ich the faith of the church has reposed in the various ages
of history. A defence, itself also twofold in its character--emotional and
intellectual--has been generated by the attack in each of the crises, and
an example thus furnished of the law which governs human society,--progress
by antagonism. Permanent gain to truth was seen to be the result of the
various controversies; quiet and refreshment after the discharge of the
storm had cleared the atmosphere from the intellectual and moral ills with
which it was charged.

The utility of the inquiry will now, it is hoped, be apparent. Though
these lectures must be regarded as instructive for the believer, rather
than polemic against the unbeliever, yet they are intended to serve also a
controversial purpose.

There are times indeed when the mere instructiveness of a history,
independently of practical use, is a sufficient justification for writing
it;--times when it is important to take the gauge of past knowledge as the
condition of a step forward in the future. Those who are accustomed to
meditate on the present age, on the multifarious elements which in a time
of great peace are quietly laying the basis of great changes, and on the
unity of intellectual condition which the international intercourse is
creating in the world of letters, as really as in that of industry, will
perhaps think that the present is such a period, when the knowledge of the
history of the former perils of the Christian faith, the nature of the
attack and of the defence, is itself of value in regard to the prospects
of the future.(1008) Those again also, who are accustomed to look at the
contemporary works of evidence in our own country, will deplore the fact
that in many cases, however well meant in spirit, they are essentially
deficient in a due appreciation of the precise origin and character of
present forms of doubt, and the natural and literary history of doubt in
general;(1009) reproducing arguments unanswerable against older kinds of
doubt, but unavailing against the modern, like wooden walls against modern
weapons of war. We stand in the presence of forms of doubt, which press us
more nearly than those of former times, because they do not supersede
Christianity by disbelief, but disintegrate it by eclecticism; which come
in the guise of erudition, unknown in former times, appealing to new
canons of truth, reposing on new methods, invested with a new air. In such
a moment a reconsideration