manship such as nations cannot despise with impunity. The world's greatest jurists acknowledge its transcendent worth.

The institutions of learning are built upon the truths it has revealed. It preserves the languages of men, instead of being preserved by them. Skepticism has blunted and broken its weapons of assault against the Book's first chapter. The sources of modern philosophy are Christian; the master minds of the centuries have pondered its themes; the great reformers have been its students. As literature, it is the world's copy-book. The highest art speaks its language. The everlasting granite has been fashioned into "booktemples" with voices that are almost divine. The hopes and aspirations it teaches have been shaped into "frozen music" from quarries of the purest marble.

It is pre-eminently the most practical of all books. What, then, of the volume? Whence came its truths? Is this Deathless Book a product of the unaided human brain? How happens it that the truest scholarship is reverent over its pages?

The one great law, overshadowing all others, is that of "cause and effect." This law obtains as surely in the commonest affairs of men as in the

sweep and swinging of worlds; unerring as that of gravitation.

Every grand life is the result of a grand motive. Every heroic deed is proof conclusive of a noble purpose. So, in like manner, what is written reveals the writer. Every book declares the mind and purpose of its author. Literature measures the mental grasp of those who produce it. Ephemeral works are proofs positive of superficial writers.

Judging solely from what it has done, the Deathless Book must have had an authorship of a mental grasp surpassing all other literatures. Deism, denying all possibility of the superhuman, granted more in the confession of Bolingbroke than was intended, when he said: "If Christianity were a merely human discovery, it would certainly be the loveliest and most beneficent with which mankind has ever been deceived to its own real benefit." If its claims are not substantiated, it must be confessed, the Christian civilization has been shaped by a stupendous fraud. How so great a fraud could accomplish the greatest good, must tax a credulity greater than the faith which sees in the marvelous Book a superhuman Inspirer.

Matthew Arnold, in his "God and the Bible," declares: "Christianity is the greatest and happiest

stroke ever yet made for human perfection." Is such a perfection the product of a Book whose claims are not true? The question demands an answer. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the English Deist, wrote an essay to disprove the idea of any special revelation, and thought he heard a divine approval of what he had written above what man could give, in the rustling of the wind; an instinctive appeal to the fact he was attempting to deny. Deism believes in the existence of God; at the same time forgetting "that we might as well try to run without feet, as to know the Divine without a revelation from on high." Notice:

I. The Claims of the Book. It claims to be from God; professing to be divine in origin, while human in form. The language is human; the thought is divine. Says the Apostle: "Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching." The Apostle Peter referred to the Old Testament when he said: "No prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost." writer to the Hebrews asserts that it was God who spoke unto the fathers by the prophets. Under such a claim, both the Old Testament and the New have been written. The words of David could

The

well be applied to them all: "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue." In like manner did Moses declare the personal command of God: "Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say." Repeated expressions occur like these: "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord"; "The word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel"; "The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea"; "The word of the Lord that came unto Micah," and hundreds of like meaning.

From such assumptions we are compelled to conIclude the Book claims to be the Book of God. It claims to give that which is beyond the power of man to originate.

Such an assumption must be either false or true. If false, then the writers were self-deceived or dishonest. Whichever of these deductions might be true, the great fact would remain, the Book would not be what it claims, or, in other words, it is unreliable.

In order to declare it false as to its statements, we must inquire whether men have proved it unreliable. We need not repeat the unwearying assaults of the centuries, in all their varied methods, while reaching their conclusions. We take the

Book as it bears upon the themes with which men claim acquaintance.

First: As to History. Apart from the central theme of the Book, Redemption, we may note that four fifths of the volume is history and biography. The Scriptures are not a book of law, but of life. They deal with men and nations. Historical errors would soon be discovered. Writings like the Psalms reflect the inner life of their author. The Prophecies never disconnect the future from the events of the Prophets' times. The Epistles, with all their instructions, supplement the history of the Apostolic Churches.

We have had experts in history by thousands, yet what is the result of their criticisms? What page has been eliminated? What narrative proven false? Not one of either. In the generation that has brought to view the mummy of the Pharaoh who oppressed Israel, there is given no stronger evidence than what the world has before known. Layard has done for the Biblical records what Dr. Schliemann has done for Ancient Troy. The standard classic authorities are unimpeachable witnesses of portions of the Scriptures. Pyramids, obelisks and tombs reveal the certainty of a history that shall outlast even granite. Sacred truth is