Page:The Other Life.djvu/29

 ments of Providence, will have no fear that the Church of God will perish or his Word fail.

Skepticism, growing up amid a general stimulus and collision of thought, is not the formidable enemy of the Christian religion that it seems to be. It is in reality a friend in disguise. It exists by divine permission and is overruled by Divine Providence for his own ends. In barbaric and half-civilized countries, where superstition and despotism reign, there are no skeptics. The undeveloped reason lies impotent at the feet of a childish imagination. Skepticism is a necessary and salutary phase in the ordinary evolution of the mind. By detecting and exposing error it prepares the way for the advent of truth. It is aggressive and destructive, but it is transitional. As evil spirits are permitted to tempt us, to stir up our wicked lusts and thus reveal us to ourselves, so skepticism comes to agitate our minds, disturb our false peace, and discover the nature and extent of our intellectual darkness.

For, if the Christian religion as now promulgated were a perfect and coherent system of truth, there could be no skepticism, for it would have fulfilled its mission. If the Church met promptly and fairly all the rational objections which have