S E V E N T H T H O U S A N D . 

c t d o t ^ T -

FOND DU LAC TRACTS 

No. 5 

Difficulties of Faith 

BY THE 

REV. SELDEN P. DELANY 

EDITED BY 

THE BISHOP OF FOND DU LAC. 

MILWAUKEE, WIS. 

T H E Y O U N G C H U R C H M A N C O . 

10 C E N T S EACH. 60 COPIES FOR $ 3 . 0 0 . 





With Compliments of 

The Bishop of Fond du Lac 







FOND DU LAC TRACTS 

No. 5 

Difficulties of Faith 

BY THE 

REV. SELDEN P. DELANY 
EDITED BY 

THE BISHOP OF FOND DU LAC 

Milwaukee, Wis. 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 





C O N T E N T S . 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

PREFACE - VII 

INTRODUCTION - - - IX 

I .—THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER 1 

I I . — T H E NECESSITY OF WORSHIP 7 

III.—HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 12 

TV.—THE LOVE OF GOD - - - 17 

V . — T H E KESPONSIBILITY FOR SIN 2 2 

V I . — T H E INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE 27 

V I I . — T H E THEORY OF EVOLUTION 31 

V I I I . — T H E FALL OF MAN - - 36 

IX.—MIRACLES 4 1 

X . — T H E INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD - - 4 6 

X I . — T H E ATONEMENT - - 5 5 

X I I . — T H E RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 6 0 

X I I I . — T H E DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY - - - - 65 





P R E F A C E . 

ALL loyal Churchmen "believe our Church has 
a great and noble mission. We have inherited an 
Apostolic Ministry, and a Liturgy in which is en-
shrined the Catholic Faith. Amidst the upheavals 
of sectarianism, the Church stands firmly resting 
on the ancient foundations. She has no quarrel 
with the facts of science nor fear of modern biblical 
historical research. The Living Rock on which she 
securely rests is Christ. His Presence within her 
is the source of her strength and life. She ministers 
in His Name and He acts through her. She has a 
great mission in our country, and everywhere her 
loyal sons are arousing themselves to a forward 
movement. 

What we need first of all, is, on the part of 
Churchmen, a better understanding of one another, 
a larger and more tolerant spirit and better unity of 
action. The series of tracts, of which this is one, 
was written in this irenic spirit, and by an appeal 
to Scripture, it sought to unite the conservative 
Churchmen of all schools. If our Church was only 
more united, what could not God work through it? 
All who sincerely love our Lord will strive in all 
the ways they can to promote this unity and trustful 
Christian fellowship. 



viii PREFACE. 

But next to this, it is necessary for us to make 
an aggressive movement on the worldly, the unbe-
lieving, the indifferent. Of these, however, not a 
few stand not far from the Kingdom of God. There 
are many kept back from an open profession of 
Christ by some inherited prejudices, some old objec-
tion clogs their action. They have been made the 
victims of magazine and newspaper articles, or the 
sarcasms and rhetoric of popular orators. But 
within the heart of man there is a desire for truth 
and a witness in conscience for God. And as it is 
the duty of every Christian to be a missionary for 
Christ, it is the duty of all such, to reach out a 
loving hand to those about them. It is believed this 
tract will enable them in part, to perform this duty. 

If our clergy would get hold of those outside 
their congregations, there is no better way than to 
follow the example of our fishermen on the banks of 
Newfoundland. When lying at anchor and prepar-
ing for their catch of fish, they do not merely bait 
their hooks. They throw over baskets of bait and 
bait the ground about their boats, and thus attract 
the fish. It would be following this excellent ex-
ample, if we gave away large numbers of a tract like 
this to our people, with the request that they, with 
prayer, would read and then give them to non-
churchgoers or non-communicants. 

C . C, FOND DU LAO. 



I N T R O D U C T O R Y . 

WHEN a man tells you that lie has never found 
any difficulty in the Christian religion, you may 
safely conclude that he is either a simpleton or a 
saint. He is much more likely to be the former 
than the latter. Most of the saints found many 
difficulties, and are recognized as saints mainly 
because they overcame them. There have been a 
few saints, however, who have never known a diffi-
culty, whose path was always bright and straight 
and clear. 

Most of us are neither simpletons nor saints. 
Therefore most of us have experienced difficulties 
in believing the Christian Faith. Some there are 
who have been prevented by such difficulties from 
believing it at all. Perhaps the difficulty was caused 
by some incident or teaching in the Bible, perhaps 
by some doctrine or practice of the Church, or 
perhaps by some painful experience in one's own life 
that could not for the moment be satisfactorily ex-
plained. It left us in darkness; our faith grew 
weaker; and God seemed far away. 

SPECIAL CAUSES OP DOUBT TO-DAY. 

There are perhaps special reasons why difficulties 



X INTRODUCTORY. 

of faith should be common at this time. The age 
in which we live has often been called an age of 
doubt and scepticism. Whether there is more 
scepticism to-day than at other periods in the 
world's history, it would be hard to say, but it 
certainly is true that scepticism is a prominent 
element in the intellectual atmosphere at the be-
ginning of the twentieth century. We may trace 
a good deal of it to certain conditions which are 
peculiar to this age. The whole modern theory of 
evolution, for example, which came in with Dar-
win's Origin of Species in 1860, has greatly changed 
our conception of the external world, and has nat-
urally brought in its train some difficulties to the 
Christian believer. Then again the modern critical 
study of the Bible has led to results that have 
changed many of our opinions about the Bible, 
and has unfortunately led many to suppose that 
the foundations of their religion have been proven 
insecure. As a matter of fact, the fair critical 
study of the Bible can never unsettle the founda-
tions of the Christian religion. Another cause 
of much modern unsettlement is to be found 
in the increase of materialism and commercialism, 
due partly to the great inventions and discoveries 
in the world of matter that have been made in recent 
years, and partly to the opening up and development 
of vast material resources in America and other 
new countries. 

TWO KINDS OF DOUBT. 

The sceptics of to-day may be divided into two 



INTRODUCTORY. xi 

very distinct classes. In one class are those who 
glory in their scepticism, and whose attitude to-
ward Christianity is one of scorn and derision. 
They never help in any of the Christian work that 
is being done in their community, and rejoice to 
detect any sign of its weakening or failure. They 
are never to be seen in a church, except at a funeral, 
and then they go not to honor God, but to pay their 
society-demanded respects to the memory of one 
of His creatures. The other class is quite different. 
It comprises those who really wish to believe, and 
are saddened by the doubts which prevent their 
believing. They frequently go to church, and do 
much to assist Christian work by taking a friendly 
interest therein and giving it their financial support. 

THE CLASS DEALT WITH HERE. 

In this series of papers, I am dealing only with 
the latter class—with those who wish to believe, but 
are held back by intellectual difficulties, as well as 
those who do believe but are tempted because of 
their difficulties to give up their faith. I never 
could hope to be of any help to those who glory in 
their unbelief, nor to convince those who do not 
want to be convinced. The desire to believe is al-
ways a requisite for Christian faith. It is impos-
sible to make a man believe anything that would 
affect his way of living when he does not wish to 
believe it. If he finally does believe you may be 
sure his desires have changed and that he is longing 
to believe. There is a saying that "a woman con-
vinced against her will, is of the same opinion still." 



Xll INTRODUCTORY. 

But surely women have no monopoly of that char-
acteristic. It may be laid down as a postulate of 
Christian apologetic that only those who make the 
initial act of the will and really wish to believe can 
come ultimately to the fulness of Christian faith. 

DO WE WANT LIGHT? 

The preliminary question that must be answered 
before we can come to the consideration of any of 
the difficulties of belief is, Do we want light« Are 
we ready to try to live up to that light when we 
have it? The story is told of one of our Bishops, 
who has lately passed to his rest, that he was once 
asked by a business man, who was a thorough man 
of the world and an unbeliever, whether he really 
believed that Jesus Christ lived, and died on the 
Cross, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven. 

B l s l l 0P assured the man that he did most cer-
tainly believe it. The business man replied that he 
had often wished he could believe it all. The 
Bishop then made an astonishing request He 
asked the man if he would say, every day for two 
months, the following prayer: "Oh, possibility of 
Jesus Christ, give me light." The man agreed to 
do so. A few weeks later they met, and the Bishop 
asked if he had kept his promise. The man replied: 
I said the prayer every day for about a week, and 

then I found I did not want light, so I stopped." 
St. John wrote these words in his Gospel: "This 

is the condemnation, that light is come into the 
world, and men loved darkness rather than light 
because their deeds were evil. For every one that 



INTRODUCTORY. xiii 

practiseth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to 
the light, lest his deeds should be reproved." If we 
really want light, then no matter how black and 
thick may be the cloud of doubt that enshrouds us, 
our eyes will soon be made glad by the glow of sun-
shine, and the cloud will roll away, leaving us face 
to face with the Light of the world, in His glory 
and His beauty. There cannot long be difficulties 
of faith for those who are seeking God with their 
whole heart. "They who seek shall find." 





C H A P T E R I . 

T H E E F F I C A C Y OF P E A Y E E . 

T H O U G H prayer is one of the simplest and 
most universal of religions practices, there are 
many people who find difficulties in believing in 
it, and many even who claim the name of 
Christian sometimes doubt whether God really 
hears and answers the prayers of men. I t is 
not surprising, therefore, that serious objections 
have been urged against prayer. They have 
been urged from the standpoint of science, of 
theology, and of practical experience. I will 
try to meet, in this paper, the chief objection 
under each of these three heads. 

T H E SEAL REASON FOE PRAYER. 

Before taking up these objections, let me 
say that there are many things about prayer, 
as about everything else in the Christian re-
ligion, that we do not fully understand, difficul-
ties that often baffle our intellects. Probably 



2 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

if we were inventing a religion of our own it 
would never occur to us to make prayer a neces-
sary part of it. The religion of Christ, how-
ever, was not invented by men. We believe 
in prayer, not because men held a convention 
and discussed the matter and came to the con-
clusion that prayer was a reasonable practice. 
We believe in prayer because God has told us 
to pray. The teachings of Christ are full of 
commands and exhortations to pray. We can 
read scarcely a page of the Gospels without 
being bidden to pray, either by the words or 
the example of our Lord. He, the Son of God, 
found it necessary to spend whole nights in 
prayer. We see Him on His knees at mid-
night on the dark, lonely mountain. He has 
thus left us an example that we should walk in 
His steps. This is the only defense of prayer 
necessary for any of His faithful followers 
to-day. Christ, who was the Truth, told us 
to pray. We may not understand why. I t is 
our duty and our pleasure to obey. 

And yet if our Lord has bidden us to pray, 
it must be a reasonable practice, and one which 
can be defended intellectually against all ob-
jections. Let us see then what may be said in 



THE EFFICACY OF PRAYEK. 3 

reply to the three chief objections that are 
urged against prayer to-day. 

UTTEBFEBENCE W I T H LAW. 

The objection is sometimes made from the 
point of view of science that prayer is unreason-
able, because the universe is governed by fixed 
laws, and we have no right to suppose that those 
laws will be interfered with in answer to our 
prayers. Now of course it is true, to state it 
a little more accurately, that the natural pro-
cesses of the universe do work in certain reg-
ular ways, to which we have given the name of 
laws. But we must not make the mistake of 
leaving man out of our calculation. The rain-
fall is according to certain laws, and yet men 
sometimes make it rain by exploding dynamite. 
The water in our great rivers flows according to 
certain laws, and yet it is more productive now 
than it was in the days of the Indians, because 
men have brought it under such control that it 
runs their factories. The activity of man is a 
very important factor in the physical changes 
that take place in this part of the universe. I t 
is by fixed laws that the water-power of a river 
is converted into the motive power for machin-
ery ; but that does not mean that man has noth-



4 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

ing to do with, the manufacture of paper or 
furniture. His interference with the natural 
operations of the river is the real cause- of the 
manufacture of paper and furniture. Now 
prayer is only one of the many ways by which 
man may interfere with the ordinary operations 
of God's world. I t is one way of correspond-
ing with God's purpose. Prayer, according to 
God's promises, sets His activity in motion. 
I t is just as reasonable to suppose that God in-
tends to give us whole classes of good things for 
soul and body, but will not give them to us un-
less we pray for them, as it is to suppose that 
whole classes of good things are stored up for 
us in nature, but will not be given to us unless 
we use our wits and our hands to secure them.1 

WHY PBAY IP GOD IS ALL-WISE? 

Another objection to prayer, and this time 
from the point of view of theology, is that if 
God is just, all-wise, and a loving Father, He 
would do justly by us and give us what is best 
for us and what we deserve without our praying 
for these things. Yes, "our heavenly Father 
knoweth that we have need of all these things" 
before we ask Him, and yet He wants us to 

1 See Dr. Gore, Prayer and the Lord's Prayer. 



THE EFFICACY OF PKAYER. 5 

pray for them nevertheless. This is because 
the real purpose of prayer is not to change God's 
will, but to conform our wills to His, to educate 
us into right relations with God, and to train 
us for an eternity with Him. Through the 
school of prayer we gradually learn to say 
"Thy will be done," and to pray for what we 
ought. We learn through a lifetime's expe-
rience of prayer to desire the right things. If 
you wished to educate your child in music, you 
might make him learn by rote a list of the 
masterpieces by the great composers, and then 
whenever he heard anything played he would 
know whether or not it was classical. "Would 
it not be wiser to make your child take music 
lessons and learn through long and hard expe-
rience to love what is true and beautiful and 
enduring in music ? So through the discipline 
of prayer, God teaches us to seek first the 
things of His Kingdom and to love what He 
loves. 

T H E PROBLEM OF UNANSWERED PRATER. 

The objection from practical experience 
runs thus: "As a matter of fact, many prayers 
are made that are never granted." Let us 
thank God that it is so. If God granted all that 



6 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

is being prayed for at this moment, the world 
would be turned "topsy-turvy" and His King-
dom would never come. Did you ever stop to 
think why a wise father refuses to grant his 
little boy's touching request for his razor, or 
why a loving mother, when her child has ty-
phoid fever, denies the child some simple food 
it is crying for? I t is for the same reason 
that God in His wisdom and love does not give 
us everything we ask for but only what is best 
for us. The condition of all true prayer is, 
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." 



CHAPTEK II . 

T H E N E C E S S I T Y OF W O R S H I P . 

THE Christian Church has always taught 
that it is our duty to go to church and worship 
God at least on every Sunday and Holy Day 
of obligation. I t is a breach of our duty to-
wards God and therefore a sin, if on these days 
we do not go to church at least once, provided 
we are in health, and no more important duty 
prevents us. 

Many have experienced a difficulty on this 
point. Why should Almighty God want our 
praise and worship? Why cannot He get on 
just as well without them? What difference 
can it make to Him, the eternal and infinite 
God, whether one insignificant human being 
goes to church or not? Do we not make our 
God into a puny man, a man full of vanity and 
love of approbation, when we assume that He 
craves our adoration ? These are fair questions 



8 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

and questions of great practical importance. 
For, if God does not want our worship, we 
ought to sell our churches or at least convert 
them into art galleries or schools, and then 
divert to some other more useful channel the 
vast sums of money we now spend in maintain-
ing a beautiful and reverent worship. 

GOD WANTS OUR WOBSHIP. 

The Christian may boldly make the asser-
tion that a blow is struck at the sovereignty of 
God by every child of man who refuses or 
neglects to worship Him. God brought every 
one of us into being and He made us for Him-
self—to know Him, to love Him, and to serve 
Him forever. Therefore He wants each one 
of us to grow in the knowledge of Him, to show 
our love for Him, and to become more ardent 
in His service, by engaging in frequent and 
regular acts of worship. I t is no more vanity 
and love of approbation for God to desire our 
adoration than it is for a human father to de-
sire some recognition and respect and gratitude 
from his children. God has made man in His 
own image and likeness, and therefore we must 
believe that the human relations of children 
toward their parents are but reflections of the 



THE NECESSITY OP WORSHIP. 9 

ideal relations we should strive to maintain 

toward our heavenly Father. 

In the older Jewish dispensation, God gave 
careful and minute directions as to the temple, 
the altar, the sacrifices, the incense, the priestly 
vestments, and all other details connected with 
divine worship. In the Christian dispensation 
God took the Apostle John to the mount of 
spiritual vision, whence he might see the ideal 
Christian worship as carried on in the courts 
of heaven. This he has wonderfully and 
graphically described for us in his Apocalypse, 
the Book of the Revelation. Had worship 
been of no consequence in God's sight, would 
He have given so much space to it in the in-
spired writings of the Bible ? 

WE NEED TO WORSHIP. 

Of course God is sufficient unto Himself, 
and could get on easily enough without our 
worship. I t is probable that the reason why 
He has commanded us to worship is not so 
much because He needs our worship as because 
we need the worship of the true God in our 
own lives. Without the regular, habitual prac-
tice of public worship we should become thor-
oughly godless, profane, selfish, and soon 



10 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

grossly immoral. To come face to face, at the 
beginning of every week, with our divine 
Creator and Ruler keeps God in our lives, 
makes us continually conscious of eur moral 
obligations to Him and to our fellow-men, and 
reminds us that in this life we are on trial, 
preparing for an eternity of weal or woe, and 
must one day stand before the Judge of all the 
earth and give an account of ourselves. In the 
long run, the man who is a sincere and faithful 
worshipper of God, and the man who per-
sistently neglects to go to church, will develop 
characters of a very different kind. This then 
appears to be the chief reason why God has 
commanded us to worship Him, because He 
knows it will have an uplifting and purifying 
effect in our lives. There is an ineradicable 
instinct in human nature to worship something. 
If men do not worship God, they are generally 
found bowing down before the almighty dollar, 
or the great god Mammon, or the deceits of the 
flesh, or Satan himself. 

T H E POSITIVE COMMAND OF OHEIST. 

But someone might ask, When did Christ 
definitely and explicitly command us to take 
part in any act of worship? The answer is 



THE NECESSITY OF WORSHIP. 11 

simple. Not only did He command us but He 
instituted the very service, the act of worship 
itself. In the night in which He was betrayed, 
He took bread and wine and established the 
Christian sacrifice, the highest act of Christian 
worship. He gave at the same time the uni-
versal command, "Do this in remembrance of 
Me." Call it what you like, the Lord's Supper, 
the Holy Eucharist, or the Mass—it is our 
Lord's service and the one obligation of worship 
which is laid upon all Christian people by di-
vine command. The Church has from apos-
tolic times celebrated the Eucharist every Sun-
day, so that all the faithful on every Lord's Day 
might carry out this simple and touching re-
quest of their dying Lord. Ever since then the 
sincere followers of Christ have never grown 
tired of obeying His command. They have 
joined in the Church's Eucharistic worship, 
not as a burden and an obligation, but as a 
privilege and a joy. 



CHAPTER I I I . 

H E R E D I T Y AND ENVIRONMENT. 

A SPECIOUS attack is to-day being directed 
against Christianity along the line of heredity 
and environment. I t is said that what we are 
is entirely determined by our ancestors and sur-
roundings. Therefore we cannot be held re-
sponsible for what we think or say or do, for 
that was all mathematically determined before 
we were born, and was as inevitable as the 
speed and orbit of a planet. This attack has 
thus been tersely stated by one of the most pop-
ular of the modern opponents of Christianity, 
Mr. Robert Blatchford: 

"Man is what heredity and environment 
make him. Heredity gives him his nature. 
That comes from his ancestors. Environment 
modifies his nature; environment consists of 
the operation of forces external to his nature. 
No man can select his ancestors; no man can 



HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT. 13 

select his environment. His ancestors make 
his nature; other men and circumstances mod-
ify his nature." 

CONSEQUENCES. 

If this position is true, then man is not re-
sponsible for his sins. Therefore the murderer 
fought not to be punished but only pitied. We 
should, however, lock him up or, if necessary 
to protect our life and property, hang him, just 
as we would lock up or shoot a mad dog that 
was chasing our children, or try to destroy an 
insect that was stripping the foliage from our 
elm-trees. Furthermore the advocates of this 
view of human nature tell us that the Christian 
method of trying to reform the sinner is all 
wrong. We should, according to them, simply 
put him in prison, and then do our best to cor-
rect the environment that has produced him, so 
that no more of his kind may be produced. 

I have tried to state fairly the argument ad-
vanced by our opponents. I will now endeavor 
to set forth what is to be said on the Christian 
side in reply to this attack. 

INFLUENCE OF HEREDITY AND ENVIEONMENT. 

I am glad to be able to begin by admitting 
a great deal of our opponents' argument. I t is 



14 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

true that heredity and environment do con-
tribute much to the making of us all. A child 
born of gypsy parents will have a strong ten-
dency to roam about and to steal whenever he 
gets a chance. A child brought up in a greasy 
hovel, amid filth and rags and rum, has a battle 
to fight that is quite different from that of the 
child brought up in a home of luxury and re-
finement. Heredity and environment are im-
portant factors in our development, but they are 
by no means determining factors. Children born 
of the most diligent and steadfast parents have 
sometimes grown up to be roaming vagabonds. 
Drunkenness is surely not confined to the slums 
or the homes of the poor. Plain, downright 
theft has been known to exist among the most 
refined and sensitive millionaires. With 
wearying frequency our daily newspapers be-
come filthy with the scandalous lusts of some 
eminent capitalist and philanthropist, whose 
environment seems not devoid of earthly com-
forts. 

EACH INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBLE. 

We have now come to the heart of the whole 
matter. What we are and what we shall be-
come depends upon our own wills, aided, if we 



HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT. 15 

keek it, by the grace of God. An Englishman, 
John Bradford, once saw a murderer being led 
[to the gallows, and exclaimed, "There, but for 
[the grace of God, goes John Bradford." I t is 
[an indisputable axiom of human experience 
that it is within the power of every man, what-
ever may be the bundle of possible tendencies 
he has inherited, to determine which of these 
tendencies are to be woven into the permanent 
texture of his makeup. We all have known 
brothers or sisters, or even twins, who have in-
herited the same nature from their parents and 
ancestors (it is important to remember that we 
have thousands of ancestors) and then have de-
veloped, by their own initiative, entirely oppo-
site characters. While we are growing up, it is 
ours to decide whether we will choose the sot-
tishness of a grandfather or the sobriety of a 
father, the gentleness and kindness of a great-
grandmother, or the maliciousness of a grand-
mother. 

T H E STRUGGLE W I T H ENVIRONMENT. 

In a similar way it is within the power of 
everyone to determine whether he will find in 
his environment "stepping-stones to higher 
things" or be vanquished by his environment. 



16 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

I t is the same environment, the water, that 
makes it possible for the drowning man to 
drown and the swimmer to swim. I t is the 
same kind of a farm-house that produces an 
Abraham Lincoln and the empty-headed loafer 
of the country store. What someone has well 
called the "eternal heroism of the slums" has 
given us many a saint and many noble leaders 
of men; while it has often happened that the 
palaces of wealth or the simple, well-ordered 
homes of the middle class have sent forth men 
and women who have been a disgrace to society. 

What we are and what we shall become de-
pends not upon our heredity and environment, 
but upon our own wills, upon the way we make 
use of our opportunities, the way we grapple 
with our own natural tendencies, the way we 
utilize our surroundings—above all, upon how 
much or how little we call to our aid the all-
powerful grace of God.2 

« J ^ l E J W S S-S"J-E-' on "Science and Con-publlshed as p™ey House Occasional Papers, 



CHAPTER IV. 

T H E LOVE OF GOD. 

THE Fatherhood of God is one of the basic 
principles of the Christian religion. Many 
sceptics tell us that this is an unreasonable be-
lief. They point to all the suffering and pain 
and death in the world, the wars, the famines, 
the pestilences, and great catastrophes such as 
floods and earthquakes, and ask us how in the 
face of all that we can still believe that God is 
a loving Father, who cares for and watches over 
all His children. How then can we reconcile 
the suffering in the world with the love of God ? 

T H E USES OF PAIN. 

A good deal of the pain in the world is 
directly useful as a danger-signal. The red-hot 
stove burns the child's hand and warns him to 
keep away from it. A sharp pain in the lungs 
warns you that you may have pneumonia and 
had better send for the doctor. Another use of 



18 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

pain and suffering is that they bring many-
people to their senses, and prompt them to give 
up a life of sin. The holiness of God and the 
horror of sin and the issues of eternity often 
take on new aspects to a man when he is lying 
flat on his back in the hospital. Many a soul 
owes its conversion to a long and painful ill-
ness. Furthermore, do we not know of many 
noble characters that have been developed by 
sorrow and loss, by disappointment of cherished 
plans, or by a life of unending pain ? If pain. 
and suffering were eliminated from life, many 
of the fairest flowers in the garden of human 
nature would never bloom at all. I t developes 
sympathy. I t binds men together. I t is the 
highest expression of love. "Greater love hath 
no man than this, that a man lay down his life 
for his friends." 

IS SUITBEIITG AN EVIL ? 

But why do we consider suffering an evil ? 
Is it not because we don't like it ? But that is 
no criterion. Many things we dislike are very 
good for us, indeed. Perhaps your boy does 
not like to go to school; he would rather spend 
the day in play. You make him go to school 
because you know it is good for him. None of 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 19 

us liked to go to the dentist; but after he has 
gotten through torturing us we realize that it 
was good for us to go. Pleasure makes us 
happy and brings on smiles and laughter; 
pain makes us sad and brings on tears and cry-
ing. But we have no right to say that one is a 
good and the other an evil. They are simply 
different sensations. The fact that we prefer 
one to the other does not make it better than the 
other. Sometimes it is better for us to laugh 
and sometimes it is better for us to weep. 

IS DEATH AN EVIL ? 

Most people pretend to be horrified when 
they hear of some great loss of life, as in the 
sinking of a ship, the eruption of a volcano, or 
the slaughter of a battle. The question is 
asked, how can a loving God allow so many 
people to be slain at once? If God suddenly 
transported a million people from Europe to 
America, He would not be accused of injustice 
and cruelty. Why should He when He sudden-
ly transports a multitude from this world to the 
spiritual world beyond ? But the grief of their 
families and friends left behind? That is 
simply the question of suffering which I have 
just been considering. The fact of the matter 



20 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

is that we must die sooner or later, anyhow A 
few years, out of the eternity we are to live, 

Z i v t n 0 ^ ^ ^ ^ I f o u r Heav-
enly Father sees fit to take us all home at once 
instead of allowing us to struggle on, 2 

• S O m e some forty years longer 

an " f T t0, C ° m p l a i n - W e C O u l d death' 
an evil only if w e were sure that there were 

» S i r 3 3 l n s t o r e us on the other side 

if O . H A g r a n t 6 d t h a t t h C T e i s h a p p i n e s s , 
if God had never made it possible for us to 
escape that unhappiness. 

As for the universal carnage that has been 
gomg on in the animal world since the appear 

canCeb°Allfe ? ^ P l a n e t ' - charge of S S f y 
can be brought against Almighty God by thosl 
of us who eat flesh meat at our meals. If it " 
wrong to kill animals, then we should all b ! 
come vegetarian, But what if vegetarians a -
tack us with the charge of the cruelty of God * 
To convince vegetarians of anything, I g i v e up 

as a hopeless task. 8 g P 

T H E CEOSS IS T H E KEY TO T H E MYSTEBY 

and l T t h f r ^ m a y S a y t h a t t h e suffering 
stacle tob° r , T ^ ^ a * * * to belief m the goodness and love of God, 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 21 

if God had forever remained aloof from the 
hnman race. But He has come into our midst. 
He was made man, when, nineteen centuries 
ago, He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the 
Virgin Mary. Jesus Christ has entered fully 
into the painful experience of our race. He 
has shared our sorrows, our sufferings, our pam, 
our disappointment. He, too, has gone through 
the valley of the shadow of death. When we 
gaze at the cross and realize that He who hangs 
there is our God, we learn that there is a mean-
ing in suffering and pain, and that they are 
not the evils we supposed them to be. They 
are the greatest of blessings. They are purify-
ing and remedial spiritual agencies. They are 
the strength of virtues. They are offerings dear 
to God. They are expressions, when born m 
conformity with His Will, of love. United to 
His sufferings they invoke blessings on the 
Church. New life ever requires a preceding 
death, till death itself swallowed up in victory 
shall die. 



CHAPTER Y. 

T H E RESPONSIBILITY FOE S I N . 

IT HAS always been the teaching of Christ-
ianity that we are responsible for our sins, and 
therefore are to be blamed for them. The 
whole Christian doctrine of the punishment of 
sin here and hereafter is based upon this prin-
ciple. 

Some of the men who are attacking our re-
ligion to-day have tried to prove that this teach-
ing is false. God, they say, not man, is re-
sponsible for man's sins. They claim to have 
arrived at this conclusion by the following syl-
logism: God made the human race. One is 
always responsible for what one makes. There-
fore God is responsible for the sins of the hu-
man race. This seems at first sight a plausible 
argument, and has no doubt perplexed not a few 
Christian believers. 



THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR SIN. 
23 

RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT ONE MAKES. 

Now let us look into this argument a little 
more closely. Is one always responsible for 
what one makes« Surely it depends entirely 
upon what the thing is that you make. If you 
so build an electric car that soon after the 
passengers are killed by an electric shock, you 
are responsible for their death. If you build 
a bridge and a train load of people are dashed 
to death by the bridge giving way, you are re-
sponsible. But it is very different if the thing 
made is a human being. Surely no one would 
hold that a man could be put in prison because 
his son had committed forgery. And yet the 
father brought the son into existence. Why 
is he not responsible for the sins of his son? 
Because the son, like every other human being, 
has free will. For the same reason God is not 
responsible for the sins of men. He created 
them with "free will and they can therefore 
choose whether they will sin or refrain from 
sinning. 

T H E NATURE OF FREE WILL. 

Man is responsible for his own acts. This 
follows necessarily from God's gift of free will 
or the power to choose. Some disbelievers m 



24 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

Christianity, however, say that even then "the 
blame must be God's, for He gave man a power 
of choice that would choose evil." The word 
"would" misrepresents the whole issue. If God 
gave us a power of choice that would necessarily 
choose evil, He would be responsible for our 
sins. But that is not the kind of a choice He 
has given us, as we all know very well. A 
young man whose companions are tempting 
him to enter into a vile place, may say "Yes," 
or he may say "No." God has given us a power 
of choice that might choose evil or that might 
choose good. That is the meaning of free will. 
A power of choice that must necessarily choose 
evil would not be free will any more than a 
stream flowing down hill would be the same as 
a man walking up hill. In endowing man with 
free will, therefore, God is not responsible for 
the sins of men, but only for the possibility of 
their sinning. 

WHY DID GOD MAKE MAN ABLE TO SIN? 

This lays us open to another charge. It is 
sometimes asked, If God was almighty and fore-
knew the danger of creating a being that should 
have the power to sin, why did He not make 
man so that he would be incapable of sinning ? 



THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR SIN. 25 

The answer to this is simple. Because God 
did not care to make that kind of a man. God 
wanted children who would love Him and serve 
Him of their own free will and not because they 
were slaves or machines. I fancy no mother 
would take much joy in children who had al-
ways been imprisoned in a cage, and who, at 
one signal, would say, parrot-fashion, " I love 
you, mother, I love you, mother," and at 
another signal would kiss her and throw their 
arms about her neck, somewhat after the man-
ner of a trained dog sitting up on his haunches 
and giving you his paw. 

T H E BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 

God might have evolved a race incapable of 
sinning, but there would have been no place in 
such a creation for the practice of virtue. For 
there would be no virtue in doing right unless 
one had the power of doing wrong if one chose. 
For example, we do not attribute virtue to 
clocks, no matter how correctly they keep time. 
Without the capacity to sin, man would be little 
different from a clock. If God had evolved 
such a race, without the capacity to sin, there 
would have been no such thing as heroism, nor 
self-sacrifice, nor the beauty of holiness. Man 



26 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

would forever have remained an animal, and 
history would have moved forward to no goal. 

WHERE T H E RESPONSIBILITY LIES. 

Seeing the consequences of failure are so 
great as Christianity represents, would it not 
have been better for God not to have created at 

f t f T h e a n s w e r is that God who alone can 
see and measure the whole final result, saw that 
more good would be the result, though many 
might be lost, than if He did not create. He 
was, therefore, right in creating. If He is re-
sponsible, as it is admitted He is, for creating 
beings capable of losing their possible end, He 
has met it by becoming a propitiation for us 
by the shedding of His own Blood on Calvary 
and by providing a way of escape from the 
consequences of sin; a way so simple, so easy, 
so loving, that if a man does not accept it when 
made known to him, the fault is his own 



CHAPTER VI. 

T H E INSPIRATION OF T H E B I B L E . 

So EAR we have been dealing with what 
might be called speculative difficulties in relig-
ious belief. We come now to certain Biblical 
difficulties. As most of them have their root 
in certain erroneous ideas about inspiration, it 
will be necessary to take up that subject first, 
and get clear in our minds what we mean by the 
inspiration of the Bible. 

MISTAKES ABOUT INSPIRATION. 

Certain mistaken notions on the nature of 
inspiration were very common among Christ-
ians in the past, though they never received ex-
pression in the creeds or other authoritative 
formularies of the Church. Such notions are 
still very widespread among the masses of un-
instructed and illiterate Christians. Those 
who take any pains to inform themselves about 
religion are rapidly coming to a clearer view of 



28 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

the meaning of inspiration. The Church has 
never spoken in favor of any view of inspira-
tion, but has simply declared that the writers 
of the Bible were inspired by God, and that 
therefore the Bible is the Word of God. 

According to the mistaken notions to which 
I have referred, God was supposed to have in-
spired the writers of the Bible in some mechan-
ical way, so that every word, even every mark 
of punctuation, was directed by God and there-
fore the Bible could contain no error in science 
or geography or history. Naturally this view 
of inspiration was certain to create many diffi-
culties. One does not have to study the Bible 
very thoroughly to discover that the writers do 
sometimes make errors in their historical facts, 
or make conflicting statements, or are far behind 
the children of our public schools in their 
knowledge of natural science. Such discoveries 
would soon upset anyone who held the old view 
of verbal inspiration. 

A MORE REASONABLE VIEW. 

A more reasonable and satisfactory explana-
tion of the nature of inspiration is that which 
was held by many of the ancient fathers of the 
Church, and is taught by most of the enlight-



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 29 

ened Christian scholars of our own day. Ac-
cording to this view, God inspired certain men 
to write various kinds of literature for a spir-
itual purpose—some to convey His revelation 
of truth to the world, some to narrate the his-
tory of His dealings with men, some to write 
poetry and drama and fiction that would stim-
ulate'and fill men's souls with spiritual power, 
and some to teach the nation righteousness. He 
employed for this great purpose men who were 
thoroughly human, who were subject to the lim-
itations of their time and nation. Their knowl-
edge of geology and geography and astronomy 
and ethnology would be simply the knowledge 
current in their own day, and not the knowl-
edge of modern science. They would have to 
compose their history from documents and tra-
ditions they found ready to hand. They were 
inspired for a spiritual purpose, not to teach 
scientific truth, nor to write infallible history, 
though their history will stand the test of inves-
tigation as well as any other histories of their 
time. The Sign of their inspiration is to be 
sought for in the unity of purpose and spiritual 
teaching that binds the whole Bible together 
and shows it to be the work of one mind though 



30 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

composed by many men writing in different 
centuries. The underlying typical meaning 
which runs through it all in an orderly and con-
nected manner, describing Christ and His 
Church, shows the writers to have been uncon-
sciously influenced by a mind other than their 
own. The unfailing vitality and soul stirring 
influence of the Bible lifting men's hearts to 
Cod, show us God to be that Mind. 

OTHER MEN INSPIRED. 

There can be no doubt that Cod has often 
inspired other men than the Biblical writers 
and in all ages of the world's history. The lat-
ter were aided in the expression of such truths 
as they had been enlightened to perceive. The 
process of inspiration or aid may be the same 
in both cases, but the character different. 

In respect of the latter, the inspiration of 
the Holy Scriptures is unique. Believing as 
we reasonably may in the aid God gives men in 
other writings, we may easily believe in the pre-
eminent inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. 
For it is certified to us, as we have seen, by its 
composition and character, revealing a hidden 
author, and by the authority of the Church 



THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 
31 

their guardian, declaring that the Books she has 
collected into the Bible are inspired to reveal 
the mind of God, and that the hidden Author 
is the Holy Spirit. 



CHAPTER VII. 

T H E T H E O R Y OF EVOLUTION. 

THE theory of evolution is an attempt to ex-
plain how the world has arrived at its present 
stage of development. I t is as yet only a 
theory, and has not been completely proved; 
but it has obtained very wide acceptance among 
scientists. According to this theory, the world 
was not created suddenly, and as it is to-day, 
but has been slowly evolved through long stages 
of development. Our solar system was once 
in a nebulous condition, such as astronomers 
now discern in the universe. I t was without 
regular form. Along with its primal motion 
came light, for, as we know, light is motion. 
The cosmic gas broke up through its motion 
into rings, and by the law of gravitation, the 
rings breaking up, formed into spherical plan-
ets. Gradually the earth was formed. In 
some way, it may be by the breaking up of the 



THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 33 

ring about it, the moon was formed. Through 
long ages a crust was gradually formed on the 
earth's surface. By the convulsions occasioned 
by its shrinking, mountains were formed. The 
waters were gathered into their place. The 
dry land appears. By action of fire and water 
the development continues. The earliest lower 
forms of vegetation appear, to furnish food for 
the subsequent or concurrent life of fish and 
reptile. With the change of atmosphere the 
sun appears. Then comes a development of the 
animal life from the lowest forms, after the 
manner of the jelly fish, and then, after a long 
period, out of the lowest kind were gradually 
evolved vertebrate animals and the four-legged 
ones, and finally man appeared. He had been 
developed by the struggle for existence and 
other impelling causes, out of the dust of the 
earth. 

While evolution does not show us the origin 
of things, it reveals to us a progressive action 
in nature to a climax. I t is like the unfolding 
of the plot of a great drama. I t were as reason-
able to suppose that one of Shakespeare's plays 
could be made by the shaking together of a mil-
lion of letters of the alphabet, as to believe this 



34 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

ordered drama of the universe could be de-
veloped up to man without an underlying in-
tellectual energy. 

GOD THE CEEATOE. 

The theory of evolution is not at all in con-
flict with the belief that God is the Creator of 
the universe. The Christian faith does not 
say how God created the universe, but merely 
that He did create it. We are left to find out 
for ourselves what was God's method of crea-
tion. We may well believe that He used the 
method of evolution. Indeed the method of 
evolution would be more to the glory and credit 
of God than the method of immediate and 
special creation. A man would be a maker of 
flour whether he ground it out in the old way, 
between two millstones, or constructed a modern 
flour mill and then put wheat in at one end and 
took bags of flour out at the other. Only we 
should consider it much more to his credit if 
he used the "improved process. So it gives us a 
higher notion of God and makes Him more of 
a present force in His world, if we think of 
Him as creating the world through the process 
of evolution than if we think of Him as build-
ing it as a carpenter builds a house. 



THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 35 

T H E GENESIS ACCOUNT OF CBEATION. 

A much more serious difficulty is the sup-
posed conflict between the theory of evolution 
and the account of creation given in the first 
and second chapters of the book of Genesis. 
This account tells us that God created the 
heavens and the earth and all that therein is in 
six days. I t gives us a definite order of crea-
tion. I t tells us God made man out of the dust 
of the earth. The solution of this difficulty 
is to be found in a true view of inspiration. 
The writer of the Genesis account of creation 
was not inspired to teach science, but to teach 
religion. He simply took the story of creation 
which was current in his own day, and revised 
it so that it would teach true views of religion. 
The traditional accounts of creation which were 
then current, as we learn from the old Baby-
lonian and other Semitic accounts that have 
come down to us, were polytheistic, that is, they 
attributed the creation of the world as it was to 
thousands of different gods. They were in 
other respects very much the same as the Gen-
esis story of creation in our Bibles. The Bib-
lical writer probably compared these traditional 
accounts and then wrote his own version, in 



36 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

which his chief concern was to bring out the 
great spiritual and religious truths that the one 
true God was the Creator of all things, visible 
and invisible, and that He created man as the 
crown of creation after His own image and 
likeness, and endowed him with an immortal 
soul. In his knowledge of geology and zoology 
and physiology, he was a writer of his own 
time. If he had been inspired to teach true 
views of science, he would have begun with a 
treatise on protoplasm, and his writings would 
have been consigned to the dust heap as the 
ravings of an insane mind. His writings have 
endured because he was inspired by the Spirit 
of God to teach the men of his own time and 
the men of all times the foundation truths of 
revealed religion. 



CHAPTER VIII . 

T H E P A L L OF M A N . 

CHRISTIAN believers have sometimes been 
troubled by objections that have been urged 
against Christianity on the subject of the Pall. 
These objections may be summed up in two. 
One is that the story of the Fall, in the third 
chapter of the Book of Genesis, is unhistorical; 
and the other is that the human race has not 
really fallen at all, but has gradually progressed 
from a very low stage to a higher stage of de-
velopment. Let us deal with these two objec-
tions separately. 

T H E STORY OF T H E FALL. 

The truth of Christianity does not in any 
way depend upon the story of the Pall being an 
account of real facts. I t does not make the 
slightest difference in our religion whether the 
Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life, the Tree of 
Knowledge of Good and Evil, are historical 



38 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

realities or only allegorical pictures. The 
writer was not inspired by God for the purpese 
of writing history, but to teach certain spiritual 
and religious truths. The story of the Fall is 
valuable for us and will remain valuable for all 
time, because it teaches the great truths that 
God created man righteous and not sinful, that 
he became sinful through his own free will by 
disobeying God's commands and yielding to the 
temptations of Satan, and that the human race, 
at the very beginning, fell from the original 
righteousness in which it was created, and there-
fore parents always hand on to their children 
a fallen nature—that is, a nature which has in 
it a tendency to sin. These are the essential 
truths in the narrative of the Fall, and the 
Church stands ready to vouch for their truth 
till the end of time. I t does not take away 
from their truth if the story is found to be alle-
gorical, any more than it takes away from the 
truth of the spiritual principles set forth in the 
parable of the prodigal son when we say it may 
not be historically true, but only a parable. 

HAS T H E HUMAN RACE FALLEN AT A L L ? 

But is the theory of the Fall of man really 
true? Has the human race as a whole fallen 



THE PALL OF MAN. 39 

below the high standard of its first estate, fallen 
away from the high ideal God has always held 
before His children, or did God create man in 
a very low and imperfect condition, in the hope 
that after thousands of years he might improve 
and finally arrive at perfection? This ques-
tion cannot be answered by historical research, 
because there are no records which go back to 
the infancy of the race. I t can be answered 
only by an appeal to religion and by an appeal 
to common sense. 

T H E APPEAL TO BELIGTON. 

The appeal to religion forces us to admit 
that the theory of the Fall of man is true. The 
religions of all primitive peoples teach that the 
earliest periods were the most perfect, that far 
back in the childhood of the race was the realiza-
tion of perfect innocence and bliss. The tradi-
tions of Greece and Rome told of a golden age, 
far back in the past. The ancient poets of Per-
sia, India, and China all sing of a sacred spot, 
provided with trees and watered by streams, 
which existed far back at the beginning of hu-
man history. This universal tradition might 
not be conclusive by itself. But it means a 
great deal when we consider that it is cham-



40 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

pioned both by Judaism and the Christian 
Church. 

THE APPEAL TO COMMON SENSE." 

The appeal to common sense and common 
experience leads us to the same conclusion. We 
all know what is meant by the phrase, "very 
few men are really manly." But we should be 
talking nonsense if we said, "very few horses 
are really horsy." Now why is this ? Because 
we have no notion of a perfect horse, below 
which all horses have fallen; but we have a 
notion of a perfect man, and from this high 
level man has fallen. If you found a man 
beating his wife, you might go to him and slap 
him on the back and say, "be a man." But if 
you found a dog chewing your cat to pieces, 
you would hardly slap the dog on his back and 
say, "be a dog." Every dog is a dog, and can-
not, if he tries, become more of a dog; but not 
every man is the man he might be. Only 
through Christ and the power of His religion 
can he rise from his fallen state and become the 
man God expects him to be. The inner con-

/ For the argument here, see "Why I Believe in 
Christianity," by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, in the collec-
tion of papers called Religious Doubts of Democracy, 
edited by Mr. George How. 



THE FALL OF MAN. 41 

sciousness of every one of us tells him that he 
was meant for better things, that he has fallen 
away from a high ideal, and that nothing short 
of perfection is his goal. And yet nowhere do 
we find human nature fully developed without 
some tendency to sin, except in the Divine Son 
of Mary. The only satisfactory explanation 
of these facts is the Christian doctrine of the 
Fall. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MIBACLES. 

OWE does not have to read far in the Bible 
before one comes across some miraculous event. 
By a miraculous event, I mean an event which 
is out of the ordinary course of nature or his-
tory, and which is attributed by the Biblical 
writer to the direct intervention of God. An 
event of this kind ought not to cause any diffi-
culty to one who really believes in God as an 
all-powerful and infinite Being. The real 
difficulty to the man of faith is that there are so 
few miracles, not that there are so many. But 
unfortunately there are many whose faith in 
God is very weak. They are the ones who find 
it difficult to believe in miracles. They are the 
ones who have attacked the miracles in the 
Bible, and worked out what they call phil-
osophic or scientific objections to miracles. 

T H E OBJECTION TO MIBACLES. 

We are told by such people that miracles 



MIRACLES. 43 

cannot happen because the world is governed 
by laws, and a miracle would be the suspension 
of those laws, and that could not be because 
there is no credible instance on record of those 
laws being suspended. This is a most excel-
lent example of arguing in a circle. I t is as 
if you had a pair of shoes which had been made 
for you, with his own hands, by a great shoe 
manufacturer, and when your friends told you 
that that manufacturer never made a pair of 
shoes with his own hands, and you produced 
your shoes as evidence to the contrary, they 
simply smiled and said you must be mistaken 
because he never made a pair of shoes with his 
own hands. If we say miracles are theoret-
ically possible, those who do not believe in them 
say, "Yes, but there is no evidence for them." 
When we take all the records of the human race 
and say, "Here is your evidence," they say, 
"But these people were superstitious, they be-
lieved in impossible things." 

WHAT IS A MIBA.CLE? 

A great deal of the difficulty about miracles 
would vanish if people would only take more 
pains to define what they mean by miracles be-
fore they talk about them. A miracle is simply 



44 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

an event in which God, for a spiritual purpose, 
alters the ordinary course of nature. There 
ought to be nothing strange or preposterous 
about that. 

We have often seen a fly trying in vain to 
get through the window-pane into the bright 
sunlight outside. Again and again it beats 
against the pane in a wild effort to escape. I t 
cannot get out because it is a law of nature that 
a fly cannot go through glass. But suppose you 
take pity on the fly and open the window and 
take the fly in your fingers and set it free. 
What have you done? You have altered the 
ordinary course of nature. If the fly could 
think, it would say you had performed a 
miracle. If a man can alter the ordinary 
course of nature for the sake of an insect, is it 
unreasonable to believe that God has often al-
tered the ordinary course of nature for the sake 
of the human race ? 

MAINLY A QUESTION OE EVIDENCE. 

The real question about the miracles of the 
Bible is not whether they could have happened, 
but whether they did happen. No miracle is 
too wonderful to be true to one who really be-
lieves in God. Take for example, the well-



MIRACLES. 45 

worn illustration of Jonah and the whale. 
There is no difficulty in believing such a 
miracle. God could easily enough prepare a 
sea monster that could swallow the Chicago 
Auditorium. The question is simply one of 
evidence. Is the Book of Jonah meant to be a 
history, or an imaginative tale« I t makes no 
difference to the truth of Christianity which 
of these two theories of the book is true. A 
scholarly study of the Bible does undoubtedly 
teach us that some of the events which look like 
miracles were not really recorded as actual his-
tory at all. We must examine the evidence for 
miracles exactly as we would the evidence for 
any other historical facts. An examination of 
the evidence for the miracles in the Bible will 
assure us that all of the miracles that are vitally 
connected with the truth of the Christian re-
ligion are as credible as any other facts of his-
tory. 

One of the greatest of the Christian miracles 
comes constantly into the daily life of all of us. 
I t is brought to our attention every time we 
write a letter or transact any business where it 
is necessary to write down the date. That 
miracle is that the whole civilized world bases 



46 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

its date upon the day of the birth of a Syrian 
Carpenter who died a criminal's death at the 
early age of thirty-three. 



CHAPTER X. 

T H E INCABNATION OF T H E SON OF GOD. 

WE NOW come to the very core of Christ-
ianity. • I am sure that in the heart of America 
we do not need to enter seriously into the ques-
tion whether there is any such historical char-
acter as Jesus of Nazareth. Our everyday life, 
our speech, our morality, our literature, our 
whole, civilization, in fact, are so permeated by 
His teaching and influence that one would 
hardly be treated seriously who maintained that 
Jesus Christ was only a myth, an ideal char-
acter constructed from some still more ancient 
legends and traditions. Yet there are some 
difficulties connected with this foundation fact 
of Christianity which it may be well to con-
sider. Perhaps we can deal with them better 
if we first have before us a clear statement of 
the Christian faith on the subject of the In-
carnation. 



48 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

T H E INCAENATIOIT. 

In Ixer teaching about Jesus Christ, the 
Church has always held that He was the Son 
of Cod, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, 
very and eternal God, of one substance with the 
Father; that He took man's nature in the womb 
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of her substance, 
without a human father; so that two whole and 
perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and 
Manhood, were joined together in one Person, 
never to be divided. In other words, Jesus 
Christ is truly God and perfectly man, and in 
Him is only one Person, but two distinct na-
tures, the human and divine. 

OTHEB INCABNATIONS.* 

IT IS a difficulty to some people that there 
are other incarnations believed in by other re-
ligions—that there are many myths parallel 
to the Christian story. No doubt there are, 
but does that prove that Christ is not the In-
carnate Son of God ? I t ought, on the contrary, 
to be one of the strongest evidences for the 
truth of Christianity. For it shows that all 
overthe world there has been a desire to believe 

and S ^ - V » ! « J 2 S S S * 



THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD. 49 

that God has come to be with us, to take our 
own nature upon Him and share our trials and 
sorrows, set us an example of a perfect life, and 
reveal to us the truth that we cannot find out 
for ourselves. I t means simply that men are 
everywhere reaching out in the darkness for 
Christ. To say that these stories of Pagan 
incarnations disprove the truth of Christianity 
would be the same as to assert that because a 
certain thing has impressed millions of people 
as likely or necessary, therefore it cannot be 
true. I t would be like arguing that because 
the story of Helen of Troy causing the Trojan 
war was mythical, therefore men never did 
fight for a beautiful woman. 

T H E VIRGIN BIKTH OF CHEIST. 

Some people find it difficult to believe the 
story of the Virgin Birth of our Lord. If you 
ask them why, they will tell you that for a man 
to be born of a virgin would be a miracle, and 
they cannot believe in miracles. But does not 
the same difficulty confront us in respect of the 
beginning of our race? How came into being 
the first man or the first woman ? They could 
not have come from some antecedent pair. 



50 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

They must have come in some other than the 
now common way. 

A saying of Professor Huxley may here be 
acceptable to some minds: "The miracles of 
the Church are child's play to the miracles (he 
means marvels) I see in nature. Resuscitation 
from apparent death and virgin procreation are 
ordinary phenomena to the naturalist." The 
birth from a virgin was, therefore, to this 
scientist not an impossibility. 

But the fact is that the Virgin Birth of our 
Lord cannot be objected to on the ground of its 
being a miracle or an invasion of the ordinary 
course of nature. The birth of an ordinary 
man of a virgin would be, but the birth of Jesus 
Christ was not of that order. For Christ, ac-
cording to His own statements, was a 'pre-
existing person. He plainly stated that before 
Abraham was, "f am." He prayed the Father 
to glorify Him with the glory He had with Him 
before the world was. He claimed to have 
come down from heaven. Now there is no 
known law of nature that requires a preexisting 
person to be born into this world with a double 
parentage. Experience furnishes us with no 
instance of this kind. The coming of our Lord 



THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD. 51 

by a single parent violates, therefore, no known 
law of nature. I t cannot therefore be classified 
as a miracle or a violation of nature's laws. 

On the other hand, the only way consistent 
with known laws for a preexisting person to 
take our nature and unite it to his personality 
would be to take that nature by way of a single 
parentage. For it must be remembered that 
"nature" and "person" in God and man are dis-
tinct and separate things. The doctrine of the 
Incarnation is that the Son of God united to 
His Divine Nature our human nature. The 
human nature is united to the Divine Nature 
by union to His one Person. So while there 
are two natures, there is only one Person or 
"Ego" behind them. Now if Christ had been 
born as an ordinary man is, there would have 
been, according to the universal law, a human 
nature and a human person. Not man's or 
human nature only would have been born, but 
a man with a human personality. Now, as it 
was God's purpose to unite to His divine nature, 
human nature without a human personality, the 
only way it could be done was by His being 
born in other than the common way. If He 
had been born by virtue of a double parentage, 



52 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

a miracle would have been required to eliminate 
the human personality. So while the virgin 
birth for a preexisting person to take our nature 
requires the violation of no known law, the In-
carnation, as known by us, if there was a double 
parentage, would require a miracle. 

Concerning the Virgin Birth we have the 
best evidence that it took place. We have the 
testimony of the Apostles that Christ rose from 
the dead and ascended. I t is certainly probable 
that one who had such a supernatural exit from 
this world would have had a supernatural en-
trance into it. This supposition is confirmed 
by the prophecy of Isaiah that a virgin' should 
conceive and bare a son; and by that of the 
prophet Jeremiah that the Lord hath created a 
new thing, "a woman shall compass a man " as 
something it Squired God to create, and as a 
new thing. I t is confirmed by our Lord's own 
testimony to His preexistence and coming down 

f ^ s f f S S s F a g S 
O her places in which it is found r the Old TestLent 
there is no reasonable ground" sam T M I ! ^ ' 

thinking that any but unmfrriTd W m e ^ r e meTnt." ^ 



THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD. 70 

from heaven; by that of St. Joseph, who said, 
as recorded in St. Matthew, he was not His 
father; by that of the Blessed Virgin herself, 
whose account of the Child's birth is given in 
St. Luke's Gospel. I t was the teaching of St. 
John and St. Paul. St. John tells us that the 
Word was made flesh; and St. Paul tells us 
how, viz.,"that He was born of a woman,"which 
is meaningless unless it implies the Virgin 
Birth. We have also the universal belief com-
ing to us from the earliest days of Christianity 
that our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. 
Such a belief could not have sprung up without 
any basis in facts. If it had not been true 
there would have been at least one voice raised 
in protest. 

T H E DIVINITY OF CHEIST. 

That Christ is God is, of course, a very 
startling belief, but with its truth Christianity 
stands or falls. The theory has been pro-
pounded by Unitarians that Christ was not God, 
but, an inspired man—a teacher sent from God. 
Unitarianism is not a very logical or rational 
system. Its theory is overthrown by the fact 
that ninety-nine hundredths of Christ's follow-
ers have regarded Him as God and given Him 



54 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

divine honors. We cannot suppose that after 
God' had delivered the world, by means of the 
Hebrew race, and His severe punishments for 
it, from the sin of idolatry, He would have sent 
a Teacher, the result of whose teaching was to 
lead the world back into the sin of idolatry. 
For if Christ is not God, most Christians are 
idolaters. Christianity is then not progress, but 
retrogression, and its worship of Christ sinful. 

Christ then was either God, or a mere man. 
If He was a mere man like the rest of us, then 
we do not need to believe what He taught, nor 
do what He commanded. If He was a mere 
man, then He is not the One Mediator-between 
God and men. If He was a mere man, then we 
are driven to the conclusion that He was the 
most brazen-faced impostor that ever lived. For 
He claimed over and over again that He was 
God. He claimed to speak with Divine author-
ity. He said things that the best of men could 
never say without a blush, such as "Come unto 
Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will refresh you." He prophesied that at the 
last great day of judgment all the nations would 
be gathered before Him, and He would judge 
them and determine their eternal destiny. 



THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD. 55 

Fancy any man to-day making such a claim. If 
Jesus of Nazareth was not God, He was either 
a poor, deluded fanatic, or a deceitful impostor. 
Can we charge Him with being either of these 
in the face of the universal approval He has re-
ceived from the modern civilized world ? 
Surely not. The civilized world to-day regards 
Jesus as a prophet of keen insight and un-
doubted sanity, and also as the moral ideal of 
Humanity. Therefore by the testimony of the 
civilized world He must have understood Him-
self and He must have been God as He claimed 
to be. 



CHAPTER XI. 

T H E A T O N E M E N T . 

IT IS the teaching of Christianity that Jesus 
Christ, the incarnate Son of God, by His death 
upon the Cross, made an atonement for the sins 
of the whole world, and thus made it possible 
for God the Pather to forgive the sins of all 
those who truly repent. This teaching has often 
caused difficulties. There are many who can-
not see why it was necessary for God the Son to 
come on earth as man and die an ignominious 
death upon the Cross. How could it be just or 
reasonable for God to forgive the guilty because 
the innocent has suffered? How could it be 
just for God to forgive the guilty because a 
third person begged his pardon? Let us see if 
we can answer these questions and still hold the 
Christian doctrine of the Atonement. 

A PENALTY EOR SIN. 

Why then could not God have forgiven man 



THE ATONEMENT. 57 

for his sins without Himself suffering? Be-
cause He is the moral Euler of the world and 
therefore cannot overlook sin or treat it as if it 
were virtue. God must demand that some act 
of repentance be made, some act of submission, 
aome penalty be paid, some punishment suf-
fered before He can forgive sin. How long 
would our government stand if it treated the 
vicious and criminal in the same way as the de-
cent and law-abiding? The government must 
punish sin and crime. What should we say of 
parents who never punish their children when 
they misbehave, but simply received them with 
open arms and hastened to assure them they 
were forgiven? Ignorant savages who beat 
their children with clubs every day, would be 
less cruel to their children than they. For 
the same reason, if God forgave sins before a 
sufficient act of submission and penalty had 
been paid, He would at once cease to be the 
moral Buler of the world. 

AN I N F I N I T E PENALTY NECESSARY. 

Man alone could never pay the penalty for 
his sins, because sin is an offense against the in-
finite God, and therefore deserves an infinite 
punishment. An infinite penalty must be paid 



58 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

before it could be forgiven. Man being finite, 
could never pay an infinite penalty. Only in-
finite suffering and love could atone for the in-
finite offense of sin against the Divine Holi-
ness. To meet our great need, God the Son, 
with wonderful love, came among us and was 
made man. He took the human race into eter-
nal union with Himself, and became bone of 
our bone and flesh of our flesh. Thus when He 
offered Himself upon the Cross a sacrifice for 
the sins of men, it was the human race which 
paid the penalty; but it was also God the Son 
who paid it and gave it its infinite value. The 
Cross was the crowning effort of humanity to 
make satisfaction for sin. Because He who 
died upon the Cross was God as well as man, 
the effort was successful and efficacious. 

ISTOT INJUSTICE, BUT LOVE. 

I t is perfectly true that it would be unjust 
and unreasonable for God to forgive the guilty 
because one innocent human being had suffered 
and had begged for our pardon. If your son 
injured your daughter, it would not be just for 
you to forgive him because another son was 
willing to be punished in his stead. But how 
can there be any injustice when the innocent 



THE ATONEMENT. 59 

One who suffers and begs for our pardon is not 
a human person but the eternal Son of God? 
Instead of being injustice it is a marvellous act 
of love. God Himself comes and suffers for us 
that we may be forgiven. If Christ were not 
God then the atoning merits of the Cross would 
vanish into nothingness, and it would have been 
immoral and unjust for God to make an inno-
cent man suffer for our sakes. As Christ was 
God, the Cross stands out as the greatest act of 
perfect self-sacrifice in all history. 

WE MUST BE UNITED W I T H CHEIST. 

Still our moral sense does tell us that we 
cannot be benefitted by the Cross of Christ with-
out some effort on our own part. I t is not rea-
sonable to believe that a transaction in the dim 
and distant past can have any vital effect upon 
us in the twentieth century, unless we can come 
into some actual connection with it. So the 
Church has always held. Accordingly it has 
been the constant teaching of the Church that 
the Cross of Christ can do nothing for a man 
unless he is sacramentally united to Christ by 
Baptism, and preserves that union by faith and 
obedience, by living a sincere and earnest 
Christian life. These are the members of the 



60 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

Body of Christ, and if the Head is saved, the 
members will be saved with Him. They are 
the branches of the true Vine, and if the 
branches abide in the Vine they will have ever-
lasting life. All others are simply outside the 
Christian covenant. All we can do with them 
is to commit them to the uncovenanted mercies 
of God. All we can positively assert in regard 
to them is that God will deal with them in per-
fect wisdom and justice and love. 



CHAPTER XII . 

T H E RESURRECTION OE C H R I S T . 

THE difficulties in regard to the Resurrec-
tion are almost all concerned with the question 
of evidence. I t is urged by unbelievers that the 
fact of the Resurrection is so unusual and im-
possible that it would require the strongest kind 
of evidence to make us believe in it, whereas the 
only evidence we have is in the New Testament, 
and that is claimed to be insufficient. 

EVIDENCE OUTSIDE T H E NEW TESTAMENT. 

Now it certainly would be strange if such a 
remarkable fact as the Resurrection of Christ 
had made no impression on the time in which 
it took place. If it were simply known to us 
because certain writers of the first century had 
recorded it, and it had never produced any 
striking effects upon the subsequent history of 
the world, we in the twentieth century would 
be foolish, indeed, to believe in it. But is that 



62 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

the case? Most certainly not. For here is a 
fact that has brought about the most tremen-
dous results. I t has revolutionized the morals, 
the beliefs, the literature, the civilization of the 
world. The most long-lived, the most powerful, 
the most miraculous institution in all history— 
namely, the Christian Church, is the direct 
effect of this wonderful fact of the Resurrec-
tion. No evidence outside of the New Testa-
ment ? Why, the whole history of Christendom 
is the evidence. No impression on the age in 
which it happened? Why, it converted the 
whole Eoman empire, and finally purified even 
the throne of the Caesars. 

There is scarcely one of us to-day who be-. 
lieves in the Resurrection solely because he 
read about it in the Gospels or the Epistles of 
St. Paul or the Acts of the Apostles. We be-
lieve in it because we were taught it at our 
mother's knees, or because as little children we 
were told about it by the only organization now 
extant that goes back far enough to tell us what 
did happen in the first century. The church 
bells ringing throughout the world on Sunday 
are a witness that something happened on that 
day equal in importance to that of Sinai by 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 63 

which the Sabbath was established. The belief 
in the Resurrection has been handed down from 
fathers to children as a continuous tradition for 
nineteen centuries, and of that the observance 
of Sunday is a living witness. 

THE BELIEF MUST BE ACCOUNTED FOB. 

How then did this belief in the Resurrection 
of Christ arise ? That is the real question to be 
settled. The burden of proof rests entirely 
with the unbelievers. I t is not for us Christ-
ians to show why we believe in the fact of the 
Resurrection. I t rests upon unbelievers to ac-
count for the continuous and widespread belief 
in this fact—a belief which has changed the 
face of the world. How did it gain support in 
the .first place? There must have been some 
one who began to preach it for the first time. 
How did he get people to believe in him? 
People would not believe in such an extra-
ordinary tale without being convinced of its 
truth. In the days of the first apostolic preach-
ing of the Resurrection, people had ample op-
portunities to investigate for themselves and 
establish the truth of their claims. If the dead 
body was still in the tomb, or had been stolen 
by the Jews, it was a simple matter for the 



64 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

enemies of the apostles to refute their claims. 
If the apostles had stolen the body, then we are 
confronted with the strange predicament that 
the founders of the one religion which has made 
truthfulness a virtue were the basest of liars, 
and that most of them laid down their lives 
for what they knew to be a falsehood. They 
knew that they saw no mere disembodied spirit 
or ghost, for they handled Christ's Body and 
saw that it had flesh and bones as a spirit has 
not. They touched the wounds in His Hands 
and Feet and Side and identified the risen Body 
with that which hung on the cross and was laid 
in the tomb. They received from Him new and 
important doctrines during forty days, and so 
the Resurrection was a certified reality. They 
proclaimed the fact of Christ's Resurrection at 
once and so it was not an after-thought or myth-
ical growth. The people who had every oppor-
tunity to investigate the facts believed in large 
numbers and a great number of the priests be-
came obedient to the faith. By the Resurrec-
tion the apostles were turned from cowards 
into heroes, and were filled with a faith in 
Christ that overcame the world. 

If a man told us to-day that an expert 



THE RESURRECTION OP CHRIST. 65 

swimmer had succeeded in swimming across the 
Atlantic from New York to Liverpool, and that 
he had done it in ten days, we should not be 
likely to believe him unless we saw it with our 
own eyes. Neither would any considerable 
number of people in the days of the Apostles 
believe that Christ had risen from the dead un-
less they were convinced by what they saw with 
their own eyes. The rapid, persistent, and tri-
umphant growth of the belief in the Resurrec-
tion is a phenomenon that cannot satisfactorily 
be explained in any other way than by assum-
ing that it was based upon an actual historical 
fact. 

The following quotation from Archbishop 
Alexander, the Primate of All Ireland, states 
the case in a cogent manner: " I t is impossible 
to account for the existence of the Church, with-
out a belief in the Resurrection on the part of 
the primitive witnesses. I t is impossible to ac-
count for that belief without its being founded 
on reality. As the Church is too holy for a 
foundation of rottenness, so she is too real for a 
foundation of mist." 



CHAPTER XI I I . 

T H E D A B K SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

T H O U G H the great purpose of Christianity 
is to bring light and joy and hope into the 
world, there is one side of it which is dark and 
gloomy. In this respect it is not unlike the 
family physician. His work is to make us 
healthy and sound and happy, but he often has 
to give us unpleasant medicines, he occasionally 
must advise a serious surgical operation, and 
now and then he must break to us the sad news 
that one we love has at last reached the end of 
the journey. Likewise Christianity must speak 
to us of sin, its malignity and power, its rem-
edies, and its penalties. If this darker side 
were left out, it would not be a religion adapted 
to the real needs of human nature. However, 
many do try to leave this darker side out of 
their religion, and it presents difficulties to some 
others who would like to leave it out if they 
dared. Space will permit me to take up only 



THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 

two of these difficulties, namely, Satan and hell. 

IS THERE A PERSONAL DEVIL ? 

A personal devil does not mean a being with 
horns and a pitchfork, gaily bedecked in red, 
after the manner of the pictures that thrilled 
us in our childhood or the figures that appear 
behind the footlights. I t means simply that he 
is an individual with a consciousness and will 
and not merely an influence or a tendency. 
Satan is a fallen angel. I t is nothing unreason-
able to suppose that God should have made an-
gelic beings as well as men and in the Holy 
Scriptures He tells us He has done so. Nor is 
it unreasonable to believe, as He has also said, 
that as there are good and bad men, so there 
are good and bad angels. God did not make 
them bad, but they made themselves bad. 
Satan is only a leader among them. They can 
tempt man, but their powers are limited. They 
cannot read the thoughts of man. They are 
continually baffled by their ignorance of God's 
love and experience of the action of divine 
grace. When speaking of Satan, we sometimes 
mean him, more often the bad angels taken col-
lectively. 

But then what is the advantage of these evil 



68 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

angels ? There is really no advantage at all but 
a great deal of disadvantage. We must, how-
ever, take the world as it is, and the Christian 
religion as it is. We must take the one with its 
earthquakes and volcanoes and diseases and 
microbes, and the other with its trials and sor-
rows and temptations. We did not make either. 
Satan is in the world and the Christian religion 
tells us how to overcome him. There is a great 
advantage in believing that Satan exists, just 
as there is an advantage in knowing that a rob-
ber has entered your house. You may then be 
able to vanquish him before he gets all your 
treasures. 

WHY DOES GOD SUFEEB SATAN ? 

But why does Almighty God allow Satan 
and other evil angels to live and keep up this 
constant warfare against the Kingdom of 
Light ? May we not say it is because we are 
now in a stage of trial and probation and it is 
necessary to strengthen our spiritual nature, as 
well as our bodily nature ? Resisting diabolic 
influences strengthens the one, just as bearing 
pain strengthens the other. At the last God 
will cast Satan and his angels out, and take 
from them all power of doing harm. Christ 



THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 

through His Church will finally conquer Satan 
and his kingdom, and keep them in subjection 
forever. I t is impossible to accept Christ as 
our Teacher and then refuse to believe that 
Satan exists. 

WHAT ABOUT H E L L ? 

I t is true that we hear less about hell from 
Christian pulpits to-day than we did thirty or 
forty years ago. Is it because we have discov-
ered that hell is a myth ? Not until we throw 
over the whole teaching of Christ can we say 
that. We may say, if we like, that the fire and 
the worm that our Lord spoke of as among the 
torments of hell are figurative expressions. 
That has been considered as allowable opinion 
in the Church from very early times. But 
Christ, in no uncertain terms, has taught that 
there is a hell in the sense of eternal separation 
from God, and everlasting punishment. No 
juggling with words can get rid of the plain 
statement that "the wicked shall go away into 
everlasting punishment, and the righteous into 
life eternal." 

WHY NOT PREACHED MOBE ? 

Why, then, do we hear so little about hell in 
the preaching of to-day % I t is largely because 



70 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

it was overdone a generation ago, and was often 
preached in such an unreal and false way that 
it became associated with cant. I t is also be-
cause it is more in accord with the spirit of our 
times to win men by holding before them high 
ideals than by trying to frighten them into the 
path of virtue. But no Christian preacher or 
teacher is "declaring the whole counsel of God" 
who does not teach plainly and fearlessly the 
doctrine of everlasting punishment. The soul 
that dies in unforgiven mortal sin will go to 
hell. Either that is true or the whole Christian 
religion is false. 

Of course no one pretends that this is an 
easy doctrine to accept. I t is, indeed, full of 
difficulties. But the question is, what has God 
revealed? I t is far better to believe this doc-
trine on the divine authority of Christ and the 
Church, even though we cannot fully under-
stand it now, than it is to make our own little 
minds the measure of divine truth. I t is better 
to believe in truth which we do not understand 
than to believe in error which we do under-
stand. 

INFLUENCE OF THE DOCTEINE. 

I t has certainly been of help to many ear-



THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 

nest Christians to remember that they might 
lose the prize of their high calling and be cast-
aways. I t stimulated St. Paul in his magnifi-
cent upward course. I t has kept many a soul 
from wasting his talents. I t has been like a 
wall of protecting fire around the sensually as-
saulted. I t has aroused the lukewarm as with 
a trumpet call. The thought of the eternal 
shame and loss has again and again been the 
saving of many a soul. 

THE JUSTICE AND MERCY OF GOD. 

Why, it is asked, should the punishment in-
flicted be so severe ? The answer seems to be 
that it is a.punishment the guilty and neglect-
ful inflict on themselves. God has offered us 
in Christ, an elevation in being and such a 
union with God in bliss, as shall secure us in a 
sinless state and consequent eternal happiness. 
I t is an end proffered to us, a prize set before 
us. I t is not a natural end like immortality, 
but a superadded gift. Being such, man by 
natural goodness cannot attain it. For no 
supernatural end can be obtained by natural 
means. The only revealed way of obtaining it, 
is by union with the God-Man Jesus Christ. 
How easy, how loving has He made it! When 



72 DIFFICULTIES OF FAITH. 

we think of what God has done, in coming , and 
dying for us, what could we ask Him to have 
done more ? What terms could be easier—what 
offers more generous and wide ? In the Cross 
we have the Mercy of God extended freely to us. 
In the sacraments we have His grace extended 
to us. If now we deliberately reject that loving 
mercy and refuse to accept Christ's terms of sal-
vation, we cannot claim a share in that mercy 
hereafter. We cannot reject it and have it, too. 
I t is now or never. And if we reject it now, we 
cannot complain that we miss the end offered us 
in Christ and are finally rejected and left with-
out in the eternal darkness. If now rejecting 
grace in the day of grace, hereafter we shall be 
unable to repent, because the grace will be want-
ing wherewith we may do so. Rejecting grace 
now, we shall eventually lose all spiritual life 
and become in kind like the beasts. God, how-
ever, will eventually triumph over all sin, for 
He will so gather the saints into Himself that 
they will be secured from all temptation, and 
the others, having no grace wherewith to repent, 
will also be unable, any more than the animals, 
to sin by rejecting it. Goodness will triumph. 

The present creation is moving on to its 



THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 

great climax. Out of it God is evolving a new 
spiritual everlasting one. In it, some by cor-
responding bere to the environment of the 
Church will obtain a place, and others by their 
own neglect will miss it. The condition in each 
will be eternal. The one state is Heaven, the 
other is Hell. I t lies with each person to decide 
which for himself it will be. 

"Each soul at goal of that way it wended"— 
when man's trial is past. 



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