If we can respect a childlike and even a childish faith, we ought likewise to learn to respect even a philosophical atheism which often contains the hidden seeds of the best and truest faith. We ought never to call a man an atheist, and say that he does not believe in God, till we know what kind of God it is he has been brought up to believe in, and what kind of God it is that he rejects, it may be, from the best and highest motives. We ought never to forget that Socrates was called an atheist, that the early Christians were all called atheists, that some of the best and greatest men this world has ever known have been branded by that name. _Gifford Lectures, III._ I have heard and read the worst that can be said against our religion--I mean the true original teaching of Christ--and I feel that I am ready in mind, if not in body, to lay down my life for the truth of His teaching. All our difficulties arise from the doctrines of men, not from His doctrine. There is no outward evidence of the truth of His doctrine, but the Spirit of God that is within us testifieth to its truth. If it does not, we are not yet disciples of Christ, but we may be hereafter. _Life._ Be certain of this, that to repress a doubt is to repress the spirit of truth; a doubt well spoken out is generally a doubt solved. But all this requires great seriousness of mind--it must assume an importance greater than anything else in life, and then we can fight our way through it. God is with us in our struggles. _Life._ EVOLUTION OF RELIGION Evolution is really the same as history, if we take it in its objective sense. Subjectively, history meant originally inquiry, or a desire to know; it then came to mean knowledge, obtained by inquiry, and lastly, in a purely objective sense, the objects of such knowledge. _Gifford Lectures, I._ We may discover in all the errors of mythology, and in what we call the false or pagan religions of this world, a progress towards truth, a yearning after something more than finite, a growing recognition of the Infinite, throwing off some of its veils before our eyes, and from century to century revealing itself to us more and more in its own purity and holiness. And thus the two concepts, that of evolution and that of revelation, which seem at first so different, become one in the end. If there is a purpose running through the ages, if nature is not blind, if there are agents, recognised at last as the agents of one Will, behind the whole phenomenal world, then the evolution of man's belief in that Supreme Will is itself the truest revelation of that Supreme Will, and must remain the adamantine foundation on which all religion rests, whether we call it natural or supernatural. _Gifford Lectures, II._