ned
or suspected, comes pouring in upon us, with a multitude of others in
prospect, all believers in Revelation, be they Catholic or not, are
roused to consider their bearing upon themselves, both for the honour of
God, and from tenderness for those many souls who, in consequence of the
confident tone of the schools of secular knowledge, are in danger of
being led away into a bottomless liberalism of thought.

I am not going to criticize here that vast body of men, in the mass, who
at this time would profess to be liberals in religion; and who look
towards the discoveries of the age, certain or in progress, as their
informants, direct or indirect, as to what they shall think about the
unseen and the future. The Liberalism which gives a colour to society
now, is very different from that character of thought which bore the
name thirty or forty years ago. Now it is scarcely a party; it is the
educated lay world. When I was young, I knew the word first as giving
name to a periodical, set up by Lord Byron and others. Now, as then, I
have no sympathy with the philosophy of Byron. Afterwards, Liberalism
was the badge of a theological school, of a dry and repulsive character,
not very dangerous in itself, though dangerous as opening the door to
evils which it did not itself either anticipate or comprehend. At
present it is nothing else than that deep, plausible scepticism, of
which I spoke above, as being the development of human reason, as
practically exercised by the natural man.

The Liberal religionists of this day are a very mixed body, and
therefore I am not intending to speak against them. There may be, and
doubtless is, in the hearts of some or many of them a real antipathy or
anger against revealed truth, which it is distressing to think of.
Again, in many men of science or literature there may be an animosity
arising from almost a personal feeling; it being a matter of party, a
point of honour, the excitement of a game, or a satisfaction to the
soreness or annoyance occasioned by the acrimony or narrowness of
apologists for religion, to prove that Christianity or that Scripture is
untrustworthy. Many scientific and literary men, on the other hand, go
on, I am confident, in a straightforward impartial way, in their own
province and on their own line of thought, without any disturbance from
religious difficulties in themselves, or any wish at all to give pain to
others by the result of their investigations. It would il