inspiration of this book or any theory in regard to its inspiration. It
is not the election of certain souls and the perdition of other souls.
It is not the length of man's punishment, whether it is going to be
forever and ever, or whether man is to go to his restoration. It is not
even the constitution of the divine life, the great truth of the way in
which God lives within His own nature. None of these are the essence of
the Christian faith, but simply this: The testimony of the divine in man
to the divine in man that lifts the man up and says: "For me to be
brutal is unmanly; to be divine is to be my only true self." Why do I
believe in God? If some man asked me, when on the street, I think I
should have an answer to give him. I could give one great reason--two
great reasons which are really but one great reason--why I believe in
God. I believe in God, my friends, I believe in God with all my soul,
because this world is inexplicable without Him and explicable with Him,
and because Jesus Christ believed in Him; and it was Jesus Christ that
showed me that this world demanded God and was inexplicable without Him;
that made certain every suspicion and dream that I had had before, and
Jesus Christ believed in Him. Shall I go to the expert about chemistry
or geology and ask him the truth with regard to the structure of the
world and the meeting of its atoms and forces? And shall not I go to the
spiritual expert, to him in whom the spiritual life of man has been
clearest, and say, "O Christ, tell me what is the centre and source and
end of all?" When he says, "God," shall I not believe Him?

It is impossible, as I have suggested to you again and again in what I
have been saying, that a man can have his mind open to the receipt of
the truth of a person unless he be a certain kind of man himself. I do
not know but the basest and the wickedest man who lives may believe in
the Copernican theory, or that two and two make four, yet I cannot help
believing that if he were a better and truer man he would believe even