pre-eminence, we must turn to a later period in the history of the world and of the church. We must come down through century after century, till we have reached comparatively modern times. We must pass by what are usually termed the Dark Ages; for during that long slumber of intellect and learning, Infidelity, like every other movement of the human mind, seems to have been brought to a pause. It was not the form in which the great enemy of Christianity then desired to act. While the Church and her ministry slept, it was his policy to remain quiet, that they might not be waked

up.

But when the trumpet of truth was blown in the days of the Reformation, and Religion and Learning began to bestir themselves after their long slumber; then also Infidelity raised its head and displayed its opposition. When Luther and Beza, and Calvin and Cranmer, and Latimer and Ridley, had taken their stand at the altar of heaven, and had brought into light the long-hidden truths of the Gospel; and when, in the generations following, such men as Bacon, Boyle, Locke and Newton in England; and Galileo, Kepler, Des Cartes and Leibnitz on the continent of Europe, gave a fresh impulse,

with a new form and spirit, to Philosophy and Science; it was then that Hobbes displayed his art and subtilty in his work, boastfully called the Leviathan, endeavoring to subvert the cardinal principles of Christianity; then did Shaftesbury send abroad his polished blasphemies in his Characteristics; it was then also that Bayle, Spinoza, Blount, Toland, Bolingbroke and others, joined in the same guilty warfare. They were all met and overthrown by christian writers of the massive strength which belonged to the learning of that day; and as evil in our world is always overruled for good, their assaults led to the establishment of the famous Boyle Lectureship, as a permanent defence of Christianity, and from which have been produced some of the ablest discourses in our language, demonstrating the truth and authenticity of the Bible.

In referring to this multitude of freethinkers, who came forth as locusts over the land, it should be mentioned that we do not find many anong them who can be called men of great learning; and if a few of their number might claim such a distinction, their Infidelity was so revolting and monstrous in its blasphemies, as to render it compara

tively harmless. They owed their fame, such as it was, to causes which existed before them, and in one sense called them into being. They generally flourished in what is known as the corrupt age of Charles the Second, when the land was deluged with practical irreligion, and the way prepared for the wild speculations of Infidelity. They were more like the insects which are generated in the miasma of a soil, already pestilential and deadly, than like the dragon whose pestiferous breath has been represented as having the power to blight and destroy whatever is lovely and precious in the Edens he invades. That gigantic power of mischief and ruin soon afterwards began to be developed, especially in three men, who were singularly adapted to act together as partners in their common object as infidels. And not waiting to enumerate many others who were their cotemporaries and fellow-laborers, let us contemplate that peculiar potency for evil which was displayed in Hume, Rousseau and Voltaire, when they formed their unholy alliance.

It has been justly observed, that there is scarce an avenue to the heart in all the varieties of human character, but some one of the three had ex.

actly the talent to reach it. Hume's mind was carried away by his fondness for new theories, his ambition to be found on debatable ground, and the vanity of making good his position by arguments that might perplex, if they did not convince. He describes himself, with evident complacency, as a "friend to doubts, disputes and novelties;" and so lightly did he value truth, whether as a philosopher or a historian, that he could sacrifice it with the coldest indifference, either to vindicate a speculation, or to gratify a prejudice. With such a spirit did Hume prosecute his attacks on Christianity. In a philosophy that sets at defiance the more fixed and acknowledged laws of evidence, and in a history abundant in false colorings and garbled statements, all written in a style of almost Grecian ease and finish, he prevailed with readers who, obdurate in heart, and ambitious to be thought more knowing than other men, loved to wrap themselves up in the mists of barren and uncertain speculations. Rousseau's mind resembled the crater of a burning vol cano. Everything that came from his pen seemed fused by a melting heat. He wrote for readers who are governed by impulse, rather than by a taste for

sober reasoning; and by a show of sincerity well adapted to win upon the unwary, and by a vividness of imagery that makes his eloquence dazzling and deceptive, he seldom failed to lead captive those whom he aimed to teach. The scope of Voltaire's mind was more universal. He is not only to be reckoned among the Encyclopedists of his day, but he himself resembled an Encyclopedia of knowledge. He touched upon everything, but instead of adorning, he defaced or perverted much that he touched. There is scarce any region of intellect with which his name is not more or less connected; and, as if glorying in the power of his multiform talents, he impiously boasted, that "while it required twelve men to write Christianity up, he would show that one man could write it down." He labored for his object through a long life, and with unabated zeal; and by the keenness of his wit and satire, and his strong picturing of sensuality and the grosser vices, he became the favorite oracle of those who lay less within the reach of his two great cotemporaries and fellow-laborers in the cause of irreligion.

It is frightful even to recollect the havoc and desolation which were wrought by these three