e is capable of
appreciating facts, will he deny--though he may deplore it--that to all
seeming these attacks have been attended by a considerable measure of
success. If, however, our man in the pew were asked to specify what
forces he had in his mind, he would probably in nine cases out of ten
point to two such, and two alone, _viz._, natural science and Biblical
criticism, which, he would tell us, had between them created an
atmosphere in which the old views of Scriptural authority found it more
and more difficult to maintain themselves.

{54}

Such an estimate of the situation would be true so far as it went; yet
it would omit to take account of a third factor, a solvent far less
obvious in its workings, but far more disintegrating in its effects.
The factor to which we are referring is philosophy; while science and
criticism have overthrown certain traditional ramparts, a type of
philosophy has sprung up, slowly undermining the very foundations; or,
to vary the simile, while the former two have captured certain
outworks, the latter has made its way to within striking distance of
the citadel, and that the more unobserved because attention has been
focussed almost exclusively upon the more imposing performances of the
critic and the biologist.

As a matter of fact, religion never had, nor could have, anything to
fear from these two quarters, which--as we can now see--could not in
any way touch the essence of religious faith, as distinguished from
some of its temporary forms; on the other hand, that very essence might
be imperilled by a false but plausible philosophy, and grave practical
consequences in the domain of conduct might arise from its spread. For
if it is accurate to say that behind every ethic there stands--whether
avowed or unavowed--a certain metaphysic, the converse holds true no
less; every philosophy, in the exact proportion in which it is _ex
animo_ accepted, will tend to produce its ethical counterpart. What we
{55} submit in all seriousness is that the only real danger to religion
that is to be apprehended to-day--a danger to which it is impossible to
blind ourselves--is that involved in a certain metaphysical outlook,
whose continued growth in popularity cannot but ere long produce its
own results in the field of practice.

The philosophy in question is intimately related to that Pantheism at
some of whose implications we were glancing in our last chapter; if we
refer to it here and subsequ