Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/10

 yet concern us all more nearly than any other matter in the world; and though I am not vain enough to suppose that I can throw new material light upon them, yet where there is so much division and uncertainty, the sincere convictions of any man, if openly expressed, may be of value as factors in the problem. At all events, I shall hope that the hour for which I shall ask you to attend to me will not have passed away without leaving some definite trace behind it.

I may say at once that I am about to travel over serious ground. I shall not trespass on theology, though I must go near the frontiers of it. I shall give you the conclusions which I have been led to form upon a series of spiritual phenomena which have appeared successively in different ages of the world—which have exercised the most remarkable influence on the character and history of mankind, and have left their traces nowhere more distinctly than in this Scotland where we now stand.

Every one here present must have become familiar in late years with the change of tone throughout Europe and America on the subject of Calvinism. After being accepted for two centuries in all Protestant countries as the final account of the relations between man and his Maker, it has come to be regarded by liberal thinkers as a system of belief incredible in itself, dishonouring to its object, and as intolerable as it has been itself intolerant. The Catholics whom it overthrew take courage from the philosophers, and assail it on the same ground. To represent man as sent into the world under a curse,