BELIEVE IN GOD THE FA-^HER ALW'CHTY,
And in JE3US Chfiist h:5 only Son our
lOKD, Who was conceived by the Koly Ghost,
Boftisi ofte-5eVi?{Gin Wary.Suffered under Pontius
pJUATE, Was; orucifsed, dead and bu:^ied, He de-
8CENDED JNTOHELL; ThE THIRD DAY He ROSE AGAIN
FROM THE DEAD. He ASCENDED IM-^O HZAVEN, AND
SITTETH ON THE R'GHT HAND OF COD THE FATHER
fliGHTY, FROM THENCE HE SHALL COME TO JUDQE
iU'.CK AND THE DEAD.
} BELIEVE m THE HOLY CHCST; ThZ HOLY CaTH-
OLJG CHURCH; ThE COMMUNiON OF SAINTS; THE
Forgiveness of sins; The Rzsurreotion of the
r^DDY. AND THE LaFE EVERLASTING. AmEN,
>^(
^i^m^ss^mmn
m
:i , I O . 1-4-
^ PRINCETON, N. J. *^g
Presented by Tir.V, L.Pc\^^o-a .
BL 181 .B37 1892
Barrows, John Henry, 1847-
1902.
I believe in God the Father
Almighty
I Believe in God
THE Father Almighty.
BELIEVE IN GOD THE
FATHER ALMIGHTY.
IViAR 10 1^14
JOHN HENRY BARROWS.
Fleming H. Revell Company,
CHICAGO : I NEW YORK :
148 AND 150 Madison St. 1 30 Union Square: East
Publishers of Evangelical Literature.
Eqtered according to /fct of Congress, iq tl]e year 1892,
by Fleming U. f]euell Company, iq the Office of ttie
Librariaq of Congress at Washingtoq, D. C. /fli
rigf]ts reserved,
TO THE
YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN OF AMERICA,
With the prayerful hope
that this book may confirm them in the joyful faith,
with which they repeat, cfrom its first great
words to its closing affirmations,
the golden sentences
of
The Apostles' Creed.
THE APOSTLES' CREED,
I Believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His
only Son our Lord ; who was conceived by the Holy
Ghost ; born of the Virgin Mary ; suffered under
Pontius Pilate ; was crucified, dead, and buried. He
descended into hell. The third day He rose from the
dead. He ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the
right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the
dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost ; the Holy Catho-
lic Church ; the communion of saints ; the forgive-
ness of sins ; the resurrection of the body, and the
life everlasting. Atnen.
CONTENTS
The Strength of Theism 9
God's Three Revelations of Himself . . 37
The Eternity of God . . . . -67
The Truth and Comfort of Theism . . 97
THE Strength of theism,
Ct^e 5trcngtl^ of Ct^eism.
For every house is builded by some
one^ but He that built all things
is God:' — Heb.3:4.
IN these words the common sense of
mankind finds expression. Every work
of contrivance demands a contriver ; ev-
ery work which goes beyond the power
of human organization demands a super-
human creator. It is ** an incomparably
great thing," as Rothe has said, *'to affirm
the existence of God," and this princely
thinker of Germany declares that we are
indebted to modern atheistic philosophy
for making us vividly conscious how
grand a thing it is to affirm that there is a
God. The prolonged discussions of our
times are not only strengthening the foun-
dations on which rests the practically uni-
[9]
10 3 Beliepe in ®o5.
versal belief in a Personal First Cause, are
not only enlarging the popular conception
of the greatness and glory of the Creator,
but are also making it plain that the su-
preme affirmation which the human mind
can make is this: ** I believe in God."
Resurrection, miracles, the incarnation,
the atonement, are superstructures ; this
is the foundation.
But in our time, as in other ages, this
foundation is attacked. We are informed
and instructed, not so much that God is
not, as that we do not know whether or
not God is. That is, agnosticism is the
present form of the anti-theistic spirit.
We are told that science (and science is
assumed to be the limit of human knowl-
edge) neither proves nor disproves the
existence of an Infinite Personal Being.
This is about as far as cautious doubt ordi-
narily creeps. The atheist of to-day tries
to keep his mind in this suspended state,
Cl?e Strength? of ^F^etsm. 11
yielding neither to the evidences that
God is, nor to the theories which would
account for a universe without a God. A
century ago, men were more positive.
The revolutionary atheists of France, who
had gained possession of the government,
issued a decree prohibiting the worship of
God, dethroning Him from His supremacy !
In the Cathedral of Notre Dame they
knelt before a new deity of their own
selection, the Goddess of Reason, personi-
fied by a degraded woman. Coleridge
has thus daringly depicted the spirit of
that day : —
»' Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
(Portentous sight !) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringed lids and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven.
Cries out, ' Where is it ? ' "
But such is not the usual temper of the
present atheism. Its fortress is the igno-
12 3 BelieDe in ^ob.
ranee of man as to what lies back of the
outward appearance of things. It does
not go beyond phenomena and so-called
second causes. It acknowledges the facts
and forces of the universe, but denies that
we can go behind them and affirm any-
thing positive of their origin. In this
denial it is guilty of stupendous folly.
"Every house is builded by some one,"
says the general reason of the race.
*'Yes," is the reply, ''but as to who or
what built all things we cannot know, for
we were not there."
In maintaining this position, modern
atheism deems itself very courteous, mod-
est, and wise. It does not claim to be
happy ; it does not pretend to be con-
tented. Some of its literature is a long-
drawn wail, sinking occasionally into a
whine. This is natural. The intellect
looking into this wonderful universe and
refusing the only natural explanation of
CF?e Stren^^tF? of Cf?etsm. 13
it, must be restless. And the heart that
is made for worship, acknowledging no
supreme object of adoration, must be
equally uneasy and unsatisfied. And
when the floods of sorrow and the terror
of death overwhelm and oppress the soul,
and a positive faith in an omnipotent love
is the foremost need, then it is that mod-
ern agnosticism leaves its victims in such
pitiful despair that human nature rises up
against it. The intellect as well as the
heart is hostile to this kind of knownoth-
ingism. It may be as foolish for a man to
say, '' I do not know," as to say, '* I deny."
Here is a book called the Bible, printed
on finest paper, silk-sewed, bound and
published in Oxford, one of the miracles
of the printer's art. Taking it in his hand,
one person says, **A skillful man must
have planned and executed the printing
of this beautiful book." He speaks the
world's common sense. Another man
14 3 Beltepe in ^ob.
takes up the Bible, and says, " I really do
not know whether a human being printed
this book or not. I never was in Oxford,
and I certainly did not see the making of
the book." A third man takes up the
Bible and says, " I deny that any human
being printed this book." It is plain that
the second and third men have stultified
human reason and have stultified it equally,
unless the cautious doubter manifests even
a little more imbecility than the stubborn
denier.
The vice of agnosticism is that it is an
attack on the trustworthiness of the hu-
man faculties. It has been wisely said
" that if a man cannot know God, he can-
not know anything," that is, rationally and
scientifically. The scientist makes all his
investigations on the basis of certain prin-
ciples, certain self-evident truths, and the
common mind acts in the same way in
coming to a knowledge of God. The
^F?e Strengtl} of tlf^eism. 15
scientist proceeds on the theory of causa-
tion — that is, that every change must
have an adequate cause — on the belief
in nature's rationality and uniformity, and
working on this basis, he trusts his con-
clusions. Knowledge gained in this, the
right way, he holds as certain in spite
of the difficulties and inconceivabilities
which beset some of his conclusions.
These difficulties it has been said belong
to science as well as to theology. If a
man is to distrust his faculties when they
lead him to God, then he must distrust
them always. False in one part, they are
not to be believed in another. Partial
agnosticism leads to complete agnosticism,
as has been frequently shown. The truth
is, that man has such multiplex and over-
whelming evidences for believing in God
that agnosticism is the suicide of his
rational nature. It is administering poi-
son to all his nobler powers. It is a degrad-
16 3 Beltere in (Sob.
ing prostration of himself before what
have been called " the hideous idols of
negation." It is remaining " an eternal
infant," that is, a living savage. Of course
most agnostics deny or endeavor to con-
ceal the fact that their system leads logic-
ally to universal skepticism. But such is
the truth. The knowledge which men
gain of the outer world rests on the trust-
worthiness of certain self-evident truths
which are equally the basis of science and
theology. The death of one is the de-
struction of the other. All must confess
that theism is the constitutional belief of
man, and that atheism, in any of its shapes,
is the unnatural and uncertain mental at-
titude of the few who must be regarded
as the eccentrics of our race. It will be
indefinitely less of a task to overturn the
Copernican theory of astronomy, than to
root out the belief in a personal God.
The very generation when materialistic
tn?e Strcngtl) of Cl?etsm. 17
atheism has been most active and confi-
dent is the generation in which Christian
theism has achieved its widest and swiftest
conquests. Appeals to man's ignorance
of what God was doing in the ages pre-
vious to the beginning of this universe,
and to his ignorance of how the Infinite
One created what was not before, are
about as effective blows against *' the most
venerable and general of human beliefs,"
as would be an attempt to disprove the
existence of Julius Caesar because we were
not clearly informed concerning every
part of his career, or as would be the
denial that there are oxen and elephants
in the world because science cannot ex-
plain how grass enters the mouth of one
animal and is transformed into an ox's
hoof and into the mouth of another animal
and is transformed into an elephant's tusk.
Man is finite, and that his knowledge of
the Eternal and Infinite God is limited
18 3 Beliepe in ^ob.
and shrouded by much of mystery, is what
he has always confessed from the time of
Job until now, and what the Christian be-
lieves that God Himself has asserted in
His revealed Word. This is also true of
man's acquaintance with material things.
But limited knowledge of God is not an
argument against the Divine existence
any more than our limited acquaintance
with geology and astronomy disproves the
existence of the palpable earth and the
clear-shining stars.
Whence arises the firm human faith in a
Divine Person ? Is the Being of God a
part of man's direct consciousness ? I am
not careful to defend this position, but I
confidently hold that there is that in the
human mind which either implies God or
leads immediately to Him. Man has a
self-evident knowledge of principles which
are universal laws of thought. He per-
ceives without proof that two parallel lines
^I}e Strength? of ^F?etsm. 19
can never inclose a space. This is a
self-evident truth. He perceives without
proof that every effect must have a cause.
These are universal laws of thought, true
everywhere in all times, and they im-
ply or presuppose that the universe is
grounded in reason, and in this conviction
is wrapped up the germ of theistic belief.
Dr. Samuel Harris has said that ''the ex-
istence of God, the absolute reason is a
necessary prerequisite to the possibility
of scientific human knowledge." Again,
it is natural for the human mind to ask
not only, Who made it ? but, What for ?
Our children put this question daily, not
only of things which we make and do, but
also of what are called works of Nature.
Nature to the child's mind teaches the doc-
trine of final causes, that is. Nature appears
to harmonize with the conviction that
whatever exists is for some end. There
is a purpose running through creation.
20 3 Beltcpe in 6ob.
It was this antecedent conviction which
led Harvey, Copernicus, and Kepler to
their great scientific discoveries. And in
this general conviction that everything is
for some end, is wrapped up the thought
of God, the Divine Purposer. What are
called evidences or proofs of God's exist-
ence are only the fervid sunbeams falling
on the strong predispositions to belief
that slumber in the human soul. Even
the leader of modern agnosticism, Herbert
Spencer, acknowledges that " the assump-
tion of the existence of a first cause of
the universe is a necessity of thought."
And yet he pronounces this first cause
unknown and unknowable. We must not,
however, expect him to be consistent.
As ex-President Hill has written, *' Her-
bert Spencer, refusing to assign attributes
to the first cause, still expresses his faith
in the truthfulness, faithfulness, wisdom,
and beneficence of the order of Nature."
CI?e Strength? of ^I^eism. 21
Manifestly, agnosticism is a hard and
devious road for this blind giant to walk
in. If the assumption of the existence of
a first cause is a necessity of thought, and
the order of Nature is uniform, wise, and
good, then uniformity, wisdom, and good-
ness would naturally seem to belong to
the first cause. In this case he is not un-
knowable.
Atheism is wrecked when brought face
to face with the chief facts of the universe.
The first fact is Matter. Matter had a
beginning, otherwise it is eternal. Why
not hold that matter is eternal ? Let us
first inquire. What is matter.'' Chemical
science reduces it to about seventy ele-
ments. Let us suppose that these seventy
elemental substances are eternal, self-ex-
istent. Let us not ask at present how
these seventy dead gods came into exist-
ence, but let us grant their eternity. We
are forced to inquire, "Which is more
22 3 Beliepe in (5o6«
rational, the common belief of mankind
in one Eternal, Spiritual Being, or this
fanciful hypothesis of seventy eternal,
material beings ? " And then we are
forced to ask, " How did these seventy
stony, or metallic, or gassy gods, not hav-
ing life, get the power to transform them-
selves, not only into this earth, so crowded
with marks of intelligence, so swarming
with vitality, not only into the wheeling
congregations of isolated worlds, but into
such beings as we know ourselves to be?"
The absurdity of maintaining the eternity
of matter as an escape from the difficulty
of believing in an eternal mind, is con-
spicuous, and becomes even more so
when, following the newest science, which
teaches that the present universe is not
eternal, that it had a beginning, we trace
the world back to innumerable atoms, as
the primordial elements out of which has
sprung what we see and know. Are these
C!?e Strengtl? of ^I^etsm. 23
molecules self-originated, self-existent ?
Are we to sacrifice human faith in one God
to this countless host of atomic gods ? The
pitiable spectacle has been sometimes wit-
nessed, of men's forsaking the faith in the
Divine Spirit, who is eternal and unchange-
able in His being, power, wisdom, holiness,
justice, goodness, and truth, and bowing
down in degrading fetich-worship at the
shrine of the new polytheism, adorning in
love-sick folly and crowning with garlands
of rhetoric these deified atoms which Sir
John Herschel instructs us have all the
appearance of ** manufactured articles."
Not content with the ** conclusion that
' Hamlet ' and ' Paradise Lost ' are simply
products of molecular motion, that the
Iliad is only the result of the decomposi-
tion of brain matter, or that the sublime
strains of Isaiah and Habakkuk are merely
a posturing of polarized atoms," — not con-
tent with such outrageous folly, shall mod-
24 3 Beliepe in ®ob.
ern wisdom bestride the molecule and say,
"Down, O God of Abraham and Moses
and Newton ! I have found the ultimate
somewhat that supersedes the Infinite
Mind " ? This is truly the landing which
an atheistic science has made on the
shores of its wild speculation. It is plain
that the reason can find no resting place
in any theory of eternal matter, whether it
thinks of seventy elements or of countless
millions of primal germs ; for the old, per-
sistent question, ** Who made these?" still
arises, and thus we are driven into the
arms of One who is independent, self-exist-
ent, eternal. " If all the world," says Janet,
"is contingent, the cause must be abso-
lute." If, following backward the changes
in the visible universe, we finally reach
that beginning which science now affirms,
we must then repeat the ancient truth,
"In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth."
C^e Strengtl) of CF^eism. 25
Another fact over which all forms of
atheism hopelessly stumble, is the fact of
intelligent order in the universe. Matter
not only exists, but is arranged in count-
less and marvelous adaptations. In-
telligence is everywhere displayed. As
Professor Fisher has written, " To talk of
thought without a thinker is to utter
words without a meaning." In what I
now say the argument from intelligence
in the universe will be linked with the
argument from causation. From the ob-
servation of orderly phenomena, man in-
fers a creating and governing intelligence.
Nothing is more certain than that every-
thing which begins to be has an adequate
cause. The principle of causation which
leads us inevitably toward God is at the
foundation of scientific inquiry. The sci-
entist may stop with the second causes,
deeming these the proper limits of science ;
but the mind never rests there, for the
26 3 Beliepe in ^ob.
principle of causation is never content
until it reaches a first cause. This style
of argument, from effect to cause, which
is, as I have said, at the basis of science,
and which to the great mass of men is
entirely satisfactory, is also the Biblical
style of reasoning, from the things that
are made to the infinite power and God-
hood of the Maker, from the human house
built to the human house-builder, from
the world-house built to the world-maker,
God. " We arc entitled, we are required,"
says Dr. Mc Cosh, ** to trust and follow
these principles." But Mr. Hume says
that while it is proper for us, on seeing a
watch, to argue a watch-maker, it is not
allowable for us, on seeing the world, to
argue a world-maker. Why ? — Because
we have seen a watch made and have not
seen a world made. But I am sure that a
savage who has never seen a watch made,
on finding one in the desert, would con-
Cf?e Stren^tF} of (Ef^etsm. 27
elude at once that the machine had a con-
triver, not because he ever saw one put
together, but because he saw evidences
that it had been put together. I never
saw the world put together, but I see
evidences that it has been put together.
But evolution, we are told, displaces this
carpenter theory of creation. The uni-
verse was not put together, but grew like
a seed. Quite possibly this is true. But
evolution, which is only a law of growth,
neither disproves a Divine Power at the
root of growth, a Divine Purpose in the
end of growth, nor a Divine Wisdom run-
ning all through the process of growth.
If evolution be true, then we have new
and even stronger argument for the abid-
ing activity of an Infinite Mind in all
Nature. An acorn is more wonderful than
a Corliss engine. In the acorn is wrapped
up a tiny organism, not only exhibiting a
multitude of adaptations to soil, air, and
28 3 Beltere in ^ob.
light, but also gifted with the power of
reproducing itself and covering the earth,
in the lapse of centuries, with forests of
giant oaks. The Corliss engine wears out
in time, and in it is no machinery for pro-
ducing similar mechanisms which shall
also construct others of like power, and so
on without limit. A universe built like
an engine or a house requires God ; but
a universe which began as a seed or a
multitude of seeds requires not only an
Omnipotent Creator at the start, but also
an ever-acting Divine Wisdom in the com-
plex unfolding, the intricate and manifold
adjustment and developments of Nature,
through all the incomprehensible periods
of the past and the perpetual wonder of
the present. For evolution, it has been
well said, " gives not simply a new and
truer doctrine of the Creator but a sub-
limer and diviner doctrine of Providence."
But it is objected, rather for the sake
^f}e Strengtl? of ^E?etsm. 29
of argument than for the sake of truth,
that if every effect must have an adequate
cause, if contrivance implies a contriver,
music a musician, design a designer, world-
making a world-maker, then the world-
maker himself is an effect. Back of him
must be another creator, and so on in an
infinite series. To this jugglery I answer,
first, that the God to whom the argu-
ments from design and causation lead us,
does not exhibit any marks of contriv-
ance. Nature appears to be arranged,
built, "gotten up." God does not soap-
pear to human thought. Nature appears
to be an effect. God does not appear to
be an effect. Secondly, if one cause is
sufficient to explain the result, it is un-
reasonable to multiply causes. The '' in-
finite series" folly needlessly multiplies
causes. And thirdly, it leaves the uni-
verse still unexplained. If there be an
infinite chain of causes, we have here a
30
3 Belicpc in @o6.
stupendous effect which demands a stu-
pendous cause. It has been truly said
that the entire chain cannot hang upon
nothing, and that an endless adjournment
of causes is a process which is meaningless
and useless, and in which reason can never
acquiesce.
The human mind is in endless protest
against that mental suicide which leaves
the stupendous effect which we behold
about us without a cause. It is generally
in endless war with any theory which
demands that intelligence should be ex-
plained by non-intelligence. The unper-
verted mind of man is in sympathy with
Napoleon on the Mediterranean ship-deck,
as, pointing to the stars, he confuted and
silenced the atheist generals about him.
It is in sympathy with Lord Herbert, in
pointing to the wonders of the human
body as showing forth the skill of a Divine
Creator. It is in sympathy with Chalmers,
trF?e Strength? of ^l^etsm. 31
in pointing to the marvels of the human
eye, as a pregnant and luminous inscrip-
tion of Divinity, fuller and plainer, as he
believed, than *' can be gathered from a
broad and magnificent survey of the skies,
lighted up though they be with the glories
and wonders of astronomy." And when,
with the student who pries with his micro-
scope into the cell-structures of plant and
animal organization, the human mind looks
as deeply as it is able into the hidden
recesses of Nature, beholding a tiny, color-
ess mass so minute that a hundred of
equal dimensions would not cover the
width of a razor's edge, and marks this
little cell, precisely the same in oak and
eagle and the human body, but neverthe-
less weaving all the various tissues of
structure, making now a violet and then
a vulture, now a geranium and then a
giraffe, now an elm and then an elephant,
now a mollusk and then a man, it is awe-
32 3 Belicpe in ^ob.
struck and worshipful, knowing that this
little shuttle, so constantly busy in making
the marvels of the universe, must have back
of it the skilled hand of an Infinite and
Ever Present God.
There are other rocks which make ship-
wreck of atheism and agnosticism, and which
furnish new and still more striking proofs
of the folly which would write ** No God "
on the heavens above, which the Creator
has starred with His name, and on the
soul of man, which He has graven with the
imperishable truths of personality and the
moral law. But our present study has, I
believe, shown us anew that the being of
God is the chief fact of human knowledge,
denying or attempting to discredit which,
we find that all nature fights against us,
as the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera. It ought then to be evident to all
that, since there is a Divine Power above
C{?e Strengtl? of Cl?cism. 33
us and about us, He is the greatest con-
cern of our lives. The chief end of man
is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
This being true, can anything be more of
an outrage to all that is noblest in human-
ity than to make the chief concern of our
lives a matter of irreverent jest ? Is there
anything more shocking than to behold
men standing, with conceited smirks on
their faces and blasphemies issuing from
their lips, in the presence of this burning
bush of the universe wherein God dwell-
eth ? A human hyena, howling about the
graves of Washington and Lincoln, is an
object to be respected by the side of the
impudent jackal who boldly drags the car-
cass of his own folly and foulness into the
splendor of the Great White Throne. We
are living in the hand of God the Creator.
What spirit but that of reverence becomes
the human soul ? When Daniel made
3
34 3 Beliepe in ^ob.
his accusation against Belshazzar, he re-
proached him for his profane pride, and
closed with the declaration, "And the God
in whose hand thy breath is and whose
are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified."
GoD's Three Revelations
OF Himself.
(5o6'5 CI]rce Hcpelations of
fjimscif.
The God that made the world and
all things therein, He being Lord
of heaven and earthy diuelleth not
ift temples made with hands;
neither is he served by men's
hands, as though he needed any-
thing, seeing He himself giveth
to all, life, and breath, and all
things; and He made of one blood
every nation of men for to dwell
on all the face of the earthy hav-
ing determined their appointed
seasons, and the bounds of their
habitation; that they should seek
God, if haply they might feel
after Him, and find Him, though
he is not far from each one of
us: for in Him we live and move
and have our being; as certain
even of your own poets have said.
For we are also His offspring.
Being then the offspring of God,
• we ought not to think that the
Godhead is like unto gold, or sil-
ver, or stone, graven by art and
[37]
38 3 Beltepc in @ob.
device of man. The times of
igno7'ance, therefore, God over-
looked: but no7v He cotnmandeth
77ien that they should all every-
where repent; inasmuch as He
hath appointed a day, in the
which he will judge the world
in righteousness by the Man lohom
He hath ordained; zvhereof He
hath given assurance unto all
men in that He hath raised Him
from the dead. " — Acts 77 .• 24-^1.
THIS passage is taken from Paul's ser-
mon on Mars' Hill, before the curious
Athenian philosophers, among whom re-
ligion had apparently reached the begin-
ning of the agnostic stage. The truths
which the Apostle so skillfully and boldly
proclaimed, sweep nearly the entire range
of theistic argument. With the mission-
ary's assurance and ardor, and with an an-
cient orator's consummate tact he brought
home his message. God's revelation in
Nature as the Creator of the worlds ; His
revelation in man, who is God's child ; His
(Sob's tEf^rce Her>eIation5 of ^imself. 39
revelation in His Son, our Lord, by whom
the world is to be judged, and the crowning
assurance of His self-disclosure which comes
to us through Jesus Christ by His resur-
rection from the dead, — this is the outline
of the most famous utterance ever spoken
by man, and will indicate the current of
our thoughts in this discourse.
I have already shown that agnosticism
is an attack on the trustworthiness of the
human faculties, that it logically destroys
the ground on which all belief rests. I
have shown that the Spirit which says,
'*I do not know," is as foolish as that
which says, " I deny," when the question
of doubt and denial concerns God. I have
shown that the evidences for the Divine
existence are rays of light falling on
germs of theistic belief already in the
mind. As Professor Shedd has written :
"The strenuous endeavor of atheism to
prove there is no God, proves that there
^0 3 Believe in ^ob.
is one. For if the Deity were really a
nonentity like a griffin, . . . there would
be no effort to invalidate it, but the same
utter indifference respecting the idea of
God would prevail among mankind as re-
specting the idea of a griffin." I have
shown that atheism and agnosticism are
hopelessly wrecked by the two facts — the
facts of matter and of intelligent order in
the universe — and that we are driven to
the arms of Him whom Paul preached on
Mars' Hill, the God who made the world
and all things therein.
Of the facts in God's revelation of Him-
self in the natural world, I shall now speak
of only one, the fact of motion. If the
spiritual origin of matter be demanded by
our reason, equally does reason require
that motion be explained by the activity
of spirit. If, with Professor Grove and the
physicists, we call motion one of the affec-
tions of matter, and discern in matter a
^ob's tEf?rce Kepclations of ^imself. 41
manipulation of force, we are equally com-
pelled to seek the explanation of force in
an intelligent will. " The conception of
force," as Dr. Whewell says, " involves the
idea of cause." Motion, which implies
moving power, and which comes to our
thought in such various forms as heat,
electricity, light, magnetism, chemical
affinity, gravity, vital force in plants, vital
force in animals, is a chief phenomenon of
the universe. Everything we behold is in
motion. An object may be relatively at
rest, as for example, a building, or some
person in it, but building and person are
resting on a body called the earth that
is whirling eastward a thousand miles an
hour. The motions of the universe are
orderly, mathematical. The forces we know
are regulated, in the sense of being in ac-
cord with discoverable law. They are
also connected, so that one force has its
equivalent in others. They are inter-
42 3 Beltere in ^ob,
changeable. Heat may be transformed
into electricity, and electricity into vital
force. They are connected with anterior
forces and are perpetuated in new move-
ments. Thus there is a unity in force,
necessitating the thought of one creating
and upholding Power. All motions which
we know, are in accordance with certain
laws, but law is only a method of motion
and is not the source of motion. Law
points to a law-maker and an executive,
and since intelligence is in the law, it must
inhere in Him who ordained it.
When we think of these so-called forces
at work about us, gravity drawing all
worlds toward each other, vegetable forces
which lift the gigantic pines on Norwegian
or Californian hills as high as the lofty
cathedral spires, the immeasurable poten-
cies of light and heat, and then learn that
they have been reduced by science to one
force, and that philosophic science is com-
(5ob's CI?rce Kepelations of f)tmself. 43
mitted to the truth that force has a spir-
itual origin ; when we remember that uni-
versal life is a correlated series of motions,
orderly, harmonious, unified, we stand in
the luminous center of theistic belief, and
the thought of God is as inevitable as
is the thought of Handel when we are list-
ening to the majestic, on-sweeping, multi-
tudinous and yet unified harmonies of his
greatest oratorio. The universe, when
seen through the lens of this truth, that
these manifold forces of Nature working
in an intelligible harmony must have a
spiritual origin, becomes an impressive
revelation of God. We begin to read the
alphabet of His omnipotence. A child's
imagination is awed by the power of fabled
giants, but the forces of Nature make hu-
man might, though it should equal that
of Milton's warring angels in Heaven,
seem puerile. What are all the powers
of mankind compared with the force of
44 3 Belicre in (5o6.
the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which not
only uplifted and overthrew a city, mak-
ing the solid earth undulate like the waves
of the sea, but raised all Europe, from
Portugal to the Highlands of Scotland, and
upheaved the Atlantic from the straits of
Gibraltar to the far-off American shores ?
This is the force of gas and fire and water and
steam, God's own energy working through
second causes, in terrestrial ways. But,
inconceivable though such might is, it is
nothing to the celestial displays of Divine
Power. What pride would fill the heart
of man if he should be able to build a
railroad track about the earth, bridging
the wide oceans, and if, on a gigantic train,
he should be able to pile the Himalayas,
the Andes, and the Rocky Mountains,
which should be transported from conti-
nent to continent around the earth in one
hour, with machinery so perfect in con-
struction and adjustment that there should
6ob's Ct?ree HcDelattons of f^imself. 45
be no noise or slightest jar, and so endur-
ing that the colossal train might continue
its rapid journey without a break, round
and round our globe, unwearied for a
thousand centuries. Even then the forces
wielded in this Herculean labor would be
Divine, though the machinery might be of
human contrivance. But what is all this
to that which God is daily doing.? The
Andes, Himalayas, and Rocky Mountains
are so small on a raised globe that their
altitudes are scarcely perceptible, while
the earth itself, with these tiny wrinkles
on the surface, turning on its mild axle so
smoothly that the sick man's slumbers are
not disturbed thereby, is whirled about
the sun at the rate of nineteen thousand
miles an hour, and kept in its ethereal
grooves without variation or shadow of
turning during the long, weary cycles in
which human empires rise and fall. But
our earth is a pigmy by the side of Jupiter,
46 3 BcIteDe in (Sob.
who moves about the solar center at a still
greater speed, and the sun himself, com-
pared with whom our earth is but a cinder
of coal in the mouth of a burning volcano,
is whirling at the rate of three thousand
miles a minute about some vaster sun,
while the multitude of suns peopling the
Milky Way are speeding about some enor-
mous center with the same inconceivable
velocity. And when we remember that
in order to preserve these mighty spheres
in balance, two opposing forces, one of
which would fling them off into space and
the other of which would draw them to
some greater body, need to be perfectly
adjusted ; when we remember that all
worlds are upheld, not by keeping them
at rest, but by harmonizing their vast and
complex motions, we are impelled to cry
out, '* The Lord God Omnipotent reign-
eth ! " And as man's pride of power is
broken in the presence of the daily round
(gob's CI?ree Hepelattons of ^imself. 47
of the universe, he will repeat the question
of that profound poet of the early dawn of
the world, who, like all the great seers of
our race, found God in Nature and her
majestic movements : ** Canst thou bind
the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose
the bands of Orion ? Canst thou bring
forth the Twelve Signs in their season, or
canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?"
But however luminous and suggestive
the disclosures of God which come to us
from without, they are pale before the
effulgent light which burns in our own
souls. Effectually barring the progress
of atheism and agnosticism is the fact of
the human mind, with its consciousness,
self-determination, freedom, multiplied in-
tellectual powers, moral convictions, and
religious ideas and emotions. Man is the
stumbling-block of modern materialism.
He is also the rock and fortress of theism.
God becomes real to us through ourselves.
48 3 Beltcr>e in ^ob.
Coming to a knowledge of our own per-
sonality, we arrive at a knowledge of the
Divine personality. The fundamental fact
in the whole structure of our knowledsre
is consciousness. You are, and know that
you are. You are yourself and not an-
other. You are a mind having capabili-
ties many, emotions various and mighty.
You are a will with self-determination and
freedom. You have not always been.
You know your dependence. You know
your moral responsibility. You are in the
grasp of something which imperatively
demands that you act righteously ; and
you are equally in the grasp of a reason
which demands that you be explained as
an effect. If there is intelligence in you,
there must be intelligence in your Creator ;
otherwise the effect would contain ele-
ments not involved in the cause ; and this
remains true whether you date your crea-
tion back twenty, sixty, or unnumbered
^ob's Cf}rec Her>eIattons of ^tmself. 49
millions of years. If there is personal-
ity in you, there must be personality in
Him who made you. If there is a moral
law at work in your soul, the Creator must
be the moral law-giver. The Cilician poet
whom Paul quoted on Mars' Hill expressed
the truth which we must come to believe
when we know ourselves : *' We also are
His offspring."
Materialism breaks down utterly in the
attempt to show that man is the son of an
atom and not the son of the Lord God
Almighty. Even Herbert Spencer's chief
apostle in America, John Fiske of Cam-
bridge, acknowledges that " the progress
of modern discovery, so far from bridging
over the chasm between mind and matter,
tends rather to exhibit the distinction
between them as absolute." But the task
given to materialism is not only to show
that the forces of Nature and the princi-
ples of life are deduced from matter, but
50 3 Belteoe tn (gob.
that the soul with its faculties, that all
ideas, that the moral law, that man's con-
sciousness of God, are all products of
matter or deductions from it. Says Dr.
Henry B. Smith, ** If materialism fails to
deduce any of these things from matter,
the entire system fails." Man is a con-
scious spirit, standing on the summit of
creation, surveying the earth and subduing
it, entering into her secret chambers with
the torch of investigation, and employing
her riches for ends which are spiritual.
Does he himself belong to an order that
is material, mechanical, fatalistic ? Every
emancipated, unperverted soul holds him-
self as of another and higher range of
being than material forms and forces.
While in Nature he holds himself as super-
natural in the sense of being above the
material order, and when his mind is ex-
alted, he reverences his own ** onlooking
and inestimable spirit, beside which the
stars are painted dust."
(Bob's ^f?ree ^epelations of ^tmself. 51
We cannot think of ourselves without
thinking of God. Hence, as one of the
profoundest philosophers of America has
written : ** No idea so impresses universal
man as the idea of a God. Neither space
nor time, neither life nor death, not sun,
moon, or stars, so influence the immediate
consciousness of man in every clime, in all
generations, as does that Presence which
in Wordsworth's phrase is not to be put
by. This idea overhangs human existence
like a firmament, and though clouds and
darkness obscure it in many zones, while
in others it is crystalline and clear, all
human beings must live beneath it, and
cannot possibly get from under its all-
embracing arch." Atheism has rightly
been called an insult to humanity. Man
is conscious of reason and of obligation to
do right ; and if reason and righteousness
do not rule in the universe, then he must
either exalt himself as a god, which his
own sense of dependence and unworthi-
52 3 Beliepe in (Sob,
ness forbids, or else he must distrust his
own consciousness, and be landed in utter
skepticism. He will do neither.
I remember the reverent emotions with
which I walked through the splendid Mu-
seum of Natural History which bears the
great name of its founder, Agassiz. There
I saw the world in miniature, the curious
wonders of sea and land, the treasures of
all the deeps, of all the continents, and
gradually a sense of awe crept into my
soul, as if I had been admitted by special
favor into the laboratory of the Almighty.
And then I marked how these million
specimens of Divine thought had been
arranged, each room representing one di-
vision or subdivision of the Kingdom of
Nature, each alcove exhibiting an infinite
care and patience in the details of its
assortment ; and as I wandered on, I saw
how wonderfully the great naturalist
had classified his treasures, so that each
(5ob'5 CI?ree Kepelattons of f^imself. 53
department was the vestibule to new and
nobler products of the Divine workman-
ship. And then I thought of the compre-
hensive mind which had gathered and
studied and placed these corals and shells
and birds and creeping things and four-
footed beasts which had haunted the icy
shores of Labrador and the tropic vegeta-
tion of the Amazon, that mind which had
discovered in the works of Nature many
infallible proofs of a Divine Wisdom. And
I thought of the great heart which had
lovingly and patiently brooded over this
superb display of the marvels of earth,
the gathering of which was the chief labor
of his life ; so that, although thinking of
the Museum, I felt myself to be in a tem-
ple where Aristotle, and Bacon, and New-
ton, and Cuvier, and Faraday would have
worshiped God, nevertheless, thinking of
Agassiz himself, I believed myself to be
in a sanctuary where David and Plato and
54 3 Beltepe in ®o6.
the highest souls of all times would have
seen the brightest inscriptions of the Eter-
nal Spirit.
But to know man in his grandeur we
must stand in other fanes besides those of
science. There is the world-wide temple
of the imagination, carpeted with blossoms
of beauty and overhung with the stars of
truth and love. There I see the Brahman
poets singing their Vedic hymns. There
I see Homer,
••The blind bard who on the Chian strand,
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey,
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea,"
and whose resounding lines beat like war-
drums and thrill like the trumpet's ardors
after eighty generations. There I see
Dante, dwelling by faith in a supernatural
world and making it more real to his
nation than the geography of the Italian
(Sob's ^l^ree Herjclattons of ^imself. 55
peninsula. There I see Shakespeare,
whose imaginary personages are more
vivid to our m-inds than the neighbors
across the way. There is Wordsworth,
feeling in his soul the pressure of that un-
seen Spirit whose dwelling is everywhere,
and by his cheerful insight and magic
interpretations of Nature, lifting a genera-
tion to serener hights. There is Emerson
questioning the rhodora,
" Whose purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay,"
and believing that the same power which
evoked the blossom called to it the poet-
worshiper. Standing in such a temple,
does atheism, does agnostic materialism,
find in atoms, or blind molecular forces, the
explanation of these radiant, far-seeing fac-
ulties that have woven a golden web of
beauty and of music over earth and sky,
and starred them with the name of God }
56 3 Bcliere in ^ob.
Has mole-eyed unbelief convicted of folly
these angelic spirits who sang with the
consciousness of the Eternal Spirit brood-
ing over their souls ?
It is surely not needful to contemplate
further the impotence of a materialistic
philosophy to account for man. It has
never explained how matter could rise
into self-consciousness, or into love. It
has never begun to explain the birth of
the moral sense. It simply commits sui-
cide when it attempts to resolve into
molecular equivalents the great righteous
acts and moral sublimities of history, the
courage of Martin Luther, the patriotism
of Washington, the ardent unselfishness
with which Wendell Phillips cast all his
ambitions behind him to help the slave,
the serene self-sacrifice of the American
captain who, while the iron ship was sink-
ing, and only one could escape from the
hold of death, calmly gave that chance to
<5ob'5 tEf?rce Hepelations of ^imself. 57
another. These acts belong to a sphere
which materialism can no more reach than
it can destroy man's faith in the Divine
righteousness which rules in conscience.
But there is one other temple greater than
all the rest, on entering which we dis-
cover as nowhere else the impertinence
of atheism and the glory of humanity. It
is the temple of Religion. Men have lived
with the sense of God supreme in their
souls, a passion in their hearts. He has
been to them the one fact and crowning
reality of life. Can atheism, armed with
the microscope, and prying for a thousand
years, find in the atomic particles a
rational explanation of that faith in a
friendly God which led Abraham away
from home and country and kindred into
a new land, and which so wrought in his
soul and life that he by it was enabled to
open in history that new order of things
which controls human civilization to-day ?
58 3 Beltepc in (Sob.
What has agnostic materialism to say in
accounting for the life of Moses who, "see-
ing the invisible," bore the mightiest bur-
dens ever laid on human shoulders ? Can
it find latent in the stone-dust or in the
rocky foundations of Mars' Hill the invinci-
ble spirit with which the Apostle Paul
proclaimed his faith in Him in whom we
live, and move, and have our being?
Have the devout minds of the ages been
deluded w.hen they, in communion with
God, have risen to holy ecstasy or poured
out their souls in rhythmic aspiration ?
What mean the raptures of Christian faith
in dying hours ?
"He lifts me to the golden doors ;
The flashes come and go,
All heaven bursts her starry floors
And strews her lights below,
And deepens on and up ! The gates
Roll back, and far within
(Sob's ^I)rce Revelations of I^tmself. 59
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of eternity —
One sabbath deep and wide —
A Hght upon the shining sea —
The Bridegroom with His Bride ! "
What mean these devout aspirations ?
Are they the twitching of diseased nerves,
resulting- from the anger of misplaced
molecules ? What account can material-
istic unbelief give of man as he appears in
the temple of worship? — None that ex-
plains him ; none that is not a monstrous
absurdity, requiring of us a savage credul-
ity more debasing than fetich-worship.
And as we perceive the frantic folly to
which men have been driven to escape
from God, we shall more serenely repose
in the faith that ''each human mind must
rest on a mind sympathetic, creative, and
eternally young."
60 3 Belteue in ®ob.
It is with a heart hushed with awe that
I bring before you now the fifth and final
fact which shatters atheism and agnosti-
cism. I mean the person of Christ. A
theory may be considered as a frame.
A fact is a picture. If the picture is too
large for the frame, the frame must be cast
aside. We have found Nature too large
for the theory of atheism. We have found
man altogether too large. But when we
bring to this frame the picture of man at
his highest, the man Christ Jesus, we find
ourselves endeavoring to inclose the ocean
in a wine-glass and compress the stars into
a crucible. Atheistic materialism, which
must account for Jesus Christ as well as
for other men, is compelled to pervert
history and reason to bring Him to the
common level, and, having done this,
stumbles over His humanity as hopelessly
as over the humanity of ordinary men.
But taking Jesus for what the greatest
^ob's d?ree Hcpclattons of ^tmself. 61
unbelievers have regarded Him, " the in-
comparable man, the matchless flower of
our race," how shall we regard His testi-
mony to the Divine Father ? Shall we
receive Newton's testimony with regard
to gravity, Faraday's testimony with re-
gard to electricity. Sir Lionel Beale's testi-
mony with regard to cell-structure, and
reject Christ's testimony with regard to
the primal fact of religion, the existence
and nature of God? Has not'this Man an
unquestionable right to speak with author-
ity on this one theme ? Has not the ag-
nostic been rightly described as one who
disbelieves the testimony of Jesus regard-
ing God ? And when Christ assures us
that by doing the Father's will we shall
know of the doctrine, when He gives each
one a practical test of these great things
of the Spirit, is He not to be believed ?
Has not His testimony received innumer-
able confirmations ? Is it not a fact that
62 3 Beltcr»e in ©ob.
multitudes of men, bewildered by Nature
and speculations about Nature, and blinded
by sin, have been brought to know Jesus
Christ, and have walked out into the light
of Christian faith where God has been the
chief moving and moulding force of their
lives ?
But when we regard the person of Christ
without prejudgments against the super-
natural, we find Him refusing to come
within the categories of a sensuous phil-
osophy, or to be explained by the laws of
human heredity. We find in Him a spir-
itual originality which made Him lonely
in the age when He lived — a ** sweetness
and light " that were not embittered into
cynicism toward man, or darkened into
distrust toward God ; a self-assertion that
would be madness were it not supported
by a wisdom and holiness unparalleled, and
withal a self-sacrifice that has bound the
Christian generations to the foot of His
^ob's ^(^rce Her)eIation5 of ^tmself. 63
Cross. Failing to find any mark of sin in
His life or any defect in His all-sided
virtue, we perceive Him standing before us
as the miracle of history, and we do not
wonder at the spiritual force which from
Him has rolled like an ocean-tide down the
years, breaking in blessing on the shores
of all the continents to-day. We do not
wonder that the wisest of our race have
seen in Him the brightness of a heavenly
glory and the express image of the Divine
Person, and, beholding Him, have rejoiced
in the Father's love revealed in Him for
our redemption. We do not look down-
ward into the primitive particles of matter
for the origin of that moral glory which
illumined Palestine and is making the
whole earth a Holy Land. We do not
find in the atheist's dreams of development
from atoms the faintest or remotest possi-
bility of any explanation of that love and
tenderness which transfigured the tragedy
64 3 Beltepe in ©ob.
of Calvary. Not from beneath — an evolu-
tion from matter — but from above, a reve-
lation from God and of God, this is the
explanation of Christ to which we are
driven. Something divine entered hu-
manity in Jesus. His word is the final law
of the Spirit. The God He revealed is
love, and through Him God becomes to us
a power unto salvation. It was but natu-
ral that such a Saviour, with such a disclos-
ure, should prove himself lord over the
material world, using it to confirm his
doctrine. It was but natural that a
God of love, purposing to join together
forever redemption from sin with the
revelation of man's immortality, should
have given assurance of His great intent
in the resurrection of Christ from the
dead.
On every Lord's day we celebrate in
jubilant hymns the Redeemer's rising from
the tomb, whereby he is declared to be the
^ob's Cf?ree Hepelattons of ^tmself. 65
Son of God with power. Something hap-
pened, as one has said, in far-off Judea, on
the third day after Jesus' death — some-
thing happened, which changed the world.
This is a fact which unbelief cannot ex-
plain away. By this open tomb we see
our God, as He is not revealed in the star-
strewn and moving heavens, or in the
powers of our own minds, or in the
smitings of conscience. We see Him as a
God — not of might merely, and wisdom,
and holy law, but as God, our Friend and
Saviour, bringing to us, like the sunshine
of April, which " startles with crocuses the
sullen earth," the warmth of heavenly love
and hope. In the risen Christ He becomes
to us the conqueror of sin and death.
Therefore we walk out of the shadows of
denial and doubt in v/hich we may have
lingered, and pour forth our gladdest
hymns. Abiding with the risen Lord,
atheism, with all its nightmare horrors,
5
QG 3 BeltcDC in ®ob.
is a forgotten dream. " And may the
God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Fa-
ther of glory, give unto us the spirit of
wisdom in the knowledge of Him, the eyes
of our understanding being enlightened :
that we may know what is the hope of our
calling and what the riches of the glory of
His inheritance in the saints, and what is
the exceeding greatness of His power to
those who believe, according to the work-
ing of His mighty power, which He wrought
in Christ when He raised Him from the
dead."
CI)e Eternity of (Bob.
CI?c eternity of (5o6.
*' Frojn everlasthig to everlasting ihojt
art God.'''' — Ps, go : 2.
• • •
THESE are words from the Psalm of
Moses, and they express that view of
the nature of God which was given to the
Hebrew reader in the mysterious name
Jehovah. From the burning bush at Horeb
the Lord revealed Himself to Moses as the
*'IAm, the Existing One, the Eternal."
The word Jehovah, is regarded as meaning
*' the Living " or *' Self-Existent." It was a
sacred word with the Hebrews, never pro-
nounced, and expresses that aspect of the
divine nature on which reverence and awe
most easily fasten. The sublime concep-
tion of a God, the dwelling-place of His
people in all generations, to whom a thou-
[69]
70 3 Beliepe in ^06.
sand years are but as a watch in the night,
existent in absolute perfection before the
mountain ridges were lifted, or the world's
foundations laid, a God before whose date-
less antiquity the life of man is as grass
growing up in the morning, and in the
evening cut down by the mower's scythe,
this sublime conception was the refuge and
rock of Israel, and is a part of Israel's
legacy to the Christian mind of every age.
God's eternity is thus seen to be a very
ancient and familiar thought, but in the
heart of all old truth is a vast realm of
new truth awaiting exploration. Since we
use language so thoughtlessly, since we
daily pronounce words that are weighted
with infinite meaning, mindless of their
significance ; since, even in prayer, we are
habitually employing phrases about God
without ever having pondered them, it will
be wise for us to contemplate the old He-
trrew doctrine that God is eternal, a doc-
tr^e eternity of (Sob. 71
trine associated in the New Testament
with the nature of Christ, who is declared
to be ''the same, yesterday, to-day, and
forever;" and who said of Himself, ''Be-
fore Abraham was I am." I propose then
as our theme of meditation, " The Eternity
of God, the Proof and Moral Uses of the
Doctrine." From the Scriptural represen-
tations, it is manifest that God's existence
is different in its mode from our own. " I
Am," not "I have been," or "I shall be," is
His wonderful name.
Thus we are carried to the edge of that
insoluble mystery, so inspiring in its sub-
lime lifting of our thoughts above ourselves,
that there is with God a mode of being
entirely different from our own ; that all
that is, or has been, or will be, is a part
of His serene and ever-present conscious-
ness ; that God is to what we call time
that which He is to space ; that He who
inhabits immensity, also and equally in-
72 3 Beliepc in (Sob.
habits eternity. Think for a moment of
space. The mind sees it, and knows that if
there were nothing else in the universe
space would be left. The mind perceiv^es
that space extends indefinitely in all di-
rections, that the imagination can put no
Chinese wall about it, since infinite space
lies beyond every inclosure which the '
mind can construct. The enormous dis-
tances in our solar system are but a finger's
breadth in that universe which the tele-
scope has already disclosed. But God fill-
eth it all. Now transfer this to time. We
know of time only by a succession of cycles
or events, that is, by motions in space.
But God is to time what He is to space.
He filleth it all. That is, He is the hab-
itant of a realm of changeless existence,
what the Scriptures call eternity. To Him
there is no past or future such as ours, no
mutation of being, no learning or forget-
ting, but from everlasting to everlasting, a
trf?e €ternttY of ^06. 73
continuous, and abiding, and perfect self-
possession — a being without possibility of
beginning or ending, " infinitely excelling
all bounds of duration," because Himself
absolute, free from limitations, independ-
ent of time. Is not this the greatest
thought that ever transfixed and trans-
figured the mind of man ? With us time
is either past, present, or future. The
years come and go. But the living God,
the "I Am" of Moses, dwelletih in an
"eternal now," — all that has been, is, or
will be, the perpetual and abiding posses-
sion of His infinite Mind, being known to
Him truly — that is, in their relations to
each other as first, midst, or last — in that
realm of time of which we are subjects, but
equally known to His changeless intelli-
gence. But as creatures we can but think
of God as existing in space and time, and
subjecting Himself to our limitations. The
Scriptures hint at the Divine reach of be-
74 3 Beltet>e in ^ob.
ing ; and Philosophy has affirmed it, as
differing from ours in that it is absolved
from temporal conditions. But, as created
beings, we can conceive of God only as re-
lated to us, with succession of thought and
activity, so that we shall sum up all that can
be clearly revealed to us of God's eternity,
when we declare of it that it includes these
three truths, that God now is, that He has
ever been, and that He ever will be. The
sublime words of Moses give us the full
truth. **Thou art God," God exists;
"from everlasting thou art God," God has
always existed ; "to everlasting Thou art
God," God will exist forever.
First, then, God is. This is the chief
fact of human knowledge. Men are so
predisposed to believe in God that the first
evidences of his being are sufficient to pro-
duce the conviction of His existence. It is
certain that men generally have recognized
that they are intimately connected by
C{?e €ternttY'of (Sob. 75
spiritual blood with the Author of all
things ; that hence they are bound to wor-
ship and to please Him, and that without His
favor they are plunged into despair. In
view of what is observed in the world of
mind and the world of Nature, men have
been convinced of their origin in a supreme
power, their need of a supreme love, and
their peril before the supreme Author of
the moral law within. The human mind, in
its natural working, is strongly theistic.
You sit down by a piano, and some friend
with long-practiced fingers renders for you
a rhapsody of Liszt or song of Mendels-
sohn, and you look on and listen in de-
lighted astonishment, amazed at the sweet
or intricate harmonies which the composer
has written, and at the manual dexterity
which throws them off lightly from the
piano keys, and you will not for one mo-
ment believe that all those marvelous
combinations of musical sounds were the
76 3 Belicpe in ®ob.
chance thrummings of an idiot. You lie
on the rocks by the Atlantic Coast and see
the foaming billows following each other
to the shore with mathematic march and
precision ; you listen to the musical sob-
bing of the waves sliding up the strand,
and remember that the pallid moon and
the glowing sun by their weight and heat
lift the ocean up and down, ruffling his
glistening mane till he roars with a voice
which is heard by the capes and promon-
tories of every zone ; you listen to the
moaning wind sweeping over the sea, bring-
ing health and freshness from the Arctic
region which sends its cooling tides and
breezes along the North Atlantic shore ;
and then you turn from the sea, and gaze
into some tiny salt pool in a hollow of the
rocks, a home of life and beauty, with green
mosses stretching their fairy arms over the
barnacles that open their eager mouths to
take the food which Nature has provided,
Cf?e (Eternity of ^ob, 77
the whole scene a picture which no human
painter can approach ; and, as you listen
and gaze, no prattler of atheism will vent-
ure to tell you amid such surroundings that
there is no wise Thinker in the universe,
no heavenly Musician, no Celestial Artist,
no Omnipotent Ruler, but you will rather
give heed to the voice of the Hebrew
Psalmist and say with him, "The sea is
His and He made it, and His hand formed
the dry land."
Some of us have looked at that white
marble wonder, the Cathedral of Milan.
We have stood beneath its spacious
arches ; have walked about its carved
pediments ; have gazed with delight at its
hundreds of pinnacles and thousands of
statues ; have wandered over the roof, a
tropic flower-garden of sculptured stone,
and, from the central spire, have looked
down on the whole beautiful pile at our
feet, instinct with thought and devotion, a
3 Belier>e in (Sob.
priceless jewel on the brow of the Queen
of Lombardy, and no one could persuade
us that all this strength and splendor of
architecture sprang from a volcanic ex-
plosion in the marble quarries of Carrara.
Such skepticism is not launched at the
petty cathedrals which man has builded,
and very rarely at this majestic cathedral
of God, this pillared and pinnacled Cosmos
of beauty and power, whose music is the
chant of morning stars.
Secondly, in the doctrine of God's Eter-
nity is contained the truth that God ever
has been. This follows necessarily from
the first statement that God is, or in other
words, that a First Cause exists. If God
is the First Cause of all that is, then He
is without beginning. If He began to be,
then he were not first. That which is a
First Cause is uncaused. There is nothing
back of a First. That which is first must
be from eternity. If there ever were a
CI?e €terntty of ^ob. 79
time when God was not, there is no God
now. He never could have come into be-
ing, for there was nothing to cause His
existence. God's life, then, never had a
beginning. By searching we cannot find
a period before which God was not. The
mind will in vain weary itself in the effort,
and yet an effort may give us a more ade-
quate conception of the word eternal as
applied to the life of God. A minute, if
passed in pain, or even in silence, is long
An hour seems to us an age, if passed in
dread. A week of sorrow drags very
slowly to its death. A year crowded with
events is so long a period that, if we were
carried to its beginning, we might hardly
know ourselves. But go back in thought
to the time before the Civil War, and you
are almost in antiquity.
Fifty years ago, many of us were not
born, many were in their cradles, and
those who were men and women grown,
8^ 3 Beltcpe in ^ob.
were reading Webster's speeches in the
Senate. Fifty years ago is a remote
epoch. But there are some now living
who remember a period still more remote.
Eighty years ago there was no railroad, or
steamship, or telegraph, and the West was
almost an unpeopled solitude. But stand
in the entrance of the old South Church
in Boston, and think back more than a
hundred and fifty years to the day when,
at the dedication of this building on the
site of an older structure, the pastor, Mr.
Sewall, gave out the prophetic text : "And
the glory of the latter house shall be
greater than the glory of the former, saith
the Lord of hosts ! " But God was then
the dwelling place of His people, even as
now. Cross the Atlantic, stand in West-
minster Hall in London, and number the
kings there crowned, before La Salle first
sailed the waters of Lake Michigan, '* be-
fore the acorn fell which grew into a keel"
CI?e (Eternity of ^06. 81
for the Mayflower. But God was the
dwelling place of His people, then as now.
Go to Jerusalem, enter the Holy Sepulcher,
lay your hand on the stone of unction
which was kissed by holy lips that grew
cold in death before the English nation
and the English language were born, yes,
a thousand years before Columbus turned
his prow toward the New World. But
leaving the Sepulcher, you may lay your
hands on the ruins of a temple reared a
thousand years before Jesus walked in
Jerusalem. Or, you may stand by the
Great Pyramid of Egypt, and gaze at a
monument which was finished before Ab-
raham crossed the Euphrates, aye, two
thousand years before Romulus laid the
foundation of Rome. But God was then
the dwelling place of His people, as now.
Go back to the morning of history. Walk
with Adam in Paradise, and then, in-
structed by modern knowledge, let your
82 3 Beltere in ^ob.
mind retire into those far-distant ages,
millions of years ago, when this world was
formless and empty, floating as a part of
the fire-mist, and you have not reached
the cradle or the birth-hour of God.
And when we have heard and heeded
the voice of science declaring that these
cycles of life, of which we are a part, were
preceded by others enduring through mil-
lions of ages, and these by others equally
vast, through whose numberless centuries
worlds slowly came into being, planets
emerged from nebulous vapors, and heat
and ice worked their miracles in upheaving
continents, and grinding the rocky prom-
ontories into the soils out of which van-
ished forms of organized life were builded ;
when we remember that all the incalculable
periods which geology and astronomy dis-
close, with vast suns waning slowly through
epochs innumerable, are but an instant to
the aeons that preceded them, a moment's
Cl?e (Sternity of 606 83
ripple of life beside the oceanic expanses
of infinitude, an insect's flutter and gleam
after sidereal ages and cycles of ages, roll-
ing back into the immensities of time, even
then we have not reached the beginning of
God, of whom Moses said, ** He is from
everlasting;" of whom Isaiah declared
that '' He inhabiteth eternity."
But thirdly, involved in the truth of
God's eternity, is the doctrine, not only
that God is, and ever has been, but that
He ever will be. He who is " from ever-
lasting" must be *' to everlasting." It is
impossible that that which has been, in
infinite and undiminished life from all eter-
nity, should ever know diminution or ces-
sation of being. God can suffer no hurt,
can experience no decay. He cannot be
destroyed by another, being omnipotent.
He cannot destroy Himself, being perfect.
Therefore we may send our strongest-
winged imaginations, not only backward
84 3 BelicDC in ^06.
but forward, and never reach the limita-
tions of God's endless being. All our cal-
culations show how futile is the effort to
compass the thought of God's endless eter-
nity.
Men have imagined that one drop in the
ocean should be removed in a million of
years, and then, after another million of
years, one other drop should be taken
away, until the wide-reaching immensities
and profundities of the sea had been ex-
hausted, down to the rocky foundations of
the great deep ; but such a period of time
is only one moment with the eternal God.
Men have imagined a bird sent out to the
earth, and taking one grain of sand and fly-
ing far away to the sun, and after a thou-
sand years, returning for another grain of
sand, and this long-winged flight continued
through ages after ages unnumbered, until
the mighty earth had vanished, and until
all the other planets had been removed.
Cf?e (EternttY of (Sob. 85
and until other systems of worlds, beside
some of which this world is but a speck,
had been transported and heaped upon our
sun ; but in God's eternity all this would be
but an instant, a mathematical moment,
which, like a mathematical point, has no
dimensions. The eternity of God, instead
of ending, would not have suffered the least
diminution. Eternity is the life-time of
the Almighty ; existence without begin-
ning or ending, without birth or death, in-
fancy or age. He who is from everlasting
is to everlasting, the high and lofty One,
inhabiting Eternity.
From the contemplation which our argu-
ment has forced upon us, it will be felt,
First, that the conception of God's eter-
nity is a most powerful incentive to wor-
ship, for it is not a part of God that is
possessed of this sublime attribute, but
His whole Infinite Nature, His power is
from everlasting to everlasting. Not one
86 3 Bcltet?e in (Sob,
slightest element of force has ever been
subtracted, or ever will be taken there-
from. And so God's knowledge and wis-
dom are eternal. He has never been
learning, and He has never forgotten.
" Known unto God are all His works from
eternity." So, too, of His mercy, His jus-
tice, and His holiness. They are from
everlasting and they endure forever. In
him the venerableness of immemorial an-
tiquity is united with the splendor of im-
mortal youth. He is the Ancient of Days,
yet fresh with the dews of an eternal
morning. We are adding year by year to
our knowledge and experience, seeking
new truth and new joy. But we are also
leaving behind us something of the beauty
and freshness of life's morning hours. The
glory of the splendid dawn dies, as Words-
worth sings, " into the light of common
day." Not so with God ; eternally old, he
is immortally young ; the same in all His
^I)e eternity of 606. 87
adorable perfections, yesterday, to-day,
and forever, " without variableness or
shadow of turning."
When you see a great and holy man,
weighted with the wisdom of seventy years,
venerable with prayer and devout medita-
^tion, a man who has seen two genera-
tions pass to their echoless graves, you
stand in reverence before such a life. But,
while you revere, your sad thought flies
onward to the swift-coming day, when,
amid tolling bells and tearful crowds, the
good man shall be laid away in the ground
which his footsteps hallowed, and men
shall mourn that his voice of heavenly
wisdom is forever silenced. But suppose
that this man had lived on the earth from
the beginning of time, had been the con-
temporary of Adam, and Noah, and Moses,
and David, and Paul, and Augustine, and
Luther, and Washington ; suppose that the
"good, gray head" was venerable with
3 Belicpe in ^ob.
seventy centuries, instead of seventy years,
of meditation and experience ; suppose
that he had been the companion of patri-
archs of the elder world ; that he had
watched the Syrian stars in the tent-door
with Abraham, and had sat with Jesus
beneath the olive-trees outside Jerusalem ;
suppose he had seen the first stone of the
Pyramids planted in Egyptian sand, and
the gilded cross placed above St. Peter's
dome, and had himself built the first tem-
ple of Christian worship on the shores of
America ; and suppose that, with all his
weight of years, he was still in the hey-
day of youthful life, and you knew that
he would yet watch a hundred centuries
to their death, in the ages to come, until
his Master had subdued all the earth by
His reconciling love, with what augmented
awe and reverence would you salute the
wise and holy man of God whose life had
been parallel with the life of humanity.
Cl?e (Eternity of (gob. 89
But what is even such a life to that of
God ? It is less than the first falling
sand in the hour-glass. Before creation
began, God is, the great Jehovah, the
Eternal, ''I Am," resplendent with the
power and wisdom and goodness by which
all worlds came into being, and perfect in
that holiness that burneth forever, the con-
suming fire of the all-righteous God, who
from eternity to eternity doeth no pin and
suffereth no change !
The ninetieth Psalm, the Psalm of Moses,
is a trumpet-call to adoration. *' Thou
hast been our dwelling-place in all gen-
erations. Before the mountains were
brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed
the earth and the world, even from ever-
lasting to everlasting Thou art God." And
David answers with a note equally wor-
shipful, "They shall perish, but Thou re-
mainest, and they shall all wax old as doth
a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold
90 3 Beltepe in ®ob,
them up, and they shall be changed. But
Thou art the same, and Thy years shall
not fail." The mighty evolutions of the
past, which science is disclosing, are illus-
trations of God's eternity, calling us to our
knees. And how we may well commiser-
ate those in our time, who, gazing at
these stupendous unfoldings, see no eternal
Father.
"Mourn not for them that mourn
For sin's keen arrow with its rankling smart ;
God's hand will bind again what he hath torn,
He heals the broken heart.
But weep for him whose eye
Sees in the midnight skies a starry dome,
Thick sown with worlds that whirl and hurry by,
Yet give the heart no home ;
Who marks through earth and space
A strange dumb pageant pass before a vacant
shrine,
And feels within his inmost soul a place
Unfilled by the divine."
trf?e €ternity of ^ob. 91
But, secondly, God's eternity introduces
the thoughtful heart into a boundless field
of consolation. When the Archbishop of
Canterbury left the Cathedral after his
consecration, the English crowds were
wont to shout after him, ** Remember
eternity!" "Remember eternity!" This
word of solemn monition I would trans-
form into a word of comfort, and say to
every believing heart, wounded by afflic-
tion and burdened with care, '' Remember
eternity." It is the habitation of God.
From everlasting the Infinite Father has
been mindful of you, who were ** chosen of
Him before the foundation of the world,"
and who are not to be snatched from Him
by the principalities and powers of evil, or
to be separated from His love in Christ
Jesus by things present or things to come.
God's covenant with us is sure, because
He is eternal. He who hath loved us from
everlasting abides to everlasting to fulfill
9- 3 Believe in ^ob.
all His promises. Heaven and earth pass
away, but the word of the Lord, who is
eternal, endureth forever.
Science and revelation both declare that
this world shall be burned up and become,
let us suppose, like the gray ashen moon,
the cinder of a consumed planet. And we
are far less abiding than this dear old
world on which the sun has shined so long.
And what we love most is as transient as
ourselves. Household friends are borne
away by the flood of years, *' sweetest
lives overwhelmed and lost to sight."
Cherished hopes come forth in vigor —
fresh buds in May, gorgeous leaves in
October, dead leaves in December. Storms
beat on every side, but the children of God
are joined to an eternal life. The restless
mutations of earth disturb not the King
in heaven. Cruelty and persecution have
smitten the Church of Christ, till hearts
grew faint, and some eyes have turned to
tri?e (EternttY of (Sob. 93
the high dome above, expecting the stars
to whirl from their courses and make a
"pathway for the coming Judge." But in
darkest hours there have not wanted those
whose faith rested serenely on the un-
shaken throne of the Eternal God. His
patience is undisturbed, to whom a thou-
sand years are but as yesterday, and whose
" Providence moves through time," it has
been said, "as the gods of Homer through
space. He makes a step, and ages have
rolled away."
Why not throw every burden of life on
the bosom of Eternal Love ? Sorrow and
loss rob us of treasure and of joy — but
our best friend is One, who, older than
the everlasting hills, abides unchanged
when hills perish in smoke. Our Father
needs His children and will call them
home. We are to expect no Buddhist's
heaven, the dew-drop of life slipping at
last into the "shining sea" of a passionless
94 3 Bclter>e in ®ob.
repose, but something infinitely sweeter
and more ennobling, even a conscious im-
mortality. Let heaven be to you as
glorious as the Divine Word makes it,
and think not that your hopes are unreal,
for the blissful mansions, and the golden
streets, and the far-gleaming battlements
of the Christian Zion all rest securely on,
the truth, and the love, and the being of
the Eternal God.
And, thirdly, this sublime attribute of
God is a continuous warning to all wicked-
ness, disloyalty, and unbelief. Sin never
seems more presumptuous than when
considered as an affront to the Eter-
nal God. It is refusing to bow the
heart to the supremely Adorable. It is
robbing God of what is due His infinite
excellence. It is the pride that prefers
its own way to the counsel of the Everlast-
ing, who saith, *' Where wast thou when
I laid the foundations of the earth.?" It
tr(?c (Eternity of (Sob. 05
is the audacity of an insect of the hour
despising the ancient sun in the heavens.
It is the conceit of an infant child seizing
the scepter of government from the hand
of its reverend Father and King. It is
worshiping the things which God hath
made more than the Eternal Creator,
and this is pouring contempt on Him be-
fore whom the angels sing with veiled
faces, " Holy, holy, holy. Lord God Al-
mighty, which was, and is, and is to
come."
O how wicked and pitiable is the pride
which affronts God's eternal being, despis-
ing His eternal law, and defying his
eternal justice, and which is certain to
be smitten by His eternal wrath. P^or if
our transgressions have not been covered
over by the Redeemer's blood and thus
blotted from His book of remembrance,
then, as the Psalmist declares, they are all
set, even our secret sins, in the light of His
96 3 Bclter>e in ^ob.
countenance ; all the iniquities of the past
of which we may be oblivious, all the greed
and worldliness which He calls idolatry,
and all the voluntary rejection of our
Saviour, are set in the light of His face, to
whom a thousand years are but as a watch
in the night. There they are, perpetual
offences to His eternal holiness, and we
shall confront them and learn by experi-
ence infinitely sad that God's warnings are
not idle words. When a ship is sinking in
mid-ocean, and the captain informs the
passengers that in an hour all will be in
eternity, even hardened natures are im-
pressed by that solemn word. The great
Welsh preacher, Christmas Evans, once be-
gan a sermon in the open fields before a
congregation of many thousands, by saying
over and over again, the word which in the
Welsh language is equivalent to eternity,
a word which, I am told, is in that lan-
guage more sonorous and weighty even
Cl?e €tcrnttY of ®o6. 97
than in our own. "Eternity!" "Eter-
nity!" "Eternity!" he said in slow and
solemn accents, looking at the great multi-
tude which would soon be beyond the
realm of earthly changes, and then, with
eyes uplifted to heaven he spoke the word
"eternity" thirty times over, until it
seemed that the other world brought its
solemnity down upon the waiting multi-
tude. Men looked at each other with faces
whitened by fear. Women sobbed and
prayed, and hundreds cried to God to have
mercy on their souls ! May God make
that word mighty to us. May God give
every one of us that vision of values that
comes to the dying saint when the breath
of eternity kisses his face, and he knows
that while heart and flesh are failing, God
is the strength of his heart and his portion
forever. Then he is amazed at the folly
which, for a moment, could have preferred
the perishable trifles of earth to the endur-
7
98 3 BeltcDC in (Sob.
ing treasures of God, and which in so
many, craves the selfish pleasures which
are like glittering baubles, before those
holy joys which are like the durable dia-
mond ledges underlying the palaces of
eternity. May the Holy Spirit lead each
one of us unto Him who is from everlasting
to everlasting, and who hath revealed to
us redemption in Jesus Christ, whom to
know aright is life eternal.
Ct^e Crutl^ anb (£omfort of
CI^c Crutt^ anb (£omfort of
Our Father 7vhich art in Heaven.
— Matt. 6:6.
IN the opening address of the Lord's
Prayer is given a revelation of God
beyond which, in its wealth of comfort
and inspiration, we may not go. " Our
Father," is the ultimate address of human-
ity to God. ''AH knowledge which the
sons of men shall gather in the cycled
times" cannot add to it a single letter or
change to sweeter melody its enchanting
syllables. And this disclosure of the divine
nature is an authoritative confirmation of
the convictions, or, perhaps more accu-
[lOl]
102 3 Beliepe in 6ob.
rately, of the hopes of the human mind
apart from the Scriptures.
Matter and motion point to God. But
material elements and motions, however
marvelous, furnish us no such revelation of
God as is found in mind, the spirit of man
that thinks and loves and chooses and
worships. *' Men," says Lowell, " go about
to prove the existence of God. Was it a
bit of phosphorus, that brain (of Shakes-
peare) whose creations are so real that
mixing with them we ourselves appear like
fleeting magic-lantern shadows?" To an
undevout soul " this goodly frame, the
earth," may seem, as it did to the bewil-
dered Hamlet, only a " sterile promon-
tory." "Even this most excellent canopy,
the air," this majestical roof, this brave
o'er-hanging firmament, fretted with golden
fire, may appear to a dulled sensibility
only ** a foul and pestilent congregation of
vapors." But even poor Hamlet was forced
CF?e CrutF? anb (Eomfort of tn?eism. 103
to exclaim, in admiration, *' What a piece
of work is man ! How noble in reason ;
how infinite in faculties ; in form and mov-
ing how express and admirable ; in action,
how like an angel ; in apprehension, how
like a god ! " And hence we are not slow
to believe the ancient words attributing
all to Jehovah : '* Thou hast crowned him
with glory and honor. Thou hast given
him dominion over the works of Thy
hands."
The tiger walks the Indian jungle,
fiercely conscious of power to attack
and defend. The lion has his tooth and
terrible paw and is king over beasts. But
man has the Spirit of God, and therefore all
obey him. The monsters crawl at his feet
subdued. At his touch great common-
wealths and capitals of civilization spring
up from the prairie sod ; deserts become gar-
dens, mountains are leveled or pierced, con-
tinents are girded with iron, and the storm-
104 3 Bcliepe in ^ob,
wind harnessed to his flying ships. He
moves his wand and magnetic wires mur-
mur through a thousand leagues of sea the
intelligible speech of nations. He yokes
the tides of the moon to his mill-wheel, and
bids the strong earth by gravitation turn
his million spindles. He magnifies his
vision so as to peer into atoms and star- -
depths. No ape or elephant ever invented
a microscope or took out a patent for a
steam engine. Man alone is lord over
nature. On him the giants and the fairies
wait. " For him," as the poet-philosopher
of New England has said, "the diving-bell
of Memory descends into the deeps of our
past and oldest experience, and brings up
every lost jewel." For him Fancy " sends
up her gay balloon into the sky to catch
every gleam and tint of romance." For
him '* Imagination turns every dull fact
into picture and poetry by making it the
emblem of a thought." So that every re-
Cf}e Crutf} anb Comfort of ^(?eism. 105
splendent faculty of our intellectual nature
becomes a shining finger, pointing, not to
the star-dust, but to Him who is enthroned
above the stars, toward whom our hearts
are uplifted as, taught and inspired by the
Divine Man of Nazareth, we cry out, in
filial adoration, ** Our Father who art in
heaven."
A stranger from another world, alight-
ing on our earth, and desiring to learn
something of the character of the king
who rules it, might discover in the royal
gardens a time-piece moved by water, like
those contrivances which some of us have
seen in Switzerland. Examining the
water-clock, he might learn something of
the ingenuity of the king or the king's
servants. Suppose, however, that the
king's own son should appear to the celes-
tial visitor and converse with him about
this mysterious clock, and explain its mo-
tions and speak of the solar and sidereal
106 3 Beltcpe in (Sob.
systems whose movements are represented
on the face of the dial ; and suppose that
from this, the young prince should begin to
reason about the origin of the Universe,
and should show that his heart had been
touched by the sublimity and beauty of
Creation, and should invite the angel to
kneel with him and adore the Maker and
Mover of all things ; the heavenly stranger
would learn from this prince's mind indefi-
nitely more of the king's nature than from
any mechanical contrivance, however mar-
velous. Man is the King's son ; the curi-
ous time-piece is this system of blazing
wheels within wheels, which we call Na-
ture ; and his soul is a nobler and completer
revelation of the Being of God than all the
resplendent and revolving galaxies of
the heavens.
But in the mind of man we discover con-
science, the organ and executive of the
moral law, which declares that right should
C^e Crutl? anb Comfort of tEf?et5m. 107
be chosen and wrong should be avoided, —
which speaks to us with a supremely
authoritative voice : which, in the presence
of every temptation, pronounces a divine
negative that loses not one whit of its
royal supremacy when mated with all the
allurements of pleasure which beguiled
Ulysses or Solomon ; and which, when we
choose the right and refuse the wrong, stirs
in our hearts a feeling of the approval of
" Some One above ourselves that makes
for righteousness." What is the meaning
of the moral law? If you ask History, she
answers, "God." Pointing to the smoke of
numberless sacrifices, she declares that men
have deemed themselves accountable to a
Supreme Being, and that the moral law is
the source and occasion of that greatest
fact of history. Religion. If you ask Phil-
osophy what it means, she repeats her sub-
lime axiom that every effect demands an
adequate cause. The moral law is a stu-
108 3 Bcltepe in ^ob.
pendous effect, and points together with all
lower effects, to that Supreme First Cause
for which, as Herbert Spencer has said, *' we
have more evidence than for any other
truth whatever." If you make your ap-
peal to the moral sense itself when touched
by a feeling of remorse, you get an answer
in the words of penitent David, *' Against
Thee and Thee only have I sinned."
Searching the nature of man we discover
affections that hunger for a divine love ;
we discover worshiping instincts and as-
pirations. Now this religious nature, this
spiritual instinct, is itself a supreme evi-
dence of God's being, from the fact that
if God is not, the instinct is a liar's finger
pointing us toward darkness and nothing-
ness, when we expected to find the Eter-
nal Father. If there be no God, then
falsehood has been planted in the very
center of our nature. But the presump-
tion is against such an hypothesis. Only
tEF?c Crutl? anb Comfort of C^etsm. 109
the most overwhelming evidence could
satisfy us that this monstrous supposition
is true, and all the evidence points in the
opposite direction. The analogies of the
universe are strongly to the effect that,
if there exist an organ of knowledge or
power, or if there be any need in body or
mind, these have their correlates in fact,
in Nature. If you find in the fossil's skull
of the megatherium an enormous eye-
socket, you know that there once existed
within that cavity an enormous eye, and,
believing in the existence of an eye, you
are confident that far back in the geologic
ages there was light to correspond with
that eye. If you see a bird's wing in a
museum of extinct animals, you know
there was air on the earth fitted to that
wing's movements. From the sight of a
fin you infer water. From the roots of a
tree you infer soil for them to penetrate ;
from the long, flexible claws of a bird.
no 3 Beliepc in (Sob.
branches for them to cling to. Lungs im-
ply an atmosphere, feet a solid earth.
Hunger points to food and thirst to water.
The study of nature is a disclosure of
correspondences. Marvelous are the prop-
erties of light and of sound, and when
we remember that those vibrations in
the ether which we call light, and those
vibrations in the air which we call sound,
form a language fitted to the soul of man
and speaking to it in Beethoven's sym-
phonies and Michael Angelo's frescoes, in
the martial airs of patriotism and in the
splendors of Raphael's pencilings, in the
song of the bird and the beauty of
the lily, in the thunder of the cataract
and in the pensive loveliness of a New
England landscape bathed in the dreamy
light of October, in the glory of the sun-
kissed waves and in the "undying baritone
of the sea," ministering to human love and
reverence, suggesting thoughts of joy and
C(?e Crutf? anb (Eomfort of Cf^etsm. Ill
sadness, exalting the heart to courage or
quieting it with tenderness, or sending it
upward in strong-winged aspiration toward
heaven, we are confident that one God
created the soul and these multitudinous
and almost spiritual agencies which minis-
ter to its life. It would seem that Nature
is a continual response to the spirit of
man, that she never makes an organ or
creates a need without supplying its cor-
relate. Man has a desire for power, here
is the earth for him to subdue ; he has a
desire for knowledge, here is the Universe
for him to study ; he has a sense of the
beautiful, and lo ! on every hand the fairy
fingers of Nature have wrought in gor-
geous dyes and finest fabrics the miracles
of beauty which the aesthetic instinct
needs.
Man is a creature with affections, and
behold the many objects on which, they
fasten ; father, mother, wife, children, home.
112 3 Beliere in ^ob.
country, humanity. But man is also and
above all a worshiping being, and shall
he be cheated here, in the very sanctuary
and palace of his soul ? Is every other
faculty true and correspondent with the
nature of things, and this supreme faculty
a lie, pointing only to illusion and false-
hood ? The construction of the world
argues no, and with all its force asserts
that, if there be a worshiping instinct
there must be that which it requires. If
man is a religious being, there must be
One supremely adorable ; if man is terri-
fied before a broken moral law and rears
an altar and puts upon it an expiatory
sacrifice, there must be Some One, not
himself and above himself, toward whom
the moral law is pointing. If humanity,
with all its sorrows and its baffled hopes
and undefined longings, is needing an
infinite Father to soothe and satisfy, and is
feeling after Him if haply it may find
trf?e Crutl) anb Comfort of tlf^eism. 113
Him, even as a hungry child in the dark-
ness cries for food and light, then there
must be an Infinite Father with whom is
food for love, and in whom is light for the
soul.
Thus Christ's revelation comes in to re-in-
force the best convictions of men and satisfy
their deepest wants. The need of God, and
of such a God as Jesus reveals, is so funda-
mental that you must almost unmake
human nature itself to destroy its latent
faith in a Divine Someone who is able to
right human wrong and to console human
grief. Much of the so-called culture of our
time is an effort to eliminate God from
human consciousness by fixing the mind
on second causes, and by vainly endeavor-
ing to satisfy the human heart with the
thought of its own possible development
in moral excellence, even though life ends
with the grave. One distinguished man
has left us an autobiography which is the
114 3 'Bdkvz in ©06.
story of an attempt to eradicate God from
the human soul. I scarcely know of a
sadder or a more instructive book. It is
only a few years since this great English-
man, John Stuart Mill, went down to
his grave, leaving us an account of
his lifelong education. A political econo-
mist, the first of his age, a logician equal
to the greatest, a parliamentary debater,
an advocate of liberty, a friend of our own
country in her mortal struggle for exist-
ence, with a generous and heroic nature,
cultivated beyond most men of his time,
John Stuart Mill is doubtless a man worth
studying, a modern man, our contempo-
rary, living a fruitful, unselfish, and high-
minded life. If we look into his career, let
our examination be without any prejudices
because he rejected the Christian faith and
stoutly opposed many of our most cher-
ished convictions. Let it be with tolerant
sympathy and a candid desire to know
whether the need of God is any part of
tEl^e Crutl? anb Comfort of Cf?eism. 115
human nature. If I wished to assail unbe-
lief in its strongholds, I would use the
Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. No
sensitive man can read the sad story with-
out crying, "O God, save me from despair."
I am not disposed to belittle this great
antagonist of Christian philosophy, but
rather to exalt him. There are enough
embittered polemics that hate his name.
The organized wrong of England always
hated him. Toryism bellowed and brayed
over his coffin, as it has bellowed and
brayed over the reverses of many great
men, from Milton to Gladstone. Let
us not walk in these ways of bitterness.
True wisdom seeks out the path of charity,
"which the lion's whelp has not trodden
nor the vulture's eye seen." I am willing
to learn much from John Stuart Mill,
remembering his own maxim that " none
is more likely to see what you do not, than
he who does not see what you do." This
man investigated truth with the boldness
116 3 Bcltcrc in ^ob.
of Socrates and carried into public life a
conscientious independence as royal as
Charles Sumner's. He was true to God in
conscience, though to him it was an un-
known God. If I viewed only one aspect
of this life, I should almost be a devotee of
this great man, who has been described as
a '* marvelous compound of intellect and
feeling, of chivalry and logic ; the pene-
trating genius of Pascal and the generous
heart of Fenelon, Adam Smith and Bayard,
Aristotle and Petrarch in one."
Coming now to his life, as told by him-
self, we recall that his father, James Mill,
author of the '' History of British India,"
was a man who came to disbelieve Chris-
tian doctrine, and who held that nothing
could be known of the origin of things.
This forceful and accomplished man re-
solved to train his eldest son, John Stuart
Mill, in accordance with his own very
positive ideas. You may remember that,
d?e (£rut(? anb Comfort of tEF^etsm. 117
at the age of three, the boy was set to
learning Greek, and that before he was
ten, his father had seen him read far more
Greek than is required of the graduates of
American universities. He began Latin
at eight, and in four years had read the
masterpieces of Roman literature, besides
writing a history of Roman law that would
make an octavo volume. His English
reading up to this time was enormous, his
father supervising all his studies and ex-
plaining the reasons for every task re-
quired, and to his father the boy recounted
the substance of his investigations, so that
knowledge was remorselessly drilled into
him. He was kept from companionship
with children, and shut up with men and
books, so that he early became a ** reason-
ing machine."
James Mill took conscientious care that
his son should acquire his own convictions
concerning religion. The belief in a per-
118 3BeItepe in (Sob.
sonal God was never permitted to develop
in his mind. It was resolutely repressed,
"I am thus," said John Stuart Mill, *' one
of the few examples in this country of one
who has never thrown off a religious be-
lief, but never had it. I grew up in a
negative state in regard to it. I looked
upon modern, as I did upon all ancient
religion, as something which in no way
concerned me." In his Autobiography he
never refers to his mother, and it would
seem that no impressions were allowed to
come from her. He was to be trained ra-
tionally, and by his father's rigorous hand.
A motherless childhood ! Do you wonder
that it ushered in a godless manhood ?
When we think of St. Monica's prayers
for her son Augustine, when we think of
the pious petitions of the mothers of
Wesley and Washington, we believe that
in the mind of God they outweighed the
hard philosophies of James Mill.
trF?e ^vuil} anb Comfort of Cl?etsm. 119
And yet moral instruction was earnestly
given to our young scholar. His favorite
book through life was the *' Reflections of
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus," the Roman
Stoic emperor. He learned to scorn all
baseness and insincerity. The time came,
however, when Mill's self-education began,
and when, instead of the iron hand of his
father, was his own independent choice.
And after years of sharp contact with the
best minds of England, after long courses
of intellectual discipline which were se-
verer than any athlete's training fof phys-
sical contests, there came a crisis in his
mental history. He began to ask, '' For
what is all this culture ? What is the pur-
pose of these efforts for the public good ?
Suppose that you attain all that you are
seeking, will you be satisfied.?" He an-
swered, "No." "The whole foundation on
which my life was constructed fell down."
He says, " I seemed to have nothing left
120 3 Beliepe in ®o6.
to live for." " In vain I sought relief in my
favorite books ; I became persuaded that
my love of mankind and of moral excellence
for its own sake had worn itself out ; " and
then he adds these suggestive words : " If
I had loved any one sufficiently to make
confiding my griefs a necessity, I should
not have been in the condition I was." I
cannot help remembering that the Apostle
Paul's love for mankind and for moral ex-
cellence never seemed to himself worn out,
because his heart had been touched by
God's heart on the Cross, and for him to
live was Christ. It makes a vast difference
with man's outlook into life whether or not
he has received the New Testament revela-
tion of the divine nature as love.
If love is the divine artificer and gov-
ernor of the material, mental, and moral
universe ; if that blessed name describes
the heart of the Almighty who awes us
by the sublimity of his creations ; if love is
Ct)e CrutI) anb domfort of ^(^eism. 121
the nature of that Being whose continual
activity in the marvels of earth and sea
and sky is the life-long study of the natu-
ralist, the mathematician, and the astrono-
mer ; if this infinite cosmos is the home
of an ever-present benevolence, and the
palpitating ether throbs from star to star
with the onflowingand everflowing billows
of love ; if this precious and peculiar grace
which makes what joy we know on earth,
has been enthroned in the royalty of su-
preme and eternal dominion over force
and law, over the motions of spheres and
the mutations of time, over national and
individual life, over our birth and discipline
and toils and griefs, over our homes and our
graves, our present and our future ; if all
the altars built to the unknown God have
been unconsciously offering incense to this
innermost and sublimest attribute of deity ;
if the divine Some One whom Socrates
and Plato revered, and Eastern poets
122 3 Beliepe in ®ob.
worshiped on Persian hilltops, rosy with
the streamers of the dawn, is best named
in the language of the Asiatic peasant
who wrote so confidently that '' God is
love," then we have a truth and a treasure
which cheapens the learning of proud uni-
versities and the diadems of prouder kings.
Had the soul of John Stuart Mill been
open, not only to the riches of human
thought, but to the sight of God's personal
love, no such plaint as he has recorded
would have broken from his heart.
But he escaped from his father's narrow-
ness and set resolutely to work to cultivate
the neglected part of his nature, the feel-
ings. From Christian sources, yet having
no Christian faith, he fed his emotiona'
nature. He became the associate of Cole-
ridge and of John Stirling, of Carlyle and
of Frederick D. Maurice, *'of all God's men
late left, the most divine ! " He even
learned to love the poetry of Wordsworth,
CI}e CrutI? anb Comfort of ^(^eism. 123
who, more than any other modern, per-
ceived and felt the presence of God in
Nature. Thus, to a degree, the frozen
music in this logical machine was thawed
out. He came to feel that he might re-
cover from his depression and despair by-
living for others. We are not surprised
to find him a chivalrous apostle of the
oppressed, filled with enthusiasm for hu-
manity. Let no one think it a discredit
to the Christian Gospel that the life of
this unbeliever was a prolonged devotion
to human welfare, for enthusiasm for man
is the living inspiration of Christianity,
and Stuart Mill was unconsciously the
child of eighteen Christian centuries, " the
heir to old Judea's gift of sacred fire,"
' living in an atmosphere permeated with
Christian thought. In his heart there was
that which paganism did not teach him.
Unwittingly this student of the heathen
emperor, Marcus Aurelius, became the
124 3 Beltepc in (Sob.
disciple of the Nazarene Jesus. A man
often walks in the cold light of the Octo-
ber moon with no grateful thought of the
sun whose reflected splendor silvers the
autumn fields. So Mill had much of the
light of Christianity, without its personal
warmth and consolation. He cherished
bright hopes for humanity, but none for
individual men. These hopes for the race,
however, are the gifts of Christianity.
Paganism ever faces the past, and dreams
of a golden age far back in the twilight
of history. The Gospel of Christ faces
the future, and points to a new heaven
and a new earth ''with joy and love tri-
umphing and fair truth." Without Chris-
tianity, Stuart Mill, hopeless for himself
and the individual, might also have been
hopeless for the race, and we should think
of him as a stony sphinx, guarding the
dull, gray pyramid of a worn-out past, and
not as a westward-looking prophet whose
C{?e CrutI) anb Comfort of CF?ctsm. 125
mind, though half-illumined, still thronged
" with shining auguries,
Circle on circle, bright as seraphim,
With golden trumpets silent, that await
The signal to blow news of good to men."
We come now to the final stage of Mill's
culture, and having seen his young mind
thoroughly emptied of God, having seen
him cherishing great hopes for the world,
though none for individuals, and having
heard him confessing the need of a su-
preme affection, we are not suprised at this
latest development. In 1830, at the age of
twenty-four, he began a friendship, which
he calls "the honor and chief blessing of
his existence, as well as the source of a
great part of all he attempted to do or
hoped to effect thereafter for human im-
provement." He was introduced to the lady,
who after twenty years of friendship, be-
came, on the death of her husband, his
wife. She was not deemed a remarkable
126 3 Bcltere in (Sob.
woman by others, but with more than the
usual enthusiasm of love, John Stuart Mill
believed that he had found in her a com-
bination of all the finest qualities he had
known in the greatest men. This cool-
headed philosopher deliberately writes that
she was "more of a poet than Carlyle" and
''more of a thinker than himself." "Her
mind included Carlyle's," and, he adds,
"infinitely more." He devoutly believed
her to be possessed of the qualities, in-
tellectual and moral, of a " consummate
artist, a great orator, an eminent ruler and
spiritual leader of mankind." In her " the
strongest justice was linked with boundless
generosity and lovingness ; " "the most
genuine modesty was combined with the
loftiest pride." "Her sincerity and sim-
plicity were absolute," and Mill says that
his intellectual indebtedness to her was
"almost infinite." He detected no flaw
in the perfection of her wisdom and no
CI?e tErutf? anb domfort of tTf^eism. 127
slightest stain on the beauty of her char-
acter. For her he scorned the scorn of
English society, and, though pure as the
day, neglected its usages. To her this
positive philosopher gave himself with a
devotion as fervent as was ever given to
the Virgin Mary. Of her he writes almost
as St. John might have written of the Lord
Christ. Who can read without astonish-
ment, and almost without tears, the dedi-
cation of the Essay on Liberty! ''To the
beloved and deplored memory of her who
was the inspirer and in part the author of
all that is best in my writings, the friend
and wife whose exalted sense of truth and
right was my strongest incitement, and
whose approbation was my chief reward,
I dedicate this volume. . . . Were I but
capable of interpreting to the world one-
half the great thoughts and noble feelings
which are buried in her grave, I should be
the medium of a greater benefit to it than
128 3 Belicpc in ©ob.
is ever likely to arise from anything that
I can write unprompted and unassisted by
her all but unrivaled wisdom."
In 185 1, Stuart Mill was married to this
idol in whose mind he could ** detect no
mixture of error." For seven and a half
years the devotee and his saint belonged
to each other, and then she was taken to
the God in whom she also did not believe..
''For seven and a half years," says the
Autobiography, " that blessing was mine ;
for seven and a half only. I can say
nothing which could describe, even in the
faintest manner, what that loss was and is.
But because I know that she would have
wished it, I endeavor to make the best of
what life I have left, and work on for her
purposes with such diminished strength as
may be derived from thoughts of her
and communion with her memory." That
memory became his religion. She had
been laid to rest in the south of France,
C(?e ^rutf} anb Comfort of Cf?ctsm. 129
in sunny Avignon, and year after year
this remorseless logician went thither and
wept over her grave. Amid the cypress
trees he walked, and looking vainly to the
east and the west, the north and the south,
he cried an exceeding great and bitter cry,
that seems an echo of Mary's voice from
the garden : '' They have taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have
laid Him."
You ask me, What does all this mean ?
It means that John Stuart Mill's heart had
revenged itself; that he who had no God
to love had clothed with divine perfections
a creature of God and worshiped that.
And is there anything sadder than this ?
A chivalrous soul, blind to God, gives its
great affections to one human being, whom
love deified, and losing her, cares to live
only because she wished it, and derives
strength only from communion with her
memory ! A son of God living on the
9
130 3 Beltepe in ^ob.
recollection of a brief gladness that could
never return, for no flower of hope bloomed
on the sunny grave in Avignon. " Truly
if in this life only we have hope, we are of
all men most miserable." Many a martyr
going to the stake repeating the words of
the Son of Mary, ** I am the Resurrection
and the Life," is far less pitiable than this
blight-smitten philosopher without God
and hence without hope in the world.
"Among those born of women" in these
latter days, there has scarcely risen a
greater than John Stuart Mill. Neverthe-
less in privilege and hope, ** he who is
least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater
than he."
Mill's broken heart might have envied
the faith in God which has made the cabin
of many a dying slave the vestibule of
immortality. Had not the great logician
met a logic sterner than his own, that of
Death ? Does not human need equalize
^{}e (Ltnil} anb Comfort of tEF^eism. 131
all and demonstrate religion ? It has been
said that " the theorizing- of ages is com-
pressed as in a seed, in the momentary
want of a single mind." And who of us
could stand with the despairing philoso-
pher by that grave in Southern France,
without praying that his heart might open
to David's God who never dies and who
alone satisfieth the longing soul ? The life
which began without God ended without
Him. A deified friend assumed the place
of Jehovah, except that the one faded as a
leaf, while the other is from everlasting to
everlasting. And I cannot point to this
nineteenth century argument for the truth
and comfort of Christian theism without a
vain regret that Mill had not omitted a few
volumes of Greek and Roman history from
his father's library and early learned the
Lord's Prayer, " at that best Academe, a
mother's knee," for then his life might have
ended with Paul's, Milton's, Bunsen's, at
132 3 Beltcpe in ^06,
the sapphire gates of the New Jerusalem,
and not in despair at the marble jaws of a
sepulcher.
The foremost need of every soul is to
accept in full confidence Christ's revelation
of God. We who say *' Our Father" must
also add, ''Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy
Kingdom come, Thy will be done." God
is. Everything affirms that. He is near
to us. The moral law declares that. He
is our Father, Christ has revealed it. Our
hearts know it. We need Him. Our lives
tell us that. Then why not speak to Him,
asking His help and pity and pardon ?
Why not go in every doubt and darkness
to Him who is the light itself.^ Is it any
dishonor to seek wisdom from Him to
whom prayer has been offered by Dante
and Copernicus, Kepler and Pascal, Sir
Isaac Newton and Linnaeus and Faraday ?
I seem yet to see on an island-shore a
great man's head bowed in prayer. He
Cf}e tlrutl? anb (Eomfort of Cl^etsm. 133
is no common mind. " To be in his pres-
ence an hour," it was said of him, "was to
gain the strongest argument for the im-
mortality of the soul." A great poet has
pictured his " forehead high and round, a
cairn which every science helped to build."
It is Agassiz with his pupils about
him, the master and his school, standing
before Nature. This man is no fanatic.
The ages of human culture roll their wealth
to his feet as the Atlantic rolls its tides.
His life's study has been matter, but he
knows with Lord Bacon that mind is be-
hind it. He has watched the miracle of
moving life in star-fish and eagle. And he
knows with his master Aristotle, that all
motion has its origin in will. And there
he stands, child of the nineteenth century,
on the Ocean's shore.
«• Over rock and isle and glistening bay
Falls the beautiful white day."
134 3 BcUcDC in ^ob.
The master is about to speak to his
scholars. Will he say, *' Study Nature,
trusting to yourselves, leaving all super-
stition behind you. God is unknown and
unknowable " ?
"Said the Master to the youth,
We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery ;
We are reaching through His laws
To the garment-hem of cause.
Him, the endless, unbegun.
The Unnameable, the One
Light of all our light the source,
Life of life, and force of force.
By past efforts unavailing.
Doubt and error, loss and failing.
Of our weakness made aware,
On the threshold of our task
Let us light and guidance ask.
Let us pause in silent prayer.
Then the Master in his place.
Bowed his head a little space,
tri^e Crut(} anb Comfort of ^l^etsm. 135
And the leaves, by soft airs stirred,
Lapse of wave and cry of bird.
Left the solemn hush unbroken
Of that wordless prayer unspoken.
While its wish on earth unsaid
Rose to heaven interpreted."
Agassiz is dead, but flowers of hope
bloom about the rough Alpine boulder
which marks his grave in Mount Auburn,
flowers which blossom not above that
grave in Southern France. But being
dead he yet speaketh, speaketh of a life
beyond, in which he believed, and of which
his great spirit was a prophecy.
" In the lap of sheltering seas
Rests the Isle of Penikese ;
But the lord of the domain
Comes not to his own again :
Where the eyes that follow, fail.
On a vaster sea his sail
Drifts beyond our beck and hail ;
136 3 Beltepe in (Sob.
But one name forevermore
Shall be uttered o 'er and o 'er
By the waves which kiss that shore.
Thither love shall tearful turn,
Friendship pause uncovered there,
And the wisest reverence learn
From the Master's silent prayer."
Fruitless is all knowledge if it does not
lead us in adoration or in penitence to our
knees. The knowledge of God is a terror
and despair, if his children may not speak
to Him. We have ascended the golden
steps which lead to our Father's threshold ;
let us entreat Him to open the door that
his glory may smite our faces. Let us
seek His mercy, lest when His anger is
kindled but a little, we be utterly con-
sumed. Let all who believe that God is,
test Him now and henceforth ifHeheareth
and answereth prayer.
CI}e Crutl? anb Comfort of tlE^etsm. 137
" For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a bhnd hfe within the brain,
If, knowing God, they Hft not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
The New Enlarged and Authorized Edition of a Remarlcabie Worlr.
THK CHRISTIAN'S
SECRET OF A HAPPY LIFE.'
This Work, the demand for which
has been so great as to wear out two
sets of plates, has now been put in
entirely new form. The book hav-
ing become an accepted classic in de-
votional literature, it was thought
wise to issue this new edition in a
compact form, and in a variety of
bindings. Occasion has also been
taken by the author to thoroughlyre-
vise the whole work, besides adding
considerable new matter.
Few Books of a Religious Character have been
accorded such Hearty and Universal En-
dorsement from all Denominations.
*• To commend this work would seem almost superfluous;
and yet to young Christians who may not know it, we can-
not refrain from saying, Buy this book, and keep it with
your Bible for constant study, until you have thoroughly-
mastered, in your own experience, the * secret ' of which it
tells. It will transform the dark days of your life, as it
has transformed those of thousands before you, into days
of heavenly light."— iVe^^ York Evangelist.
"We have not for years read a book with more delight
and profit. The authov has a rich experience, and tells it
in a plain and delightful manner.
■Christian Advocate.
85
The " Handy Classic Edition." l8mo, 292 pages as follows :
Each in separate box, gilt edge, round corners, except JNo. d.
No, 8, Persian Calf, Broken
Glass Pattern $1 75
10, Calf, plain 2 00
12, Best German Calf
Embossed 2 25
14, Best German Calf
Padded 2 50
No. 3, Cloth, full gilt edges.. $
4, French Morocco, Seal
Grain 1 50
6, French Morocco, Rus-
tic Gold Bands 1 50
7, White Enamel, Easter
or Wedding Edition. 1 50
The "Standard Edition." 12mo 240 pages as follows:
No. 01 Paper covers 50 i No. 02 Cloth, fine .— 75
No. 03 Cloth, full gilt edges 100
WW voRK.:; Fleming H. ReVell Company :: Chicago.
Works of D. L MOODY.
"By the strenuous cultivation of
his gift Mr. Moody has attained
to a clear and incisive style which
preachers ought to study; and he
has the merit, which many more
cultivated n.en lack, of saying
nothing that does not tend to the
enforcement of the particular
truth he is enunciating. He
knows how to disencumber his
text of all extraneous matter, and
exhibits his wisdom as a preacher
hardly less by what he leaves out
than by what he includes. Apart
from its primary purpose each of
these books has a distinct value
as a lesson on homiletics to min -
isters and students." —
The Christian Leader.
SOVEREIGN GRACE.
BIBLE CHARACTERS.
PREVAILING PRAYER; WHAT HINDERS IT. 30th Thousand.
TO THE WORK! TO THE WORK ! A Trumpet Call. 30th Thousand.
THE WAY TO GOD AND HOW TO FIND IT. 105th Thousand.
HEAVEN; its Hope ; its Inhabitants; its Rpppines' , its Riches ; its
Reward. 125th Thousand.
SECRET POWER ; or, the Secret of Success in Christian Life and
Woriv. 72d Thousand.
T'JWELVn SELECT SERMONS. 165th Thousand.
The above are bound in uniform style and price. Paper coversj
30 cerfls; cloth, 60 cents. Also the eight books are bound in four
volumes. Price of Set, in neat box, $4.00.
DANIEL, THE PROPHET. 10th Thousand. Paper cover, 20c.; cloth,
40c.
THE FULL ASSURANCE OF FAITH, 7th Thousand. Some thoughts
on Christian confidence. Paper cover, 15c.; cloth, 25c.
THE WAY AND THE WORD. 65th Thousand. Comprising " Regen-
eration," and " How to Study the Bible." Cloth, 25c.; paper, 15c.
HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 45th Thousand. Cloth, 15c.; paper, 10c!
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST. 45th Thousand. Paper, 10c.
INQUIRY MEETINGS. By Mr. Moody and Maj. Whittle. Paper, 15c.
GOSPEL BOOKLETS. By D. L. Moody. 12 separate sermons.
Published in small, square form, suitable for distribution, or inclos-
ing in letters. 35 cents per dozen, $2.50 per hundred. May be had
assorted or of any separate tract.
CHICAGO.
Flemiiis H. Reyell Conipaiiy.
NEW YORK.
A ^nfrfrF^TION ^^^^ ^°'" *^^ ^^^^ volume and see what a mine of
want the full set.
'• wealth is in these "Notes." You will surely
"C. H.M.'s" NOTES,
OR
THEG08PEL1NTHEPENTATEUGH
These Books are not Commen-
taries, ;n the ordinary under-
standing of that word ; they are
of a more popular style ; helpful,
suggestive, inspiring.
GENESIS, EXODUS, LEVITICUS,
NUMBERS AND DEUTERONOMY.
Read thefollowing Commendations from well-known
Pastors, Evangelists, Laymen, Etc.
"Some years since 1 had my attention called to C. H.
M.'s Notes, and was so much pleased, and at the same
time profited by the way they opened up Scriptural
truths, that I secured at once all the writings of the
same author. They have been to me a very key to the
Scriptures" D. L. MOODY.
"Under God they have blessed me more than any
books outside of the Bible itself, that I have ever read,
and have led me to a love of the Bible that is proving
an unfailing source of profit."
maj. d. w. whittle.
Deuteronomy is issued in two volumes, the others complete in one
volume each.
Separate volumes may be had if desired. Sent post paid to any
address on receipt of price.
The complete set in tix volumes^ covering over 3,j,oo pages, ia
offered at the reduced price of l^^:. per Vol. Of $4.50 per Set.
BewYort FLEMING H. REVELl CO. Chicago.
Theological Seminary-Spee'
1 1012 01006 8999
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