i THE HESPERIAN STUDENT. Qnt non Froflcit, Deficit. VOL. VIII. FEBRUARY, 1870. NO. 2 INFLUENCE OF SCEPTICISM. Fortunately the time has now come, when scepticism no longer implies social ostracism, even in America. True there are a few by whom, "The man is thought a knave or fool, or bigot plotting crime, "Who, for the advancement of his race, ' is wiser than his time." But there is a large and increasing class who arc boldly laying open the great questions that lie at the foundation of all true progress. Never before in the his tory of man have so ir.anj' been ready to weigh facts dispassionately, and to abide bj' the results. Every one, who is conversant with the history of mankind for the last three cen turies, must be aware that every genera tion has demonstrated some phenomena to be natural, and governed by law, which the proceeding generation fiducial ly accepted as supernatural and governed by the athitrarv will of an inscrutable deity. Thus every year increases our con fidence in the natural and decreases our faith in the supernatural we recoil from Uie uncertainty of an arbitral Providence and cling with childlike confidence to the universal reign of law. I know of no octtcr definition of progress than this gradual transfer of our allegiance from the supernatural to the natural. To whom then do we owe this progress! We owe it, if I mistake not, to those who have dared to question the correctness of the current opinions of their times, or in other words to those, who in their own times, were known as sceptics. Where in the progresss of thought would the world be to-day had not these noble spir. its braved the anathemas of the Church? Let me answer this question by asking another. Where would we be in the progress of the mechanical arts if, by common consent, the sickle and the prim itive press had been declared the only authorized instruments for reaping and printing! Where would have been our rapid transit, our telegraphic communica tion, our phonographical wonders, if in vention had been interdicted because Christ's messengers went on foot and he himself rode into Jerusalem upon an ass? Nay, do not charge me with ridicule, for aic we not expected to conform to a creed founded in many cases upon grounds equally trivial ? But the creed has changed and is still changing. As in the progress of civil law, legal fiction always precedes legislation, so in religion, religious fiction always precedes open scepticism gradual