not how, to
be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much
a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be
fictitious .... On the contrary, thus much at least will here be found,
not taken for granted, but proved, that any reasonable man, who will
thoroughly consider the matter, may be as much assured as he is of his
own being, that it is not, however, so clear that there is nothing in
it.' The Christian, we conceive, may now say the same to the Froudes,
and Foxtons, and to much more formidable adversaries of the present day.
Christianity, we doubt not, will still live, when they and their works,
and the refutations of their works, are alike forgotten; and a new
series of attacks and defences shall have occupied for a while (as so
many others have done) the attention of the world. Christianity, like
Rome, has had both the Gaul and Hannibal at her gates: But as the
'Eternal City' in the latter case calmly offered for sale, and sold, at
an undepreciated price, the very ground on which the Carthaginian had
fixed his camp, with equal calmness may Christianity imitate her example
of magnanimity. She may feel assured that, as in so many past instances
of premature triumph on the part of her enemies, the ground they occupy
will one day be its own; that the very discoveries, apparently hostile,
of science and philosophy, will be a great extent with the discoveries
in chronology and history; and thus will it be, we are confident, (and
to a certain extent has been already), with those in geology. That
science has done much, not only to render the old theories of Atheism
untenable and to familiarise the minds of men to the idea of miracles,
by that of successive creations, but to confirm the Scriptural statement
of the comparatively recent origin of our Race. Only the men of science
and the men of theology must alike Guard against the besetting fallacy
of their kind,--that of too hastily taking for granted that they already
know the whole of their respective sciences, and of forgetting the
declaration of the Apostle, equally true of all man's attainments,
whether in one department of science or another,--'We know but in part,
and we prophesy in part.'

Though Socrates perhaps expressed himself too absolutely when he said
that 'he only knew nothing,' yet a tinge of the same spirit,--a deep
conviction of the profound ignorance of the human mind, even at its
best--has ever been a characteris