swiftly. This flow of human life becomes more intense, and as the years go on, more impatient. One hundred years ago they had Quarterly Reviews, and they travelled in stage coaches at a dignified pace. Now we are not satisfied without a daily paper or an hourly bulletin; we cannot stop to write now, we must correspond by the telegraphic tick, and we speak through the telephone, too eager to wait even for that. The pulse-beat of the age is feverish in its swiftness. As there has been an intensifying of human life and a restlessness characteristic of this era, so there has been a breaking up of the old forms. With the opening of the Reformation came a great change, men were no longer born into a church without choice; they were no longer the mere subjects in the hands of those who were to do the thinking and the organizing, but the Bible being put into their hands they were bidden to think for themselves. The difference between the subsequent ages and those preceding, is the difference between the man who no longer believes because he is told to, but who believes because he has investigated and found the statements to be true. There has been imposed upon the Christian of these later ages the duty and responsibility of enquiring. He has to come to the Book of God, and he has been assured that he must voluntarily and intelligently for himself accept the truth as it is in Jesus, and that he must submit himself to the ordinances that the Lord himself has pointed out, and become intelligently a man. If ever there come unity again in the Christian Church it will be no longer the unity of the barrel held together by hoops outside, but the unity of the tree held together by vital forces; it will not be the unity of the turtle who carries his backbone outside his body, but the unity of the perfect man held together by the vertebræ from within. If the Christian Church is lawfully broken into sections and those sections are lawfully busy in canvassing the lines of truth, and if the world has caught that spirit of enquiry and asked itself the question as to the origin of Christianity, if it has only caught the inspiration for enquiry, and men to-day are enquiring not simply because of a perverse determination not to believe, but because of a longing to know the truth: in so far as this spirit extends it is to be recognized not as by any means a hopeless or discouraging one. In so far as it is an unbelief rather than a disbelief, it is a hopeful element in the intellectual history of the time, and one to be recognised as conveying a promise of good for the future. That there is, that there has been, and that there will be stolid Atheism, no one can doubt. That man through being sodden with materialism will simply

put away all questioning, that man being hardened in nature. against God will refuse to accept the most cogent evidences, is true; and against this form of antagonism to the truth we have no weapon save prayer to God for his spirit which convinces all, and which will break through those hardened walls of hatred and of unreason by which men seal themselves against the pressure of the truth.

If God send light into the world man may close the eye, though he cannot abolish the sun. If man will be hardened against God and hide himself in the depths of sensualism from the power of that light, we may not be able to dislodge him. But in so far as this state of mind is one of hesitating enquiry, in so far as men repeat in Montaigne's motto, honestly :-“ I don't understand," "I pause," "I examine;" in so far as their ignorance is not invincible, that boasts itself superior to the wisdom of other men, but humble and ready to learn, it is by no means to be despised or put away. We ask ourselves how we shall deal with the current unbelief of the time? I suggest, first of all, that we should discriminate between this hesitating and ephemeral unbelief and that habit of scepticism which blocks up all channels through which truth may come. It seems an impertinence for Herbert Spencer to argue the question of creative design, after having by his theory obliterated the very idea of design itself. If we be simply the creatures of the exterior world, if our thoughts be the mere shadow of passing environment, and we ourselves in all our conscious being, a mere thread of dust blown at the tail end of a cyclone of cumulative inheritance, if we have no wish, no thought, no personality, whence comes the conception of design itself? If there be no mind in man it is fruitless to enquire if there be mind in the universe. When men obliterate the preliminary axioms on which alone discussion can be based, then it is impossible to reason with them. If we can show to those who have begun to doubt because of difficulties which have arisen in connection with fact, or historic statement as to Christ, the difference between this doubt which uses the reason, and that doubt which of itself repudiates reason, we shall have made one step towards removing difficulties. It is well for us to observe regarding the Word of God; this book of books, with what absolute candour it records the doubts and questionings of the early times. Observe with what frankness and boldness, John, while declaring that he wrote his gospel that men might believe Jesus the Son of God, yet recorded the doubt of Thomas, which precisely anticipates Hume as to sufficiency of evidence for miracles. Thomas says,

notwithstanding their report of the appearance of the risen Lord, that he must have verification by personal observation, and must thrust his finger into the very print of the nails. Thus the very test wanted by the scientific doubter of to-day, is stated in all its fullness in the Bible. In many other instances we have such doubting anticipated.

DISCUSSION.

REV. DYSON HAGUE, BROCKVILLE.

I trust it will be pardoned in one so young, if I say a few words on this all important topic. I wish to address but a few brief sentences in connection with the subject, and on one aspect which it presents to me. I would ask whether the theoretical impression on the public mind as to Christian life is not the cause of current unbelief, and whether what we ought to grapple with is, not current unbelief among Atheists, but current unbelief among Christians, among Ministers, among us who profess to be apostolic, yet who in our lives have such unapostolic tendencies, and who set forth in our teaching, our living, and our whole Christian being, a vast and immeasurable gap between ourselves and the apostles. I hold that the idea of the world in regard to the Church and in regard to the Christian Ministry, is, in the main, correct. "What is a Minister?" Ask the world, and the answer is, "A man who wears a long black coat and preaches on Sunday." "What is a Christian ?" "A Christian is a man who thinks he is sure of Heaven and manages to live very comfortably here below." The world wants to see the difference between a Christian Minister and a philosopher, or a rhetorician, or an essayist. They want to see the man whose whole life is an exhibition of Christ—not the man who can give a very beautiful discourse, or who can grapple with false and abstruse theories,—another man can do that as well as a Minister, but a man who is prepared to live like Christ, and who is living specially for those whom Christ lived and associated with the publicans and the sinners. I believe we spend too much of our time in our studies and too little in the slums, too much time preparing sermons, and too little preparing sinners for the road to Christ. That, I think, is the real reason of current unbelief. I should like that every Minister should read and

digest a work called "Modern Christianity and Civilized Heathenism." A dear friend of mine said to me, "that book is all stuff and nonsense." I said, "I don't believe it is, it hits too hard to be nonsense." Whether we admit it or not, it lays its finger on a very sore spot in the Christian ministry. "What are Ministers ?" "Comfortable men.” "What were the Apostles ?" "Uncomfortable men." "What are Christians ?" "A form of believers." "What were Christians ?" "Followers of Christ." Unfortunately there is much truth in that. We want to see Christians now-adays who cannot sit at ease in a fine church like this and remember that poor brethren in the next lane or alley-way are not as comfortable as themselves, and do not listen to such a beautiful Gospel as they do. It is all well to have a good sermon in church. The ladies will say, "how beautiful, how nice, there was a lot of thought about it." Why, any man who has been three years at a Theological College can, or ought to be able to, think a little. What the people of to-day want is not so much thought; they want life; they want to see Christ. I feel this more and more every day. I want my people not to think of me as a clever man, or even as a man who can preach the Gospel well, (though I like to) but I want to be thought of as a man who preaches Christ, in his every day life and actions. It is all very well to preach sermons at infidels. I never did preach for an infidel but once, and after I preached the sermon a man came to me and said, “that is a fine sermon, but it went away over their heads." What will win the infidel far more than a discourse on the Being of God, is a life lived daily for Jesus Christ, a people less desirous of comfort, thinking less how much spiritual pabulum they can get to digest, and thinking more how much they can go among the people and win them for Jesus. I do not say that infidels will be convinced in this way, for only God's grace can convert anyone, but I do say that the whole public will have an elevated opinion of Christian life, and say, "here are Christians indeed." As Luther said, “What am I beside those great doers? I am a mere talker." I feel every day more and more that what we want is "doers," "workers," to win souls for Jesus, and not talkers. Pardon me if I give expression to the thought which is in me, that we ought to be more earnest in trying to win men for Christ. Do not let us have the bugbear of infidelity around us all the time. Let us go right to their hearts. I believe that the paralysis of doubt is explained by the paralysis of the Christian Church. If the Christian Church had never been dead, infidelity would never have been alive.

REV. DR. WARDROPE, GUelph.

I must say that I very thoroughly appreciate all the discourses that we have heard this morning. They are a great intellectual treat and a source of great enjoyment, and I wish to declare that I am heart and soul, in every fibre of my nature and my life, with the last speaker. He is a young brother that I never saw before and I am old now in the work of the ministry. I am clearly convinced that he has told us things that we ought all to lay to heart, and things which if we remember and act upon will benefit us during our remaining days. What we need is a more really spiritual life in ourselves, and a more really spiritual life in our churches. If this great gathering, in which I so truly rejoice, shall tend in any way to the raising of us to a higher platform of life in Christ, we shall have reason to go home blessing God for having brought us hither.

REV. DR. POTTS, TORONTO.

My object now is to give an incident in my Ministerial life in Toronto. A gentleman came to my study one morning, and said to me:-"I am feeling a deep interest in the subject of religion, and I think, to be honest with you, that I ought to tell you I cannot quite receive your view of the divinity of Jesus Christ." I knew he was an honest man, and therefore I gave par value to every word he uttered; so thinking and praying for a moment, I thought as to how I ought best to deal with him. I said to him "I would rather not discuss with you just now, the subject of the divinity of Christ. Take my advice, accept Christ as your Friend and as your Saviour as best you can, and after a while we will discuss the subject of His divinity. Shortly afterwards we had a missionary anniversary, and I asked the congregation to give more than double what they had ever given for missions. On the afternoon of that day, just a little before the evening service, this same gentleman handed me a note with a special thank-offering, in addition to his regular annual subscription, and in that note he said :-" I have no doubt now about the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ." It struck me very forcibly that if I had gone into a dogmatic disputation on the divinity of Jesus Christ with that gentleman, in that particular juncture of his moral experience, I might not have convinced him. He told me afterwards how thoroughly he believed in the glorious truth of the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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