The Collapse of the Faith [pp. 164-184]

THE COLLAPSE OF FAJI TH.
among thinking and cultivated men. We could cite many arguments and concessions to this effect from numberless essays and
criticisms proceeding from very able and discerning writers who
represent various schools of thought and feeling. This conclusion is held, indeed, in various forms: by some in the form of a
fixed and logical conclusion, by others as a gloomy and unwelcome foreboding, by others as a shivering misgiving, by others
in a spirit of sorrowing but patient fortitude, by others in a temper of frivolous refinement, and by others in a mood of malignant recklessness or despairing pessimism. In short, there is
alarming evidence that a positive and scornful contempt of Christian theism as a doctrine and a life, a desponding or malignant
disbelief in its truth, and a more or less assured confidence in its
downfall have become more or less definitely the creed of many
young men in England and America.
We propose to examine the reasons for these conclusions, in
whatever form or spirit they may be held, and whether by the
friends or the foes of the Christian faith. To give greater defi —
niteness to our theme, we would propose the definite inquiry
whether faith has in the last century gained or lost in the argument, and especially whether, under the critical and confident
attacks that are peculiar to the present age, her cause is weaker
or stronger at the court of the last resort-the court of the
sober second thoughts of considerate and competent men. By
the argument we do not mean the argument as viewed in the
light of a rigid and dry logic, but in the actual hold which the
truths in question have gained and are likely to keep in the
convictions of the present and the next generation. We are
prepared to concede that in no century since the Protestant
Reformation have the opinions of believers in Christian theism
been modified in so many particulars as during the present.
And yet we would contend that in spite of these changes, and
in many cases in consequence of these changes, faith in Christian theism and all that it involves never stood so strongly on
grounds of reason in the minds of those who accept it as true,
and never could urge so many arguments in its defence. Our
position implies that we do not accept as final the confident,
and in a sense the honest, unbeliefs of eminent scientists who
may be narrow in proportion to their eminence. Nor are we
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