to those truths in His Life and in His
Death with a steadfastness of conviction which none other has ever
surpassed; Who, according {143} to the records which we possess of Him,
habitually lived to do the Father's Will and died commending His Spirit
into the Father's Hands: a Son of Man Who could truly be said to be in
heaven while He was on earth? If God be such, and our relations to God
be such, as Theists describe, would not that Son of Man be the
confirmation of their thoughts? Would not His testimony be of infinite
value on their side? Would He Himself not be the radiant illustration,
the eagerly longed for proof of the truth for which they contend? They
believe in God: why should it, on their own showing, be so hard to
believe in Christ?

III

The Theism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is in some
respects different from the Deism of the eighteenth. It is not so
cold, the God in whom it believes is not so distant from His creatures.
But it is not {144} less vehement in its depreciation of Christianity
as a needless and even harmful addition to the Religion of Nature.
Conspicuous among the advocates of this modern Theism have been Francis
William Newman, Miss Frances Power Cobbe, and the Rev. Charles Voysey.

Francis Newman, in his youth, belonged, like his brother the famous
Cardinal, to the strictest sect of Evangelicals, but, like the Cardinal
also, drifted away from them, though in a totally different
direction.[4] As he found the untenableness of certain views which he
had cherished, the insufficiency of certain arguments which he had
employed, he came with much anguish of mind to the conclusion that the
whole fabric of historical Christianity was built upon the sand. He
rapidly renounced belief after belief, and caused widespread distress
and dismay by a crude attack upon the moral perfection of {145} our
Lord. His conviction that Christianity had nothing special to say for
itself, and that one religion was as good as another, seems to have
been mainly brought about by a discussion which he had with a
Mohammedan carpenter at Aleppo. 'Among other matters, I was
particularly desirous of disabusing him of the current notion of his
people that our Gospels are spurious narratives of late date. I found
great difficulty of expression, but the man listened to me with much
attention, and I was encouraged to exert myself. He waited patiently
till I had done and then spoke to the following effec