reality of the vicarious atonement provided by the
passion of our blessed Lord; (2) the supernatural and miraculous character
of the religious revelation in the book of God; and (3) the direct
operation of the Holy Ghost in converting and communing with the human
soul. Lacking the first of these, Christianity appears to him to be a
religion without a system of redemption; lacking the second, a doctrine
without authority; lacking the third, a system of ethics without spiritual
power. These three principles accordingly are the measure, by agreement
with which the truth and falsehood of systems of free thought are
ultimately tested.(18)

The above remarks, together with those which occur in the text, where
fuller explanation is afforded, will illustrate the province of the
inquiry, and the spirit in which it is conducted.(19)

The explanation also of the further question concerning the object which
the writer proposed to effect, by the treatment of such a subject in a
course of Bampton Lectures, is given so fully elsewhere, that a few words
may here suffice in reference to it.(20) Experience of the wants of
students in this time of doubt and transition, which those who are
practically acquainted with the subject will best understand, as well as
observation of the tone of thought expressed in our sceptical literature,
led him to believe that a history, natural as well as literary, of doubt;
an analysis of the forms and a statement of the intellectual causes of it,
would have a value, direct and indirect, in many ways. His desire, he is
willing to confess, was to guide the student, rather than to refute the
unbeliever. He did not expect to furnish the combatant with ready-made
weapons, which would make him omnipotent in conflict; but he hoped to give
him some suggestions in reference to the tactics for conducting the
contest. The Lectures have a polemical aspect, but they seek to obtain
their end by means of the educational. The writer has aimed at assisting
the student, in the struggle with his doubts, in the inquiry for truth, in
the quiet meditative search for light and knowledge, preparatory to
ministering to others. The survey of a new region, which ordinary works on
the history of infidelity rarely touch, may lay bare unsuspected or
undetected causes of unbelief; and thus indirectly offer a refutation of
it; for intellectual error is refuted, when the origin of it is referred
to false systems of thought. The anatomy o