HOW MAY THE PULPIT BEST COUNTERACT THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN SCEPTICISM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9022, 7 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

HOW MAY THE PULPIT BEST COUNTERACT THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN SCEPTICISM.

Wβ hear much about modern scepticism in distinction from ancient disbeliefs. The impression has gono abroad that this is a progressive age, in which centuries are crowded into days and human thought advances by Titanic strides; old religious theories have been consumed in the crucible of an infallible criticism, and an effete Church, dying of inanition, is about to be carried to its burial. A remarkable assumption ! It is true the Church is not what it ought to be. The enemy has sown tares. Errors in principle and practice have marred the spiritual life of many. Nevertheless, the Church is the great uplifting and conserving agency in the world, without which the race would soon relapso into barbarism and press its way to perdition. And notwithstanding the mingling and opposing elements in the Church, Christianity has never since apostolic times been so alive as now ; never so potential a power in the whole realm of human thought and life; never so aggressive in its movements and rapid in its conquests, entering all lands, and under a heaven-born inspiration claiming all nations as its own. . . Scepticism is largely a resuscitated doubt or an antiquated error. The Hylozoismof the old Stoics is substantially the materialism of to-day. Epicurus anticipated Hobbes by over two thousand years. Huxley admits that he is the disciple of Hume. The philosophy of Aristotle has dominated the Latin Church for centuries, and some of the principles of our new theology have been routed on a thousand battle fields. It is true old enemies may wear new clothes. Their phraseology may be modern, while their subject matter is antiquated.— Homiletic Review.