theology, not only in the comparatively simple and universal order of the facts with which it deals, but also because the facts are so much more verifiable in the one case than in the other. They can so much more easily be found out to be true or not. It has been sought of late, in a well-known quarter, to bring all religion to this test—and the test is not an unfair one if legitimately applied. But it is not legitimate to test spiritual facts simply as we test natural facts; such facts, for example, as that fire burns, or that a stone thrown from the hand falls to the ground. The presumption of all supernatural religion is that there is a spiritual or supernatural sphere, as real and true as the natural sphere in which we continually live and move; and the facts which belong to this sphere must be tested within it. Morality and moral conditions may be so far verified from without. If we do wrong we shall finally find ourselves in the wrong; and that there is a "Power not ourselves which makes for righteousness" and which will not allow us to rest in wrong. This constantly verified experience of a kingdom of righteousness is a valuable basis of morality. But religion could not live or nourish itself within such limits. It must rest, not merely on certain facts of divine order, but on such personal relations as are ever uppermost in the mind of St Paul, and are so clearly before him in this very passage. Moreover, the higher experience which reveals to us a Power of righteousness in the world, no less reveals to us the living personal character of this Power. Shut out conscience as a true source of knowledge, and the very idea of righteousness will disappear with it—there will be nothing to fall back upon but the combinations of intelligence, and such religion as may be got therefrom; admit conscience, and its verifying force transcends a mere order or impersonal power of righteousness. It places us in front of a living Spirit who not only governs us righteously and makes us feel our wrong-doing, but who is continually educating us and raising us to His own likeness of love and blessedness. We realise not merely that there is a law of good in the world, but a Holy Will that loves good and hates evil, and against whom all our sins are offences in the sense of the Psalmist: "Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight."

So much as this, we say, may be realised—this consciousness of sin on the one hand, and of a living Righteousness and Love far more powerful than our sins, and able to save us from them. These roots of religion are deeply planted in human nature. They answer to its highest experiences. The purest and noblest natures in whom all the impulses of a comprehensive humanity have been strongest, have felt and owned them. The missionary preacher, wherever he has gone—to the rude tribes of Africa, or the cultured representatives of an ancient civilisation—has appealed to them, and found a verifying response to his preaching. St Paul, whether he spoke to Jew, or Greek, or Roman, found the same voices of religious experience echoing to his call—the same burden of sin lying on human hearts—the same cry from their depths, "What must I do to be saved?" It is not necessary to maintain that these elements of the Christian religion are verifiable in every experience. It is enough to say that there is that in the Gospel which addresses all hearts in which spiritual thoughtfulness and life have not entirely died out. It lays hold of the common heart. It melts with a strange power the highest minds. Look over a vast audience; travel to distant lands; communicate with your fellow-creatures anywhere,—and you feel that you can reach them, and for the most part touch them, by the story of the Gospel—by the fact of a Father in heaven, and a Saviour sent from heaven, "that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."