Pride in asking questions.

Humble spirit.

not follow you with any desire to have the difficulty removed. He either is absorbed in thinking how shrewdly he discovered and expressed the difficulty, or else, if he listens to your reply, it is to find something in it upon which he can hang a new question, or prolong the difficulty. He feels a sort of pride in not having his question easily answered. He can not be instructed, while in this state of mind.

"What then would you say to a boy in such a case?" you will ask.

I would say this to him: "I do not understand that very well myself. I know nothing about the creation but what that chapter tells me. You can think about it, and perhaps some explanation will occur to you. In the mean time it is not very necessary for us to know. It is not necessary for you to understand exactly how God made the world, in order to enable you to be a good boy next week."

Thus universally, a humble, docile spirit will disarm every theoretical difficulty of its power to perplex us, or to disturb our peace.

Evidences of Christianity.

The merchant.

CHAPTER VII.

EVIDENCES OF

CHRISTIANITY.

"God who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath, in these last days, spoken unto us by his Son."

THE first inquiry which meets us in entering upon the consideration of this subject is, "What sort of evidence of the truth of Christianity are we to expect?" The only proper answer is, that sort of evidence which men require to produce conviction, and to control the conduct in other cases. The human mind is so constituted, that men are governed by a certain kind and degree of evidence in all the concerns of life—a kind and a degree which is adapted to the circumstances in which we are placed here. This evidence, however, almost always falls very far short of demonstration, or absolute certainty. Still it is enough to control the conduct. By the influence of it a man will embark in the most momentous enterprises, and he is often induced by it to abandon his most favorite plans. Still it is very far short of demonstration, or absolute certainty. For example, a merchant receives in his counting-room a newspaper which marks the prices of some species of goods at a foreign port as very high. He immediately determines to purchase a quantity of the goods, and to send a cargo there; but suppose, as he is making arrangements for this purpose, his clerk should say to him, "Perhaps this information may not be correct. The correspondent of the editor may have made a false

Skepticism.

statement for some fraudulent purpose, or the communication may have been forged; or some evil-minded person having the article in question for sale, may have contrived by stealth to alter the types, so as to cause the paper to make a false report, at least in some of the copies."

Now in such a case, would the merchant be influenced in the

slightest degree by such a skeptical spirit as this? Would he attempt to reply to these suppositions, and to show that the channel of communication between the distant port and his own counting-room could not have been broken in upon by fraud somewhere in its course, so as to bring a false statement to him? He could not show this. His only reply must be, if he should reply at all, "The evidence of this printed sheet is not perfect demonstration, but it is just such evidence in kind and degree as I act upon in all my business; and it is enough. Were I to pause with the spirit of your present objections, and refuse to act whenever such doubts as those you have presented might be entertained, I might close my business at once, and spend life in inaction. I could not, in one case in ten thousand, get the evidence which would satisfy such a spirit."

Again you are a parent, I suppose; you have a son

The unexpected letter.

The sick child.

traveling at a distance from home, and you receive some day a letter from the post-office in a strange handwriting, and signed by a name that is entirely new, informing you that your son has been taken sick at one of the villages on his route, and that he is lying dangerously ill at the house of the writer, and has requested that his father might be informed of his condition and urged to come and see him before he dies.

Where now is the father who in such a case would say to himself, "Stop, this may be a deception; some one may have forged this letter to impose upon me. Before I take this journey I must write to some responsible man in that village to ascertain the facts."

No; instead of looking with suspicion upon the letter, scrutinizing it carefully to find marks of counterfeiting, he would not even read it a second time. As soon as he had caught a glimpse of its contents he would throw it hastily aside, and urging the arrangements for his departure to the utmost, he would hasten away, saying, "Let me go as soon as possible to my dying son."

I will state one more case, though perhaps it is so evident, upon a moment's reflection, that men do not wait for perfect certainty in the evidence upon which they act, that I have already stated too many.

Your child is sick, and as he lies tossing in a burning fever on his bed, the physician comes in to visit him. He looks for a few minutes at the patient, examines the symptoms, and then hastily writes an almost illegible prescription, whose irrugular and abbreviated characters are entirely unintelligible to all but professional eyes. You give this prescription to a messenger-perhaps to some one whom you do not know-and he carries it to the apothecary, who, from the indiscriminate multitude of jars, and drawers, and boxes, filled with every powerful medi

Men act from reasonable evidence.

cine, and corroding acid, and deadly poison, he selects a little here and a little there, with which, talking perhaps all the time to those around him, he compounds a remedy for your son. The messenger brings it to the sick chamber, and as he puts it into your hands, do you think of stopping to consider the possibility of a mistake? How easily might the physician, by substituting one barbarous Latin name for another, or by making one little character too few or too many, have so altered the ingredients, or the proportions of the mixture, as to convert that which was intended to be a remedy, to an active and fatal poison. How easily might the apothecary, by using the wrong weight, or mistaking one white powder for another precisely similar in appearance, or by giving your messenger the parcel intended for another customer, send you, not a remedy which would allay the fever and bring repose to the restless child, but an irritating stimulus, which should urge on to double fury the raging of the disease, or terminate it at once by sudden death.

How possible are these things, but who stops to consider them? How absurd would it be to consider them! You administer the remedy with unhesitating confidence, and in a few days the returning health of your child shows that it is wise for you to act, even in cases of life and death, on reasonable evidence, without waiting for the absolute certainty of moral demonstration.

Now this is exactly the case with the subject of the Christian religion. It comes purporting to be a message from Heaven, and it brings with it just such a kind of evidence as men act upon in all their other concerns. The evidence is abundant; at the same time, however, any one who dislikes the truths or the requirements of this Gospel, may easily, like the skeptical clerk in the case above mentioned, make objections and difficulties innumerable. A man