deluded, or bad men. The character of its early founders, and the
Person to whom it owes its name, must, for the same reason, be
abandoned. The Old Testament can form but a feeble barrier to the
flood which has thus swept away the New, with all which has arisen out
of the assumed truth of its history. And thus each man, cut off from
the past, is left to discover a God for himself, from evidence which,
to satisfy him, must necessarily be more overwhelming than that which
he rejects, and on which the faith of the Christian Church has rested
for eighteen centuries. Can any man be satisfied with such a basis of
religion as this? Having rejected God as revealed in Jesus, _can_ he
peril his soul in peace on the God discovered by himself? Having fled
from Christianity as a religion whose foundations are insecure, can he
repose with confidence in the building which he himself has reared?
Or, if he moves at all, must he not gradually slide into universal
scepticism, and conclude that, since he cannot believe in Jesus,
he can believe in no one else,--that if deceived by Him he may be
deceived by all,--that if there is no such Person as the Divine Son,
there is no such Person as the Divine Father,--that if he must be
without Christ, he must necessarily be without God!

He may, indeed, in such a case, profess to believe in _a_ God; but is
He the living and true God, or one who is but the product of his own
mind, the shadow cast by his own human spirit? Oh! hear the words of
Him who is truth itself: "Ye believe in God, believe also in me;" "All
things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son
but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and
he to whom the Son will reveal him;" "Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!" May the Lord's last
prayer be answered in us: "Father, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also
may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he