ror were
comparatively few. But now the accumulated arguments of German infidels
for the last half-century may be thrown into a five-cent Sunday paper,
whose issue will reach a quarter of a million of copies, which perhaps a
million of men and women may read. These articles are copied into a
hundred other papers, and they are read in the villages and hamlets;
they are read on the ranches and in the mining camps where no sermon is
ever heard.

It is perfectly evident that in an age like this we cannot propagate
Christianity under glass. It must grow in the open field where the free
winds of heaven shall smite and dissipate every cloud of error that may
pass over it, and where its roots shall only strike the deeper for the
questionings and conflicts that may often befall it. Error cannot be
overcome either by ignoring it or by the cheap but imbecile scolding of
an ignorant pulpit.

I cannot express the truth on this point more forcibly than by quoting
the trenchant words of Professor Ernest Naville, in his lectures on
"Modern Atheism." After having admitted that one, who can keep himself
far from the strifes and struggles of modern thought, will find
solitude, prayer, and calm activity, pursued under the guidance of
conscience, most conducive to unquestioning faith and religious peace,
he says: "But we are not masters of our own ways, and the circumstances
of the present times impose on us special duties. The barriers which
separate the school and the world are everywhere thrown down; everywhere
shreds of philosophy, and very often of very bad philosophy, scattered
fragments of theological science, and very often of a deplorable
theological science, are insinuating themselves into the current
literature. There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a
political journal, which does not speak on occasion, or without
occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests. The most
sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public opinion.
At such a juncture can men, who preserve faith in their own souls,
remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow limits
of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common ground and
fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For this purpose
it is necessary to state questions which run the risk of startling
sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it if we are to
combat the adversaries on their own ground; and becau