stian faith.

Christianity offers occasion for opposition by its inherent claims,
independently of accidental causes. For it asserts authority over
religious belief in virtue of being a supernatural communication from God,
and claims the right to control human thought in virtue of possessing
sacred books which are at once the record and the instrument of this
communication, written by men endowed with supernatural inspiration. The
inspiration of the writers is transferred to the books, the matter of
which, so far as it forms the subject of the revelation, is received as
true because divine, not merely regarded as divine because perceived to be
true. The religion, together with the series of revelations of which it is
the consummation, differs in kind from ethnic religions, and from human
philosophy; and the sacred literature differs in kind from other books.
Each is unique, a solitary miracle of its class in human history.

The contents also of the sacred books bring them into contact with the
efforts of speculative thought. Though at first glance they might seem to
belong to a different sphere, that of the soul rather than the intellect,
and to possess a different function, explaining duties rather than
discovering truth; yet in deep problems of physical or moral history, such
as Providence, Sin, Reconciliation, they supply materials for limiting
belief in the very class of subjects which is embraced in the compass of
human philosophy.

A conflict accordingly might naturally be anticipated, between the
reasoning faculties of man and a religion which claims the right on
superhuman authority to impose limits on the field or manner of their
exercise; the intensity of which at various epochs would depend, partly
upon the amount of critical activity, and partly on the presence of causes
which might create a divergence between the current ideas and those
supplied by the sacred literature.

The materials are wanting for detecting traces of this struggle in other
parts of the world than Europe; but the progress of it may be fully
observed in European history, altering concomitantly with changes in the
condition of knowledge, or in the methods of seeking it; at first as an
open conflict, philosophical or critical, with the literary pagans,
subsiding as Christianity succeeded in introducing its own conceptions
into every region of thought; afterwards reviving in the middle ages, and
gradually growing more intense in modern ti