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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