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ing for the first time on the encounter with Materialism or with secular modes of thought. At present, certainly, the tone and feeling of society is not anti-Christian: it only needs to be reassured. We are not entering on a conflict unexpected, unforeseen. He who came "not to send peace upon the earth but a sword," has with that sword, "even the Word of God," armed His warriors for the fight of Christian truth with human imperfection.' We are contending for a Elements faith which from the first has been the religion of progress: whose cardinal doctrine is the love the reof our kind, the source of all just and enduring Christ. liberty:3 which has been ever the enemy of social injustice which in nowise denies the unity of the human race and is confined to no one clime, to no one tribal division of mankind, Aryan or Semitic, to no one form of political constitution and which in its deep sense of human

1 See M. Guizot, Meditations, Vol. I. p. xx.

2 This is admitted by M. Comte, Phil. Pos., IV. 231, and comp. Dean Merivale, Lect. on Conversion of the Empire, p. 210; also Guizot, Civ. in Europe, I. 94, ed. Bohn; Ozanam, Civil. in Fifth Cent., I. 4, E. T.; Lecky, Hist. Rat., II. 234-5.

3 Professor Goldwin Smith, Study of History, Pref.

✦ Thus Cardinal Wiseman, Lect. on Science and Religion; Ffoulkes, Div. Christendom, p. 247. "Christianity alone has a definite message addressed to all mankind. The character of the teaching of Mahomet is too exact a reflection of the race, time, place, and climate in which it arose to admit of its being universal. The same objection applies to the religions of the far East," &c.—Dr. Newman, Gram. of Assent, p. 425. "Christianity is a living truth which never can grow old," &c. Ib., p. 480.

of perma

nence inherent in

ligion of

responsibility has been the handmaid of man's perfectibility, leading him up to "the fulness of the stature of Christ." We are contending for a faith which claims to be coeval with the powers, the wants, the destinies of human nature: which alone is potent in virtue of Christ's Mediation to heal the wounds of conscience and dry the tears of sin which has extended our very conceptions of purity and holiness, as possible to man: and which alone satisfies the boundless yearnings of his spirit by filling it with the promise of the likeness of its God. Why should we not assert for such a religion as this, the living germs of permanence and truth, a vitality surviving modification, a vigour which can never decay, a life immortal as the soul for which it lives and works?1

Μέγας ἐν ταύτῃ Θεός, οὐδὲ γηράσκει.

1 "Nemo dubitat eum qui veram religionem requirit, aut jam credere immortalem esse animam, cui prosit illa religio, aut etiam id ipsum in eâdem religione velle invenire. Animæ igitur causâ omnis religio. ... Animæ causâ vel solius vel maximè vera, si qua est religio, constituta est."-Augustin, de Utilit. Cred., c. vii.

LECTURE II.

OBJECTIONS TO THE PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY

CONSIDERED.

C'est un vieux bâtiment : si on y touche, il croulera.

"Je suis donc très-disposé à croire que chez des hommes que ceux qui m'entendent l'instinct secret devinera juste assez souvent même dans les sciences naturelles. Mais je suis porté à le croire à peu près infaillible lorsqu'il s'agit de philosophie rationnelle, de morale, de métaphysique et de théologie naturelle."

DE MAISTRE, Soirées, 1er Entret.

LECTURE II.

"If thou sayest, Behold we knew it not: doth not He that pondereth the heart, consider it? and He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? and shall not He render to every man according to his works."—Prov. xxiv. 12.

§ 1. WE have been hitherto occupied with the The past

history of

anity a

believing

manence.

consideration of permanence as a crite- Christirion of truth, and the conditions of its applicability ground for to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christianity, we con- in its pertend, is the only religion which has stood its ground, which has taken part in the general advance of modern civilization as represented by the nations of Europe, the foremost portion of mankind. There is, then, good reason to believe that it must be true, and will prove to be an accompaniment of human progress to the end. The argument thus afforded to its claims to reception is laid on grounds which are common to any religious system. It does not, then, rest principally, or in the first instance, on the contents of the religion as revealed. These, however cogent to the mind of the believer, can have no binding force in relation to an ob jector. To all who accept the faith of Christ it This argumust be plain enough, that our holy religion can dependent be no passing phase of thought or sentiment in the ticular

ment, in

of the par

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