staggered by the problems which were presented by Christianity. Bishop
Butler's argument was directed against a special set of antagonists, an
argument, it may be said, of little avail against the scepticism of the
present day. The argument seems to have been unanswerable by those to
whom it was addressed. The grounds on which they rejected the
Revelation of Christ were shown to be inadequate. When they accepted
this or that article of Natural Religion, they had accepted what was as
difficult of belief as this or that part of the Revelation which they
rejected. The mysteries which existed in the religion with which they
would have nothing to do were in harmony with the {141} mysteries which
existed in the religion which they declared to be necessary for the
welfare of society. That retort may be made with even more effect to
those who so far occupy that same ground to-day. They rejoice to
believe that there is a God, that He is not far off, that He
communicates Himself to their souls, that the love which we bear to one
another is but a faint image of the love which He bears to us, that the
noblest qualities which exist in us exist more purely, more gloriously
in Him, that we are in very deed His children and are called to
manifest His likeness. It is by prayer, both in public and in private,
both in congregations and alone with the Alone, that His Love and His
Help can be comprehended and used. He is no absent God: His Ear is not
heavy that it cannot hear, nor His arm shortened that it cannot save.
With this belief we, as Christians, have no dispute: we gladly go along
with Theists in asserting it: we {142} only wonder at their
unwillingness to go along with us a little further. For if God be such
as they glowingly depict Him, if our relations to Him be such as they
esteem it our greatest dignity to know, there is nothing antecedently
impossible in the thought that One Man has heard His Voice more
clearly, has surrendered to His Will more entirely, than any other in
the history of the ages and the races of mankind: nothing antecedently
impossible in the thought that to One Man His Truth has been conveyed
more brightly, more fully than to any other; that in One Man the
lineaments of the Divine Image may be seen more distinctly than in any
other. If God be such, and if our relations to God be such, as Theists
describe, why should they shrink with distrust or with antipathy from a
Son of Man Who has borne witness