be looked upon as proof of narrow-mindedness or
boorishness. The profession of morality became
unfashionable. The standard of morality was
gone.

The analogy between faith and morals is close
and real. And the decline of morality in the
Restoration period is finding its counterpart in
the sphere of faith to-day. We have come
within sight of an apostasy unparalleled in the
history of Christendom. Every attack which open
infidelity has ever launched against the Bible is
now being repeated by men "who profess and call
themselves Christians," and who claim to be the
apostles of a new movement in defence of the
citadel of Christian truth. And just as vice
became fashionable in the days of Charles II., so,
as Professor Cheyne naïvely owns, this system of
attacking truth in the interests of truth has
become "fashionable" in Britain to-day. The
appearance of his Encyclopædia has checked
the movement for the moment: but the scare
thus caused will soon subside. It has fluttered
the lesser lights of the Higher Criticism, who
have been serving as acolytes in the worship of
this new goddess of Reason. For they are not
clear-headed enough to see that Professor Cheyne
has only pressed their own principles to legitimate

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