right." This law is of universal application. It belongs to men in all their relations, both public and private, collectively and individually. In the relation of the State to its citizens it taxes them for the support of government, it fines, imprisons and puts them to death for crime. In the relation of nation to nation it imposes tariffs and declares war, filling history with scenes of blood and woe. The common sense of mankind approves this law, and the Bible declares it just. Wars were approved of God, when they were for the greatest good of the greater number. It was upon the same principle that all the divine judgments were administered, from the destruction of the Antediluvians down to the overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus.

This law is the substratum in moral righteousness, underlying all that is right. Such is its wonderful latitude and longitude that, in order to carry it out, it sometimes becomes necessary to tilt a nation into a sea of blood and replace it with a better people. Unbelievers and skeptics who admit this are guilty of wresting Bible facts from their proper places and testing them upon the plane of morality, regardless of the laws of jurisprudence.

This erroneous method of reasoning leads the minds of many ignorant and unsuspecting persons away from the right ways of God. The guilty reasoner justifies taxation, fines, imprisonment and wars in the history of his own country.

It sometimes seems cruel to carry out this great moral principle of which we are treating; it is nevertheless right, and men who abuse its facts and turn things upside down are guilty of opposing the right.

Unbelievers are guilty of selecting from the Bible all that can be tortured out of its place in the laws of jurisprudence and made to look ugly out of its proper relations, and are continually holding such things up before the people, turning them into ridicule, and at the same time they have been through all the bloody scenes of war and justify themselves, wishing to be known in many instances as Major, General or Colonel. We have some such in our own country. They seem to have never learned that many things which are good for humanity are very ugly out of their proper relations. I am glad that God has revealed himself in the jurisprudence of nations, for the facts given inspire confidence in rulers and officials, strength to judges upon the bench, and nerve to warriors who are acting with direct reference to the "greatest good of the greatest number."

A history of God in his dealings with states and nations in order to a perfect revelation of himself necessitates a history of states and nations so far as it is necessary to make known the approbation and disapprobation of God in connection with all that may ever enter into national or state character. Without this we would find states and nations where God did not see fit to show himself. We must find him wherever we find man, approving or disapproving. This is just what we do in the Bible. We do it in no other book. But let us ever remember that all that is wicked had its origin with wicked men and demons, and that the Divine Being, with all his attributes, appears in the foreground in all his relations to men and their conduct, as the grand Bible picture shining out through all the darkness and gloom, surrounded with the virtues and noble deeds of all his worshipers, and that he is building up and throwing down as his righteous judgment approves or disapproves. This revelation of God is like the sun at noonday bursting through dark and heavy clouds and blessing the earth with its rays. In making this revelation, which is related negatively or affirmatively to all there is in human history, God saw fit to communicate his will through man, and in his own language, except in the gift of the great charter of the national existence of the children of Israel and the great foundation truth of the church of God. These he uttered with his own wonderful voice.

Was it reasonable to expect a revelation from God? Is it necessary to the greatest good of the greatest number? If so, it is a thought at once involving the moral character of God and necessitating a revelation of himself. In answering these questions intelligently we must look after the demands for such a communication. Where shall we find them? Answer, in the wants of our humanity. Here two kinds of light are needed for two pair of eyes in order that we may be happy in two respects. First, physical light for the physical eyes, in order to the enjoyment of physical life in a material world. Second, the light of knowledge for the eyes of the understanding, in order to the enjoyment of spiritual life in a spiritual world. It is universally conceded that there are means provided in nature to meet man's physical wants and adaptations that manifest the wisdom that belongs to God; also, that it would have been the work of a demon to create man with these wants, like so many empty vessels, without any provision to satisfy or fill them. Without those supplies our suffering would be great and our wretchedness unendurable. Is there no liability to mental suffering? Are there no spiritual wants consequent upon the nature of mind?

Is it not unreasonable to allow that "Infinite wisdom" provided for all our physical wants and left our spirits with all their demands, like so many children away out in the darkness without hope, uneasy, restless, always dissatisfied, and ever trying to get into the possession of the knowledge of the unseen and future, without one ray of mental light shining out from the heavens upon our relations to perfect our condition and declare the glorious goodness of an all-wise Creator? Volney says, "Provident nature having endowed the heart of man with inexhaustible hope, he set about finding happiness in this world, and failing in his efforts, he set out in his imagination and created a world for himself, where, free from tyrants, he could have all his wrongs redressed and enjoy unsullied bliss." This is Volney's account of the origin of religion, the tap-root of the tree. It contains a most wonderful concession, one that Tyndal made when he said, "There is a place in man's psychological nature for religion." Is there a place in man's physical nature for bread and meat, for food of every variety that man's soul desires? Do we attribute all the mercies of physical life to a supreme intelligence? Has that intelligence created us and left us endowed with "Inexhaustible hope," to be disappointed forever, and the only result, the "imaginary" creation of the Christian's happy heaven. But Volney makes another grand concession in the quotation which I have given, and that is the nature of the Christian's future world in its relations to wrongs as well as tyrants, neither are to exist there. That the Christian's religion, with its beautiful world, does fill up the soul's demands is a fact unintentionally conceded by Volney, and known throughout the land in the contentment and bliss and heroism of the dying Christian. In this hope alone man's spiritual wants are met. This, with all that pertains to it, is in the revelation that God has made to our race. How could this be made? I answer, it was made by the spirit of God. "Holy men of old spake as they were moved upon by the Holy Spirit." This is what we call inspiration. This word is a translation of "Theopneustos," which is from "Theos," God, "pneuma," spirit, Spirit of God. Is it reasonable to allow that this revelation could be given by the spirit of God through holy men? I will let an infidel answer this question. Bolingbroke said, "It is just as easy to comprehend the operation of the spirit of God upon the mind of a prophet in order to give his will to us as it is to comprehend the operations of our own spirits upon our physical nature in order to an expression of our