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that runs through a recent work by Dr. Draper ? Professor Lias expresses 
very clearly the distinction I refer to in sec. 15 of his paper, when he says 
“ Mr. Greg has mistaken the scum on the surface for the stream— deep, rapid, 
and pure— which runs beneath.” I very cordially endorse this paper in its 
main line of argument throughout. 
A. Stewart. 
January 15th, 1877. 
As I start this afternoon for the North of England, and shall not return 
for two or three days, I take this means of expressing myself on Professor 
Lias’s paper, which is to be read this evening at the Institute. The paper 
appears to me to occupy just that ground of general defence of our religion 
which is so suitable to the position of the u Victoria Institute.” What I 
should have said, had I been able to be present, would have been rather in 
the way of supplement to the remarks of the learned and discriminating 
essayist. The estimate which he well makes of the moral power exerted, on 
the whole, by Christianity is not disputed by the generality of unbelievers 
in the present day. Even Mr. Lecky, in his European Morals from 
Augustus to Charlemagne, concedes as much as Professor Lias asks. In the 
notes to my own Hampton Lectures, referred to by the Edinburgh Review for 
the true description of the moral state of the empire as Christianity found it, 
I have given an extract from M. de Pressense on the “ first three ages 
of Christianity, which also exhibits the same state of facts from the point of 
view of a French Protestant of some learning. But I would now observe 
that the controversy of the nineteenth century with our Religion is not so 
much against the moral power of its teaching as against the distinctive 
features of it as a Revelation. Even the Revue des Deux Mondes, criticising 
Strauss, defends for itself the title of “ Christian,” as indeed the right of all 
who are ready to admit that Jesus Christ is an illustrious “ moral factor who 
cannot be ignored in our modern estimate of civilization. The case is this : 
the Primitive Christianity, as represented in all the early writings, regards 
Jesus as Son of God, who took our nature, died as a man, and rose and 
ascended to heaven bodily after His resurrection ; recognizes that He said, 
“ I will build My Church ” ; that His followers set up a Society, and organized 
a social system, with rules and rulers of its own ; shows that that organiza- 
tion prevailed in large parts of the Roman world as a separate organization, 
and then made terms with the imperial organization ; and that since then, 
the joint organization has gone on as one. The nineteenth century is 
getting rid of the Christian part of the organization, and yet hopes to retain 
the leading moral improvements jointly effected in society.. Christians feel 
that the original organization of a “ church,” a “ new creation,” cannot thus 
really be set aside without also disputing the original facts of the life of 
Emmanuel, “ God with us.” Thus it is Christianity as an organic whole, 
and not simply the moral influence of certain of its principles, that will 
have to be defended in the times before us. — Was our religion to bo a 
“ new creation,” on the grounds taken by the Apostles and those who suc- 
ceeded them ? — or is it to terminate in a moral amendment of the “ old 
creation” ? and then, is the world to supersede the sacred organization 
and faith of the first ages of our Religion — and just to criticise its former 
literature, and subject its “ evidences ” to strict proof,— leaving individuals 
to accept it,— society as a whole doing without it 1 
William J. Irons. 
