was set aside; but in the laboratories of England and Germany, under the clear light of the microscope, nature was revealing new wonders in plant and animal, and men's minds under fierce excitement were arranging analogy after analogy, and flashing back through countless centuries to the nebulæ of worlds, and the germs of all existing life. Biology versus Creation now became the burning question. Is man the product of mechanical forces, working up and out through the strata of matter, or is he indeed the son of God, created to the image and likeness of the Deity? The doctors of the new science were Haeckel of Germany, and Darwin of England. The apostles were Tyndall in these islands, and Huxley of New York. We remember what a thrill of horror penetrated the world when, in 1874, Tyndall defiantly formulated and unfolded at Belfast the full plan of the naked materialism that was to supplant the sacred traditions of humanity. Huxley, still more boldly, fled to America a few years before, and in a series of lectures in New York, not only explained the new theories, but deduced from them a series of conclusions as wanton and unconnected as ever agonised the intellect of a logician. The mind of America was agitated. The transcendentalism and ill-concealed pantheism of Emerson were forgotten. Speculation gave place to examination. The scientific journals teemed with praises of the industry and enterprise of the evolutionists, and the world of science waited on the tiptoe of expectation for the discovery which was confidently promised-the link that was to connect the organic with the inorganic world. It was not forthcoming. But scientific speculation was accepted for certain revelation, and men of science boldly launched themselves against revealed religion under every form. All the caution that was so carefully observed by rationalists of former years was cast aside; the fear of wounding susceptibilities, or of darkening the light of faith in minds, where the torch of science could provide no adequate substitute, was stated to be pusillanimous and childish. Scepticism became dogmatic; and by every class of literary men, historians, metaphysicians and philosophers, all faith in the supernatural was ridiculed as a remnant of the weak and puerile superstitions of the world in its infancy. Arrogant infidelity became supreme in America. The absolute freedom of the press enabled the active propagandists of this new religion of science to scatter their pernicious doctrines broadcast through the land. Scientific journals of immense weight and

authority were assisted by the lighter magazines, and these in turn by the daily papers, in making the theories and deductions of evolutionists familiar to the masses of the people. Light scientific lectures, ably illustrated, opened up to wondering minds the spectacle of the world, with all its vast complexities of animals, vegetables, and minerals, unfolding itself from the first atom, and growing under the hands of some unseen power, with mechanical precision, into a universe of surpassing loveliness. And if these, in their exclusive devotion to science, spared the susceptibilities of their audiences, there were not wanting in the American cities street preachers, and day lecturers, and pamphleteers, who repeated in coarse and indecent jests the unqualified contempt of their superiors for everything savouring of religion. All our fundamental ideas of God and Revelation, the soul and its everlasting destiny, the higher moral sense, the spiritual desires and aspirations of men, everything in fact, that could be a motive of virtuous actions, and a mainspring of noble deeds and ambitions, was stigmatised as the fancy of superstition, or the dream of enthusiasts, kept alive by an elaborate system of priestcraft throughout the world. The fact that nearly every preacher of the new creed had been obliged to retract his assertions under the pressure of science itself; that Tyndall in all his later lectures withdrew from the advanced position which he had taken at Belfast; that Huxley, in his article "Biology," in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," absolutely contradicted his own favourite theories; and that Haeckel himself in his addresses before the French Association, and in his "Natural History of Creation," was driven to admit the necessity of an absolute beginning, was most carefully kept in the background. In Germany and England, the ancient conservatism of the races, and their stern and pitiless examination of these subversive doctrines, compelled the materialists to limit their dogmatism. America and France, let it be said, have stood forth in ugly pre-eminence as the countries where infidelity has taken its firmest foothold. In these lands it is no longer disreputable. It is no disgrace to be known as an atheist. That terrible name, which Voltaire in his worst moments would have repudiated, that term of shame which, even to depraved minds, carries with it some nameless idea of turpitude, has been freely accepted, and even boasted of, under the euphemised form of Agnostic and Materialist. And all sacred things of religion, names

that were spoken with bared heads and bended knees, sacred stories that had so often brought comfort to the sorrowful, and sacred hopes that had so long had their consecrated shrines in the human heart, are made subject to derision. The scoff of the unbeliever has degraded in the eyes of thousands the purest and holiest revelations of heaven.

Our examination into the growth of free thought in America would hardly be complete, did we not advert for a moment to the luxury and voluptuousness of social life, and to the corruption and venality that exist in all the State departments. So far as the mere material growth and progress of the States is concerned, these things, which in an older and more thickly populated country, would be the prelude to extinction, will scarcely have a perceptible effect. So long as the population is not wedged together within limits that are impassable, so long as there is free power of expansion, and unused land with its teeming wealth lies open to the people, there never can be those awful collisions between wealth and poverty, the governing classes and the governed, that are such perilous possibilities in older states. But that excessive luxury, the facility of making and squandering fortunes, and the com petition for wealth, which is so keen, that dishonesty is reputed a virtue; that these things are inimical to religious feeling, and direct incentives to infidelity, is beyond all dispute. The history of the world testifies it. Athens, in the very climax of freedom and prosperity, forgot its ancient deities, and built statues to the Great Unknown. Rome, under the emperors, lost faith in the gods, under whose tutelage it was supposed to have waxed so strong. Florence, under the Medici, became classic and pagan. Paris, under Louis XIV., became the cradle and school of all modern infidelity. England, under Victoria, is drifting every day into the abysses. And America, whose ambition it is to rival and surpass these states and empires, may succeed too in securing the doubtful honour of towering above all in colossal iniquity. Certainly, if there be any connection between free-living and free-thinking, and some one has said, "Les Passions sont athées," it would not be rash to predict a supremacy in evil for America. We will not go into details, but mention that, as far back as the Civil War, and even amidst its horrors, an outcry was raised against the extravagance and voluptuousness of the cities of the Union. Descriptions of

revellings and riotous living are quoted largely by Doctor Brownson in his Review,' and they read like a page from the "Arabian Nights," or from a history of Rome under Caligula. Now, if these things were done twenty years. ago, what shall be said of America at present? The answer, in all its painful and vivid truth, may be read in Mr. Henry George's latest work, called "Social Problems."

We now come to the question, what defence has been made by the Christian communions of America against the terrific assaults of infidelity? We put aside for a moment the Catholic Church, and we candidly admit that all that could be done by human zeal, intensified by the deadliness of the struggle, and fortified by learning as wide and deep as that of the adversary, was done by the Evangelical churches of America. That their pastors were at an early period quite alive to the dangers which were pressing on their traditional creeds, from within and without, was apparent from the efforts that were made to secure for their theological students a most accurate knowledge of those sciences which were assumed to be in direct hostility to revealed religion. Hence, divinity students from America crowded the universities of Germany for the last fifteen years, and returned to their missions fully equipped with every fact and argument that could tell against the advancing lines of infidelity. And if we except the standard works, written by German divines, we hardly exaggerate when we say, that by far the fullest and ablest defences of Christianity have been made by the elders and professors among the Non-Catholic creeds of America. A mere catalogue of the works issued by the religious press of America during the last fifteen years, would fill a volume. To each succeeding phase of unbelief,-Rationalistic, Materialistic, and Positive-they opposed scholarship that was very profound, and a tenacity for their faith that was heroic. They established in their professional schools, notably at Princeton and Andover, lectureships on the relation between religion and the sciences. And, not being impeded by strict theological courses, they had leisure to devote themselves to the philosophical studies which have become of such supreme importance in our days. It ought, therefore, be a matter of regret that they were unable to counteract the influences

1 Review, January, 1864; Art. "Popular Corruption and Venality.'

of free thought. In their defeat there is the pathos that always hangs around the brave defenders of a hopeless cause. They went down like the Israelites before the Philistines, because they had not the Ark of God in their midst. Stubbornly they contested every issue, and gradually they had to abandon point after point of cherished beliefs, which were doubly hallowed by the worship of their ancestors and the robust traditions of their race. But no purely human institutions could stand the merciless criticism that rained from press and platform on doctrines that had no better support than the frail logic of the class-room, set in stereotyped forms, and supported by ancient texts, which had lost all their inspired vigour, because they had been irreverently handled by every individual who claimed the right of private judgment. The Nemesis of the Reformation has assuredly come. Its own children have risen against it. They have pushed its lessons to their logical conclusions. With audacity unheard of before our century, they have assailed every doctrine, not only of Christian, but even of Theistic belief, and the churches have gone down before their assaults like cities built upon the sand. Every familiar doctrine must be modified to meet the requirements of science; the integrity of Scriptural inspiration must be abandoned; the deeplycherished doctrines that the Puritans brought over in the Mayflower, and which were reverenced as the Israelites reverenced the Ark and its Tables-the dogmatic articles which lit the fagot and heated the brand in the New England cities-have been swept away ruthlessly by the broader views of that liberalism which environs all thought in our time. The texts and tenets which went to build up the edifice of Calvinistic theology, and which generations of elders regarded as irrefragable, have been torn in pieces and flung to the winds by the contemptuous logic of latterday infidels; and even that sacred belief, in which were centred all hopes of comfort here and happiness hereafter -the belief in the Word of God, the "sword of the spirit"-has become as vague a source of religious thought as the intuitions of the philosopher, or the reason and spirit of Emerson. "Faith in spiritual and divine realities," says an American divine, " may, in some of its older forms, be passing into Herbert Spencer's family of extinct beliefs;'" and his only hope is, that he may be allowed to help in the general movement towards a faith at once "more simple, more rational, and more assured." It is