52 THE LIGHT OF DAY 



with other things, that it is not an exception or an 

 isolated circumstance, but is in a line with facts 

 and principles of the truth of which we are already 

 assured ? Suppose the theory of Christianity, as 

 popularly held, had something like the breadth of 

 application, or the same warrant and basis in the 

 constitution of things as has, say, the theory of evo- 

 lution or the doctrine of the conservation of energy ; 

 or suppose the dogma of vicarious atonement pleased 

 the mind and harmonized with our sense of the fit- 

 ness of creation like the modern doctrine of embryo- 

 logy, namely, that embryology is a repetition of past 

 history, that every animal in its development from 

 the egg assumes successively, though briefly, all the 

 forms through which its ancestors have come in the 

 course of the long stretch of geological ages, should 

 we not all unhesitatingly accept it as true ? Would 

 there ever have been any doubters and skeptics ? I 

 think not. It is because these things have no such 

 warrant and basis, no such agreement with our per- 

 ception of the order of the world, that doubters 

 and skeptics exist ; it is because they break com- 

 pletely with all the rest of our knowledge of crea- 

 tion. 



There is a very marked activity in the theologi- 

 cal mind of to-day which has for its end the bridging 

 over of the gulf which exists between natural and 

 what is called " revealed " truth. Half a dozen re- 

 cent works might be named of which this is their 

 principal aim. That eloquent preacher Frederick 

 W. Eobinson sought in one of his sermons to give 



