Modern Substitutes for Christianity

POPULAR IMPEACHMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY That there is at present a widespread alienation from the Christian Faith can hardly be denied. Sometimes by violent invective, sometimes by quiet assumption, the conclusion is conveyed that Christianity is obsolete. Whatever benefits it may have conferred in rude, unenlightened ages, it is now outgrown, it is not in keeping with the science and discovery of modern times. 'The good Lord Jesus has had His day,'[1] is murmured in pitying condescension towards those who still suffer themselves to be deceived by the antiquated superstition. The statements in which our forefathers embodied the relations between God and man are no longer, except by a very few, considered adequate; and there is everywhere a demand that those statements should be recast. Is not all this an irresistible proof that the beliefs of the Church have been abandoned, that the old notions of the Divine care, the spiritual world, the everlasting life, cannot be maintained, must be relegated to the realm of imagination? The blessings with which Christianity is commonly credited spring from other sources: the evils with which society is infected are its result, direct or indirect. Such accusations, it may occur to us, cannot be made seriously: they bear their refutation in the very making; they cannot be propounded with any expectation of being accepted. This may seem self-evident to us: it is not self-evident to multitudes of eager, earnest men. The accusations are persistently made by vigorous writers and impassioned speakers, and are received as incontrovertible propositions. However astonishing, however painful, it may be for us to hear, it is well that we should know, what, in largely circulated books and periodicals, and in mass meetings of the people, is said about the Faith which we profess, and about us who profess it. Listen to some of the terms in which Christianity is impeached. 'I undertake,' says Mr. Winwood Reade, 'I undertake to show that the destruction of Christianity is essential to the interests of civilisation; and also that man will never attain his full powers as a moral being, until he has ceased to believe in a personal God, and in the immortality of the soul. Christianity must be destroyed.'[2