evidence a willful heart can reject. The Jews in their prejudice against the Messiah resisted the force of evidence which almost the whole world has since acknowledged.

Selfishness makes practical infidels. Men are too busy with private interests to study the evidences which conduce to faith. Sometimes in their delirious scramble after the things of the world they lose all ideas even of the existence of God. Their atheism is grounded in

mammon.

Impure literature is also the cause of much of the prevailing skepticism in our land. Infidels are manufactured at some of the colleges and institutions of learning. Text-books upon science by the leading skeptics are found in their curriculums, and their libraries are crammed with trashy literature from the pens of unbelievers.

The late Professor Chapman, of Mount Union College, once said he knew a man who had been educated into infidelity, and was so rooted and grounded in unbelief, that when he desired to embrace the truth he could not. He had so worked himself into the labyrinth of unbelief, that when he would believe he could not find his way back through the mazes of skeptical ideas, and with tears he uttered the sad lamentation, "O, if I only could believe!"

But is there really any reason for such unbelief? " People," says Moody, "read infidel books and wonder why they are unbelievers. I ask why they read such books. They think they must read both sides. I say that book is a lie; how can it be one side when it is a lie? It is not one side at all. Suppose a man tells downright lies about my family, and I read them so as to hear both sides; it would not be long before some suspicion would creep into my mind. I said to a man once: 'Have you got a wife? Yes, and a good one.' I asked: Now what if I should come to you and cast out insinuations against her?' And he said: 'Well your life would not be safe long if you did.' did.' I told him just to treat the devil as he would treat a man who went around with such stories. We are not to blame for having doubts flitting through our minds, but for harboring them. Let us go out trusting the Lord with heart and soul."

Some fall into doubt by falling into sin. Life shapes the belief. Men hold such and such opinions because they live such and such lives. They begin to do wrong, find pleasure in it, and then conclude that what yields pleasure must be right. They make their own sensibilities their criterion of judgment. After they are established in iniquity, the thought comes to them that error ought to be right, and they defend it to make it right. By this process men defend gam

bling, drunkenness, polygamy, and other forms of evil. They do not reach these conclusions through the channels of pure reason, but through the various gradations of a corrupt life. It is the life that controls the faith, rather than the faith that guides the life. A man is responsible for such unbelief. Any person who begins to practice deception and keeps at it until he persuades himself it is right, is responsible for his wrong belief. When Paul preached to the Jews at Rome, some of them believed the words which he had spoken, and some believed not." Why did they not all believe? Because some were extremely selfish, prejudiced, and hard of heart, made so by their own modes of life. They allowed other things to engross their minds and delight their hearts. They would not receive Paul's words because Paul's words tended to overthrow their bad habits and practices. It is so to-day. The gospel is preached, and some refuse to believe because it cuts into their secret and selfish ways. Their own practice has prejudiced the case. If all persons would come to the house of God with hearts free from the undue love of self, sin, and the world, and with minds prepared by prayer and meditation to hear the gospel impartially, a thousand would believe where now there is only Business, pleasure, secret sin, render the gospel of none effect. Here is the secret of many an apostasy in young life. When young persons, perhaps those who have had religious training, "become depraved in their moral feelings, and licentious in their conduct, the vitiation of the imagination and of the social affections tends to obscure that internal evidence of the truth of Christianity which, to a mind not depraved, or perverted, is alone sufficient to command belief. And as the injunctions of the Bible, and its awful sanctions, are the principal restraints upon the passions, there is a strong motive for wishing to invalidate its authority: this motive may so far divert the attention from the direct evidence of revelation, and so fix it upon objections and difficulties, that, at length, a very sincere kind of infidelity may be produced, which may continue to infatuate the understanding to the last moment of life."

one.

THE UNREASONABLENESS OF UNBELIEF.

Infidels boast of their reasoning qualities; but when you look for these qualities in fact, they are not to be found. Nothing is more unreasonable than unbelief. To reject all rational and logical evidence of the truth of religion, and refuse to test it by experience, is the very height of absurdity. This the infidel does. He rejects all the

testimony of experienced Christians, when on the strength of the evidence of almost any two of them he would condemn his fellowman to the gallows, or the dungeon.

Confidence in testimony is natural to man, yet the infidel discriminates against the strongest evidence in support of religion, when, too, he himself knows absolutely nothing contrary to its truth.

"Infidels in all ages," observes the late Hon. Thurlow Weed, "have found their strongest arguments against revealed religion upon what they regard as improbable. And yet we are not called on to believe any thing more incomprehensible than our own existence. We might with about the same degree of reason deny this fact, as refuse to believe in a future existence. We know that we live in this world. Is it unreasonable to believe that we may live in another world? If we are to believe nothing but what we understand, we go through life incredulous and aimless. We are ready enough to believe on information the things that relate to this world. But we are slow to believe in prophecy and revelation, though both are corroborated by observation, experience, and events. Infidelity, claiming superiority in reason,' and common sense, asks us to believe that all of grandeur and sublimity, all of vastness and power in the bountiful earth, comes by chance; that every thing is self-existing, and that law, order, and harmony are accidents."

Infidels are unreasonable because they reject the only system of truth which secures satisfaction of mind in this life, and good hope through grace of blessedness beyond.

Indisputably," says Byron, "the firm believers of the gospel have a great advantage over all others; for this simple reason, that if true, they will have their reward hereafter; and if there be no hereafter, they can but be with the infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through life, without subsequent disappointment." Atheism does not settle the question against man's immortality. Were atheism true, we may still be immortal. For as Bishop Butler says substantially: Having existed in this world without a God, we may exist in another without him. God or no God, man now exists, and it is no more wonderful that he should exist hereafter than that he should exist at all. "Thy dead men shall live." This prospect is a source of untold comfort in this life. The hope of eternal life mitigates the pains and ills of life and lifts the soul above the conflicts and sorrows of this world, and is a rock of support in the day of misfortune, sickness, disappointment, and death. Even if there would be no hereafter, as the skeptic avers, it pays to be a Christian,

since godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of this life as well as of that which is to come.

Unbelief is unreasonable because it tramples under foot the Son of God, and counts the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing, and does despite to the spirit of grace. It says: "I have no confidence in the necessity or nature or reality of the atonement; and as for Jesus Christ, I do not believe that 'his blood cleanseth from all sin.' I do not feel in my heart that he is 'my wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' I, in fact, do not realizingly believe any such thing.

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Infidelity is the cause of all other sins. A little reflection will convince any one who will look at the subject, that unbelief, or the withholding a felt confidence in the character, word, and promises of God, is the cause of worldly mindedness and selfishness, under all the forms in which they exist in this world. Let the mind but have a conscious realizing assurance that all the infinitely interesting things contained in the Bible are realities, and it instantly breaks the power of selfishness and pride, and every other abomination, and delivers the soul up to the entire dominion of truth."

Infidelity is unreasonable because it is in direct opposition to common sense. Why has man the capacity to believe, if it is sensible to be unbelieving? Why is he not like the brutes-destitute even of the rudiments of faith? What is an eye for, but to see with? What is a tongue for, but to talk with? What is a mind for, but to weigh evidence, and believe with? Since the faculty of faith is given, it is but common sense to use it. Some one has said that "unbelief is nature's moral vacuum, and which it most abhors."

Every thing around us incites to faith. Every thing we do is an exhibition of faith. A man without the faith of daily life would be a monstrosity, as surely as one without arms or legs. Faith, not doubt, is the law of nature. And faith, not doubt, is the law of grace. Show me an unbeliever, and I will show you a man who is out of harmony with God. The opponents of righteousness are always unbelievers.

Unbelief is unreasonable because its tendency is to throw human life into a scene of confusion and discord. Doubt always works badly. Doubt causes perplexity, wandering, distress, and darkness ever deepening. The doubter never gets beyond a perhaps.

"Doubt leads to discouragement and despair, and its logical issue is suicide. It causes failure-it forfeited Canaan. It is the very zero of construction. It never moves forward; it begets no inspiration;

it is purely negative. It has no tendency whatever to construction, but only to disintegration and destruction. Atheism has never accomplished any thing good or great. It finds civilization, and leaves demoralization. It drives society from its centers, and reduces the Babel-builder to the Bedouin, the cultured citizen to the Bohemian, vagabond, and Hottentot. It finds organic happiness, and leaves sporadic madmen and interminable deserts. Faith moves forward in straight lines, and accomplishes good with every movement. It brings joy to the soul and to the world. The songs of the ages have been the utterances of faith. The achievements of the world, its 'Pillars of Hercules,' have been reared up by faith. Faith is the making of manhood-it concentrates power. Failures in life are owing to a lack of belief in some great truth or principle. Firm conviction is necessary to and will bear one on to success. From such conviction springs originality. Faith is prehensile. It not only searches for truth, with Lessing, but it reaches truth and rests in its fruition."

O, what would be the condition of the world without faith? Blight would rest upon mankind were religious belief destroyed. "Of all human sorrows the bitterest is to discover that we have misplaced our love; labored and suffered in vain; thrown away our heart's devotion." Rob mankind of the thought of God, of a revelation and a future life, and to life's latest hour there would remain in every heart which has once loved God an infinite regret that it can love him no more, "and the universe, were it crowded with a million friends, would seem empty when the Infinite Friend were gone."

THE REMEDY FOR UNBELIEF.

The remedy for different phases of unbelief will depend upon the diagnosis in each case. When the cause is ignorance, religious knowledge ought to cure it, and the doubters should be encouraged to learn the truth. A sincere doubter will never hesitate to receive instruction, or even to apply himself to gain information by his own exertions. No man has the right to claim sincerity in unbelief until he has done his best to gain a knowledge of the evidences. As Dr. D. W. C. Huntington justly observes:

'Sincerity in doubting means a great deal. (1) A sincere doubter will not trifle with religious truth. He will admit its great importance. He will treat it seriously. (2) Sincerity never scoffs. A scoffer has no convictions. He has no reasons for his scoffs, and cares for none. (3) Sincere doubters never parade their doubts. They