ligion, demands explanation, and cannot be hastily set aside, as was
thought in the last century in France, by the vulgar theory that the one
is factitious, and the other the result of priestly contrivance. The
writers are men whose characters and lives forbid the idea that their
unbelief is intended as an excuse for licentiousness. Denying revealed
religion, they cling the more tenaciously to the moral instincts: their
tone is one of earnestness; their inquiries are marked by a profound
conviction of the possibility of finding truth: not content with
destroying, their aim is to reconstruct. Their opinions are variously
manifested. Some of them appear in treatises of philosophy; others
insinuate themselves indirectly in literature: some of them relate to
Christian doctrines; others to the criticism of scripture documents: but
in all cases their authors either leave a residuum which they profess will
satisfy the longings of human nature, or confess with deep pain that their
conclusions are in direct conflict with human aspirations; and, instead of
revelling in the ruin which they have made, deplore with a tone of sadness
the impossibility of solving the great enigma.

It is clear that writers like these offer a wholly different appearance
from those of the last century. The deeper appreciation manifested by them
of the systems which they disbelieve, and the more delicate learning of
which they are able to avail themselves, constitute features formerly
lacking in the works of even the most serious-minded deists,(897) and
require a difference in the spirit, if not in the mode, in which
Christians must seek to refute them.

The solution of this remarkable phenomenon is to be found in the universal
change which has passed over every department of mental activity in
England in the present century. The peculiar feature of it may be
described by the word _spirituality_, if that word be used to imply, in
contrast to the utilitarian and materialist tendencies of the last
century, the consciousness in ourselves, and appreciation in others, of
the operation of the human spirit, its rights, its powers, and its
effects. This conviction stimulates in one the vivid consciousness of duty
and moral earnestness; in another it hallows human labour, and throws a
blessedness around the struggles of industry; in another it kindles the
inspiration of art, breaking up conventionalities of style, or expresses
itself in poetry, in soliloquies on