men than I am, to the questions which are now agitating the minds of
the rising generation, and to the absolute necessity of solving them
at once and earnestly, unless we would see the faith of our
forefathers crumble away beneath the combined influence of new
truths which are fancied to be incompatible with it, and new
mistakes as to its real essence. That this can be done I believe
and know: if I had not believed it, I would never have put pen to
paper on the subject.

I believe that the ancient Creed, the Eternal Gospel, will stand,
and conquer, and prove its might in this age, as it has in every
other for eighteen hundred years, by claiming, and subduing, and
organising those young anarchic forces, which now, unconscious of
their parentage, rebel against Him to whom they owe their being.

But for the time being, the young men and women of our day are fast
parting from their parents and each other; the more thoughtful are
wandering either towards Rome, towards sheer materialism, or towards
an unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualism. Epicurism which, in
my eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, precisely because it
looks at first sight most like an angel of light. The mass, again,
are fancying that they are still adhering to the old creeds, the old
church, to the honoured patriarchs of English Protestantism. I wish
I could agree with them in their belief about themselves. To me
they seem--with a small sprinkling of those noble and cheering
exceptions to popular error which are to be found in every age of
Christ's church--to be losing most fearfully and rapidly the living
spirit of Christianity, and to be, for that very reason, clinging
all the more convulsively--and who can blame them?--to the outward
letter of it, whether High Church or Evangelical; unconscious, all