To this, however, there is one condition, before referred to, but not distinctly named. No doubt we often come into the presence of those objects through which God reveals Himself without perceiving God. We read the gospels, we imagine to ourselves the Christ, and remain cold and unimpressed. And that is because, to feel His presence, we must gaze with a pure heart. If the mind be filled with low passions, if it be corrupted by selfishness and sin, if it be at war with right and love, in vain will it seek for the light which guides it to God. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," is the divine beatitude that gives the law under which this cry of Job and of our own day is answered. "There is an inward beauty, life, and loveliness in divine truth which cannot be known, but then when it is digested into life and practice."* And when so digested, the soul, coming into the presence of what is divine, from the inward response its own nature gives to the revelation, at once becomes assured of the glorious presence of its God. None of us need, then, wander through life as in a dark and dreary maze, crying, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him." God calls to us from on high; through ten thousand means He reveals Himself on every hand. Above all, He draws near to us in Christ Jesus; and he who comes to him in simple, loving, contemplative faith, will find a response to the cry of his soul. Only he must come with a pure heart, a free conscience, a purpose set to do God's will. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." And as for the rest, we will pray, as our great poet has taught us—

"O living will that shalt endure

When all that seems shall suffer shock,

Rise in the spiritual Rock,

Flow through our deeds and make them pure.

* Smith's Select Discourses.

That we may lift from out the dust
A voice as unto Him that hears,
A cry above the conquered years,
To One that with us works, and trust

With faith that comes of self-control
The truths that never can be proved,
Until we close with all we loved
And all we flow from, soul in soul."

TRUTH REVEALED TO THE OBEDIENT.

"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."-JOHN vii. 17.

In these days of the disintegration of beliefs going on around us on every hand, what is a plain, honest, intelligent man, who has no professional knowledge of theology, to do in order to satisfy his religious cravings after faith? He longs after God, feels religion essential to his happiness, has been taught to rest on Christ and to accept the doctrines of Christianity as divine: but now, he finds objections, doubts, and difficulties started in every direction. He has pointed out to him discrepancies, contradictions, and alleged errors in the sacred books. Geologists prove to him the world was not created in six days, as Genesis says; Colenso tells him the whole Pentateuch narrates impossible facts; Strauss argues that the whole of the gospels is the product of traditional reports of Christ's life; and then, what perplexes him more, the advocates of Christianity are divided amongst themselves. One would give up the Pentateuch to save the Gospels. Another would eliminate all historical and scientific statements, and take his stand only upon the morality and religion of the Bible. Another shrinks from justifying the morality, especially that of the Old Testament, and would rest only on the religion. And another would surrender

the doctrine and cling only to the religious sentiment. Very few indeed, boldly attempt to defend the verbal and thorough-going inspiration and Divine authority of all contained between the covers of the holy book. Again, then, I ask, how is a man to make up his mind upon all these questions, who has only ordinary intelligence and common sense? how is even a cultivated man of science or literature to decide upon them, if he have no special knowledge and training upon such subjects? If, in order to be religious, it be necessary first of all to accept the historical truthfulness of these documents—if, before we can worship God in spirit and in truth, we must be sure, or have rational ground to think it probable, that all these books were written by those to whom they are ascribed; that all they narrate the writers were eye-witnesses of, or had divine authority for asserting; that they came in such sense from God that their teachings may be rested upon as infallibly true—how can any one become religious and worship God, but those who have been trained to the investigation of literary and historical questions, and have special time for the pursuit?

For, just consider the sort of inquiry which is involved before these questions can be answered. The very first point requires an amount of learning and research that, very few even amongst scholars possess. That first point is, were these books written in the age and by the men to whom they are assigned? Now, how can we determine that? First of all, we must trace them up the stream of time to discover whether we can find any indications of their introduction at a later period-reading through the writings of the different centuries to collate the different quotations from the books, in order to make sure that these same books have existed in their present state, and been ascribed to the same authority, through all this time. Well, all this is easy enough until we have arrived on our

journey backwards at about the third century. Up to that time the authorities are numerous and tolerably unequivocal. But then the need of caution, close examination, rigid criticism, careful reasoning, augments rapidly. And the further back we go, the darker and more difficult the matter becomes. The writings extant are few, and some of them of doubtful character. Before you can use them, you have to prove that they themselves are genuine and authentic; that they are not the works of a later age, and that, supposing they are the works of those whose names they bear, they have not been tampered with, interpolated, and amended since, by some dishonest hand.

There, for example, are the writings ascribed to Ignatius at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. It is believed that Ignatius did write some letters, not only because Eusebius, that gossipping, weakminded historian said so in the fourth century, but also, because some other church writers afterwards referred to the fact; but are these the letters? Now, for centuries men only knew these letters from the Greek editions of them. Critics, however, for a long time had a suspicion that these Greek editions had been tampered with; that long passages had been introduced many generations after the death of Ignatius, in order to give countenance to certain doctrines and practices of an ecclesiastical character which had in the meanwhile sprung up. And, strange to say, a few years back an old Syriac manuscript was discovered in which many of these suspected passages are wanting-confirming thus the critics in their belief that, the epistles are not as Ignatius wrote them, but as fraudulent writers had afterwards altered them.* Now, before we can make use of

* I think it is very doubtful whether even the shorter epistles after Mr. Cureton's emendations are genuine; at all events, there is no proof that they are.