chosen this text because I see in it the three great verities of the Christian faith: No. 1, the fact of God; No. 2, the fact of Christ, and No. 3, the fact of the future life.
First of all, the fact of God. Note this, the Bible never seeks to prove the existence of God. Written for man, it takes it for granted that man believes that already. It does not follow that just because our churches are to a large extent more than half empty that men deny God's existence. I have neither the time nor the patience to discuss this subject with the man who bluntly and baldly tells me that there is no God. The man who denies God's existence is an absolute outsider, and should be treated as such. A man like that is not only a danger to himself; he is a danger to the whole commonwealth. He is "a" leper, and the cry should go up "Unclean, unclean," and nobler men should shun that man as they shun the plague itself. We do not live to-day in the poisonous atmosphere of a cold and naked atheism; we live in an age when all right-minded men and women are open to conviction and reason. People are seeking the truth to-day as they never sought it before. An old man was one day asked if he knew So-and-so. "Knew him?" he queried in his reply, "why, I slept in the same church with him for 20 years." Let the story be taken for what it is worth. We can, with all truth, say this, that men to-day do not go to
