30 
Christianity requires the social life to be what we could only call a 
kind of milder savagedom. But the age rs now infested with a still 
more pernicious class of teachers, namely those who, rejecting Chns- 
tianity altogether and disbelieving the Holy Scriptures, “ e ^ er *eless 
also set themselves up as Bible interpreters They pervert what 
Christianity teaches, in order to clear the ground for their own p 
sophies, although all that is good in the latter are merely barefaced 
plagiarisms from the teaching of Christ and the Scriptures. T1 y 
pretend that Christianity is adverse to human advancement, and. to 
the material progress which they chiefly identify with civilization. 
55 Christianity has been vindicated from such slanders more 
than once already in the Victoria Institute, especially by Dr 
Irons and Mr. Bow* Let me do it once more very briefly, by 
analogy, in keeping with the other arguments of this paper. We 
have God’s holiness and righteousness proclaimed in His Holy 
Word and by our reason and the still small voice of conscience 
within us. But we have also the varied beauties of His outward 
creation exhibited to our eyes in all His works, in the : glory of 
the heavens above and throughout this beauteous ^h. In Chris- 
tianity we have something analogous in the actual development of 
the fine arts in Christendom, in the revival of letters and in the 
history of European civilization. But the gifts and teaclun 
nature and of grace maybe alike perverted, abused and misapplied. 
There was no reproach, however, implied as regards the gorgeousne 
of the king’s apparel, when our Lord declared that even Solomon in 
all his glory was not arrayed as superbly as the flowers of the held. 
Men did not know the marvellous literalness of this truth when 1 
was taught by Christ. By the microscope we now ™tostmid it 
When St. Peter teaches woman that the ornament of a meek 
quiet spirit is the true adorning of the gentler sex, he is not foi- 
bidding P all outward adorning of the p kiting of hair and of ^wearing 
of gold, or of putting on of apparel. He is only telling them 
how unimportant or even paltry these are in themselves * 
they are at best but vain and ephemeral, while the other 1 
ruptible. When Christ tells us that the world will be engaged l in 
the last days, and when He comes again, precisely « ¥ 
of Noah ” when “they bought and sold and planted and budded, 
He is not condemning these employments. He is only co “^ m f "“ h ° 
the careless godlessness of men and their want of * me “i™- 
To labour is the primary condition now of man s existence h . 
Without buildino- and planting and commerce, how could the 
state of the world be maintained ? ” t Without architecture, gar- 
* Journ. of Trans.,, ol. i. p. 78. et se q , also job v « On the Testimony 
of Philosophy to Christianity,” § 87, et seq. 7** also vo . . p. 
t Ecclus. xxxviii. 34. 
