lying conviction that faith has solid grounds of truth on which it may rest; and consequently, though an individual or a generation may falter in its allegiance, the truth will not fail to shine upon other souls and upon other generations with intenser brilliancy and effect.

But what phrase shall we select to express that type of unbelief which seems to have taken so strong a hold of not a few of the present generation—whether they are unwilling sceptics, agnostic seekers who never find, or earnest and reverent souls who are in terror lest God and his truth have ceased to be because so many wise men deny them? What shall we say of the alarm of those lookers-on who observe not merely that many faintly believe, but discover the more appalling evidence that multitudes are drifting into the half-formed conviction that the reasons for faith seem one after another to be dissipated by the advance of science and culture, as morning clouds melt before the morning light.

No phrase seems more fitting for this state of mingled doubt and fear than "The Collapse of Faith," whether it describes the failure of faith, or the fear that this failure is reasonable and is likely to be universal. Other phrases make the presence or absence of faith to be dependent on the subjective condition of the persons concerned. Whether the hindrances to faith in these cases be intellectual or moral, they have only to be removed, and the light of truth will appear again. The condition for which we seek a suitable appellation is, the more or less settled and prevailing conviction that faith is not only failing, but that it is doomed to a slow but certain dissolution, and that all the indications of the prevailing time-spirit justify this conclusion.

We are well aware that the presence and prevalence of such a conviction are no new phenomena in the history of Christendom. Bishop Butler recognises a similar collapse of faith in his time, in the words so often quoted: "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

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way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." It was doubtless his reflections on this condition of opinion which led him on one occasion, when walking in his garden with his chaplain, to stop suddenly and ask the question, "Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity as well as individuals?” and in response to the reply, to add, "Nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity equally at least with private persons, can account for the major part of those transactions of which we read in history." The amiable yet sharp-witted Berkeley has drawn a lively portrait of the freethinkers of his time, which, with certain inconsiderable changes, finds its exact counterpart in the advanced thinkers of our own time. Niebuhr, the leader and almost creator of modern historical criticism, recognised the atheistic unbelief of his own day as worse than insanity-as almost a demoniacal frenzy.

It avails but little, however, to refer to Butler or Berkeley, or even to Niebuhr with his old-fashioned notions about Providence and prayer and moral retribution, which he so obstinately retained with his new theories of the philosophy of history. The advanced critics of our time are characteristically averse to any comparison of old times and old thoughts with the events and thoughts of the present. Butler and Berkeley, in the opinion of many, have been altogether left behind by the prodigious advances of modern science and the deeper insight of modern philosophy. Development and evolution are no longer used in the high spiritual significance in which Niebuhr employed these terms. It is only as these terms have become wholly materialised by Comte and Spencer that they are accepted in the most modern philosophy.

The authority of Butler has not only been set aside, but by the dexterous use of modern dialectics it has been shown that the cumbrous and old-fashioned battery which he contrived for the defence of Christianity is capable of being used with deadly effect by the new-fashioned assailants of theism. And as for Berkeley, the new atheistic materialism is ostentatiously Berkeleian in its creed-using the very arguments which Berkeley devised for the annihilation of matter to demonstrate that spirit and matter are in substance but one.

Leaving the times of Butler and Berkeley to themselves,

with their historians and critics, and returning to our own, we cannot deny the fact that a collapse of faith has befallen us in a somewhat peculiar and a very formidable fashion. Its most alarming feature is this, that, whether reasonably or unreasonably, men of knowledge and culture are so extensively taking it for granted that Christian theism, in the essential truths of personality in God, responsibility in man, and the providential and supernatural conduct of human history, is doomed to vanish before what is called modern science and culture. They do not all affirm that this collapse will be final. But they find unmistakable and alarming indications that it is making rapid progress among thinking and cultivated men. We could cite many arguments and concessions to this effect from numberless essays and criticisms proceeding from very ablé and discerning writers who represent various schools of thought and feeling. This conclusion is held, indeed, in various forms: by some in the form of a fixed and logical conclusion, by others as a gloomy and unwelcome foreboding, by others as a shivering misgiving, by others in a spirit of sorrowing but patient fortitude, by others in a temper of frivolous refinement, and by others in a mood of malignant recklessness or despairing pessimism. In short, there is alarming evidence that a positive and scornful contempt of Christian theism as a doctrine and a life, a desponding or malignant disbelief in its truth, and a more or less assured confidence in its downfall, have become more or less definitely the creed of many young men in England and America.

We propose to examine the reasons for these conclusions, in whatever form or spirit they may be held, and whether by the friends or the foes of the Christian faith. To give greater definiteness to our theme, we would propose the definite inquiry whether faith has in the last century gained or lost in the argument, and especially whether, under the critical and confident attacks that are peculiar to the present age, her cause is weaker or stronger at the court of the last resort- the court of the sober second thoughts of considerate and competent men. By the argument we do not mean the argument as viewed in the light of a rigid and dry logic, but in the actual hold which the truths in question have gained and are likely to keep in the convictions of the present and the next generation. We

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are prepared to concede that in no century since the Protestant Reformation have the opinions of believers in Christian theism been modified in so many particulars as during the present. And yet we would contend that in spite of these changes, and in many cases in consequence of these changes, faith in Christian theism and all that it involves never stood so strongly on grounds of reason in the minds of those who accept it as true, and never could urge so many arguments in its defence. position implies that we do not accept as final the confident, and in a sense the honest, unbeliefs of eminent scientists who may be narrow in proportion to their eminence. Nor are we convinced by the a priori assumptions of pantheistic or agnostic philosophers by profession, nor by the logical deductions of the school of critics who from the opening to the close of human history deny the possibility that God can direct or interfere with it as puerile or fanatical. We do not sympathise with the supercilious tone of that literary criticism which is moved by no fervent sympathy with those views of duty or spiritual aspiration which are characteristically Christian, whether Christianity be true or false. While we recognise

the force of all these classes of negative arguments and prepossessions, we find stronger reasons for rejecting than for accepting them. While we would do the amplest justice to the considerations which induce so many to adopt negative conclusions, and while we sympathise with the alarm which is felt by so many honest inquirers after truth lest the foundations of faith should be destroyed, we would reassure them and reassure ourselves with a brief survey of the argument for and against the Christian faith as it stands at the present time, under the several heads to which we have referred.

I. It will be conceded by common consent that what is called modern science should be considered first of all, as well for its intrinsic claims to attention as for the confidence with which its authority is appealed to. We are also compelled to connect philosophy with science, because by a naïve and therefore pertinacious effrontery modern science claims to have become a philosophy, and as such to furnish materials and to dictate principles, methods, and laws for every department of special investigation. Even when science ignores and

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denounces metaphysics and speculation, it unconsciously sets up and uses a metaphysics of its own, though this is often nothing better than a transformed and amplified physiology or physics.

Connecting for these reasons science and philosophy together, we propose as our first inquiry: What effect upon the great argument before us has been wrought during the preceding century by the changes in each and in both, whether considered separately or as one? We limit our view to the last century because, with the exception of the Newtonian physics, terrestrial and celestial, modern science in every one of its divisions has been the growth of this period. Within this time also every variety of metaphysics, including the transfigured or rather the disguised physics of which we have spoken, has had its ardent representatives and devotees.

Going back a little earlier than a century ago, we find that in 1770 the Système de la Nature, by Baron Von Holbach, very generally attracted the attention of the philosophers of Europe, and claimed to express the ultimate and prevailing thought of the age. It was grossly and avowedly atheistic, painfully but not brilliantly imaginative, violently and contemptuously arrogant with respect to any and every form of religious faith and feeling. It called forth at once the indignant protest of Voltaire, who represented the reasoned deism of the logical school, and subsequently the passionate remonstrances of Rousseau, the founder and leader of the sentimentalists. Far gone in its negations as the new illumination of science and philosophy had proceeded, it had not gone far enough to respond with distinct and full-mouthed assent to Von Holbach's outspoken and defiant assault upon theism. And yet this writer in a most important sense had the argument of his time on his side. He commanded the assent of the hour. Against his logic, whether weak or strong, whether it were the logic of science or sentiment, Voltaire's ingenious protests and Rousseau's eloquent appeals could avail but little, and that little but for a little while. When we say he had the argument we certainly do not mean that he had the truth on his side, but that all the logic was on his side which was provided in the principles and premises which were currently recognised by cultivated men in respect to man and his signi