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the awful condition of man, when the existence of God and providence is denied: "The giving up of faith in a divine providence is certainly one of the most sensitive losses that can befall man." Hear Humboldt: "I despise humanity in all its strata. I foresee that our posterity will be far more unhappy than we are. The whole of life is a great insanity." Listen to Schopenhauer, the great German author and pessimist: "This world is the worst possible; the life of man is one of unbounded misery and wretchedness; existence is a blunder and crime, and 'not to be' is infinitely better than 'to be.'" Surely in these confessions, which are but characteristic of unfaith, there are sorrow and moroseness, selfishness and despair, enough forever to shut out of sight and thought the wonted seriousness of the Christian mind.

It is in time of spiritual trouble and sorrow that Christianity appears most divine and infidelity most frightful and devilish. Here is a man seriously considering his moral state. His conscience upbraids him on account of his sins. He has been so far enlightened by the Spirit and by the Word as to see and feel that the wages of sin is death. The pangs of guilt, the dreadful prospect of deserved punishment fill him with agony. "Oh wretched man that I am," he cries, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" In this situation the gospel finds him. The happy announcement, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," is made to him. He inclines to enter upon that way, to find the peace which the world cannot give, and which infidelity does not possess, when some unbeliever encounters him, chills his heart with recitals of his own rejection of truth, and is successful in keeping him from the Cross and from salvation. What now does the infidel bestow in the way of compensation for robbing this penitent man of the happiness, hope and heaven so nearly his? Having strangled his convictions, murdered his spiritual aspirations, dashed from his parched lips the chalice which contained the blood of Christ-the only hope of perishing sinners-what does he give as a recompense for the ruin he has wrought? Nothing, absolutely nothing! unless hopelessness, heartlessness, remorse, and despair can be accounted gifts. An enemy to God, the infidel thus becomes an enemy also to his fellow man, cheating him of coveted peace,

robbing him of his best convictions, blinding him to the holiest truths of God, crushing out his religious instincts, and cruelly heaping upon his sorrow-stricken heart a heavier load of unforgiven guilt, thus leaving him, helpless and miserable, to his fate, and going in search of another victim. This is the hellish malignity and criminality of zealous unbelief.

Pitiable, too, the weakness of a man who unresistingly consents to be slain, who yields his better judgment and his awakened conscience into the hands of his spiritual enemy, who is satisfied to be robbed of all that is dearest and purest and best in the earthly life, and all that makes existence blessed in the life eternal, for nothing and worse than nothing. It is the magnitude of the sinner's loss which awakens our sympathy. Like the fluttering bird, charmed before a serpent's glaring eyes, he unwittingly allows himself to be deceived by the adversary until his precious probationary moments are fled, the coils of incorrigible guilt around him, his pathway darkened by the gloom of long spiritual night, the gates of mercy forever closed before him, and none to deliver his perishing soul.

"When subject to the multifarious ills which flesh is heir to, what is there," enquires Thompson, "to uphold our spirit, but the discoveries and prospects that are unfolded to us by revelation? What, for this purpose, can be compared with the belief that everything here below is under the direction of infinite wisdom and goodness, and that there is an immortality of bliss awaiting us in another world? If this conviction be taken away, what is it that we can have recourse to, on which the mind may patiently and safely repost in the season of adversity! Where is the balm I may apply with effect to my wounded heart, after I have rejected the aid of the Almighty Physician? Impose upon me whatever hardship you please; give me nothing but the bread of sorrow to eat; take from me the friends in whom I have placed my confidence, lay me in the cold hut of poverty, and on the thorny bed of disease; set death before me in all its terrors; do all this,-only let me trust in my Saviour, and pillow my head on the bosom of Omnipotence,' and I will fear no evil'-I will rise superior to affliction,-I will rejoice in my tribulation.' But, let infidelity interpose between God and my soul, and draw its impenetrable veil

over a future state of existence, and limit all my trust to the creatures of a day, and all my expectations to a few years, as uncertain as they are short, and how shall I bear up, with fortitude or with cheerfulness, under the burden of distress; or where shall I find one drop of consolation to put into the bitter draught which has been given me to drink? I look all over the range of this wilderness in which I dwell, but I see not one covert from the storm, nor one leaf for the healing of my soul, nor one cup of cold water to refresh me in the weariness and the faintings of my pilgrimage."

Dr. Brooks of St. Louis tells of meeting at Bex, in Switzerland, a young man whose pale face, shrunken limbs and curved back gave indication of the agony he had suffered. One day, seated at the table, he listened to the wit and ridicule aimed by a handsome skeptic against the Bible. After dinner the youth detained the skeptic, to relate to him the following history: "I am from the United States. My father died in my infancy. I had no childhood, but when boys were shouting in the streets, I was lying in a darkened room, moaning with pain. Under God I owe my life to the unwearied tenderness and watchfulness of my mother. Thinking that a voyage would benefit me, and a visit to the Holy Land would interest me, we together made the trip to Palestine, where I have just laid my mother, my last earthly friend, in the grave, and now I go home to die; and the only joy left me on earth is the hope of meeting my mother again with Jesus in heaven. Would you take that hope from me?" "No, no," said the infidel with tears on his face, "I would not. Keep your hope and your joy, and I crave your pardon for having said a word to wound you. I was wrong, and deserve your reproof. Never again will I speak in the presence of others as I did to-day."

It is not, however, blunt and rough infidelity that causes apprehensions among the good, so much as the constant storm of cold and relentless criticism directed against simple piety and the plain old English Bible by the champions of "advanced thought." Some have expressed alarm lest serious injury or even permanent overthrow might result. There is little ground for such fear. That flippant skepticism and savage critical thrusts cannot shake the body of inspiration, is proved by the experience of three thous

and years. Ever since the "Song of Songs," perhaps the oldest complete book in the Bible, written a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and the semi-dramatic poem of Job, were brought to the attention of mankind, there have been unbelievers to cavil and sucer, but the result of all their doings and sayings have had little or no appreciable effect upon the influence of these sacred writings. Job's words are just as thrilling to-day, unfolding as they do the first glimpse of the future life that ever dawned upon the race, as they were when the inspired old patriarch first wrote and spoke:

"I know that my Redeemer liveth,

And that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth:
And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body,
Yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Whom I shall see for myself.

And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger."

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That the "higher criticism" will by no means destroy the tical influence of the Scriptures, we are also well assured. It may change somewhat the critical and historical uses of the Bible, but can by no means affect its ethical and spiritual uses. Indeed, we are sometimes led to believe that the sweeping criticisms of liberal scholarship will have not only a reactionary, but a directly good effect upon the minds of the people, in stimulating them to independent investigation of the truth.

Prof. G. F. Wright has shown that the fear that the science of textual criticism would disturb our confidence in the integrity of the documents upon which our Christian faith is based has proved utterly groundless. "Seven-eighths of the words of the New Testament have passed the ordeal without question. Of the changes that have been adopted or suggested in the remaining one-eighth, ninety-nine one-hundredths are of the most trivial character, having no relation to the sense. So the passages of Scripture whose interpretation is in doubt, through uncertainty respecting the text, do not number more than one in a thousand, and are none of them indispensable to the maintenance of any Christian doctrine. We admit, of course, that possibly some discovery may be made which

shall shake our confidence in the integrity of the sacred writers; but such an event is scarcely more probable than the earth's collision with a comet, or the discovery of facts and principles which should make us disbelieve in the rotary motion of the earth."

It is self-evident to every thoughtful person that 1. People will have a sacred book and a cherished religion. This is an inborn characteristic of the race. 2. There is no danger of their substituting the sacred books of the East, like the Vedas of the ancient Brahmins, the Avesta of the Zoroastrians, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the Kings of Confucius, or the Koran of Mohammed, however freighted with a kind of wisdom and enthusiasm these books may be, for the vastly and confessedly superior book we have in our English Bible, viewed simply as a literary production-"the library of ancient Israel." "I confess," says Max Müller, "it has been for many years a problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the sacred books of the East should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, and true, contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous and repellant." "The religious literature of Asia," says Wendell Phillips, "has been compared to the Christian Scriptures. The comparison is not just. That literature has many merits, and contains scattered sayings and precepts of great excellence; but there are heaps of chaff in that and in the writings of the early Christian fathers; none in the gospels and epistles. Of the medieval writings one-half was useless. Of the boasted works of Confucius seven-tenths must be winnowed out to find what the average reason of mankind would respect." Other exponents of "advanced thought" have spoken in similar strains. 3. People who take the Bible as a guide only in morals and religion, find in it all that they require to confirm its claims to divine authority and power. "I know," says Mr. Moody, "that the Bible is inspired, because it inspires me." "The Bible, especially the New Testament part of it," says Dr. Henry A. Reynolds, "is all in all to me, and from it I get just the sustaining which I so much need." The book which reveals God to man, and inspires the life of God in man, must ever be accepted by manly men as the revelation and inspiration of God. 4. Indications all point to