Scepticism and its Relations to Modern Thought [pp. 242-252]

SCEPTICISM AKD [Nov.~
"My friend," he cried, "you are dying. Will you not
call on God once before you go to face him?"
It was an appeal wrung from the depths of a heart which
until this terrible moment had not been conscious of possessing faith, and was so earnest that it might have touched the
dying man, if anything could. But as he opened his eyes for
the last time something of the fire of a life-long defiance
flashed into them.
"There is no God," he said. " Vive 1'kumanitj!"
And with these words still on his lips the soul passed
forth-to meet Him whom it had denied.
TO BE CONTI~UED.
SCEPTICISM AND ITS RELATIONS TO MODERN
THOUGHT.
LooKING out upon the intellectual life of the day, it is safe t(?
characterize its attitude as a state of opinion. Dogmatic teaching in religion to a wide extent has been rejected on the ground
that it is contrary to reason and science. The privilege of
choosing or formulating a creed is refused to n6 one, and the
equal favor of rejecting all is maintained by many. There no
longer exists any obligation to believe, and, what is more, no one
can condemn the belief or unbelief of his neighbor, for the
reason that he has no definitive knowledge to lay down as a
rational basis or criterion of belief. There is no evidence that
one person has the truth and another has not; one may have it,
neither may have it. Such is the substratum of much of the
reJigious thought of the day. Hence the wide-spread toleration of conflicting opinions which passes current for liberalism
Opinion upon the momentous subject of religion, which is the
state of the modern mind, or rather of a large school of modern
thinkers, connotes a state of doubt; and this condition has been
arrived at through various underlying processes, one of which
is a similar attitude in philosophical thought. Here also all definite knowledge has been thrust aside in favor of the supremacy
of doubt, and as a result the foundation of the religious structure
has been ~eyere{y shaken. But, far from striking fear to the