Those who are interested in watching the change in the
modern religious temper shauld read carefully the address of Dr. Fairbairn, Principal of the Independent College, Airedale, Bradford, delivered before the Congregational Union on Tuesday. Its object was to describe the position of modern thought, especially sceptical thought, in relation to Christianity, and though of course orthodox, it was penetrated throughout by an admirable fairness. Dr. Fairbairn treated the modern movement as an outburst of naturalism, a new effort to get behind Christ and find a basis for religion in Nature. There is not a sentence in his speech to which a just-minded agnostic could object, though he might not like the icy way in which he is told that the modern movement is a revival, rather than a progress, that M. Renan is very like Celsus, and that Mr. Matthew Arnold is "a modernised Lucian, with better manners, more religion, and a higher mind." We cannot summarise the address, which ended in a strong appeal to the audience to introduce their religion into the affairs of life, until "Secularism should have no excuse for its being ;" but its tone was as unlike the narrow bigotry often attributed to Dissent as it is possible to conceive. Dissenters must, however, pardon us if we say that thirty years since it could not have been delivered, or would have been pronounced there and then an example of the evil tolerance of scepticism which was impeding the Word. Dr. Fairbairn did not swear enough at heresy, for the older members.
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