-rooms of
Athens. But the public mind sometimes needs a path by which it can
effect a transition from a skeptical to an evangelical condition. May it
not be that, as far as France is concerned, the minds of the masses
have, by this agency, been deflected to such an extent from the
infidelity of Encyclopaedism that popular evangelical literature will now
find a readier entrance than it could otherwise have effected? If a
taste for reading be once created, it may be won, under judicious
management and by the aid of God's Spirit, to a purer cause than that
which first excited it. The tendency of the works in question is
indisputably pernicious, but, if we may think they will serve as a
medium of passage for the French masses to the reading and adoption of
the great truths of the Gospel, let us not be too slow to accept the
consolation.

Such are some of the agencies which have been operating upon the French
mind. It now becomes necessary to take a survey of the present
theological movements, and to show in what relations the Rationalistic
and evangelical thinkers stand to each other.

The Critical School of Theology is beyond all comparison the greatest
foe of orthodoxy in France. The English Rationalists exhibit but little
scholarly depth, having borrowed their principal thoughts from Germany.
The Dutch are too speculative to be successful at present, and the
Germans have already grown weary of their long warfare. But the French
School, claiming such writers as Scherer, Colani, Pecaut, Reville,
Reuss, Coquerel, and Renan, is not to be disregarded, nor are its
arguments to be met with indifference. It is, however, most gratifying
to state that those ardent friends of the Gospel who resist the attacks
of this school manifest a zeal, learning, and skill, quite equal to
their ill-armed opponents.

By virtue of that principle of centralization which has long been in
force in France, the Critical School of Theology makes Paris the chief
seat of its influence. Availing itself of the advantage of the press, it
now publishes an organ adapted to every class of readers.[100] The
members of the Critical School are connected with the Protestant Church,
yet they claim to teach whatever views they may see proper to entertain.
They profess deep attachment to the Church, and in their journals advise
every one to unite himself with the fold of Christ. If the Reformed
Church, in which the most of the Rationalists are found, were not boun