12 MODERN DIFFICULTIES 



age, by proclaiming an emasculated Christianity. If 

 Christianity is true, its truth and reasonableness will 

 be most adequately exhibited when its doctrines are 

 fully and coherently set forth. This ought carefully 

 to be remembered by you, who are preparing to become 

 preachers of the Gospel and apologists in behalf of a 

 religion upon the successful propagation of which 

 depends the higher welfare of mankind. From the 

 moment that you surrender to the demands of the age 

 one single genuine content of the historic faith of 

 Christendom you also begin to surrender in effect the 

 task of propagating the actual rehgion which the great 

 Redeemer established. You must indeed translate an- 

 cient phrases into language which moderns can under- 

 stand, but to translate means to convey the original 

 meaning of what is translated. You will also have 

 need to distinguish between the historic faith and the 

 speculative opinions of later theologians and schools, 

 refusing to be hampered by the latter. But a Chris- 

 tian apologist is an apologist of Christianity — that is, 

 of a religion which is now nineteen centuries old, and 

 which, like its Founder, is ''the same yesterday, to-day, 

 and forever." 



n 



Having considered the chief causes of modern diffi- 

 culties of faith, let us define for ourselves the leading 

 forms of opposition to Christian doctrine with which 

 Christian apologists now have to deal. They are 

 rationalistic biblical criticism, pantheism, and natural- 



