amine, the tales of St. Bartholomew and the Inquisition,
and then deny by material philosophy the possibility of even a Calvinistic
hell; deny the personality of man because your microscope and scalpel can
not find a soul by dissecting the brain of the mathematician, and then
deny a personal God because his spirit eludes the grasp of sealed
crucibles and can not be detected by digging in the earth with the spade.
Deny the existence of conscious life, and then in the light of reason and
science deny that the forces that generate life must from necessary law
work for its continuance and immortality. Extreme materialism confidently
teaches the birth, death and resurrection of planetary universes; why
should such grand faith stagger at the theory of the resurrection of a
soul? Where is the scientific absurdity of Renan's distant hope, that this
mighty resurrection of dead worlds will embrace in its infinite scope the
awakening to consciousness; the universal past consciousness of the
universe. May not both theist and atheist find in this line of thought a
partial answer to the oft recurring modern prayer, "Help thou mine
unbelief."--_From the Religio-Philosophic Journal._

Can you believe that all things are the result of blind, unintelligent
forces, operating under mechanical laws?

THE SHASTERS AND VEDAS, AND THE CHINESE, GOVERNMENT, RELIGION, ETC.

Men who wish to be known as scientific skeptics and unbelievers often
boast that the above-mentioned books are more worthy of respect than the
books of the Bible. For the benefit of all who may not have access to
those books, the following, from Duff's India, credited to the Shasters,
may be of service in the search after truth:

"Brahm produced an egg. All the primary atoms, qualities, and principles,
the seeds of future worlds, that had been evolved from the substance of
Brahm, were now collected together and deposited in the newly produced
egg. And into it, along with them, entered the self-existent himself,
under the assumed form of Brahma; and then he sat vivifying, expanding,
and combining the elements, during four thousand three hundred millions of
solar years. During this amazing period the wondrous egg floated like a
bubble on the water, increasing constantly in size. At length the supreme,
who dwelt therein, burst the shell of the stupendous egg and issued forth
under a new form with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand
arms. Along wi