99 
taught this blank negation about God, while they have greater 
opportunities than former generations have had of knowing 
His works, what can be the consequence ? 
This is the issue to which I have all along desired to bring 
this question. Many of these gentlemen are possessed of 
attainments in physical science, such that one would sit 
joyfully at their feet to learn the facts they have to tell. But 
when they step out of their own province, and on the strength 
of acquaintance with physical facts venture on subversive 
theories, or metaphysical and spiritual problems, they have no 
special claim to a hearing, and the simplest man of thought 
may judge them. There are other sciences, and more spiritual 
knowledge. Why should they go out of their way in their 
popular teaching to quench faith ; to silence prayer; to thrust 
away the personal God from the knowledge of His intelligent 
creatures; to destroy, I had almost said, manhood itself? 
One of them says, “he has no theory, not even of mag- 
netism/'’ No theory of life or eternity! What is the object 
of all this ? Where is it tending ? When conscience is 
destroyed and responsibility gone, what remains ? What 
basis is left for charity, for truth, for honesty, for chastity? 
What glimpse of immortality survives? I wish to know 
what our sons and our daughters may yet be taught. This 
warfare is in truth “pro oris et focis No altar, no home. 
The Continental unbelievers are more logical than the English, 
and are not afraid to discover, and to state boldly the 
ulterior consequences of unbelief. No revealed God, no 
conscience, no standard of good or evil — then no property, 
no family, no right, — then self-love, health, pleasure, utility, 
must be accepted with the French Encyclopedists as the 
guides of morality. 
All this, in a certain sense, is very well for literary men to 
play with as a mental toy during the hours of a life of mental 
excitement. Their own intellectual pursuits occupy, and in a 
measure, elevate them above the gross and the sensual. But 
what for others ? What shall we say (I tire not of asking it) 
to our children who have not these literary tastes ? What 
shall we do for the degraded classes of society? Where is 
the Gospel that we may take into the courts and alleys, and 
that shall sound as sweet music by the bedside of the sick 
who is dying in rags and misery ? 
As I speak thus, the dark shadow of all this scepticism 
seems to pass away. We also have a science transcendently 
true and earnest, — a science that rests on a basis as sure as 
any established physical theory. We have our divine faith, 
in which he who possesses it rests, because he finds that it 
