LABORATORY OF WISE AND GOOD. 365 



determined to abandon their belief. But of those who no 

 longer believe in God, and have ceased to be Christians, 

 how many will believe in the " Cosmos, the laboratory of the 

 reasonable and good?" This laboratory of Strauss is utterly 

 destitute of a chemist, and concerning the formation of the 

 reasonable and good in the laboratory nothing positive has 

 yet been made known. 



For forty years has the faithful believer in the new cosmic 

 conception fought hard against a faith that is old, and, being 

 old, has been held to be untrue. There remains no sort of 

 doubt upon Strauss' s mind that the old faith is really untrue 

 and, in his opinion, the modern cosmic conception which 

 has resulted from scientific research, and is " simultaneously 

 both cause and effect, the outward and inward together," 

 contrasts favourably with it, and will ultimately supplant 

 Christian theology ; but of those who accept his premises, 

 how many will be ready to act upon his conclusions ? 



Although Strauss has spent so long a time in fighting 

 for truth and against untruth, he has not succeeded in 

 discovering a method by which we may prove, to our own 

 satisfaction or to that of intelligent upright men, that what 

 has been affirmed to be truth is really true. He gives no 

 sign by which we may know it to be true. Sometimes he 

 evidently doubts whether the new faith in his own particular 

 Cosmos is fit to take the place of the old faith which he 

 imagines has been destroyed by science, and has been 

 demonstrated to be untrue. 



Whether those other critical statements which have been 

 advanced by Strauss, from an altogether different stand- 

 point, will really destroy the old belief in God and in 

 Christian theology, I am incompetent to judge. Some con- 



