I Do not think that the disciples of the Faith have any reason to be alarmed, either at the character or the prevalency of modern unbelief. There has been a scepticism distinguishing every age of the Christian Church. Sometimes it has been sullen and inert. Where the spirit of the times has been revolutionary, and the minds of men have been in conflict with political change, the dogmas of the Church have generally slept in peace, and unbelief has simply existed as the passive condition of iniquity and ungodliness. At other times it has assumed the active form of inquiry and discussion, especially at the close of a great national struggle or a great war, when the boundaries of empires have been readjusted, and perhaps a nation has been liberated from bondage, and new forms of government have been introduced and established. When the old has been compelled to give place to the new, when the ancient landmarks of political doctrine and privelege have been removed, it was inevitable that the Church would not be allowed to escape. Although Christianity is the mother of freedom, the restraints of her laws, and it must be confessed certain ecclesiastical errors of her leaders, have favoured the impression that religion has discouraged intellectual freedom and frowned upon the impulses of advancement. To this it must be added that there is in the human heart a natural dislike to any law that professes to be divine. St Paul's account of this enmity satisfies us: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: and he cannot know them, becaused they are spiritually judged" (1 Cor. ii. 14). Those who decline to accept Paul's teaching may explain, if they can, how it comes to pass that every mind which thinks at all is conscious of a rebel sentiment against the authority of God and the inner standard of conscience. This inborn repugnance has not only inspired the scepticism which has always assailed the biblical doctrines of the Church, but has made an honest and impartial examination of those doctrines well-nigh impossible.

At any rate, the opposition to Christianity has been conducted in a spirit so combative and remorseless, that nothing has escaped the rigour of every available test. In the attempts to overthrow the faith there have been two forces at work: there is the scholarship and speculation of the learned, examining the teaching of revelation, and there is the persecution of rulers testing the fidelity of its witnesses. These two forces, with little variation, have consistently attacked the Truth from the beginning. They resisted the testimony and embittered the ministry of our Lord; they assumed incredible activity and fierceness during the career of the Apostles. How remarkable that this first age was the dispensation of miracles of those very evidences, the absence of which in after times was the alleged ground and justification of unbelief! Even the resurrection of our Lord, the most carefully and luminously attested of all the miracles, was

disputed by contemporaries; not to mention the fact that where unbelief was inspired and supported by the jealousy of the reigning power, or the pride of the prevailing school of thought, no miracle, however strikingly manifest, was able to shake it; it was simply invincible.

In the discussion of our subject this fact must always be present to our minds: The revelation of Christ belongs not to the ordinary sphere of thought, where propositions are considered upon their merits, and the understanding yields or refuses its assent according to the proofs by which they are supported. Christian truth is admitted to the mind by another law than mere intellectual apprehension. There are certain dispositions of the heart which introduce a new element into the processes of intellectual acquisition. There is sympathy with the doctrine presented; there is a willingness to conform to the results of conviction, if conviction should follow; there is that kind of humility and frankness which are the steps of a child's way to knowledge all these must animate the study of Christian evidence. Our Lord's teaching on this subject is equally precise and profound: "He that willeth to do the will of Him that sent me, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself" (John vii. 17). Of similar import is another passage: Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. xviii. 3).

Unbelief is very much the same in every age. There is popular infidelity which is not so much an intellectual temper as an aspect of enmity to Christ, for there is in it neither sincerity nor learning; and there is serious scepticism, the unbelief of honest minds which in many cases is a mere halt on the road to faith, but, in some few instances, is a despairing inability to arbitrate between the contending claims of a certain class of propositions, an infirmity which, very curiously, exists in minds carefully trained and of eminent endowments. These defeated inquirers merit our earnest sympathy, and may be left to His care Who is touched with the feeling of every infirmity, be it intellectual or constitutional, that impedes an honest effort to attain a knowledge of the truth. They are not so far from the Kingdom of God as we are apt to imagine.

But while unbelief, as thus classified, is, in principle, the same in all generations, its particular character is determined by the age in which it prevails. The unbelief of the masses is tinctured by the doctrines and spirit of contemporary leaders of thought; those doctrines are travestied by the popular drama or novel. The atheism which is gravely proclaimed and defended in the treatise, is parodied by the wits of the tavern, and finds its way to the jests and laughter of the comic theatre. We may select an example from the reign of Queen Anne, when literature commanded the same eminence as that which science has achieved in our own time. The

flippant scoffing spirit which infected the unbelief of the people in the beginning of the eighteenth century, descended to them from the speculations of a deistic philosophy and the writings of literary men. It came at last to be considered that the Christian religion was so palpably a human fabrication that its pretensions hardly merited a serious research. The apology of Bishop Butler for writing his Analogy reminds one of the irony of Swift. These are his words, and the attitude of present-day unbelief gives them a peculiar significance:

"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 principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."

Those who take a gloomy view of the strength of modern infidelity, and see in the great names that support it, and in the popular forms in which it is made intelligible and attractive to the public, the prospect of another reign of Atheism, may remember that following the date of the Analogy, there swept over the Churches of England and Scotland that wonderful revival of spiritual life which was awakened by the ministry of Wesley, Whitfield, and others. Christianity rose up like a giant refreshed and became suddenly triumphant, scattering the prejudices, the arguments, and the resentments of infidelity like chaff, not through the learned defence of apologists such as Butler, Bentley, and Barrow, to whose labours all honour be ascribed, but through the unadorned proclamation of the tidings of grace, accompanied by the ancient power that gave irresistible effect to the simple preaching of the first witnesses of the Cross. New churches sprang up in a night like Jonah's gourd, but not like that ephemeron did they perish in a night, for they are flourishing this day.

And yet the unbelief of this day is supposed to present a more formidable front than the scepticism of the last century, or, indeed, of any preceding age. This is partly due to the advancement of science; not that there is, or can

be, any antagonism between science and

Christian truth, for truth is one. Science is the knowledge of facts respecting nature. The methods and resources of inquiry into natural phenomena have enabled scientific men to attain results so new, unexpected, and far-reaching, that the public mind is bewildered by their brilliancy. The students of nature in seeking for exact knowledge, live themselves in a world of speculation, in certain regions of which only their imagination can attend them, and this pioneer faculty is the inspiration and sometimes the guide of their researches. It is only natural, therefore, that the authority of science, unimpeachable in its own proper domain, should be made to extend to questions that lie outside the rigid walks of scientific analysis. Christianity does not teach science, but the books upon which her revelations are based, affirm the history of supernatural events. Science denies the miracle; there is nothing new in this repudiation; the

miracle has been denied from the beginning. But if it be maintained that science has adduced any stronger reason for its rejection than that which was debated in the old controversy, we absolutely deny it. It was always insisted that a miracle was impossible. But what was meant by the impossibility of its occurrence? Only this, that what are called the laws of nature must have an unbroken, an undeviating ordinance; that nature knows nothing of any suspension of law. Science, by illustrating this fact, has given it completeness and impressiveness, but she can add nothing to it. Science cannot say that there is no mind above nature; some of her disciples have said it in her name, but in doing it, they abuse her authority and descend from the high province of exact knowledge to the level of speculation.

But while we have nothing to fear from the progress of science, while we rejoice in that progress and applaud the labours of those whose genius, diligence, and patience have so marvellously extended the boundaries of discovery, it is no less true that popular unbelief has been fortified by what has appeared to be a new authority. People who do not think and cannot reason have an impression that at last science has disposed of revelation: that the hard facts which recent researches have brought to light have dissipated the halo of divinity with which the imagination of its followers have encircled the Bible, and left the inspired writings bare of any merit other than that of a merely human composition. This impression has been strengthened by the agnosticism to which certain men of science have imagined themselves driven. Names of scientific renown are caught up and quoted in vindication of an infidel rejection of the Word of God. Literature is pressed into this unhallowed service. Journals are devoted to the propagation of anti-Christian doubt, and novels of considerable artistic merit bring sceptical doctrines into our families, and diffuse them through our circulating libraries.

To those of us who are contending in the great fight of faith, the unbelief of working men is a subject of absorbing solicitude. This Alliance from its foundation has evinced a deep and practical interest in the religious welfare of the working classes. I am satisfied that infidelity has no serious hold of the artisans of England. Their's is for the most part a negative infidelity. It is not the infidelity of conviction, but of apathy. Their intelligence is just now concerned with politics, and with trade combinations. That brutal insensibility and selfish narrowness that used to be marked features in their life are beginning to disappear, and we may often detect in their conduct the presence of large and generous sentiments. When some great disaster overtakes their comrades in the coal pit or the mine they risk or sacrifice their lives in the work of rescue with sublime heroism. In their clubs the democratic spirit will sometimes prompt them to assume an attitude towards the Christian faith, and emphatically the Christian ministry, which they are ready to disavow if you meet them alone, or visit them in their homes, especially if there happen to rest upon their family the shadow of sickness or bereavement. Their relation to the Church has been rendered more hopeful through the temperance movement. It is not

merely that great numbers of them have been delivered from the debasing tyranny of the publichouse, but new habits of sobriety and thrift have awakened self-respect and personal responsibility; and this change has been strengthened and confirmed by themselves engaging in temperance work. This is not only a social renovation; it is a great moral triumph, and is spreading through the crowded city-populations of the land. We may, I think, gratefully accept it as advancing the solution of a deep and intricate problem: How to get the artisans of the country and their families into the Church.

We have spoken of present-day unbelief as fortified by what is supposed to be a new authority, the discoveries of science and the countenance of scientific men: we have indicated the measure and the importance of that authority. But the Church itself, the guardian and the exponent of the Faith, is in danger of becoming, unwittingly, a minister of unbelief. I am not going to discuss the principles of what is known as the Higher Criticism. I do not think I am called to enter within the precincts of that controversy. I admire the earnest and conscientious learning that presides over the sacred literature of the Church. There has always been, there will always continue to be, schools of thought representing departments of theological research, and different fashions of ecclesiastical taste, not necessarily opposed to each other, but all aiming to express the mind of God or to improve the edification of public worship. We cannot forget, however, that sometimes these divisions instead of building up the faith of the Church have imperilled its safety; and but for the ever-following guardianship of the Angel of the Covenant, the strife of those who bear the Ark of the Lord would long since have destroyed it. The conflicting views now current among theological leaders on the historical books of the Bible, and on the character of the inspiration pervading it, have given a kind of poignancy to popular unbelief. Those who have always doubted the supernatural authority of the Word of God, on the common ground of their hostility to every thing divine, will affect to see in the disputes of the Church a confirmation of their suspicions. People of this class rarely acquaint themselves with the merits of these questions. They are content to imagine that their resistance of the claims of the Bible acquires some importance when men who are the appointed interpreters of the Bible cannot agree as to the nature of those claims.

I am

In meeting present-day unbelief the pulpit occupies our front rank of defence. convinced that the more excellent way of attacking unbelief from the pulpit is to preach Christ. I doubt the wisdom of making the pulpit a professor's chair for the purpose, for instance, of defending the Biblical account of the creation from the Darwinian theory of evolution, or maintaining the accuracy of the sacred writers against the criticism of those who impugn their inspiration. If a minister attempt this method of controversy he should be a great master in it. An imperfect handling of a sceptical position in the presence of a congregation will probably add to the number of unbelievers; and even when the treatment of the subject is able and conclusive, the tendency of such preaching is to disturb rather than settle the faith of the hearers. At

the same time a minister's studies should include, if possible, the whole literature of polemics, for there are many young men and women, the hope of the Church, who apply to him for help, as they would consult an oracle. Moreover, the pastor who keeps abreast of the learning of the day, and is familiar with the currents of popular doubt, will understand the intellectual and spiritual needs of his hearers, will anticipate their difficulties by sympathy, and meet them rather by informal teaching than by logical and technical treatment. I am speaking only of the functions of the pulpit where the limits of a discourse will not admit of an elaborate refutation of infidelity, and if the preacher leave his work half done, with the chance of never attempting the other half, perhaps the most important division of the argument, his congregation will be left in a far worse plight than he found them. The simple and direct teaching of the Cross, the setting forth of Jesus, present in every mind to bring the evidence of that presence to the doubter, is sufficient to meet the ordinary unbelief of an assembly, which is probably little more than that deadness to faith which no argument can quicken. The assurance of the understanding must come after all from the demonstration of the Spirit.

But the preacher is linked to his people and to the community by another bond than that of the pulpit. He is intimately related to the family; and there are subtile forms of unbelief in the children of the Christian home, which almost

The

invariably escape the sermon. The most pernicious impressions will secretly thrive even in our select families, awakened or fed by the current literature of fiction and journalism. pastor must study the children of his flock, or much of his public labour will be thrown away. He must acquire their confidence, guide their reading, invite the disclosure of their sceptical misgivings, and rescue them from the insidious drift of popular infidelity.

We have described the unbelief of working men as something which vanishes when you touch it; but you cannot touch it without first knowing where it lies; and here again private intercourse will do more than preaching. It is everything at first, for as a rule working men do not attend public worship. The attraction that conquers their reluctance is not an ornate service, or a musical entertainment, or a festive tea meeting, or a Sunday afternoon talk on politics and socialism. Methods like these are just now widely adopted, and not altogether without result. But they fail for the most part to win the genuine artisan. He is proud and shy, and carries within his heart an ancient prejudice against the parson, the Bible, and the Church: a prejudice inherited and made almost impregnable by the habits and surroundings of his life. And yet strong and firm as it is, it rests neither upon conviction nor experience. He does not know the parson, he does not read the Bible, he does not enter a church. But a prejudice in which there is no intelligence is not impregnable. Approach the working man with sympathetic respect; show him the friend and not the patron; visit his family; let him see the practical side of Christianity, which is the beautiful gate of the Temple, and he will enter in; let him see the love, the tenderness, and the majesty of Jesus;

and falling down he will worship God, and acknowledge that God is with you of a truth.

The literature of Christian evidence, whether in the form of elaborate treatises, sermons, or pamphlets, has done good service in the defence of the Faith; but unless some new position is assumed by our adversaries, demanding an immediate reply, I do not think that very much is to be gained just now by learned apologies. The best way of dealing with those who attack the Word of God is to get them to read it. As the Bible increases the number of its students it diminishes the number of its enemies. Whether the Revised Version of the Old and New Testament will take the place in the Churches of the land which they were designed to fill may be a matter of doubt; but there can be no question that the labours of

the Revisers have already borne precious fruit in giving a new stimulus to Bible reading, resulting in a vast increase in the circulation of the Scriptures.

And here let me add that it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of recent editions of the Oxford and Cambridge Bibles as an instrument of meeting present-day unbelief, putting into the hands of young ministers, teachers, and ordinary readers, the results of the most advanced criticism on questions relating to the text and the chronology of the sacred books; and presenting invaluable summaries of the most recent discoveries of antiquarian explorations in Egypt and Syria, showing that God is making the very stones to cry out against the scepticism of the age.

If I were to select from you, to-night, testimonies concerning the exploits of faith, how some of you who have joined the army of the Living God have found the old weapons (the tried and trusted ones) to do grand deeds, we should hear many stories, and God's name would have the glory. Those who are called to lead pilgrims to the Celestial Land need to-day to be Greathearts well armed. Ours is still a way of war. I am sorry for any Christian man or woman who thinks it is an easy thing to get to heaven. Before long, they will find out their mistake. I believe it is harder than ever; for the machinations of the adversary, the inventions of sin, are more numerous to-day than even in the days of yore. He who thinks he can play the part of a carpet-knight in the regiment of King Jesus, had better clear the ranks. We want men who know how to grip the sword, draw it from its sheath, and wield it in the name of Jesus.

What are the weapons which we have to use in this holy crusade? We do not go to the battle unarmed. Some think they can fight the foe without any weapons. They have misjudged their adversaries, for the forces are as strong as ever. Sin is sin to-day. You may dress it as you please, you may name it as you like, but it is Jezebel that looketh from the window, though her face be rouged and painted; and we have to bid, in the name of the Lord, that the harlot should be flung to the ground. Error is the the same to-day as in ages past, though some may cull from dictionaries or lexicons strange words to designate it. It is the same disguised, I grant you but in the name of the Lord, thrust surely and severely against all superstition and falsehood, and bring the demon down. Am I not right in saying that the world to-day is the world of yesterday; more worldly, methinks, than in times that are gone; and we have to fight this force, too? We need to be warriors well armed.

Where should we find our weapons? There are some who will search for them outside

Emmanuel's land. For my own part, I prefer home-made weapons. German bayonets are capital things for corkscrews, they bend and twist so easily; but they are no good for real fighting men. We want the true metal and the strong steel; and you will find that the heroes of the past, who accomplished much through faith in the Living God, were wise to select such armaments as had been proved and tested. David, on one occasion, was minus a weapon; but he found that, in the place where he was, there was a sword which his own hand before had handled. He had taken it from the slain giant, and knew what that keen blade could do; for you recollect how, having slung his stone into the head of Goliath, he ran upon his carcass, and drawing forth the giant's sword, severed the head from the body. What did he say?" Give me that, for there is none like it." He had proved the old weapon to do its work well, and he asked for none other on this occasion. When the young King Joash ought to have been on the throne (but a usurper held that position), he had his guards about him, who took from the temple walls the spears and the shields of David, which had been used in battle before, and had been thrust into the bodies of the fces, and which had protected Israel from the shafts of their adversaries. So I call again, to-night, to you who have lately enlisted in the ranks of King Jesus, you should seek for nothing else but the same old weapons that were used in days gone by.

I like the Bible of my father-blessed Book of God! They want to change it for something else. I take after my father, I think, in being somewhat old-fashioned. I like the old Book. That is the weapon; the old weapon that our Blessed Master used when, foot to foot and face to face with the fiend of hell in single combat in desert wilds, He fought and won. And I, as a young soldier fighting under the same bar.ner and seeking to follow the same Captain, say, "that sword of the Scriptures which my champion wielded so well, 1, too, with the hand of faith, will grip again "'; and,