Revolution was shortlived, and did not represent the majority of the people, any more than Bolshevism represents the true spirit of Russia. The Confucianism of China might at first sight seem an exception, but it is not a denial of God, but rather a system of morality based on duty to the State. The prevalence, side by side with Confucianism, of other creeds shows that the Chinese could not rest without some idea of God, however perverted it might be. If we take a dozen of the world's greatest men who were not religious teachers, say Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, Cæsar, Dante, Michelangelo, Bacon, Shakespeare, Newton, Kant, Napoleon, we find that they were all believers in God though in several instances it was a purely intellectual belief. They did not want to believe in Him, but they had to do so, whether they liked it or not. It is not probable that all the world has made a mistake in a matter of such importance, and if we say it has done so we may and must go on to say that in that case it is just as likely to have been deceived about its philosophy or about anything else.

2. The Need of a Creator.-It seems impossible to believe that the world came into being without a Designer and Creator. We know that, not so very long ago as geological time goes, this earth was a glowing mass of fire in which no life could exist. How did life start and how did it grow into all its complexity in such a short time? The only alternative to design is Chance, and the answer is that the probabilities against Chance are incredibly and impossibly great. Even were they a million times less than they are the time required for Chance to work its miracles does not exist. Even a philosopher like Mr. Herbert Spencer does not try to explain the world, but has to fall back on the Unknown (and according to him unknowable) Power which exists and works behind all the phenomena of the universe. Even if we understood the origin of Life there would still remain the even greater wonder of Consciousness to be explained. The old materialism of the last century is almost extinct among serious thinkers to-day. Whenever we trace things back to their source

we come upon not matter, but spirit. Matter itself is, we are now told, not what we once thought it was. The atom is composed of electrons and the electron is not matter at all, but simply a centre of poise. When we press it back to its source, matter evaporates into something much less solid than air, something that is not matter even in its most tenuous form.

3. Order and Beauty.-Quite apart from the problem of Creation is the problem of Order and Beauty. We find all through the world and indeed, throughout the universe, a most wonderful Order. It is a fundamental axiom of science that nothing comes by chance or without cause, that there is a reason for everything, a law which will explain it if only it can be discovered. When a man of science finds something that cannot be explained he does not say: "It is no use to try to explain this; probably there is no reason why it should be thus rather than otherwise!" On the contrary, he is absolutely convinced that there is a reason, if he could only find it, and he is prepared to devote his whole life to try to discover it. He may fail, but his faith that the reason is there is never shaken. In other words, all science is founded on the conviction that perfect order pervades the universe; but Order, so far as we know it, proceeds only from Intelligence and nothing but Intelligence can have given rise to the marvellous complication of the Order of the universe.

The case is even stronger when we think of Beauty. We are all convinced that Beauty exists. No one can look at the sunset sky without being converted to a belief in beauty, or study a butterfly's wing without being amazed. Now we must never forget that beauty has no existence, and never had any existence, apart from an intelligent mind. Even the sunset had no beauty until there was an intelligence to appreciate it. How then did it come to possess all those characteristics which appeal most strongly to intelligence where it exists? How could non-intelligence have made that which corresponds so exactly to the very perfection of intelligence? There is no answer.

4. Conscience and the Moral Law.-We find everywhere

certain things regarded as wrong and certain things regarded as right. It is true that standards of right and wrong vary to some extent in different ages and in different countries; but certain things are probably almost universally regarded as wrong. For example, murder of a friend, treachery to a friend, cowardice, theft from a friend, cruelty to parents or to children, other than newborn, disobedience to tribal customs, laws, and authorities, would be almost universally regarded as wrong, while respect for parents, self-sacrifice for the common good, obedience to constituted authority, unselfishness, justice, family affection, courage, would be almost universally regarded as virtues. Thus we find everywhere the rule of conscience, sometimes less, sometimes more, regarded, but always setting up standards for which we cannot account on material grounds, since conscience most often leads a man to act contrary to his natural instincts and often to his obvious interests.

In addition to this we see Moral Laws operating, as Bishop Butler has pointed out, in the world at large. While we often see virtue rewarded and vice punished by natural laws, we never see virtue, as such, punished, or vice, as such, rewarded. For instance, if a man is sober, steady, hardworking, and trustworthy we often see him prospering because of these virtues, but we do not see him suffering because of them. If a man is dissolute, drunken, lazy, and untrustworthy we often see the natural punishment of disease and suffering come upon him, but we never see him naturally rewarded because he is drunken or lazy, though a bad man may possess also other qualities which bring him into prominence. We can only account for these things by believing that there is a God that judgeth the earth.

5. Personal Experience.-In addition to all these evidences there is the evidence of Personal Experience. We find in ourselves certain aspirations, ideals, and powers, to which we find as a matter of fact that there is something outside ourselves to correspond. Take prayer for instance. No one who has made a regular and lifelong habit of

prayer, and has taken the trouble to note down the extent to which his prayers have been answered, can doubt that there is a response to prayer from outside himself. There are, indeed, prayers which for some reason remain unanswered, as St. Paul points out to us, but the extraordinary proportion of prayers that are answered to those that are not leaves no doubt in his mind, and apart from prayer altogether, where does he get his very idea of God and the spiritual world from? The material cannot produce the spiritual; the spiritual is every bit as real as the material, and its origin requires an explanation just as much. To say that all spiritual life comes from the Spirit of God is intelligible, to say that it is an illusion evolved from mere matter is not credible. We know that matter can produce matter and spirit can produce spirit, but we have no proof whatever that matter can produce spirit, and until this is shown to be the case, we have every right to disbelieve it.

It will be seen that none of these lines of thought is absolutely conclusive by itself, but taken together they form a cumulative argument of irresistible power. If you find a row of great stones in a straight line there is a presumption that they were placed there by man. If you find that they are alternately white and black the presumption is strengthened. If you find that all are of exactly the same shape the presumption becomes almost a certainty, and if you find that there is a definite and exact ratio in the distance between the stones no reasonable doubt can be left. God does not force us to believe in Him because then we should be mere automata, but He does give us such evidence of His being that it is more difficult to doubt than to believe. The will has more to do with the matter than the head. Men often do not

believe, not because belief is difficult but because they do not want to believe, and this is a sin from which may God keep us free.

XXXII.—THE CHURCH

If he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the Church: and if he refuse to hear the Church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican.-ST. MATTHEW XVIII. 17. R.V.

IT

is very common in the present day to hear people draw a distinction between Christ and the Church. Christ is supposed to be the ideal of all that is good, and the Church is supposed to have corrupted and distorted all His ideals, and to be therefore unworthy of either credence or obedience.

It is worth asking what these good people really mean by the Church and what they really mean by Christ. The Church represents the teaching of Christ as interpreted and explained, in the first instance by the New Testament, and in the second instance by Tradition, that is, by the experience and conviction of century after century of Christian men and women who have in their prayers, their commentaries, their preaching, their institutions, and their lives, expounded and explained Christ and what Christ intended and wished as seemed to them to be most true. Christ, on the other hand, means to such people as those referred to just the idea of Christ that they have themselves formed by their own unaided wit, and often with only a very limited study even of Christ's own words and teaching. One is obliged to ask, Who is more likely to be right? The man who trusts entirely to his own wisdom and power of interpretation, or the man who takes full account of the wisdom of all those who have gone before. Is it not probable that the latter will be the nearest to the truth? The theory that you need not trouble about the Church, that all you have to do is to have your own idea of Christ somewhere in your mind, that you need not worry about Holy Baptism or Confirmation or Holy Communion so long as you have your own little ideas about Christ safely locked up in your own