coffing scepticism were to be found
anywhere to-day, it would most likely be found manifested among
the throng of young men gathered at our most progressive
University,--Harvard. But Dr. Lyman Abbot, after several weeks'
association with the students there, and a careful study of their
states of mind, not long ago testified, that "if they are sceptical,
it is because they are too serious-minded and too true to accept
convictions ready made, traditional creeds for personal beliefs, or
church formularies for a life of devotion." Now to call such a state
of mind irreligious or infidel is most unjust. The irreligion lies
rather with those who make a fetish of the Bible and substitute a few
pet texts from it; that sustain their own private opinions, in place
of that divine light that lighteth every man that cometh into the
world. The real infidels are they who reject the revelation which God
is making us continually in the widening light of modern knowledge,
and by a species of ecclesiastical lynching, condemn, before trial,
the sincere, painstaking, and careful scholars and reverent disciples
of Christ, who are so earnestly seeking after truth, because the
results of their learned researches do not agree with the prejudices
of their anathematizers. It is with no less cogency of argument than
nobility of feeling that Dr. Briggs replied to his assailants: "If it
be heresy to say that rationalists, like Martineau, have found God in
the reason, and Roman Catholics, like Newman, have found God in the
Church, I rejoice in such heresy, and I do not hesitate to say that I
have less doubt of the salvation of Martineau and Newman than I have
of the modern Pharisees who would exclude such noble men,--so pure, so
grand, the ornaments of Great Britain and the prophets of the
age,--from the kingdom of God."

Scepticism and religious questioning are, then, no sins; they are not
irreligious. But surely they do vex the Church. What shall the Church
do about them? In the first place, we should not try to suppress them.
Nor should we tell religious inquirers to shut their eyes and put the
poppy pillow of faith beneath their heads and go to sleep again, and
dream. They have got their eyes wide open and they are determined to
know whether those sweet visions which they had on faith's pillow are
any more than illusions. Nor will they be satisfied and cease to
think, by having a creed of three hundred or fifteen hundred year's
antiquity recited