1G 
itself, and giving ns a hope of certain peace from the utter 
hopelessness of war. 
The interest with which we view all that is thus presented 
to our sight becomes a melancholy one, when we reflect that 
one half of the skill and labour whose results we behold was 
expended for the single purpose of destroying human life, and 
the other half for the purpose of shielding the destroyer. The 
pictures of battle-fields, which, at once as embellishments and 
illustrations, make the armoury complete, only intensify the 
feeling by showing how, with varying appliances, men from 
age to age tried to solve the one terrible problem — how to kill 
and yet to live. 
Some such a feeling comes over us as we examine the 
sceptics’ armoury, the varied forms of the weapons from time 
to time brought into play by Unbelief against the Christian 
faith, and the varied methods of attack ; as we review, at the 
same time, the varied modes and means of defence resorted to 
by the champions and upholders of Christianity when assailed. 
We seem, I think, to wonder and to grieve that so much 
thought, so much ingenuity, so much labour, so much power, 
so much earnestness, should have been spent in the endeavour 
to take away man’s moral and spiritual life by leaving him 
nothing to live for ; to ruin his peace by wresting from him 
that most peaceful of all privileges, the privilege of saying, 
“ I believe.” 
There is this comfort, however, that whereas in military 
warfare the arms of defence and offence usually belonged to 
each party alike, and both equally sought to preserve them- 
selves and destroy the others, in our warfare the two are quite 
distinct. We may be pained at the sight of arms, but we 
exult in reviewing the armour. The assailants seek only to 
destroy, while we and ours are standing on the defensive only, 
and are endeavouring not to slay, but, while preserved our- 
selves, to give to our opponents that life and peace which their 
aim is to annihilate. 
PERIOD OF UNSCIENTIFIC DENIAL. 
II. The scepticism of a century and a half ago took in most 
instances the form of a vulgar Deism. Paltry cavils were 
raised against the details of the Old and New Testament, such 
cavils as had been long ago suggested by Tryplion, Porphyry, 
and Celsus, and answered by Justin and Origen. Interpola- 
tions in the original text of the Scriptures were suggested, 
wherever anything like definite teaching was found, or where 
