Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/16

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xii
Preface.

its dilapidations. To rejoice gratefully in a health-giving atmosphere, and a clear sky, is what is due to piety; but it is also due to piety to effect, in time, needed repairs at home.

As to the recent out-speak of unbelief, it is of that kind which must, in the nature of things, be recurrent, at intervals, longer or shorter. The very conditions of a Revelation that has been consigned to various records in the course of thirty centuries involve a liability to the renewal of exceptive argumentation, which easily finds points of lodgment upon so large a surface. But this periodic atheistic epilepsy (unbelief within the pale of Christianity never fails to become atheistic) will not occasion alarm to those who indeed know on what ground they stand on the side of religious belief. This ground has not, and will not, be shaken.

Looking inwards upon our Christianity—looking Churchward—there may indeed be reason for uneasiness. This recent agitation could not fail to bring into view, in the sight of all men—the religious, and the irreligious—alike, a defect, a want of understanding, a flaw, or a fault, in that mass of opinion con-