sentiment floating up and down through the channels of sundry Clubs, Debating Societies, and Scientific Institutes, together with a large proportion of the periodical press, and a no less extensive proportion of the light and transient literature of the day. Infidelity is no longer administered in the suffocating doses of Socialism, but in homoeopathic globules, which poison, but do not alarm.

Allow me briefly to illustrate this point. What more common than to hear opinions broached under the name of liberality, or charity, or freedom of thought, or independence of intellect, which are wholly irreconcilable with simple loyalty to God's word ? What more common--to single out one class of sentiment, the most prominent, if not the most pernicious in vogue -than to hear it said: "You have no right to pronounce other men in error; hold your own opinions to yourself, but do not presume to judge others. A man is not responsible for his opinions; he cannot help his belief. The evidence which convinces you does not convince him; and who has a right to arraign him, if, after honestly investigating that evidence, he has found it to be insufficient?" Such notions-stealthily oftentimes as the pestilence that walketh in darkness, or the miasma floating in the air-are diffused on every side. We had a new edition of them broadly developed a few years ago by a noble lord, at that time a commoner, who deliberately enunciated the dogma that a man can no more change his belief, over which he has no control, "than he can the hue of his skin, or the height of his stature."

We must say, with all deference to that philosophical lord, that a more unphilosophical sentiment never fell from the lips of a philosopher. For, in the first place, if truth be one, then truth, viewed with the same disposition and condition of mind by ever such a multitude of observers, must appear one: consequently, if there be diversity, and still more if discordance, in the views of truth, this must arise from something in the

state of the minds of the students, since it cannot originate in the object itself.

But if so, then how can it be said that a man is not responsible for his belief, when it cannot be denied that he is largely responsible alike for the moral condition and for the exercise of his mind; accountable for examining a subject, and for how he examines it. For instance, has not a man, to whom the opportunity is afforded, the power of attending or not attending to the evidences of the Bible, and of examining or not examining the book itself ? Is it not further in his power to search the Bible as it demands to be searched, or to scrutinize it with a hostile eye; determined, or at least disposed, to disbelieve it, because he has made it his interest to deny its truth? The power which the moral disposition exerts over our perceptions and convictions of truth is so obvious to the common sense of mankind, that they have embodied the principle in such every-day proverbs as- "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still; and, "What a man wishes he easily believes ;" and, "None so blind as those who will not see." Do not a man's prejudices, passions, and interests continually warp his judgment in temporal matters; and are not the consequences of erroneous judgments, so formed, frequently disastrous? Surely it follows that much more is he liable to be biassed in things spiritual and eternal; and that if in the former case he suffers for his errors, it is not to be supposed that he can escape in the latter.

But, more than this, it is not denied that man is responsible for his actions. The noble lord, whose notion we are exposing, has, since he uttered it, often pronounced judgment from the bench of justice, and never for a moment thought of saying to the prisoner at the bar : "I have no right to judge or condemn you. You have, indeed, thought it right to steal, whilst I and the law of the land pronounced it wrong; but it would be very uncharitable and unreasonable to hang or transport you

for having acted upon an erroneous belief, over which you had no control." The noble lord has never been guilty of such folly. But where was the acuteness of his philosophy when he failed to see that our actions are but the types and embodiments of our opinions and judgments, or, in other words, of our belief? Yet the sincerity and earnestness of a criminal in the persuasions which prompted his crime are never accepted, even in mitigation of his guilt. Conceive how the noble lord would have frowned, had any prisoner at the bar thus addressed him "My lord, I candidly concur in your enlightened sentiment, that a man cannot control his belief; now I believed it was perfectly fair to share my neighbour's property when I had too little, and he too much;" or, "I thought it perfectly equitable to shed what I considered to be a little coloured fluid, when I owed my neighbour a grudge, and wished to take revenge."

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If then perverted belief does not shield a man from the consequences of his misconduct on earth, will it shield him a the tribunal of heaven? Shall God be less just than man, or his laws more mutable than the laws of his creatures? God forbid ! But perhaps the noble lord would rebut this reasoning by replying: "You are arguing about opinions carried out into practice, these we can justly condemn and punish; but the faith lodged in a man's breast, with this you have no right to find fault." We answer, That moral judgments, or (to retain the same form of expression) moral belief cannot lie dormant and inoperative; in the nature of things they must influence the man's conduct and become the subjects of blame or of praise.

Not only so; the noble lord acknowledges the omniscience of the Great Judge of all. But what actions are to man, opinions and judgments are to God; we judge by the outward deed, he judges by the internal motives and decisions of the and sins of the heart will as surely be visited by God

heart;

as sins of the life. He does not require a palpable exponent to discover the secret to him. "He searcheth the heart and trieth the reins," and "requireth truth in the inward parts." "He will bring every thought into judgment." Man must, therefore, be responsible for his belief to God; and he who vainly thinks that he will be excused in the last day, because he chooses to say, "I do not believe the Bible, and I am not responsible for it, because I cannot help my unbelief," will assuredly find that what he counts upon as a plea in justification, will, in reality, enhance his guilt. Nor will he dare to breathe the lie before the face of that Judge who, when on earth, declared, "If any man will do (be willing to do) the will of my Father, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." To that experimental test the sceptic never brought the Word of God. He "loved darkness rather than light, because his deeds were evil." He could not believe, because he would not believe. Infidelity is the offspring of the heart, not of the head. No man ever became an infidel against his will. Inclination, not evidence, has been deficient. The "evil heart of unbelief" is the root of scepticism. It needs not that a man be profligate to incapacitate him to believe: pride, ambition, sloth, selfishness, self-will, self-righteousness, these and many other secret sins will effectually blind the understanding and pervert the judgment. What then more just than that God should proclaim : "He that believeth not shall be damned." That he should in nowise hold him guiltless, who, in the fearful language of Holy Scripture, "maketh God a liar!"

There is another species of sceptical sentiment exceedingly rife in the present day at which I must glance, though little more than glance. I refer to the godless opinions so largely mingled with a great many of the political theories the day.

I will not touch on debateable ground, but I could not acquit my conscience if I did not testify that all those notions which

go to divorce religion from politics—which is nothing else than to divorce God from nations--have an infidel tendency.

We think and let think in political details, but dare never blink, compromise, or reserve the great, broad principle, that "power belongeth unto God," that "the powers that be are ordained of God," and that the immutable basis of all just authority in this realm is God's ordinance and God's Word. The maintenance of this truth we conceive to be essential to the maintenance of the full integrity and supremacy of Revelation; so that the man who directly or indirectly denies, invalidates, or disparages this principle, however unwittingly or however conscientiously he may do it, is helping forward the sceptical tendencies of the age.

Those tendencies have revealed themselves recently in a somewhat new and seemingly modest shape. Consideration is the form they assume, and the disciples of this subtle scepticism take the name of "Considerers." We have had a philosopher from America giving lectures in various parts of the country, and he has furnished a new definition of σKETTIKOS, from which comes sceptic; he informs us that it does not signify one who scoffs, but one who considers; so that, according to this new etymology, a sceptic means a man who considers, who weighs well before he decides.

Another plausible lecturer of the same school, who has visited Manchester more than once, and fascinated many of our young men—and who, I dare say, has been trying to fascinate the young men of your metropolis--delights to gloss over his covert scepticism with equal artfulness. He has a chapel in Birmingham, which is currently known by the name of the "Chapel of the Doubters;" and he professes to be actuated by a spirit of free and candid inquiry. He repudiates all creeds and denounces all forms; everything is to be kept in abeyance; all things to be proved, but nothing to be held fast. Yet all this is simply manly consideration!

VOL. IV.

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