lations to those whose life and influence convict them as impostors; but we have now to meet the rejection of Holy Scripture by those who have nothing to substitute for it, and who glory in their agnosticism; and still further we are confronted by those who nominally accepting the Scripture, give its declarations no practical credence as they go about to find an easier creed and another way of salvation-or of perdition. In this debauchment of faith, that we may not let go thoughtlessly of truths which we need, that there may not come such demoralization of opinion and practice as to put back in our time the cause for which all times and all providences have contributed, it may be well to consider some of the plain CONDITIONS OF BELIEF.

I. Doctrines that plainly HONOR GOD are commended to our faith. Many religions degrade the divine Being. All forms of Paganism make the god only equal to the best, or perhaps less than the worst, of men. "The worshiper carried through the long avenues of columns and statues, and the splendid halls, of the ancient temple of the Egyptian Thebes, was conducted at last to a miserable termination, when in the inner shrine he found one of the lower animals." A worship that finds its finality in a brute, can hardly excite our contempt, so much does it deserve our pity. The old mythologies placed in the seats of the gods personages who were stained with the vices and crimes of those who inaugurated them. Those who accepted their teachings worshiped men only who were more degraded than themselves.

Much of the assumed science of our day would utterly dethrone God. It imputes the order of nature to impersonal force. The changes that have been wrought through the ages it would account for by a dominant and universal principle of evolution. It finds life in the material atoms. The wide and splendid and manifold phenomena lead back only to law. It sees no need, and recognizes no evidence, of God. So we are thrown back on to blank atheism. This is nothing new. One by one as the natural sciences have emerged into the realm of thought, they have at first been considered as hostile to Biblical doctrine, but as broader reaches of the facts have been gained. the hostility has disappeared. All science needs to be builded

on the broadest possible basis. He who runs into conclusions, as against a personal Creator or the Bible, before he is thoroughly satisfied with his own science, acknowledges his own unwisdom. Over and over again has the apothegm of Lord Bacon been verified, "A little philosophy makes a man an atheist, a deeper study of it brings him back to God." The mind is the chief factor in interpretation, whether of Scripture or of nature. The influences which work upon it for evil or for good are often invisible and undetected, and only the result will show whether it was open or closed to all the voices of God and to all the methods by which He works for the union of the soul to Himself.

Professedly Christian instructors too have fostered meager conceptions of God, by what they have propounded concerning Him. A God who does not look with aversion upon sin, while He may pity and seek to save those who commit it, is not a God fit for us. Teachings which represent Him as sanctioning practices which are abhorrent to a rightly educated conscience can be safely rejected. The authority of a creed which sets forth God's approval of what good men would consider crimes, or what wise men would consider follies, may well be denied. Our faith is challenged, first of all by that which honors God. He must be enthroned above human imperfections, with a character whose Alpha and Omega is holiness. A God countenancing sin, in league with whatever spoils human happiness on the one hand, or diminishes His own purity on the other hand, is not the Being for us to worship. Here it is that the God of the Bible outranks the imaginary divinities. Philosophy stands abashed before Revelation. Here One is made known to us worthy of our regard, our reverence, our love. The Bible honors God: it exalts Him to a Throne, brilliant, glorious. It never lowers the Divinity to us; but draws us up to adore Him whose character and whose works are altogether such as to inspire right sentiments in us.

II. Truth, to demand our faith, must be announced through CREDIBLE AND REPUTABLE MEDIUMS. It would not be consistent with the acknowledged character of God for Him to employ wicked or contemptible agents to make known to men the great facts which are vital to their happiness and holi

ness. Any doctrine therefore which comes to us through such channels may well be set aside as lacking an essential element in the conditions of belief. We may properly demand of him who claims to have a new revelation a palpable, public miracle as assurance that he is sent from God. And the miracle must be wrought not in the presence of interested disciples and in the dark, but openly before the multitude. It must be, not a pretended sign, devised for effect on the uninitiated, but a real, benevolent work, witnessed by those who are capable of judging of its genuineness and intent. He who works it must be a good man, with an established character for honesty and uprightness. It is supposable that a man might be in league with the devil and that communications might be received from him which would be strange to those of us who are ignorant of his devices. We must therefore demand that revelators shall be worthy of such an office, men whom God would be likely to commission for such an important duty. They need not be rich men, nor those high in place and power, but they must be good men, whose character is above suspicion. The prophets and apostles, who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, were humble men for the most part, whose personal influence did not spring from their external position, but whose personal character challenged respect and whose words were therefore with power. But this principle effectually silences our modern revelators, the pretended promulgators of new faiths. In many cases they have not the personal qual ities which command even the respect of men, and they are far from being such persons as we should naturally infer the divine Being would select to inform men of truth essential to their salvation. We object to the mediums: we say that many of them are more likely to be the agents of the devil Though there may be among them good men, souls that are easily moved to accept of any new or wonderful thing, yet the foremost of them, in any fair judgment, are not men of God. We therefore scout their assumptions. If we ask for miracles: they are powerless to invoke the interposition of higher laws. Signs fail. The imposture is palpable. Better mediums must be procured before intelligence will recognize the authority of the modern setters-forth of new

than of the Deity.

doctrine. On this ground the religion of the Bible stands preeminent. They were holy men who were moved by the Holy Spirit.

III. Doctrines in which ALL THE SCRIPTURES HARMONIZE are worthy of our assent. Anything can be made out of detached portions of the Bible. Any monstrous dogma or heresy can be fortified within isolated paragraphs or texts of Scripture. There is a sentence which declares, "There is no God." But it is essentially modified by what precedes it: "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." The inability of the sinner to obey the commands of God can be gathered from texts like this: "The mind of the flesh is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be." But we learn what kind of an inability it is when we read these words of Christ, "Ye will not come to me that ye may have life.” The fact that Christ died for the elect is plainly taught by some passages, but the doctrine of a limited atonement is utterly overthrown when we bring to bear upon it such passages as these: "He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world;""That by the grace of God, He should taste death for every man." There is a large class of texts which speak of the future destruction. of the wicked, which teach that they shall utterly perish. Some have inferred from this strong language that the finally impenitent are to be annihilated. But another class of texts, which speak of the endless existence of the wicked in a state. of consciousness, oblige us to give such meaning to the former texts that both shall harmonize. Such a meaning is obvious. As the life of the righteous is eternal well-being, so the destruction or death of the wicked is eternal ill-being. In that meaning all the Scripture harmonizes, and in no other. Awful as the truth is, hard as it may be to believe it, we must accept it or reject the Bible. If the Scriptures are authoritative with us, that meaning in which their combined texts, on any subject, harmonize must be received as the truth of God, or else we are afloat on a boundless sea of conjecture and doubt.

IV. Truth that BEARS AGAINST OURSELVES, as accountable beings, is probably commended to our belief. Such truth is unpalatable to the unrenewed or the partially sanctified nature.

Men like to think well of themselves, and to have others think well of them. They do not like hard doctrines which humble their pride and refute their self-righteousness. They put their morality high, a great deal higher than God does. They enumerate their good deeds with Pharisaic content. They look down on sinners beneath themselves. Certain texts they would read out of the Bible. They cannot think it will go as hard with them as such passages would indicate. Hence come forms of religionism designed to make it easy for men to go through the world and to meet the issues of probation, to give substitutes for biblical orthodoxy and godly repentance and humble faith in Christ, and a holy, self-denying, cross-bearing life. God's terms are set aside. This may be according to the pleading of human nature, but it is not according to the Gospel of Christ. The better way is, to take the worst possible view of ourselves, or rather, to look at ourselves just as we are, which is very much the same thing, and then seek delivIf we are sinners, we do not change that fact by calling ourselves saints nor by requiring others to call us so. If the wrath of God abides on us, we shall not shake it off by thanking Him that we are not as other men are. If there are truths that bear hard upon us, that show us to ourselves in a bad light, we shall probably not go far amiss if we insert these truths in our creeds. The presumption is that the statements do not come up to the reality. The sinner, moved by the Holy Spirit to look at himself as he is, feels that the half has not been told his pungent convictions sometimes beget despair. If he gains relief, it is not by thinking any better of himself, but by learning to trust in Christ as a Saviour for the lost. A stupid self-conceit is not an honest judgment of one's self. The biblical doctrines that humble us, that spoil the self-glory of our hearts, that direct us as lost sinners to the only way of escape, the blood of an atoning Saviour, are those which are most worthy of our acceptance, though their very truthfulness may repel us from them.

erance.

V. Those truths should be embraced in our belief which are SAFE IN ANY EVENT. The possibilities should be considered in important decisions. The statesman in peace will prepare for war. The mariner is best off who has provided for storm.