72 
for a great deal more than they are worth. That scepticism, 
both in its negative and positive forms, is more outspoken 
than formerly makes it a more noticeable and impressive 
phenomenon, but does not therefore prove that it is really 
more widespread or influential than it was, e.g. } in the 
eighteenth century. The open avowal of sceptical views is 
partly a recoil from the more earnest and explicit avowal of 
religious convictions, and partly a consequence of it. The 
plain-spoken frankness or fierceness of sceptical literature 
testifies among other things to the acknowledged vitality of 
the religion which it assails. Men do not care to waste their 
sturdiest blows on a prostrate foe. Those who think religion 
is really losing its hold on the woi’ld might fairly be asked to 
account for the prominent place occupied by religious con- 
siderations in all the great wars and social revolutions of the 
present century, not excepting the critical struggle in the 
East which is going on before our eyes at the present 
moment.” 
English Christianity may even gather reassurance from 
the case of France. There is vastly more religious faith in 
France, I venture to think, at this moment than there has 
been since the terrible revolution. May I not go further, and 
say that there is more religious faith and feeling now than for 
a hundred years past ? And yet Christianity in France stands 
at every disadvantage. It is identified in its popular form 
with superstitions which are not only idolatrous in their 
aspect, but heathenish in their character. In popular belief 
it has been identified with all the wrongs and tyrannies which 
helped so largely to provoke the revolution. 
On the other hand, atheistic unbelief has claimed identity 
in France with all liberty, whether moral or intellectual, or 
civil and political, and with all enlightened progress. Nor 
have the claims of religion been recommended, or its position 
improved, by the tactics of Ultramontanism during the last 
five-and-twenty years. Nevertheless, in spite of all these 
disadvantages, the strongest instincts of national self-preser- 
vation have gradually linked themselves into a steadfast array 
and union against atheistic principles and theories. The 
sti’ength of Ultramontanism, that which has made it so for- 
midable a power, that which has compelled Ihe nation, 
though it fears and hates it, yet to tolerate and even to a 
certain extent to indulge it, is that the nation dreads and 
loathes atheistic politics even more than it fears and hates 
Ultramontanism. The nation cannot live without some faith, 
some religion, some ground of conscience, some basis of 
morals. It craves a religion which shall not be Ultramontane, 
