THE MODERN SKEPTIC 111 



One may personify the whisperings, or the motives 

 of evil within himself, and give it a bad name, and 

 he may personify the nobler and higher voices within 

 him and give it a good name. In either case it is a 

 subjective phenomenon, which the man bent upon 

 exact knowledge cannot attach much weight to. 

 Satan walked and talked with the Biblical writers, 

 the same as did Grod ; he even talked face to face 

 with God himself. Not long since a respectable 

 mechanic in one of the large cities believed himself 

 bewitched ; the hallucination worked upon him till 

 he took to his bed, and finally he actually died, to 

 all intents and purposes bewitched to death. 



It is in the light of such facts and considerations 

 as these that the so-called skeptic refuses to credit 

 all people tell him about their knowledge of God. 

 So that he is finally compelled to rest upon the God 

 of force and law of outward nature. 



It is also to be said that the decay of religious be- 

 lief in our times is rather a decay of creeds and 

 dogmas than of the spirit of true religion — religion 

 as love, as an aspiration after the highest good. If 

 we regard it as a decay of Christianity itself, it is to 

 be remembered that Christianity bears no such inti- 

 mate relation to modern life, either the life of the 

 individual or to the life of the state, as polytheism 

 bore to the life of the ancient world. It is rather 

 of the nature of an aside in modern life, while in 

 Greece and Eome and in Judea the national religion 

 was the principal matter. The whole drama of 

 history clustered around and was the illustration of 



