with or without intelligence, all imaginable subjects from the highest to the lowest, and even in the treatment of the greatest has usually a mocking majority out of those who attend at all, but more frequently must address a mass who are indifferent or ignorant. II. In the second place I will endeavor to present the ideal of which scepticism is the caricature. If I succeed in this, I may suggest a remedy for this "delirium" and sore malady of man's reason.

I. Before dwelling on the abuses to which the reason of man is tempted in actual life, we should remind ourselves that the reason, the feelings, and the will are one in essence, and make up each indivisible human person. They are inseparable in fact, and mutually serve one another. The reason enlightens, the will gives energy, the feelings supply motives and vivacity. The reason may become the slave of the other two. This is precisely what religion forbids, claiming the service of will and feeling to all real light, natural or supernatural. This is the only tyranny over the natural man included in "the obedience of Christ." "With intellect itself," as has been said many times, and cannot be said too often, "with really moral and reasonable intellect, with the thought of man recognizing at once its power and its weakness, its vast range and its necessary limits, religion has, can have, no quarrel. It were a libel on the All-wise Creator to suppose that between intellect and spirit, between thought and faith, there could be any original relations other than those of perfect harmony."

"2

Still we ought not to be surprised at the charges, numerous and groundless as they are, brought against religion by reason, when we consider the actual condition of that reason in the world around us.

A young man believes that with money he could command and rule the world; and when he finds himself in possession of a keen, cultivated intellect, but without 12 Cor. x. 5, τὴν ὑπακοὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ.

'Liddon's University Sermons, Sermon VIII., p. 167. Rivington, 1869.

money, he often, half in scorn and defiance, will offer his services as a writer, to those whom he despises, in order to win the money which to him then seems his first need. Then are we presented not seldom with a piteous spectacle. The world of which he dreamed to be the master he finds has made of him its slave. He is bidden to write up this measure, to depreciate that; to sound the praises of some leader in politics, and to pick out and magnify the faults of a chance adversary who stands in his wayto do both with vivacity and an air of conviction, though knowing nothing of either. He must present views of politics, morals, even religion, in the interests of the parties or men who have bought his services, not as they seem to him right or true. If a young and generous soul chafe at this bondage, as it can hardly fail to do, it is coolly reminded that its bargain is an affair of commerce, not of conscience. If, constrained by harsh necessity, it submits to its hateful task, its whole intellectual life becomes poisoned and warped. The human soul sometimes seeks to avenge its own degradation by denying the ideals against which it has sinned. He who by practice has acquired skill to confound truth and falsehood, and right and wrong, by sophisms which, though they do not convince, can confound, plain people, because they may have no answer ready, comes to take pride in his power, and ends by blunting the keenness of his own. intellect, and half believing the lies he has defended. His conscience shows itself by irritation and unfairness toward those who plainly tell him of his real condition. He will even boast of his own freedom, and taunt the friends of religion with their subjection to bondage. Thus the mercenary writer, attacking religion as he by turn attacks everything else, wears his degrading yoke, and still refuses the only offer of deliverance.

Another class of pernicious books and writings proceed from authors who have resolved to achieve notoriety, if they cannot have fame, at any price. As the class just mentioned are the victims of pride, so those now to be

described are the fools of their vanity. At one time it is an able man in his own department (say) of natural science, but restless till he enters the field of theology, of which he knows little or nothing; at another it is a versatile and stirring writer seeking for a new sensation; at another it is a theorist resolved to prove his particular hypothesis at any cost, whether of Bible, Church, or morals; at another it is an unprincipled sophist, whose vanity courts reputation by some plain and stinging exposure. Sometimes among these we find an eccentric man of wealth, who will expend his money to put forward some novelty in religion. What is to be noted in these vainglorious writers, whether they have much ability or little, is that they seem content, as if their end had been gained, if they make a sensation in the religious world, call forth criticism, examinations, answers, unsettle the faith of some, spread an impression that the foundations of religion have been shaken. They care nothing for the religious distress, the loss of peace, the tears, the despair, of those who through their means have been robbed of their only guide in life, their sole comfort in affliction.

Perhaps the most revolting phase of scepticism-the phase which at times brings it under the chastisement of the civil law-is when it deliberately allies itself with sensuality. The power of literature infused with this malign spirit has at different times displayed itself in an appalling and incredible degree. Its agents have not wanted human ability; but, amid the pollutions of the imagination and unbridled passions, all beauties of language and imagery are lost in a hideous animalism.

"Many years ago a German in Dresden, defending sensual sin, said, 'Does not nature itself bid you indulge yourself?' I did not well know what to answer, but I ought to have said, 'Nature is that which my Maker meant me to be. I am sure

He did not mean me to be the slave of every passing desire.' The ruling powers in man are reason and conscience. Passion must submit to them, or misery and dissolution follow."-Bp. Walsham How (Bedford), Sermon in S. Paul's, 25th Dec., 1886.

The typical modern assailant of religion may be said to be characterized by a self-reliant cynicism. He will not acknowledge any enthusiasm for, hardly any belief in, virtue. He is too proud or too fastidious to be numbered with those whom vanity incites to write, and he respects himself too much to join the sensualists. Still his intellect, without doubt, though he may not suspect it, is the slave of an inordinate egotism. The writings of such often deceive good judges by a semblance of impartiality, by their cool, clear vigor, and are thought models of intellectual perfection.

II. The following may be taken as a summary of scepticism when it appears as a foe of religion, and includes both its essential character and its most familiar manifestation.

1. It denies, with all the vigor with which it denies anything, a separate province for religion, especially the system of truths known as supernatural religion, as distinct from those which constitute natural religion. The intellect, it affirms, "commands the whole field of truth." To speak of spiritual facts beyond the ken of the natural reason is too humiliating for this proud spirit. Still, reason is compelled at times to confess, even in its researches in natural knowledge, that certain facts - the existence of the indefinitely small and the indefinitely great, for instance-become probable, of which still it can never reach direct knowledge. So the truths in the province of religion, discovered by unaided reason, remain limited and ineffective.

Even, however, when driven from its exclusive claim to judge of every truth, and brought to admit revelation, it is inclined merely to substitute one form of rebellion for another. Though it allow that a revelation may have been made, it still claims the right to judge and criticise its contents. It thinks it even becoming to put in a stipulation that religion shall contain no mysteries. Still, besides the intrinsic unreasonableness of criticising the contents of a real revelation—as if, while the Almighty is speaking to us, we should undertake to tell Him what to

say when we examine the various meanings and applications of the word "mystery" in Holy Scripture, it is not easy to see how, even in its deepest sense, it can be excluded from any revelation, or how a great truth like the Incarnation, made known to man as the ground of his faith and salvation, can, while any relation of it be unexplored, as some of its relations must certainly forever be, be anything else than a mystery.

With equal inconsistency and pertinacity, the religious sceptic, coming to a sound mind, is sometimes heard loudly insisting that, though he may admit a supernatural revelation, and even mysteries, he will have no dogmas in his religion. He objects to dogma on principle, without reference either to the Authority that proposes it, or to any necessity that seems to demand it. It seems to him in some way contrary to the essence of religion -to its flexible and poetical character. Yet a dogma, every one knows, means, as a Greek word, the "decree of a sovereign. In revelation it is a plain, unequivocal statement of a truth of religion, e. g., "the Lord our God is one Lord," "the Word was made flesh." It is necessary that truths should thus be stated, both to guard them against mistake, and to make them capable of being taught; and it is difficult to see why the same truth, when plainly stated, should be harder to receive than when wrapped in poetic imagery.

2. The ideal sceptic, also, like the more familiar mundane one we have been considering, "looks forth" (σμETTεTai) for himself upon the world around him with attentive, searching eyes, scanning its physical constitution and the ways of its inhabitants. He has no prejudice against any truth whatever, natural or spiritual. He has the thirst for truth and knowledge imbedded deep in man's nature, and bringing him at once his purest and most lasting delight. He has never dreamed that truth is unattainable: his nature was formed for it. If some mysterious barrier · ἐξῆλθε δόγμα παρὰ Καίσα· πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην. - S. ρος Αὐγούστου ἀπογράφεσθαι Luke, ii. I.