These great events turned
men's minds from speculative subjects, and there was no enemy to the
faith which could arouse even a languid interest. At no time probably
since the beginning of the century could an ordinary observer have
detected less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I am
writing.
I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. Older men, who
knew more than undergraduates were likely to do, must have seen that the
wave of scepticism which had already broken over Germany was setting
towards our own shores, nor was it long, indeed, before it reached them.
Ernest had hardly been ordained before three works in quick succession
arrested the attention even of those who paid least heed to theological
controversy. I mean "Essays and Reviews," Charles Darwin's "Origin of
Species," and Bishop Colenso's "Criticisms on the Pentateuch."
This, however, is a digression; I must revert to the one phase of
spiritual activity which had any life in it during the time Ernest was at
Cambridge, that is to say, to the remains of the Evangelical awakening of
more than a generation earlier, which was connected with the name of
Simeon.
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