its secret loves and preferences. Man's reason is not like a balance which weighs with strict exactness that which is presented to it; on the contrary, it is too often biassed by feelings, by acquired habits, by hope, or fear, or imagination. "It is one thing," says Whateley, "to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth." The whole practice of the world illustrates the fact, that belief or unbelief are in a great measure moral qualities, and that men are held responsible for them, and for all the consequences, good or evil, which result from them. "If a man about to cross a river sees a notice that it is dangerous to pass, but thinks he knows better, and disbelieves it, and is drowned, all persons will acknowledge that he lost his life through

his own wilfulness. If a man embark his fortune in a foolish speculation, in spite of the advice and remonstrances of his friends, and so ruins himself and his family, it is not held to be sufficient excuse that he did not believe his friends, but thought himself wiser." Some men, by a mental convulsion, as it were, pass from a state of unbelief, or religious indifferentism, into positive infidelity, and afterwards point the finger of scorn at those who still believe in the unseen and supernatural relations of God to the human soul. It may be difficult to precisely recount the causes of their sad relapse and departure from God and His truth. But their state of indecision on religious matters had much to do with it, their neglect of duty had something more, and perhaps the engrossing study of science, the catastrophes occasioned by nature's laws, and the darkening perception of the manner in which the gradual growth of knowledge seems to lessen the region of the supernatural, completed their revolution of feeling, and removed their anchor ground of belief.

The causes therefore of that destructive criticism with which the Christian religion is now assailed, are of two kinds; Satanic and human. There is serious significance to be attached to the representations of the apostle; "But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." With the Scriptures in our hands we need not hesitate to attribute not only indirectly and originally, but distinctly and petually, the existence of sin in our world, to the operation of the Evil Spirit, and regard every attempt to thwart the truth of God, and destroy the kingdom of righteousness, as the suggestion and agency of this same Evil Spirit. Our lives are invested with great solemnity, and in union with God will alone be found our hope of deliverance and salvation. Van Mildert, in

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his " 'Boyle Lectures," so exclusively dilated on the direct operation of Satan in the origin and prevalence of infidelity, that his opponents charged him with Manichiasm. Perhaps in these days we are in danger of understating this invisible and solemn agent of infidelity; nevertheless, we must not forget intermediate agents. This general and supernatural cause must be considered in the region in which it works, and in the instruments it employs. We must then also consider the human causes of opposition to the Christian Faith, these being both moral and intellectual. These are the agencies visible in actual history. Psychology teaches us that the emotions operate immediately on the will, and the will on the intellect; hence the emotion of dislike, is able through the will, to prejudice the judgment, and cause disbelief of a doctrine against which it is directed. The evidence of religion being probable evidence, not demonstrative, offers opportunity for the subtle influence of moral causes, where at first sight intellectual might seem alone to act. You will see then how the nature of the Christian religion presents distasteful features to a man of immoral or unspirtual life. It is such a man's apparent interest to find Christianity untrue, and he cannot, with his tastes and proclivities, but dislike its positive and holy injunctions. It is certain that sinful tastes and habits bring with them temptations to unbelief.

ALIQUIS. That is a little severe. Your language seems to imply that every one who cannot accept the truth of Christianity must be perverse and wicked.

NEMO. I should be sorry to say that in this broad direct way. I believe a little in "honest doubt,” and do not imagine that any sinfulness can be attached to the mere scepticism of inquiry. But a conscientious mind will use its utmost endeavours to find the truth, and the utmost caution not to communicate needlessly its doubts to others. Yet, tell me how to speak of men (for my remarks refer only to such) possessed of the