I.

ALIQUIS. In resuming the conversations you so kindly promised me, I must inform you that I have had to encounter not a little banter and animadversion on the concessions I made to you, with respect to the Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture. I have been told that I assumed what ought to have been proved, in accepting the proposition that the Bible is a final and sufficient appeal on such a subject as the "Eternity of Future Punishment." The late Baden Powel asserted, that no argument on earth should induce him to believe a miracle, and somewhat analogous to this is the disbelief of many of the momentous doctrine we lately considered, for rather than credit it, they are prepared to repudiate the Divinity and claims of God's Word.

NEMO. Of this I am aware. Rather than accept the doctrine of the abject and hopeless future of any of our fellow-beings, some are quite ready to surrender the Divine pretensions and preciousness of the Christian Revelation. But there is no weight nor argument in all this. Disbelieving the fact of future punishment, and rejecting Inspiration because it is thought to be taught in it, proves nothing. These are only excesses of scepticism, and evidences of the domination of human

B

te amo con i mince them to more the truth of the Gospel or scrent sealed disclosures of a read of Less ve But this persistency and energy of assertin Eres not in ether side amount

This I here leamt some time ago. My -s possible to arrive at a

on of the truth of the Christian Relics We are trung an age of severe and trenchant once a subjects of human opinion, and on one more than on human judgments touching the hitherto generally ack no generally acknowledged faith of Christians: and a le I hope my faith in the Gospel of Christ is sound. I must confess to uneasiness of mind, and a desire to know something in Christian evidences more definite and assuring. Society is debating whether it shall remain Christian or not. Here in the University, examinations on Biblical subjects are discouraged, and a feeble minority of the men are being trained for the Christian ministry. Religious indifferentism, to use no stronger word, rests upon Oxford as a dark and threatening cloud. Then, you know, in that part of the country from which I come, I have had an opportunity of hearing the ridicule with which the claims of Christianity are assailed. Christianity is looked upon by shrewd and reading mechanics as one of the numerous systems by which the world is checked in its intellectual, Social, and political progress. They look upon it as an engine for cramping the minds of men, and fastening on them the chains of a spiritual despotism more terrible than any mere physical thraldom. I have heard them with sarcastic severity inveigh against tyranny and priesteraft muffled up in the cloak of piety. They point to factions in the Church, wrangling with each other on subtle distinctions, and whilst advocating liberty of opinion for themselves, practically denying it to others;

contending for creeds, and formulas, and ceremonies, rather than emulating one another in justice, and mercy, and love. The whole ontology of our religion, the problem of the existence of the First Cause, and the material basis of all life, are debated in our schools, nor are the people beyond the University spared.

NEMO. Admitting, as I must, the substantial accuracy of your representation, yet I hope you will not think too much of the scepticism of the day on religious subjects. True it is that the most solemn fundamental questions, which all religion in some form presupposes, are now challenged, still you must remember that from the beginning, from the days of Cain and Abel, scepticism has been at war with faith, and severe indeed at times have been their conflicts. Abel chose to walk by faith, and believed in a Revelation; Cain, on the other hand, walked by sight, and rejected mystery and commandment in religion. Here is the gist of the controversy that has raged from their day, and which now appears in fiercer antagonism. Long ago the fires of faith would have been extinguished, had it not been, as the inimitable allegorist tells us, for that personage, (( on the other side of the wall with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did continually cast (but secretly) into the fire." Christianity has been sustained in the world by a Divine Power. Bishop Butler in his day wrote; "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it, as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained, but to set it up as a principle subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." Upwards of sixty years afterwards, Robert Hall, in his sermon on "Modern

* Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."

Infidelity," recorded his impression of the times in which he lived. "To obliterate the sense of Deity, of moral sanctions, and a future world, and by these means to prepare the way for the total subversion of every institution, both social and religious, which men have been hitherto accustomed to revere, is evidently the principal object of modern sceptics; the first sophists who have avowed an attempt to govern the world, without inculcating the persuasion of a superior power." These periods were indeed days of great gloom and depression, but they were over-ruled by God for the development of the vitality both of the outward and internal evidences of the Gospel. In earlier ecclesiastical history you will find that the enemies of our Faith have at some periods appeared to prevail, and the glory of the Church has suffered a temporary eclipse, but it was still in existence, and like the sun obscured by a passing cloud, emerged again into power and splendour. The struggle is not yet over, although ages of victory, and universal monuments of beneficent conquest, vindicate the Gospel's claims, and pledge its final triumphs.

In answer to your Important inquiry I can assure you that solid and irrefragable reasons can be adduced for the Divine authority of the Christian religion, and that assent to its truth may be intelligent, profound, and supreme. "If we would see what the force of simple assent can be, viewed apart from its reflex conformation, we have but to look at the generous and uncalculating energy of faith, as exemplified in the primitive martyrs, in the youths who defied the pagan tyrant, or the maidens who were silent under his tortures. It is assent, pure and simple, which is the motive cause of great achievements; it is confidence, growing out of instincts rather than arguments, stayed upon a vivid apprehension, and animated by a transcendent logic, more concentrated in will and in deed for the very reason that it has not been subjected to any intellectual development.*

*Newman's "Grammar of Assent," p. 209.