The Congregational Union held its first meeting for the year
on Tuesday, in the City Temple, Dr. Aveling, of Kings- land, delivering the address. Dr. Aveling was very scornful towards the scepticism of the day. "Like Cadmus," he said, "the men of letters and philosophy were sowing dragon's teeth, whence an armed host would spring, to destroy, as they thought, religious belief. But, as in the fable, an invisible hand would throw a stone in their midst, and make them fight with one another till none but a few remained, and these would assist in build- ing the city of God." That is a metaphor which hardly shows, we think, a true appreciation, on Dr. Aveling's part, of the kind of unbelief which is the most powerful among us. It is not the un- belief enshrined in the jargon of philosophic phrases which neutralise each other, so much as the unbelief of minds and hearts confused by the dense tangle of human ignorance and knowledge, and hopeless of separating the one from the other. It will not be by the mutual hostility of negative creeds, but by the thoughtful discriminations of a brooding faith, that the most destructive doubts of the day will be resolved.
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