whose heart can be distrusted is in reality no God; he is but an idol,—a false imagination of ignorant men. With the progress of knowledge this fact will become generally recognised. The only God who can permanently survive, the only God whom men will permanently worship, is the God of love. And if He too is degraded, the time is not far distant when He too will come to be regarded as merely the product of a diseased imagination. I adjure you, therefore, if you call yourselves Christians, if you think you believe in the God of Christ, be very careful that you do not confuse Him with inferior deities, with false gods. If you attribute to Him, if you allow to be attributed to Him, characteristics unworthy of a man; if you attribute to Him, if you allow to be attributed to Him, characteristics that are incompatible with infinite and eternal love,-you are worse enemies to the cause of real religion than the most virulent of open and professed atheists. Beware! The time is coming when judgment must first begin at the house of God.

I will read you in conclusion a poem of Whittier's, called "The Eternal Goodness."

"O friends! with whom my feet have trod

The quiet aisles of prayer,

Glad witness to your zeal for God

And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh, as one who dreads dissent
And fears a doubt as wrong.

But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My heart within me pleads.

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;

I dare not fix with mete and bound
The loving power of God.

Ye praise His justice; even such
His pitying love I deem :

Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.

Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes,
And prayer upon the cross.

More than your schoolmen teach, within

Myself, alas! I know;

Too dark ye cannot paint the sin;

Too small the merit show.

I bow my forehead to the dust,
I veil mine eyes for shame,
And urge in trembling self-distrust
A prayer without a claim.

I see the wrong that round me lies,
I feel the guilt within;

I hear, with groan and travail-cries,
The world confess its sin.

Yet in the maddening maze of things,
And tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed stake my spirit clings, -
I know that God is good.

Not mine to look where cherubim
And seraphs may not see,—
But nothing can be good in Him
Which evil is in me.

The wrong that pains my soul below

I dare not throne above:

I know not of His hate; I know
His goodness and His love.

I dimly guess from blessings known
Of greater out of sight,

And, with the chastened Psalmist, own
His judgments too are right.

I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise;

Assured alone that life and death

His mercy underlies.

And so beside the silent sea,

I wait the muffled oar;

No harm from Him can come to me On ocean or on shore.

I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care.

Do thou, O Lord! by whom are seen
Thy creatures as they be,
Forgive me, if too close I lean

My human heart on Thee!"

246

The Didache; or, Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.

I

HAVE explained to you1 how the particular

books which we now find in "the Bible' came to be there. This subject is generally shrouded in a great deal of unnecessary mystery. In reality there is no mystery about it. It might be, and should be, explained to Sunday - school children. Whatever theory of "inspiration" you may hold, you must remember that the books of Scripture were collected together by synods or councils, composed of men for whom no inspiration, in the orthodox sense of the word, can be claimed. Nor indeed can it be claimed for them in any sense. For they have frequently contradicted one another, and it is manifest that two contradictory statements

1 See Inspiration,' pp. 76-88.