Those who but a few months ago were doing their utmost to subvert Christianity are now vigorously defending and successfully spreading it. And some, whose hearts were striken with fear and filled with alarm, are now peacefully resting on the sacrifice of the Cross, and glorying in that on which they once poured the bitterness of their scorn. These our friends will hail as tokens for good; and will pray and labour that in the future they may be greatly increased. If modern infidelity does not boast so loudly as it recently did, it still exerts an influence in our large cities, and manufacturing districts, which no true friend of religion or of man can be justified in overlooking. In a latent form it prevails widely among many who are all-engrossed in the present, whose thoughts are bounded by this life, and whose only care is to enjoy the pleasures of sense. Among the more intellectual the works of Carlyle, of Emerson, of Parker, and of Newman, produce a distaste for the spiritual religion of the Bible. There is need, then, that every man, who values the truth, which alone through the Divine Spirit conveys saving health to all nations, should gird up the loins of his mind, and, with a higher and holier energy, labour for its defence and diffusion. |