53 
work, to consider the gist and purpose of Paley’s writings, 
in order to dissipate any such idea. It is scarcely possible 
to conceive of an age more heartless, less Christian, more 
abjectly materialized, than the eighteenth century in England. 
Infidelity was then vastly stronger in proportion, more fashion- 
able, more arrogant, in what were regarded as cultivated 
circles, than agnosticism is to-day among educated English- 
men. It may be instructive and encouraging to mark the 
agencies which Providence has employed during the last 
century to raise up the power of true religion in this country. 
The successive waves of spiritual force will serve, in some 
general way, to register the interval between the Christianity 
of to-day and that of a hundred years ago. I can, of course, 
but indicate these agencies and their operation very briefly. 
The first I name was the power of light reason applied 
to Divine things. The fashionable infidelity of England was 
reduced to absurdity by the fine philosophic irony of the 
accomplished Berkeley; the grave doubts on moral subjects 
of sincere questioners, of honest and earnest seekers after 
truth, were worthily dealt with by the profound intellect, 
equally candid and humble, of Butler ; the metaphysical 
scepticism of Hume, prototype of the sceptical idealism — 
shall I call it, or nihilism ? — of Mill, was ably refuted by 
Dr. George Campbell in Scotland, and in England by the 
luminous common-sense of Paley. Thus infidel intellect was 
foiled at its own weapons, and Christianity remained mistress 
of the field of argument. 
This was a great and needful success, without which the 
position of Christianity, at least among educated men, 
must have been left very insecure. But yet the labours of 
these masters of argument only gave Christianity a negative 
triumph. Speculative argument may subdue the aggressive 
foe, may keep him back, may beat him down; but for 
Christianity to gain positive triumphs other weapons arc 
needed, not the armour and arms of intellectual defence, 
but of spiritual onset — the sword of the Spirit, the Word of 
God, and, as the only protection against “ fiery darts ” of 
doubt and unbelief which no chain-mail of logic however 
complete and cunningly wrought can always avail to “quench/’ 
the shield of a living faith. These other weapons were pro- 
vided in connection with successive movements of spiritual 
revival which arose during the century following the rise of 
Methodism. 
These movements may all have been traceable, more or less 
remotely, to the same fontal influences, but the waves broko 
successively in different directions. The earliest Methodism — 
