Twenty years ago there was widespread inquiry and anxiety, both in and out of the churches, as to the future of Christianity. Men's hearts were failing them because of the seeming inadequacy of Christian creeds and doctrines to meet the needs of mankind. Where was rest to be found? In what church was peace, in what creed was comfort, "the Comforter"? Earnest men and women, looking fairly in the face the tumultuous questions asked on every side, were forced, either to hold through blind faith to the old theological positions, or to become agnostics, infidels, to bear any name that held out the slightest hope of helping them to be true to some high ideal, rather than compromise their integrity by shambling along, assenting in word to creeds they had realized to be utterly useless for the inculcation of a high and practical Christianity. In France and Germany scholars of the profoundest research were studying the Scriptures with eager diligence, hoping to pierce the general gloom and mystery, and present some honest, consistent answers to the burning questions asked on every hand in every civilized land. In England, a noble army of investigators questioned every creed and assailed every dogma. Truly, the veil of the temple of human opinions and theories was rent in twain. Matthew Arnold, searching anxiously for some unit of statement regarding God, finally gave us this as the definition upon which he hoped men might generally agree: "God," he said, "Was the stream of tendency that makes toward righteousness."
This cold and vague utterance was a gleam of light thrown across the dark and sullen waves of unbelief, for it carried with it a hope that enough people would see its truth to present to unbelievers in God an honest minority at least, who clung to their faith in a supreme Intelligence. There came to us, too, from England, the loving earnestness of Maurice, who tried to bring "fire from Heaven" by his untiring labors, especially for those who were beating their wings against the Church of England cage, longing for greater freedom of flight, many of whom were calmed temporarily by his measurably successful endeavor to prove that "the Church" was as broad as humanity's needs! And so the battle waged about these two vital questions, "Is there a God?" and "Is Jesus the exponent of absolute and eternal Truth?"
Men willingly made large concessions of precious truths that they might preserve intact these fundamental and essential facts. For my own part, so terrible did the strain become that I felt obliged to restrict myself in reading the Bible to a few parts, where I was unlikely to come upon something that would open up the disputed doctrinal questions. lest all hope and faith should go from me and I should sink into the dark night of atheism. It would not have surprised me if some sudden and awful destruction should have come upon us when men were asking such questions as these:—
