this primary inquiry, not any which comes later, in regard to which at present I would offer suggestions.

But here the second embarrassment confronts us, which involves plainly a graver difficulty than does the preceding. It arises from the fact that the religion itself makes a personal spiritual experience of its power the only final evidence for it. "Taste and see that the Lord is good"; "if any man be minded to do the will of my Father in heaven, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself": these are consenting representative declarations from the older writings and the later of what is called among us The Bible, which harmonize with many others in setting forth the fact that only by spiritual experiment of the Gospel can man be assured of its Divine origin, as ultimately proved by its Divine energy. All other impressions of this must be, in the nature of the case, preparatory, rudimental. Only by trying it do men find with what subtle and exquisite adaptation the air is fitted to the lungs, so that by inhaling it their life is reinforced. Only by joyful experience of it is such a certainty produced in the mind of the inestimable beauty of sunshine, as could have been formed, as can be shaken, by no argument conceivable. Imagine the attempt to make that beauty as certain as it is to us, to one who had passed his entire life in the unlighted cavern! So it is only by trying Christianity, in its fitness to our deepest personal needs, of alliance with God, of moral renovation, of tranquillity, and of hope, that men can become utterly certain that it is from above; not a fabric, any more than the earth is, of human fancy, or a construction of human logic, or even a brilliant and lofty surmise of human aspiration; but a Divine system, as is the atmosphere, as is radiant light, presented by God to the world of mankind for their permanent sovereign life and peace.

Every religion must have it for its office to bring men to God. Mental philosophy, ethics, art, have other purposes. A religion, by its nature, must have this for its object, sublime and special If one has found this accomplished in himself by Christianity, it may reasonably be said, he will need no further argument to prove that that which thus lifts him into intimate and conscious alliance with his Maker has come from Him. No stilts, con

structed in human workshops, can enable man to walk on the level of stars. No legend or logic can lift one to new and essential fellowship with Him whose wisdom governs the universe which His holiness illumines. If one has not this experience of the system, in its efficacious and beautiful virtue, all external argument, in the absence of this, must be an ineffective marshalling of words: a breath of air, set in motion for a moment, and speedily absorbed in the great world-currents that play and pulsate around the globe.

I do not in the least overlook the importance of the difficulty thus stated. As against the final demonstrative value of any external argument for Christianity, it is insurmountable. It must be impossible, in the nature of the case, to give one a vivid and governing conviction of the Divine source and the heavenly mission of a religion, by intellectual suggestions. He can gain that, as I fully believe, only by experience: as one learns in practice the virtue of a medicine, the tonic value of a strengthening cordial, or the strange power to conquer pain which lurks in the odorous anesthetic. The kind of faith, if such it may be called, which is based simply upon extrinsic proofs, is never one to quicken joy, to inspire to service, or to win from others sympathetic response. It fails in the grand emergencies of life. It cannot have the settled security, the vital energy, it cannot inspire the overmastering enthusiasm, which belong to the faith that is born of experience. To take the just distinction of Maurice, a man may come to hold a religion, in consequence of its external proofs; but that religion will not hold him, in its constant, subtle, and stimulating grasp, except through his experience of it.

But again, my inquiry is so primary in its nature that this objection does not really challenge it. I go back to meet a prior stage of mental and spiritual search for the truth, and the ques tion which waits for our answer is this: Is there, or is there not, such a fair, obvious, antecedent probability that Christianity is from God, that each conscientious and intelligent man should study it for himself, should master it in its statements, requirements, offers, should set himself in intimate personal harmony with its law and life -thus making a sufficient experiment of it

by accepting and applying it to his own soul? I would only, as before, lead the unconvinced mind up to the system, as it stands declared in the New Testament, and show him such reasons for believing it Divine, in the transcendent sense, as may persuade him, as may forcibly prompt him, to investigate its contents, and to see if on spiritual trial of its energy he finds in it a really celestial power and glory. So, only, can the indestructible certainty be wrought in the soul.

But the steps preliminary may yet be needful; as needful a is the hand of him who leads us up to the master-piece of the rich gallery, that the delicate and ethereal charm of its splendor may stream upon us; as needful as was the ancient errand of the woman of Samaria, who called the men to see that Lord of whom afterward they said: "We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ." If one hold himself carefully to this definite purpose, he may hope, I think, to do service to his hearers; and he need not regard the sharp sneer of Dr. Newman, that 'if we rely much on argumentative proof as the basis of personal Christianity, we ought in consistency to take chemists for our cooks, and mineralogists for our masons.'

One other embarrassment, though certainly involving far less of difficulty than those which I have mentioned-but which especially confronts one who would gather the testimonies offered to Christianity by its recorded career in the world-arises from the fact that some of the worst wickedness on the earth has been wrought ostensibly on behalf of this religion, by those who have been held its disciples and advocates. The fires, kindled professedly in its service, have lighted with their glare long passages of history. The cruelties, lusts, ambitions of those who have stood as princes in the society called by its name—the treacheries, conflagrations, wholesale murders, accomplished by those who have borne with crimsoned hands its consecrated bannersthese are, assuredly, frightful to contemplate. Men may seem at first fairly justified in saying, as oftentimes they have said: "If we are to judge the tree by its fruits, which even the New Tes tament requires us to do, then the system must be intrinsically evil, born of man's nature, and of the worst part of it, not of Gel, from which have proceeded effects like these. If we are

not at liberty absolutely to predicate untruth of the whole of it, we may say that it cannot, in any exclusive and preëminent sense, be from His mind who is infinitely pure, since it has been associated with, has seemed to tolerate, or even to inspire, the fiercest and foulest vices of man."

I do not overlook the difficulty, here, as I have shown by stating it in strong terms. But it is rather apparent than real, and does not, I am sure, interpose any grave or governing obstacle, to a reflective and candid mind, in the way of the acceptance of Christianity as Divine. The physicist has to recognize a difference between the theoretical effect of a force acting without friction, in ideal freedom, and the observed effect of that force, as incessantly though silently hindered or deflected by resistances of matter. How vast the difference between the harmonies in the soul of the composer, or even as inscribed on the musical score, and the same as harshly or ignorantly rendered on jangled strings! An original energy is not to be condemned because of imperfection in the instruments or the media through which it is revealed; as the sunshine is not less purely lucid when it pierces the crystal of violet or of ruby; as the expansive force of steam is not less a beneficent instrument because it explodes the imperfect steam-chamber, or drives the ship, carelessly piloted, crashing upon reefs. However Divine Christianity may be, and in whatever superlative sense, if human nature be what it postulates, so darkly obscured, so vitally disordered, as to need a Divine intervention to amend it, it is not unnatural, it was rather to be expected, that according to the impact of this religion on any spirit remaining unpurified must be the mischiefs wrought in its name. Hypocrisy everywhere counterfeits virtue; and it deepens, as shadows do, when the light grows intenser. Fa naticism and enthusiasm are near of kin. It is only a moral difference which divides them. And the fierce fanaticism of the sanguinary bigot, though in utter contrast with the vivid enthusiasm of the devout and humble disciple, may simply show the tremendous impression made by the religion upon a temper which it does not essentially overcome and renew.

The Religion, in other words, is not disproved by the fact that the alien and hostile human will has mistaken or misapplied

it. Rather, as poisonous weeds grow must fruitfully on soils made prolific by culture, and under a glowing baptism of sunshine, so crimes and shames, if the germs of them continue in human nature, may only come to more frightful exhibition beneath the force of a religion from above. The impression which they make on the quickened public moral sensibility will certainly be sharper than in the absence of such a religion. It is not improbable that their intrinsic evil energy may be aug. mented.

I do not assume anything, then, as to the essential interior constitution of that religion declared in the New Testament. I do not fail to recognize the fact that only by inner experience of its power can we fully know if this religion has come to us from God. I do not overlook the disastrous fact that it has by no means done as yet its fairly authenticating work in the world; that it has even incurred, often, a heavy opprobrium from the gross and fierce wickedness of its adherents. But admitting all this, and looking at Christianity not now analytically, but simply as a historical Faith, confessedly discovered to the world at the outset of our era, and represented to day, to whomsoever would clearly find it, in these ancient writings, I ask myself if there is any obvious, forcible, presumptive evidence that that Religion, so declared, has come to us from God as its author? Is there such evidence, so far potential, as to properly impel men to study Christianity with a profound and faithful attention: to make themselves masters, by such attention, of whatever of doctrine, law, promise, or of alleged spiritual fact, it presents: and then to make personal experiment of its efficacy, when what it affirms, and what it requires, has to them become evident?

I think that there is such important directive and preliminary evidence that it is of a nature, and of an extent, which properly demand that it be fairly pondered by all: and that the impression received from it will become always stronger as it is more carefully and largely considered. And along a particular line of this evidence I would, in the Lectures which are to follow, conduct your thoughts.

Even here, however, a distinct limitation must be recognized by all. Anything approaching demonstrative proof, absolutely