BISHOP MAGEE ON INFIDELITY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2614, 13 April 1889, Page 5 (Supplement)

BISHOP MAGEE ON INFIDELITY.

At the Church Congress in Manchester this year one of the subjects for the general meetings was ' philosophic doubts.' Three papers were read, and then the Bishop of Peterborough, who is known for his lectures on thrj subject of infidelity, was asked to speak. The riyhfc rev. prelate (says the " London Daily News ") was in his finest form, having something to fight. The introduction to Congress of atheists, agnostics, and pessimists aroused all his combative faculties, and with clc-nched fist he went (or them with a will. Firi-t, however, he asked liow many of the brilliant arguments and definitions of the trained thinkers and writers who had been heard would be curied away by the ordinary laymen aud women. How much better would they be equipped for meeting the utheist, agnostic, and pmsitivitt? The Bishop left these questions himself unanswered, and passed on to say that the unbelief of the present day is aggressive and omuipresent. It is found in the club; in the drawing room you hear it from all young , gentlemen who air their free thoughts before they have learned to think ; it lisps from pretty lips, and lurks in newspaper, book, and magazine. The Christian parent is not sure that the poison will not be found in the next popular novel from the circulating library. In his advice to his audience how to deal with unbelievers, Mr Magee warned them never to expect to silence infidelity, for Christianity being a faith, and not a science, cannot be demonstrated. He told them not to trouble themselves abont unanswered objections, and said that agnosticism is not philosophy, but a confession of tho want of philosophy. He was allowed to exceed the limit of time permitted to speakers, and was wildly applauded when he finished.