their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (James 1:27).

Somewhat abashed, and amidst the joy of the Christians and confusion of his own party, he opened the Bible again and read:

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ?" (Isa. 58:6).

Still more abashed, he read again as the book opened:

"Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isa. I: 16).

He made one last attempt and read:

"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Mic. 6: 8).

Disappointed and chagrined, the skeptic left the platform, overwhelmed by the sneers of his companions and the tumultuous joy of the Christians.

No Christian could desire a more favorable test than this. The Scriptures will bear to be taken at random and read in the presence of their bitterest foes, for "every word of God is pure as silver refined in a furnace of earth."

IT PROVES ITSELF.

A GENTLEMAN approached the fruit-stand of an Italian woman, whom he found very intently engaged in reading a book.

"What are you reading there, my good woman, that seems to interest you so much ?" he inquired. "The Word of God," said the woman.

"The Word of God? Who told you that?" "God told me Himself," answered the woman. "God told you? How did He do that? Have you ever talked with God? How did He tell you that was His Word?"

Not accustomed to discuss questions of theology, the woman was a little confused. Recovering herself, she looked upward into the sky and said: “Sir, can you prove to me there is a sun up there in the heavens ?"

"Why do you ask me It warms me and I

"Prove it?" said the man. to prove it? It proves itself. see its light; what better proof can any one want ?"

The woman smiled and said: "Just so; you are right. And that is just the way God tells me this book is His Word. I read it, and it warms me and gives me light. I see Him in it, and what it says is light and warmth which none but God can give; and so He tells me that it is His Word. What more

proof do I need ?"

The man left, admiring the simple argument of the woman, and took pleasure in relating it as indicating a clear and sufficient proof of the divinity of the Bible.

GENERAL BERTRAND AND NAPOLEON.

AFTER the fall of Napoleon, and while in exile on the island of St. Helena, his friend General Bertrand remained with him as one of his companions. Bertrand was an avowed unbeliever on the subject of religion. On one occasion the dethroned emperor said something about the divinity of Christ, to which Bertrand remarked:

"I cannot conceive, Sire, how a great man like you can believe that the Supreme Being ever exhibited Himself to men under a human form, with a body, a face, mouth, and eyes. Let Jesus be whatever you please the highest intelligence, the purest heart, the most profound legislator, and, in all respects, the most singular being that ever existed: I grant it; still, he was simply a man, who taught his disciples and deluded credulous people, as did Orpheus, Confucius, Brahma. Jesus caused Himself to be adored, because His predecessors, Isis and Osiris, Jupiter and Juno, had proudly made themselves objects of worship. The ascendency of Jesus over his time was like the ascendency of the gods and heroes of fable. If Jesus has impassioned and attached to his chariot the multitude, if he has revolutionized the world, I see in that only the power of genius and the action of a commanding spirit which vanquishes the world, as so many conquerors have done-Alexander, Cæsar, you, Sire, and Mohammed-with a sword."

To this, among other things, Napoleon replied: "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man. . . There is between Christianity and

We

whatever other religion the distance of infinity. can say to the authors of every religion, 'You are neither gods nor the agents of the Deity. You are but missionaries of falsehood, moulded from the same clay with the rest of mortals. You are made with all the passions and vices inseparable from them. Your temples and your priests proclaim your origin.' Such will be the judgment, the cry of conscience, of whoever examines the gods and the temples of paganism.

Paganism was never accepted as truth by the wise men of Greece, neither by Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Anaxagoras, or Pericles. On the other side, the loftiest intellects since the advent of Christianity have had faith, a living faith, a practical faith, in the mysteries and doctrines of the gospel; not only Bossuet and Fénelon, who were preachers, but Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne and Louis XIV. Paganism is the work of man. One can here read but our imbecility. What do these gods, so boastful, know more than other mortals? these legislators, Greek or Roman-this Numa, this Lycurgus, these priests of India or of Memphis, this Confucius, this Mohammed? Absolutely nothing. They have made a perfect chaos of morals. There is not one among them all who has said anything new in reference to our future destiny, to the soul, to the essence of God, to the creation. Enter the sanctuaries of paganism. You there find perfect chaos, a thousand contradictions-war between the gods, the immobility of

sculpture, the division and the rending of unity, the parcelling out of the divine attributes mutilated or denied in their essence, the sophisms of ignorance and presumption, polluted fêtes, impurity and abomination adored; all sorts of corruption festering in the thick shades, with the rotten wood, the idol and his priest. Are these religions and these gods to be compared with Christianity? As for me, I say no. I summon entire Olympus to my tribunal. I judge the gods, but am far from prostrating myself before their vain images. The gods, the legislators of India and China, of Rome and of Athens, have nothing which can overawe me. . . . I see in Lycurgus, Numa, and Mohammed only legislators, who, having first rank in the state, have sought the best solution of the social problems; but I see nothing there which reveals divinity. . . . I recognize the gods and these great men as beings like myself. They performed a lofty part in their times, as I have done. Nothing announces them divine. On the contrary, there are numerous resemblances between them and myself-foibles and errors which ally them to me and to humanity.

Everything in Him

"It is not so with Christ. astonishes me [see pp. 221, 223]. The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine, everything is above me—everything remains grand, of a grandeur which overpowers me. His religion is a revelation from an Intelligence which certainly is not that of man. There is there a profound originality which has created a series of words and of maxims before