ife's usefulness until he
has settled the problems of the universe. Tell him those problems will
never all be settled; that his life will be done before he has begun
to settle them; and ask him what he is doing with his life meantime.
Charge him with wasting his life and his usefulness; and invite him to
deal with the moral and practical difficulties of the world, and leave
the intellectual difficulties as he goes along. To spend time upon
these is proving the less important before the more important; and, as
the French say, "The good is the enemy of the best." It is a good
thing to think; it is a better thing to work--it is a better thing to
do good. And you have him there, you see. He can't get beyond that.
You have to tell him, in fact, that there are two organs of knowledge:
the one reason, the other obedience. And now tell him, as he has tried
the first and found the little in it, just for a moment or two to join
you in trying the second. And when he asks whom he is to obey, you
tell him there is but One, and lead him to the great historical figure
who calls all men to Him: the one perfect life--the one Savior of
mankind--the one Light of the world. Ask him to begin to

OBEY CHRIST;

and, doing His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of
God.

That, I think, is about the only thing you can do with a man: to get
him into practical contact with the needs of the world, and to let him
lose his intellectual difficulties meantime. Don't ask him to give
them up altogether. Tell him to solve them afterward one by one if he
can, but meantime to give his life to Christ and his time to the
kingdom of God. You fetch him completely around when you do that. You
have taken him away from the false side of his nature, and to the
practical and moral side of his nature; and for the first time in his
life, perhaps, he puts things in their true place. He puts his nature
in the relations in which it ought to be, and he then only begins to
live. And by obedience he will soon become a learner and pupil for
himself, and Christ will teach him things, and he will find whatever
problems are solvable gradually solved as he goes along the path of
practical duty.

Now, let me, in closing, give an instance of how to deal with specific
points.

The question of miracles is thrown at my head every second day:

"What do you say to a man when he says to you, 'Why do you believe in
miracles?'"

I say, "Because I have se