icient to induce us to gather up our armor and adjust it
for immediate defence. Delay will entail evil. The reason why skepticism
has wrought such fearful ravages at various stages during the career of
the church has been the tardiness of the church in watching the sure and
steady approach, and then in underrating the real strength of her
adversary. The present History will be written for the specific purpose
of awakening an interest in the danger that now threatens us. We have no
ambition to deal with the past, further than to enable it to minister to
the immediate demands of the present. We all belong to this generation;
it calls for our energies; it has its great wants; and we shall be held
justly responsible if we neglect to contribute our share toward the
progress of our contemporaries.

The three principles which have influenced us to undertake a discussion
of the present theme--and of the truth of which we are profoundly
convinced--are the following:

I. THAT INFIDELITY PRESENTS A SYSTEMATIC AND HARMONIOUS HISTORY. Our
customary view of error is, that its history is disjointed, rendered so
by the ardent, but unsteady, labors of the doubters of all periods since
the origin of Christianity. We have ignored the historical movement of
skepticism. Even the storms have their mysterious laws. The work of
Satan is never planless. He adapts his measures to the new dangers that
arise to threaten his dominion. The analogy between the Rationalism of
to-day and the infidelity of past ages is so striking that we can with
difficulty recognize the interval of centuries. We see the new faces,
but the foes are old. Rationalism has repeatedly varied its method of
attack; but if we follow the marches of its whole campaign we shall find
that the enemy which stands at our fortress-gate with the _Essays and
Reviews_ and _Notes on Pentateuch and Joshua_ in hand, is the same one
that assailed Protestant Germany with the Accommodation-theory and the
_Wolfenbuettel Fragments_.

II. A HISTORY OF A MISCHIEVOUS TENDENCY IS THE VERY BEST METHOD FOR ITS
REFUTATION AND EXTIRPATION. We can learn the full character of the good
or evil of any abstract principle only by seeing its practical workings.
The tree is known by its fruits. Rationalism may be of evil character,
but we must see the results it has produced,--the great overthrow of
faith it has effected, and its influence upon the pulpit and press of
the countries invaded by it, before we ca