The faith in which we can live
bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as
it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing. It may
be that all intellectual efforts to arrive at it are in vain;
that it is given to those to whom it is given, and withheld
from those from whom it is withheld. It may be that
the existing belief is undergoing a silent modification,
like those to which the dispensations of religion have
been successively subjected; or, again, it may be that to
the creed as it is already established there is nothing to
be added, and nothing any more to be taken from it.
At this moment, however, the most vigorous minds
appear least to see their way to a conclusion; and
notwithstanding all the school and church building, the
extended episcopate, and the religious newspapers, a
general doubt is coming up like a thunderstorm against
the wind, and blackening the sky. Those who cling
most tenaciously to the faith in which they were
educated yet confess themselves perplexed. They know
what they believe; but why they believe it, or why they
should require others to believe, they cannot tell or
cannot agree. Between the authority of the Church
and the authority of the Bible, the testimony of history
and the testimony of the Spirit, the ascertained facts
of science and the contradictory facts which seem to
be revealed, the minds of men are tossed to and fro,
harassed by the changed attitude in which scientific
investigation has placed us all towards accounts of
supernatural occurrences. We thrust the subject aside;
we take refuge in practical work; we believe perhaps
that the situation is desperate and hopeless of
improvement; we refuse to let the question be disturbed. But
we cannot escape from our shadow, and the spirit of
uncertainty will haunt the world like an uneasy ghost,
till we take it by the throat like men.

We return then to the point from which we set out.
The time is past for repression. Despotism has done
its work; but the day of despotism is gone, and the
only remedy is a full and fair investigation. Things
will never right themselves if they are let alone. It
is idle to say peace when there is no peace; and the
concealed imposthume is more dangerous than an open
wound. The law in this country has postponed our
trial, but cannot save us from it; and the questions
which have agitated the Continent are agitating us at
last. The student who twenty years ago was contented
with the G