36 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



inferred from the attitude of mind exhibited in the Unseen Universe or 

 Physical Speculations on a Future State which Balfour Stewart and he 

 wrote together. A more distinct utterance however is to be found in an 

 article published in the International Review of November, 1878, and 

 named " Does Humanity demand a New Revelation ? " This article was 

 largely polemical, being avowedly a reply to Froude who had communicated 

 to the same Review some articles on " Science and Theology Ancient 

 and Modern." Towards the close of Tail's article these sentences occur : 



"It would therefore appear, from the most absolutely common-sense view 

 independent of all philosophy and speculation it would appear that the only religion 

 which can have a rational claim on our belief must be one suited equally to the 

 admitted necessities of the peasant and of the philosopher. And this is one specially 

 distinguishing feature of Christianity. While almost all other religious creeds 

 involve an outer sense for the uneducated masses and an inner sense for the more 

 learned and therefore dominant priesthood, the system of Christianity appeals alike 

 to the belief of all ; requiring of all that, in presence of their common Father, they 

 should sink their fancied superiority one over another, and frankly confessing the 

 absolute unworthiness which they can not but feel, approach their Redeemer with the 

 simplicity and confidence of little children. 



********* 



All who approach the subject without bias can see from the New Testament 

 records how some of the most essential features of Christianity were long in impressing 

 themselves on the minds even of the Founder's immediate followers. And we could 

 not reasonably have expected it to be otherwise. The revelation of Himself 

 which the Creator has made by His works we are only, as it were, beginning to 

 comprehend. Are we to wonder that Christianity, that second and complementary 

 revelation, is also, as it were, only beginning to be understood ; or that, in the 

 struggle for light, much that is wholly monstrous has been gratuitously introduced, 

 and requires a Reformation for its removal ? What more likely than that, in the 

 endeavour to frame a document for the stamping out of a particular heresy, over- 

 zealous clergy should carry the process a little too far, and so introduce a new and 

 opposite heresy? But this is no argument against Christianity; rather the reverse. 



It might in fact be asserted, with very great reason, that a religion which, like 

 any one of the dogmatic systems of particular Christian sects, should be stated to 

 men in a form as precise and definite as was the mere ceremonial law, would be 

 altogether an anomaly inconsistent in character with all the other dealings of God 

 with man and altogether incompatible with that Free Will which every sane man 

 feels and knows himself to possess." 



Tait was indeed a close student of the sacred records. The Revised 

 Version of the New Testament always lay conveniently to hand on his 



