THOUGHTS ON DISTINCTLY RECOGNISING IN THE PULPIT THE SCEPTICAL SPIRIT OF THE TIMES.

It is unwise policy in preachers to ignore the currents of evil which from time to time set in, and create wide-spread havoc among their people. Quickness of discernment to "catch the living manners as they rise," is one great element of success among public agencies of another class; and if the preaching of our day is to keep or regain its hold upon the national mindcheck or slacken its progress in error-cast its healing branch into the stream of public sentiment-preserve or restore the living waters of spiritual truth, so as to sanctify, comfort, and save, it must keep pace, in power and energy, with the advancing activity of the age, and adapt itself to meet the perils and unconscious yearnings of their hearers.

It is a significant fact, that so few attendants, on going out of church, ever advert in the least degree to the sermon they have just heard. It creates no interest, quickens to no thought, adds nothing to their stock of knowledge, bequeathes nothing to their recollections. Compare a congregation returning from church with an audience dispersing from attendance on some popular or scientific lecture,-the difference is unmistakeable. In the one case their interest is kindled and sustained by the subjects; in the other they feel a relief when it is all over.

There must be serious fault somewhere. We can hardly conceive a graver symptom of the public mind than this growing indifference affecting religious worship. It is significant of some deep and portentous mischief. Nor can it stop there. Grave evils like these must wax worse till retribution comes.

Allowance must be made for man's natural distaste for spiritual things. Present them as you may, the things of the Spirit of God have no attraction for worldly men. They will not bestir themselves to understand or appreciate subjects for which they feel an inveterate distaste. The frequent repetition

of these things strengthens the habit of inattention. We cannot help this. We have no remedy to offer but what aggravates the evil. If we try to accommodate the salvation of God to man's taste; if we change the medicine to please the patient; if we omit what one dislikes, alter what may offend another, and throw the veil of genial obscurity over the whole, then do we throw up our office, and cease to be the messengers of God. If it be so, if the message fail to awaken the sympathy of some, and fall upon others with the flatness of a stale and uninteresting repetition,-let us betake ourselves to humiliation and prayer that God would give us a right judgment in all things, and turn the heart of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.

But, there is another cause. There is something deeper and more active in the minds of many of our hearers, which prevents their giving serious and reflective heed to what is preached. The sceptical spirit of the age is concealed from no one. It now tinctures the general aspect of thought. It is openly avowed by many who once took the opposite side. It is proclaimed by public men; debated and approved in social circles; its principles are covertly insinuated even by Christian teachers, and it has obtained some settled occupation in many a mind, where it generates doubt, creates indifference to truth and duty, and makes them feeble and lenient in their conflicts with sin.

Things are advanced too far to remain as they now are. Here is a strong mound thrown up, behind which the enemy lies concealed, incessantly making fierce assaults on the faith. Doubtless, like Nehemiah, we must build up the walls of Jerusalem with one hand, but we must grasp the sword and repel the enemy with the other. We must feed Christ's sheep, but, like David, we must go forth to slay the lion and the bear, which seek to make havoc of the flock. It is no conflict now about doctrines only, but the Bible itself, the foundation of Christianity. It is no skirmishing among a few stragglers, but a dead onset upon the main army. It is not a struggle to capture a gun, or take a tower, but to destroy the faith once delivered to the saints. We are not taking up arms to defend a worldly possession, but, as our translators rightly call the Bible, " that inestimable treasure which excelleth all the riches of the earth, because the fruit extendeth not only to the time spent in this transitory world, but directeth and disposeth men to that eternal happiness which is above in heaven."

The following thoughts may be suggestive, in meeting the aggressive evils of popular infidelity. Let it be remembered

that

1. The Bible is the only book which claims to be inspired to make men happy in both worlds. True, other nations have their sacred books, but they give no knowledge of the One True God, reveal no good hopes, enforce no moral duties, give no

power to the conscience, and confer no blessing. The greatest evils which afflict such nations are their temples, their priests, and their religious practices. No man ever proposed to substitute the sacred books of Oriental nations for the Bible. No man dreams of translating and circulating the Shasters and Vedas, or other heathen records, with a view of doing good. Nor have we any other book which claims to be inspired. No. It is either the Bible or nothing.. Lay that aside, the world has nothing to substitute. Infidelity offers you nothing. It takes away the compass and the chart, and leaves you tossing hither and thither, in doubt and storm and darkness, with nothing to guide; it leaves you drifting among wrecks and perils, which you know not how to escape, or whither you are going. If any man rejects the Bible, it is not because he has something better in reserve. He has nothing to propose. "If I give up this, I ask myself, what have I left? I want some guide for the long journey which lies before me. I am not to live on for

ever as I now do; even here I am far from being at rest, but I shall soon be gone hence, to be no more seen,-gone, but for what the Bible reveals, I know not whither,-gone to meet, I know not what. Life becomes a journey in the dark, death is a plunge into a world unknown and darker still. Without the Bible I cannot live, and I dare not die." It is the only Book which claims to shed one ray of Divine light upon the duties, and mysteries, and tribulations of this life; the only Book which claims to give any clue to the deeper mysteries of death; the only Book which points to any firm ground to tread upon beyond the grave. If that light be quenched, I am left a solitary traveller at midnight, in an unknown land, affrighted by sounds of danger I cannot see,-bewildered by trackless solitudes I dare not traverse. There is much weight in all this. I tell the sceptical objector, that before I renounce the Bible, I must have some other lamp to my path. Grant that your objections are valid; but show me another Book which has any such offers to make. What other can you bring which claims to be a counsellor for this world, and guide for the next? Till then-till you can produce another, let me keep hold of the one I have. Make what objections you may, the Bible, thank God, has got firm grasp of the English mind; and till you can substitute a better, or another as good, let us at least keep what we have ; it is not wise nor expedient to destroy the compass, to quench the light, and abandon the helm, to be driven helplessly among tempests and rocks and darkness, to perish at last in deeper and more hopeless destruction. So that, till the question is answered about another Guide, we may well say, in the language of St. Peter,-" Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

2. Then, examine the Bible itself. View it on all sides; it has an evidence of its own that it is not of man. The works of

God all have the witness in themselves. The sun is unlike all other lights. The stars are not like other gems. A flower, a leaf, a blade of grass, man tries in vain to counterfeit. God's works proclaim their own original:

"In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is Divine."

The Bible also is its own witness. (a) It is the oldest book in the world. Of all the relics of antiquity that have come to us, some writings of the Bible are the most ancient. Westminster abbey, grey with the lapse of ages, where men with immortal names lie in their silent tombs, is comparatively modern. Rome is enriched with ruined buildings which stood in their pride and glory almost 1000 years before the first stone of Westminster Abbey was laid; and yet they may be called modern. Go to the banks of the Nile: there are Pyramids that were standing as they now are many centuries before the city of Rome was built on the banks of the Tiber; and they too are modern. Go to the banks of the Euphrates: there lie, in fragments of blasted masonry, remains of the city of Babylon-perhaps vitrified fragments of the tower of Babel itself. These are specimens of antiquity worn and mutilated by the lapse of time. All that was once connected with them is gone. The hands that built them, the pride and beauty of their cities, the crowds that thronged their streets, the tombs where they lay; all are gone! But the Bible is far more ancient than those crumbling monuments. When the Pyramids were gazed upon as new buildings, Moses penned his Pentateuch. David wrote his Psalms probably two centuries before Homer wrote his Iliad. When Rome was but rising as a village, Isaiah was denouncing the corruptions of Jewish kings, and predicting their downfall; when Alexander the Great set out for Eastern conquests, the Jewish nation had existed for 1000 years; when he entered Jerusalem, the Jews had in their sacred archives all the books of the Old Testament which we read now; and Josephus tells us that the High Priest even showed to Alexander Daniel's prophecy respecting himself. God made the Jewish nation His librarians; and with rigorous fidelity did they preserve every book, every psalm, every prophecy, scrupulously guarding even its letters from wilful corruption. To them were committed the oracles of God. Thus the Bible is its own witness; it is the oldest and most venerable monument of antiquity; it is minutely interwoven with the great events in the world's history: the more it is examined, the more exactly it is found to agree with facts at the time when it professes to have been written..

(b) No book has ever endured such assaults as the Bible. Some people write and argue as if the sceptics of our day were the

But

first who ever questioned the authority of Scripture. the Bible has always been the object of assault. Men withstood the words of the Lord Himself, and then everywhere contradicted the Apostles. The early Christians lived and suffered and held fast their faith amid fierce and incessant conflicts. When the Bible lay for ages unread by the people, infidelity was silent; but when learning revived, infidelity sprang up again. Many of the leading writers of the last century in England and France were infidels. It was the age of infidelity. They boasted that Christian faith should be swept clean from the earth. A fiery furnace was kindled, and the Holy Bible submitted to the torture. Sceptics have ever sought to disprove its facts, and ridicule its characters. Men of science alleged that its statements are contradicted by their discoveries; philosophers have found fault with its morals, and argued against all belief in its miracles, as a thing simply incredible; kings have forbidden it to be read; popes have put it under their curse; generals have drawn the sword against it; grave and venerable councils decreed that it is a dangerous book, not to be possessed; houses have been ransacked to destroy it; learning perverted to misinterpret it; all the charities of life sacrificed in hot zeal for its extermination; and yet, in the face of tempests and universal uproar, the Bible stands,—

"Like the cerulean arch that spans the sky,

Majestic in its own simplicity."

No fragment of an army ever survived so many battles as the Bible; no citadel ever withstood so many sieges; no rock was ever battered by so many hurricanes, and so swept by storms. And yet it stands. It has seen the rise and downfall of Daniel's four empires. Assyria bequeathes a few mutilated figures to the riches of our national museum. Media and Persia, like Babylon which they conquered, have been weighed in the balance, and long ago found wanting. Greece faintly survives in its historic fame, ""Tis living Greece no more;" and the iron Rome of the Cæsars is held in precarious occupation by a feeble hand. And yet the Book that foretells all this still survives. While nations, kings, philosophers, systems, institutions have died away, the Bible engages now men's deepest thoughts, is examined by the keenest intellects, stands revered before the highest tribunals, is more read and sifted and debated, more devoutly loved and more vehemently assailed, more defended and more denied, more industriously translated and freely given to the world, more honoured and more abused, than other book the world ever saw :

any

"Strange words fulfilled, and mighty works achieved,

And truth in all the world both hated and believed."