mouths of infidels are not studied to ascertain their truth. Some reckless head starts them on their rounds, and others receive them at par without the slightest wince. It is related that many years ago, the late Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Cox was traveling in a stage-coach in company with an infidel, who was sneering at the alleged inconsistencies of the Bible. "Mention one," said Dr. Cox. The infidel replied: "It was prophesied in the Scriptures that Christ was to be the first to rise of all the dead, and yet we are told in the Gospels that when Christ expired on the cross the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.' Behold the inconsistency." "Stop," cried Dr. Cox, "you have misquoted by giving only a fragment of the narrative;" and then taking from his pocket the New Testament, he read from Matthew xxvii, the remainder of the passage-" and came out of the graves after his resurrection," etc. This is a fair specimen of most cases of unbelief. Skeptics are not eager to know the truth. They prefer their doubting and doubtful quibbles to the certainties of faith. Every man who digs down to the foundations of the Christian religion finds that it rests upon solid rock. Earnest infidels who have studied the evidences for the purpose of overthrowing Christianity, have been themselves converted to the faith. Lack of information, failure to investigate, disregard of truth in any event, lie at the root of nearly all unbelief. One of the most noted of infidel writers admitted that he had never read a single book of the New Testament. Careful examination of the Gospel in its history and teachings makes believers. This the Bible invites. This our Lord commanded. “Be ready to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear."

MANIFESTATIONS OF UNBELIEF.

There is a sort of men whose faith is all

In their five fingers, and what fingering brings;
With all beyond of wonders, great and small,
Unnamed, uncounted in their tale of things-
A race of blinkards, who peruse the case

And shell of life, but feel no soul behind,
And in the marshaled world can find a place

For all things, only not the marshaling Mind.

'T is strange; 't is sad; and yet why blame the mole
For channeling earth ?-such earthly things are they;
E'en let them muster forth in blank array,
Frames with no pictures, pictures with no soul.
I, while this dædal dome o'erspans the sod,
Will own the Builder's hand, and worship God.

(John Stuart Blackie.)

Unbelieving people betray their condition in various ways. With most of them the Bible is utterly neglected and its claims to Divine authority ignored. In every point of view the Bible is the most interesting book in the world, yet unbelievers care but little about it. They do not acquaint themselves with its wonderful history, or seek to know any thing of its sublime teachings. Even though they reject its claim to inspiration, one would think they would at least pore over it as a rare curiosity, a priceless relic handed down from other ages and countries. But they do not. Infidels are notoriously stupid as to the grandeur of the Bible.

They are also more or less indifferent as to the Church. Now, viewed as a purely human institution, the Church is the grandest organization on earth. No other has such a history; no other wields such an influence over the race. Yet unbelievers are apathetic in reference to it. They not only refuse to support it, but often seek to destroy it, utterly without cause. The Church does them no harm, yet they would harm the Church either by persecuting it, as they have done, or letting it severely alone as they are doing now.

But they are equally apathetic as to the condition of mankind. Infidels are notoriously cold-hearted. They undertake no work of evangelization; they institute no measures for the elevation of the race in any respect. They even do nothing for the education and enlightenment of mankind. Once they tried to establish and maintain a few colleges in this country, but could not succeed. In 1800 there were twelve religious and eight secular colleges in the United States, the infidels claiming most of the latter. In 1878 there were three hundred and twelve religious and only sixty-four secular-none of them avowedly infidel. More than half of these eminent secular universities and colleges are under the control of learned ministers of the gospel, and if there is in the whole world one single atheistical college or university we should like to know about it. Infidels are doing nothing for the betterment of the world. They are allowing their own peculiar institutions to go into decay. Not very long ago their temple in Boston-the only one in this country-was sold by the sheriff. Religious people have sometimes allowed themselves to be scared by a local or personal outbreak of infidelity; but, as the New York Herald sensibly remarks: "You must not suppose because the crows are pretty thick over your corn-field that they are going to eat up all of the corn in the world." The literature of infidelity amounts to little or nothing. Its organ in Boston has only a narrow reputation. It has been impossible to establish a journal of that class in New York

or Chicago.

Where there is no strength to establish a literature there is little strength to accomplish any thing good. Infidels have Those who lecture on the subject do so simply

no zeal for their cause.

for the pay.

Yet it is said that infidelity is rife, increasing, and dangerous; that it takes on various hues and is in its way doing much to hurt the world. We know it is prevalent. Sometimes we see it assume the garb of politics, sometimes of philosophy, and sometimes of the most degrading vices. Rev. Dr. George Peck once declared that "philosophical infidelity is reason run mad; political infidelity is liberty without restraint; and vulgar infidelity is a full license of the grosser passions. In every form, it is the same enemy to the improvement and happiness of man. A nation of infidels could not long exist. It would very soon burst like a bubble, and be numbered with the things that were. And this obstinate demon is lurking about in all directions; and though he may cover himself with the garb of religion, he is no less a devil at heart, nor any less dangerous to the public weal.”

CAUSES OF UNBELIEF.

Ignorance lies at the root of nearly all unbelief. But what are the causes which dispose to such a state? Why do people suffer themselves to remain in a condition of doubt and moral obtuseness?

Unbelievers are not all of one class. Some are led into skepticism from mere pride pride of thought. It tickles their vanity to be styled freethinkers. They imagine that freethinking is deep thinking, whereas the contrary is generally true. They sneer at creeds, deride the Churches, and boast themselves of superior insight. Bacon's words would aptly apply to them: "A little knowledge is dangerous, and a smattering of knowledge tendeth to arrogancy and pride of heart." Numbers of men who style themselves freethinkers, and have long blatant tongues with which to hurl anathemas against the Bible and against God, are too illiterate to write good English. We hear of one who could not spell his own name correctly, who was loud in his boasting that he was "an Ingersoll man." Put such men to a practical test of their knowledge. Show them how little they really know. Do not let them entangle you into the discussion of their favorite points. If they are inclined to atheism, ask them the seven questions proposed by Canon Farrar:

"First. Ask them, Where did matter come from? Can a dead thing create itself? Second. Ask them, Where did motion come from?

Third. Ask them where life came from, save the finger-tip of Omnipotence. Fourth. Ask them whence came the exquisite order and design in nature. If one told you that millions of printer's types should fortuitously shape themselves into the Divine Comedy' of Dante or the plays of Shakespeare, would you not think him a madman? Fifth. Ask them whence came consciousness. Sixth. Ask them who

gave you free will. Seventh, and last. Ask them whence came

conscience."

There is peculiar difficulty in answering these questions, and it were far better to busy an infidel with them than to listen in silent approval to the harangue he will torture your ears with, if you let him speak on just as he has accustomed himself to do.

Some men become known as infidels by reason of their associations. They confide more in man than in God, suffer their confidence in God to be destroyed by the unbelieving evasions of those who have not faith in God. Nothing is easier than to be led astray. Simply to keep within hearing of infidel objections and scoffs is to incline the heart to hardness. The unwary are duped into the acceptance of falsehood before they are aware of it, and become settled in lines of thought which lead only to hopeless unbelief. Not knowing the facts in the case, nor how frequently all the objections have been met by Christian thinkers, they suppose them to be of weight and unanswerable.

When Voltaire twitted Solomon of mentioning glass in Proverbs xxiii, 31, hundreds of years before glass was made, it is said that half the infidels of Europe repeated the jest. A little attention showed that Solomon had said nothing about glass in the passage, but that glass was known five hundred years before his time. Infidel books and tracts are full of bold assertions, the proof being: "He says so." By some this is taken as sufficient. It should never be taken as sufficient by any body.

Mistaking the nature of inspiration leads some men to doubt. They do not distinguish betwixt the human and divine elements in the Bible. They think that the sacred writers all should have one style, and never vary one particle in their statements of truth. Such a form of inspiration as they demand would have turned the "holy men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" into pagan oracles. God preferred to leave the sacred penman free. He inbreathed into their minds his own thoughts, and allowed them to tell them as they would, only preserving them from hurtful error.

Again, mere animalism makes some people unbelievers. Their

physical and mental type is so low, their appetites and passions so enslaved, that they are scarcely susceptible to the refining influences of divine truth. They answer to the inspired description of "mere brute beasts," who have smothered appreciation of spiritual realities by their debasing habits and practices. Their infidelity is of the lowest type. They are generally fond of selecting from the Bible such passages of Scriptures as in themselves admit of base construction, or seem on their face unrefined and vulgar. No allowance is made for the fact that the Scriptures are the oldest authentic writings in the world, and that in the ages when they appeared, and in the language in which they were written, there was not the slightest objection to such expressions, and that every part of the inspired record served its purpose in the then existing condition of society, either in rescuing man from a worse condition of things or pointing a way toward a better practice. No notice is taken either of the fact that most of these passages are incidental to the records, in no case inculcate moral wrong, and have never produced any harm in the world, unless it be among those who habitually and wantonly wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. The poets of only a century or two ago indulged themselves and satiated the public with songs which for ribaldry and blasphemy no ancient records bear any comparison to, yet infidels are never heard dilating upon the wickedness of these men or the bad tendency of their productions. With them, Shakespeare and Byron, Congreve and Wycherley, with all their filth and obscenity, are inspired bards, even ahead of David and Isaiah, Christ and John. Pity the intellect and heart which delight to revel in filth; which can discover among the purest gems that adorn the literary page only the dirt and dust which happen to attend them. Every man who knows any thing knows that the teachings of the Bible are elevating and wholesome. They have lifted up the world to its present high estate. They are accomplishing wonders wherever they go. They plainly show to man his duty and destiny, his privileges and reward. They have commanded the homage of the greatest intellects that have ever lived, and the devotion of the purest hearts. They stand to-day unimpeachable for morality and exalting influence, notwithstanding they record the depravity of other ages, and allow the depraved in this age to indulge their satanic propensity for reveling in the mud, as the filth and offscouring of the world.

Mere willfulness sometimes prevents exercise of faith. Men do not believe, simply because they will not. Confidence is an action of the will itself, and it is often amazing to observe what an amount of