Modern Infidelity Disarmed. By E. Stephens. (Bet:arose and Sons.) —Mr.
Stephens, who, it appears, is an Evangelical Protestant, is not at all, in our opinion, the man to disarm modern infidelity. He does not thoroughly understand it, or he would not class indlicriminately together Mill and Tyndall, or speak of the kindred works of Darwin and Renan. It is against the latter that his book is specially directed, and he has now and then, we think, the advantage over him. Some of Renin's theories are particularly whimsical. We agree with Mr. Stephens in regarding as puerile his explanation of the miracle of feeding the multitude, which was, he thinks, accomplished by the exercise of an extreme frugality. But if Renan's intellect is not very robust, it seems to us rather too bad to charge him with "a wilful and persistent hatred of God's revealed truth." Mr. Stephens does not seem clearly to apprehend the force of the argument against miracles. He says that to deny theta as being contrary to experience is'as absurd as it would be to deny the existence in the past of animals now extinct. The two eases are hardly parallel. Traces of now extinct animals have been dis- cdvered, and to reply, as he does, that we might go on to say that such traces are contrary to our experience, is as puerile as any of Renan's fancies. Mr. Stephens appears to have a great many sceptical acquaint- ances, who make silly remarks, which he is fond of quoting. One of them was not sure of his own existence, but declined to be convinced of it by the application of a pin to his cuticle. This sort of thing is really childish. As might be expected, Mr. Stephens does not really under- stand the nature of the controversy about matter, and he thinks to settle it by saying that any man of ordinary judgment, provided always that he is not a philosopher, knows that it exists. In fact, Mr. Stephens is a man who has no sympathy with opinions which differ from his own. Oddly enough, he says it is not "consonant with his feelings to write in a condemnatory strain," and yet he does little else.
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