t of man with good cheer.

Let us never imagine that we can strengthen Christianity by leaving out
the great doctrines which have given it life and power. Faith is not a
mere matter of feeling. It is the acceptance of truth, positive,
unchanging, revealed truth, in regard to God and the world, Christ and
the soul, duty and immortality. The first appeal to faith lies in the
clearness and vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which this truth
is presented.

There has not been too much preaching of doctrine in this age. There has
been too little. And what there has been, has been too dull and cold and
formal, too vague and misty, too wavering and uncertain.

What the world wants and waits for to-day is a strong, true, vital
preaching of doctrine. The Church must realize anew the precious value
of the truths which Christ has given her. She must not conceal them or
cast them away; she must bring them out into the light, press them home
upon the minds and hearts of men. She must simplify her statement of
them, so that men can understand what they mean. She must not be content
with repeating them in the language of past centuries. She must
translate them into the language of to-day. First century texts will
never wear out because they are inspired. But seventeenth century
sermons grow obsolete because they are not inspired. Texts from the Word
of God, preaching in the words of living men,--that is what we need.

We must think about the doctrines of Christianity more earnestly and
profoundly. We must renew our Christian evidences, as an army fits
itself with new weapons. The old-fashioned form of the "argument from
design in nature" has gone out with the old-fashioned books of science
which it used. But there is a new and more wonderful proof of God's
presence in the world,--the argument from moral ends in evolution. Every
real advance of science makes the intelligent order of the universe more
sublimely clear. Every century of human experience confirms the Divine
claims and adds to the Divine triumphs of Jesus Christ. Social progress
has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of His gospel; and He lays
His hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still
trouble us, "the social lies that warp us from the living truth."
Christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness
now as it was in the first century. Every moral step that man has taken
upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of hi