CHAPTER XXX.

RECONNOITRING INFIDEL POSITIONS.

RUTH! Your inquiries concerning it are not unwelcome. It will be well if you can say as much of my replies! A Frenchman candidly remarked that to such as are determined not to relinquish error, truth must ever be unpalatable. To the well-meaning and honest-hearted, truth, he thought, could never give offence, even if carried up to the highest point of plain-dealing and faithful remonstrance; that, if it come from a friend, it will ever be distinguished from the rancor of an enemy, as the friendly probe of a physician from the dagger of an assassin! An admission which, I hope, you will not lose sight of!

Such "queries" as yours were, perhaps, never so rife in this town as now among all grades of unbelievers. A great revival of religion is great for creating such effects always, and in all places, more or less, as the leaven of infidelity happens to be diffused. The Gospel fully and faithfully preached, awakens attention, like a sudden blaze of lightning and thunder among the clouds, setting some quaking and others querying. The principles of Christianity, when brought thus into action, are too tremendous in their nature and consequences to permit men remaining long without sentiment regarding

them, favorable or adverse. We may say the same regarding the preacher! The hopes and fears of the people are too much interested to allow of a long continuance of indifference or neutrality. To be neither for nor against is an anomaly, as Christ hints: "He that is not for me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." A divine in Switzerland insisted that the intolerance of the Gospel arises from a principle laid down by our Lord, by which it considers. every man an enemy who is not a friend. Rely upon this: when the Gospel is preached, this fact soon develops itself in the hearts of the hearers. I think we may safely say of every man who holds out against the Gospel, when thus preached, that he is a skeptic upon some point or other, which arms him against its claims, and renders him immovable.

It is impossible to conceive of any fact so immense and so overpowering as that of religion. To enable a man to stand in its presence unmoved requires the assistance of a doubt, equal in strength to him who said, "My name is legion." Even in such a case, I have learned not to despair. A sinner who, in the bottom of his heart, recognises another great fact, that it is optional with him whether he entertain this doubt or reject it, is not a hopeless case! I believe with the celebrated old Thomas Adams, that the devils have faith, but they have no hope; that hope is the life of Christians (ay, and a life amid much death in the hearts of sinners!) and that the want of hope makes devils. Devils believe and tremble, but they have no hope. Our faith would make us tremble, too, were it not for hope. On this principle I account for so much of that ❝stony air" observable in some, rather than an entire sur render to infidelity.

Indifference is one of the most difficult opponents I meet with in any country. Persecution, in certain forms, is nothing to it. A disposition to inquire or investigate is an angel to it. An irritable sinner is assailable, and may receive a backhanded blow from truth, if thrown off his guard, which may bring him to his knees. How often have I armed myself in going forth against indifference, and returned from the attack weak-handed and discouraged! The heaviest pieces of my pulpit artillery had been as ineffectual against it, apparently, as the chirping of grasshoppers. What an incubus of this sort of indifference we had upon us when we commenced this effort! It was said, if we held on thus, we should certainly drive the people out of their senses! when it was evident they had not been in their senses for a great while! At any rate, they were senseless enough—had fallen a prey to spiritual death, hopeless as the scene in "the valley of dry bones," or next to it. "Few," remarked one, "succumb under acute diseases; the majority die of the chlorosis and marasmus of complete indifference. The words 'church, divine service, and sermon' make them yawn. They bear the brand-marks of impending judgment, and the signs, if not of rejection, yet of the capability of it. Satan even does not seem to think these people worthy of an energetic attack. Like dead trees, they fall to him of themselves, and he finds them in his net before he spreads it." A mournful picture! Compare it with the state of things around us. Not one has gone out of his senses, in the sense predicted by formalism; but what multitudes have found their senses! The dead trees are alive again! Indifference has given way!

But, as is always the case in such a work, skeptics are

wide awake also! They seem to be much of the Spanish Jesuits' minds-" Beatus qui prædicat verbum inauditum ”—“Happy is he who proclaims a doctrine not yet heard!" They remind us of the Athenians of old, who spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or hear some new thing. (Acts xvii. 21.) Demosthenes, were he alive and among us, might with propriety transfer his impression of the people of Athens to

(and by the way, it is curious to notice the coincidence of the orator's remark with that in Acts): "I found them inquiring perpetually in the place of public resort, if there are any news." May the poor unbelievers among us, who are yet doing homage to the hemisphere of darkness, turn to the light of the Gospel-turn from "lying vanities" and the husks of falsehood "to the truth which is after godliness," moulded after it that truth which follows after godliness, helps the soul to overtake it, and, with both truth and godliness, enter into heaven. Amen!

Skeptics, though boastful, are usually dissatisfied with that which they mistake for truth. No more truth is in it than that Satan is "an angel of light," whatever transformations it may undergo. (2 Cor. xi. 14, 15.) Error, like Satan, may be so transformed; but, mismanaging its drapery, its nature and origin may be seen in its dusky complexion! Impatience of contradiction has led it so to spring round and round of late, in certain arenas of controversy, to an imprudent showing of "the cloven foot" of its "father the devil." John viii. 44 is worthy of your closest attention. It contains one "truth" which may be of great value to you.

These late dissensions among the churches have made these skeptics bold, as if all religion were falling to pieces. As Stil

lingfleet remarks, "Weaker heads when they once see the bat tlements shake, are apt to suspect that the foundation itself is not firm enough, and to conclude, if anything be called in question, that there is nothing certain !" How applicable to many now, as in 1650! It is amusing how they change front so often!-this is not safe "in the presence of an enemy," in military tactics! They want to know the truth, but when truth appears they reject it, as the Jews did their true Messiah when he came! They profess a liking for truth, if they did but know it-have an altar for it, as the Athenians had, "To the unknown God." And if it was really so that the people of Athens never allowed an idol to be placed upon that altar, it is much to their credit. Would that we could say as much of these skeptics! To exalt error in the place of " unknown truth" is to fall beneath the dignity of the Athenians. Never yet have I found two infidel writers to agree. Their disagreement in this town is notorious; except in one thing-to oppose the truth, as revealed in the Bible.

The definitions of truth, by our modern skeptics, remind one of the squabbles of Grecian and Roman philosophers of ancient times as to "the chief good "—their favorite phrase for happiness-which called forth no less than two hundred and eighty-eight opinions! All these were diverse, agreeing only upon one point, viz., in reasoning from false principles and from wrong premises. Plutarch tells us of a thoughtful and sincere man who, after hearing the philosophers wrangle upon "the chief good," as to what it consisted of some assigning it to one thing and some to another-like yourself, fearing he should miss of true happiness, resolved, if possible, to acquire the whole, hastened to the market-place and bought up all the