Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/277

Rh and fair fight; they ought to welcome it as a complete unmasking of the foe. If the life according to Sanin is really practicable, if it is a good substitute for the life according to the Christian Gospel, it is desirable that it should be clearly set forth, and its working capacity demonstrated. For the real test of Christianity, and the only one given by its Founder, is its practical value as a way of life. It can never be successfully attacked by historical research or by destructive criticism—all such attacks leave it precisely as they found it. Those who are determined to destroy Christianity, and among its relentless foes have always been numbered men of great courage and great ability, must prove that its promises of peace and rest to those who really follow it are false, and that its influence on society and on the individual is bad.