Connected with this fundamental disagreement with the ordinary teaching of the Christian church, on the central question of Christ’s work and the nature of Christianity, is the cognate question concerning the relation of the Bible as a rule of faith. Its superiority to ordinary books is admitted, as cordially as the superiority of Christ’s work to that of ordinary beings; but the religious contents of it, not to speak of the literary, are criticised, not indeed in a polemical, but in an independent spirit; and are measured in the manner just described, and approved or rejected in accordance with it. Thus these two questions,—the atoning work of Christ, and the authority of the scriptures,—are the two forms of doubt which are most likely to meet us in the present age. The expression of them in the clergy of any particular church may of course, if it be deemed necessary, be prevented by political means. A church, if regarded merely in a worldly point of view, is a political as well as a spiritual institution, where the members cede somewhat of individual freedom for the good of the whole; a compact where certain privileges and remunerations are granted, in return for the communication of certain kinds of instruction, and the performance of certain offices: and no one can object that the terms of a treaty be maintained; but the prevention of the expression of doubt is not the extinction of the feeling. And such acts of repression cannot reach the laity of the church, even if they touch the clergy. The inquiry accordingly here intended, as to the means for repressing such doubts, does not descend to the political question, but is a spiritual one; viz. if these doctrines are contrary to Christ, how can such thinkers be directed by moral means to the truth which we believe? or what reason can we give for the hope that is in us, which leads us to decline yielding up one iota of dogmatic Christianity to them? The history of evidences offers a series of experiments, in which we may find an answer to these questions, by studying the different methods adopted in various centuries for spreading Christianity.