that is employed in modern civilization; and when they have exhausted every source, let them embody the results of their best intelligence in a book and offer it to the world as a substitute for this Bible of ours. Have they the confidence that the prophets of Baal had in their god? Will they try? If not, what excuse will they give? Has man so fallen from his high estate, that we cannot rightfully expect as much of him now as nineteen centuries ago? Or does the Bible come to us from a source that is higher than man?

But the case is even stronger. The opponents of the Bible cannot take refuge in the plea that man is retrograding. They loudly proclaim that man has grown and that he is growing still. They boast of a world-wide advance and their claim is founded upon fact. In all matters except in the "science of how to live," man has made wonderful progress. The mastery of the mind over the forces of nature seems almost complete, so far do we surpass the ancients in harnessing the water, the wind and the lightning.

For ages, the rivers plunged down the mountainsides and exhausted their energies without any appreciable contribution to man's service; now they are estimated as so many units of horse-power, and we find that their fretting and foaming was merely a language which they employed to tell us of their strength and of their willingness to work for us. And, while falling water is becoming each a day a larger factor in burden-bearing, water, rising in the form of steam, is revolutionizing the transportation methods of the world.

The wind, that first whispered its secret of strength to the flapping sail, is now turning the wheel at the well, and our flying machines have taken possession of the air.

Lightning, the red demon that, from the dawn of Creation, has been rushing down its zigzag path through the clouds, as if intent only upon spreading death, metamorphosed into an errand-boy, brings us illumination from the sun and carries our messages around the globe.

Inventive genius has multiplied the power of a human arm and supplied the masses with comforts of which the rich did not dare to dream a few centuries ago. Science is ferreting out the hidden causes of disease and teaching us how to prolong life. In every line, except in the line of character-building, the world seems to have been made over, but these marvellous changes only emphasize the fact that man, too, must be born again, while they show how impotent are material things to touch the soul of man and transform him into a spiritual being. Wherever the moral standard is being lifted up—wherever life is becoming larger in the vision that directs it and richer in its fruitage, the improvement is traceable to the Bible and to the influence of the God and Christ of whom the Bible tells.

The atheist and the materialist must confess that man should be able to produce a better book to-day than man, unaided, could have produced in any previous age. The fact that they have tried, time and time again, only to fail each time more hopelessly, explains why they will not—why they cannot—accept the challenge thrown down by the Christian world to produce a book worthy to take the Bible's place.

They have begged to their God to answer with fire—appealed to inanimate matter with an earnestness that is pathetic; they have employed in the worship of blind force a faith greater than religion requires, but their God is asleep. How long will they allow the search for strata of stone and fragments of fossil and decaying skeletons that are strewn around the house to absorb their thoughts to the exclusion of the architect who planned it all? How long will the agnostic, closing his eyes to the plainest truths, cry, "Night, night," when the sun in his meridian splendour announces that noon is here?

Those who reject the Bible ignore its claim to inspiration. This in itself makes them enemies of the Book of books, because the Bible characters profess to speak by inspiration, and what they say bears the stamp of the supernatural. "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Peter 1:21).

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:13-14).

Those who reject the Bible ignore the spirit that pervades it, the atmosphere that envelopes it, the harmony of its testimonies and the unity of its structure, despite the fact that it is the product of many writers during many centuries. Its parts were not arranged by man, but prearranged by the Almighty.

Those who reject the Bible also ignore the prophecies and their fulfillment—"History written in advance"—proof that appeals irresistibly to the open mind.

Those who reject the Bible even disparage the testimony which the Saviour bore to the inspiration of the Old Testament, and yet what could be more explicit than His words? "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27).

As Canon Liddon says:

"For Christians, it will be enough to know that our Lord, Jesus Christ, set the seal of His infallible sanction on the whole of the Old Testament. He found the Hebrew canon as we have it in our hands to-day, and He treated it as an authority which was above discussion. Nay, more; He went out of His way—if we may reverently speak thus,—to sanction not a few portions of it which modern scepticism rejects."

Besides open enemies, the Bible has enemies who are less frank—enemies who, while claiming to be friends of Christianity, spend their time undermining faith in God, faith in the Bible, and faith in Christ. These professed friends call themselves higher critics—a title which—though explained by them as purely technical—smacks of an insufferable egotism. They assume an air of superior intelligence and look down with mingled pity and contempt upon what they regard as poor, credulous humanity. The higher critic is more dangerous than the open enemy. The atheist approaches you boldly and tries to blow out your light, but, as you know who he is, what he is trying to do and why, you can protect yourself. The higher critic, however, comes to you in the guise of a friend and politely inquires: "Isn't the light too near your eyes? I fear it will injure your sight." Then he moves the light away, a little at a time, until it is only a speck and then—invisible.

Some who have used the title "higher critic" have approached their subject in a reverent spirit and laboured earnestly in the vain hope of satisfying intellectual doubts, when the real trouble has been with the hearts of objectors rather than with their heads. Religion is a matter of the heart, and the impulses of the heart often seem foolish to the mind. Faith is different from, and superior to, reason. Faith is a spiritual extension of the vision—a moral sense that reaches out toward the throne of God and takes hold of verities that the mind cannot grasp. It is like "the blind leading the blind" for a higher critic, however honest, to rely on purely intellectual methods to convey truths that are "spiritually discerned."

As a rule, however, the so-called higher critic is a man without spiritual vision, without zeal for souls and without any deep interest in the coming of God's Kingdom. He toils not in the Master's vineyard and yet "Solomon in all his glory" never laid claim to such wisdom as he boasts. He does not accept the Bible nor defend