Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity [pp. 250-294]

25pologetics.
of their age in our Church. But no man, whatever his abilities or polemic skill, is prepared to discuss such subjects as they
should be discussed, without a training which our ministers do
not often receive. If these dangerous systems of scientific infidelity are not refuted, it is our fault, as much as theirs who
attempt it and fail. It is preposterous, of course, to think of
furnishing a complete and final refutation of a system of infidelity, which has been three quarters of a century in rearing
its ground-work and its defences, without a thorough training
for the task; and scarcely less preposterous to think of preparing to discuss it adequately, by reading on the subject for a few
weeks.
The most remarkable Lecture, on some accounts, in the
volume, is that on "The nature of Christianity, as shown to be
a perfect and final system of Faith and Practice, and not a
form in transitu to a higher and more complete development
of the religious idea." We do not doubt that the writer saw a
really grand thought looming through the haze with which the
deistical idealism of modern metaphysics has invested the philosophy of religion; but we have always doubted whether the*
"dummheit" charged by the admirers of this philosophy upon
the English intellect, was not a real disqualification for following the game they have started, into the cloud-land of its native
home. We mean no disrespect to the able lecturer, for we are
free to concede, that none but a man of genius and learning
could have written the Lecture; but we must confess, that its
perusal constantly minded us of the famous bon mot of Napoleon to Las Casas, while making their way back from the rigours
and barrenness of a Russian winter, "There is but one step from
the sublime to the ridiculous." We do not affirm that the respected Lecturer ever actually takes that critical step; but to our
optics, which are doubtless none of the best, the topography of
the Lecture seems to lie somewhere near the debatable ground,
about which the reader is sometimes compelled to doubt whether it belongs to the actual or the ideal; whether it is terra
firma, or fog. As Dr. Chalmers once said of the brilliant con versations of Coleridge, on a similar class of topics, "we caught
occasional glimpses of what he would be at: but mainly he was
very far out of all sight and all sympathy."
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