As a pioneer, and not as a preacher, I have tried to indicate the real position in which modern knowledge has placed us, and the way in which it puts the problem of life before us.  I have tried to show that, whatever ultimately its tendency may prove to be, it cannot be the tendency that, by the school that has given it to us, it is supposed to have been; and that it either does a great deal more than that school thinks it does, or a great deal less.  History would teach us this, even if nothing else did.  The school in question has proceeded from denial to denial, thinking at each successive moment that it had reached its final halting-place, and had struck at last on a solid and firm foundation.  First, it denied the Church to assert the Bible; then it denied the Bible to assert God; then it denied God to assert the moral dignity of man:  and there, if it could remain, it would.  But what it would do is of no avail.  It is not its own master; it is compelled to move onwards; and now, under the force of its own relentless logic, this last resting-place is beginning to fail also.  It professed to compensate for its denials of God’s existence by a freer and more convincing re-assertion of man’s dignity.  But the principles which obliged it to deny the first belief are found to be even more fatal to the substitute. ‘Unless I have seen with my eyes I will not believe,’ expresses a certain mental tendency that has always had existence.  But till Science and its positive methods began to dawn on the world, this tendency was vague and wavering.  Positive Science supplied it with solid nutriment.  Its body grew denser; its shape more and more definite; and now the completed portent is spreading its denials through the whole universe.  So far as spirit goes and spiritual aspirations, it has left existence empty, swept and garnished.  If spirit is to enter in again and dwell there, we must seek by other methods for it.  Modern thought has not created a new doubt; it has simply made perfect an old one; and has advanced it from the distant regions of theory into the very middle of our hearts and lives.  It has made the question of belief or of unbelief the supreme practical question for us.  It has forced us to stake everything on the cast of a single die.  What are we?  Have we been hitherto deceived in ourselves, or have we not?  And is every hope that has hitherto nerved our lives, melting at last away from us, utterly and for ever?  Or are we indeed what we have been taught to think we are?  Have we indeed some aims that we may still call high and holy—­still some aims that are more than transitory?  And have we still some right to that reverence that we have learnt to cherish for ourselves?