beyond, then in the name of things as they are, whether they have a God
or not, let us smash the deceiving glass, and face the darkness or the
daylight outside. "Religion is nothing unless it is true," and its
workableness is the test of its truth. Behind the accepted hypotheses of
science lie countless experiments; and anyone who questions an
hypothesis is simply bidden repeat the experiment and convince himself.
Behind the fundamental conviction of Christians are generations of
believers who have tried it and proved it. The God and Father of Jesus
is a tested hypothesis; and he who questions must experiment, and let
God convince him. To commit one's self to God in Christ and be redeemed
from most real sins--turned from selfishness to love, from slavery to
freedom; to trust Him in most real difficulties and perplexities, and
find one's self empowered and enlightened;--is to discover that faith
works, and works gloriously. A man's idea of God may be, and cannot but
be, inadequate; but it corresponds not to nothing existent, but to
Someone most alive. That which comes to us through the idea is witness
of the Reality behind it.

Nor are we confined to the witness of our personal discoveries. There is
a social attestation of the workableness of faith. The surest way of
establishing the worth of our religious experience is to share it with
another; the strongest confirmation of the objective existence of Him
with whom we have to do is to lead another to see Him. The most
effective defender of the faith is the missionary. "It requires," as
David Livingstone said, "perpetual propagation to attest its
genuineness." Not they who sit and study and discuss it, however
cleverly and learnedly, discover its truth; but they who spend and are
spent in attempting to bring a whole world to know the redeeming love of
One who is, and who rewards with indubitable sonship with Himself those
who prove wholeheartedly loyal.