"One of the principal difficulties," he said (of the clergy), "was the prevalence of freethought among the people. There was a time when the New Testament was received by almost everybody * * * But things had changed * * * Some time ago the weapons of skilled historians were turned first against the Old and then against the New Testament * * * Dr. Norman McLeod, writing from Germany, said, 'I am informed on credible testimony that ninety-nine out of every hundred persons here are sceptics.' * * * Germany was to-day more Pagan than Christian * * * The press passed up and down the land, scattering into every home things which set men thinking." [Ah! there is the secret; when men begin to think and reason on theological subjects as they do on secular, good-bye creeds! goodbye confessions!] "Goldwin Smith, a man who had so studied the past as to be able to interpret the present, had told us that a religious collapse of the most complete and tremendous character was apparent on every hand." It was only very recently that a sceptical work on 'Supernatural Religion' passed through a number of editions in a few months. Col. Ingersoll had recently visited the country. He came, he saw, and in some sense he conquered. (Cries of No! No!) The second night he had a much larger attendance than on the first. No matter who, ran Ingersoll down, he was a man of great power of oratory and strong in those qualities which control audiences. The Rev. gentleman then referred deprecatingly to the inadequate-college training of theological students in "apologetics," as they were not allowed to read the works of sceptics for themselves, but had to take their tutors' version of the sceptics' arguments. This "putting up a little argument and then knocking it down," he said was neither "the fair nor the true way." He recommended putting "the very sceptical works into the hands of the students, and he would even say to go and hear Ingersoll if he came." That "man's idea of God rises with his progress in civilization," _Bystander_ admits; but he attempts to explain the fact away on theistic grounds, and dilute its strength as an argument that God is simply a projection of the human mind. He asks:-- "If this conception" (a conception of God) "flows from no reality, from what does it flow? It is a phenomenon of which, as of other phenomena, there must be some explanation; and we have not yet chanced to see in the writings of any Agnostic an explanation which seemed at all satisfactory."