God and confidence in the immutability of His decrees can stay the arm of strength in individual or nation.

Belief in God is the basis of brotherhood; we are brothers because we are children of one God. We trace through the common parent of all the tie that unites the offspring in one great family. The spirit of brotherhood is impossible without faith in God, the Father, and peace, at home and abroad, is impossible without the spirit of brotherhood.

One must believe in God in order to be interested in the carrying out of the Creator's plans. In the prayer which Christ suggested as a form for His followers, interest in the coming of God's kingdom stands first. The petition begins with adoration of the Supreme Being and in the next sentence the heart pours out its desire in an appeal for the coming of that day when the will of God shall be done in earth as it is done in heaven. It is proof of the supreme importance of this attitude that this petition comes before the request for daily bread; it comes even before the appeal for forgiveness. How quickly the prayer would be answered if all who utter it would rise from their knees and make the hastening of God's kingdom the uppermost thought in their minds throughout the day!

Finally, belief in God is necessary to belief in immortality. If there is no God there is no hereafter. When, therefore, one drives God out of the universe he closes the door of hope upon himself.

A belief in immortality not only consoles the individual, but it exerts a powerful influence in promoting justice between individuals. If one actually thinks that man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more easily to the temptation to do injustice to his neighbour when the circumstances are such as to promise security from detection. But if one really expects to meet again, and live eternally with those whom he knows to-day, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of endless remorse even when not actuated by higher motives. We do not know what rewards are in store for us or what punishments may be reserved, but if there were no other it would be no light punishment for one who deliberately wrongs another to have to live forever in the company of the person wronged and have his littleness and selfishness laid bare.

The Creator has not left us in doubt on the subject of immortality. He has given to every created thing a tongue that proclaims a life beyond the grave.

If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in the image of his Creator? If He stoops to give to the rose-bush, whose withered blossoms float upon the autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another springtime, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it has paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tenement of clay? No, He who, notwithstanding His apparent prodigality, created nothing without a purpose, and wasted not a single atom in all His creation, has made provision for a future life in which man's universal longing for immortality will find its realization. I am as sure that we shall live again as I am sure that we live to-day.

In Cairo, I secured a few grains of wheat that had slumbered for more than thirty centuries in an Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this thought came into my mind: If one of those grains had been planted on the banks of the Nile the year after it grew, and all its lineal descendants had been planted and replanted from that time until now, its progeny would to-day be sufficiently numerous to feed the teeming millions of the world. An unbroken chain of life connects the earliest grains of wheat with the grains that we sow and reap. There is in the grain of wheat an invisible something which has power to discard the body that we see, and from earth and air fashion a new body so much like the old one that we cannot tell the one from the other. If this invisible germ of life in the grain of wheat can thus pass unimpaired through three thousand resurrections, I shall not doubt that my soul has power to clothe itself with a body suited to its new existence, when this earthly frame has crumbled into dust.

II

THE BIBLE

Jesus Christ not only endorsed the Old Testament as authoritative, but bore witness to its eternal truth. "Think not," He said, "that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matt. 5: 17, 18).

When one's belief in God becomes the controlling passion of his life; when he loves God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind and with all his strength he is anxious to learn God's will and ready to accept the Bible as the Word of God. All that he asks is sufficient evidence of its inspiration.

After so many hundreds of millions have adopted the Bible as their guide for so many centuries, the burden of proof would seem on those who reject it.

The Bible is either the word of God or the work of man. Those who regard it as a man-made book should be challenged to put their theory to the test. If man made the Bible, he is, unless he has degenerated, able to make as good a book to-day.

Judged by human standards, man is far better prepared to write a Bible now than he was when our Bible was written. The characters whose words and deeds are recorded in the Bible were members of a single race; they lived among the hills of Palestine in a territory scarcely larger than one of our counties. They did not have printing presses and they lacked the learning of the schools; they had no great libraries to consult, no steamships to carry them around the world and make them acquainted with the various centers of ancient civilization; they had no telegraph wires to bring them the news from the ends of the earth and no newspapers to spread before them each morning the doings of the day before. Science had not unlocked Nature's door and revealed the secrets of rocks below and stars above. From what a scantily supplied storehouse of knowledge they had to draw, compared with the unlimited wealth of information at man's command to-day! And yet these Bible characters grappled with every problem that confronts mankind, from the creation of the world to eternal life beyond the tomb. They gave us a diagram of man's existence from the cradle to the grave and set up warning signs at every dangerous point.

The Bible gives us the story of the birth, the words, the works, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of Him whose coming was foretold by prophecy, whose arrival was announced by angel voices, singing Peace and Good-will—the story of Him who gave to the world a code of morality superior to anything that the world had known before or has known since.

Let the atheists and the materialists produce a better Bible than ours, if they can. Let them collect the best of their school to be found among the graduates of universities—as many as they please and from every land. Let the members of this selected group travel where they will, consult such libraries as they like, and employ every modern means of swift communication. Let them glean in the fields of geology, botany, astronomy, biology, and zoology, and then roam at will wherever science has opened a way; let them take advantage of all the progress in art and in literature, in oratory and in history—let them use to the full every instrumentality