alienation. We see this tendency manifested in relation both to Natural
Theology, and to Revealed Religion. The old conflict between the claims
of these two guiding principles of man (in no age wholly suppressed)
is visibly renewed in our day. In relation to Christianity especially,
there are large classes amongst us who press the claims of faith so far,
that it would become, if they had their will, an utterly unreasonable
faith; some of whom do not scruple to speak slightingly of the evidences
which substantiate Christianity; to decry and depreciate the study of
them; to pronounce that study unnecessary; and even in many cases
to insinuate their insufficiency. They are loud in the mean time in
extolling a faith which, as Whately truly observes, is no whit better
than the faith of a heathen; who has no other or better reason to offer
for his religion than that his father told him it was true! But
this plainly is not the intelligent faith which, as we have seen, is
everywhere inculcated and applauded in the Scriptures; it is not 'that
faith by which Christianity, appealing In the midst of a multitude of
such traditional religions, to palpable evidence addressed to man's
senses and understandings (in a way no other religion ever did)
everywhere destroyed the systems for which their votaries could only say
that their fathers told them they were true. And yet this blind belief
in such tradition, many advocates of Christianity would now enjoin us to
imitate! It might have occurred to them, one would think, that, on their
principles, Christianity never could have succeeded; for every mind must
have been hopelessly pre-occupied against all examination of its claims.
It is, indeed, incomparably better that a man should be a sincere
Christian even by an utterly unreasoning and passive faith (if that be
possible), than no Christian at all; but at the best, such a man is a
possessor of the truth only by accident: he ought to have, and, if he
be a sincere disciple of truth, will seek, some more solid grounds for
holding it. But it is but too obvious, we fear, that the disposition to