two parts of the
same effort to destroy the divine basis of Christian faith. We do not
impugn the private opinions of the contestants, but we must judge them
by their fruits. They wrote and taught against those departments of
truth which it is necessary to preserve intact if we would have
Christianity continue a vital power of the soul and an aggressive
principle in the world. Objections will still be urged against the
Gospel history, but it will still be blessed by the ceaseless oversight
and unfailing ministrations of the Holy Spirit. Supposing the
evangelical accounts to be purely human, we have even then the highest
embodiment of truth in the history of man. Herder says, "Have the
fishermen of Galilee founded such a history? Then blessed be their
memory that they have founded it!" With the conviction that the writers
of the Scriptures throughout were inspired men, and spake as they were
moved by the Holy Spirit, we have a power demanded alike by the cravings
of the soul and the aspirations of the intellect. Blessed with this
sentiment, the individual and the church are thoroughly furnished unto
every good work.

From Germany we turn to France. The latter country has been the
traditional purveyor of revolutionary material for the rest of the
Continent. No great popular movement west of the Rhine has been without
its influence upon the eastern side. The July Revolution of 1830, which
effected the overthrow of the Restoration represented by Charles X.,
set the German masses in commotion. They were henceforth restless, and
ready, whenever occasion offered, to overturn the government and
establish a national constitutional basis. The Rationalists were
insurrectionary, and, the more rapid their decline in all religious
sentiment the more decided was their opposition to constituted
authorities. Strauss' _Life of Jesus_, great in its influence upon
theology, was equally powerful over the political mind. Every new
publication which befriended infidelity was not without its support of
faction and discontent.

In connection with the revolutionary tendency, Rationalism assumed also
a more pantheistic, and subsequently a more atheistic form. The second
important work of Strauss, his _System of Doctrine_, was even more
adapted than his first to sap the foundations of faith and social
security. It was the embodiment of all the worst features of the
Hegelian philosophy. It was frank and bold in all its statements. No man
could