One would try to crush it; he hates it because it will not let him sin. Like that profligate man who wished Keith's Evidences from Prophecy destroyed, "because they were so convincing;" many cry, Away with the Word of God, for the same reason that the Jews cried, Away, away with the Son of God--because it rebukes their iniquity. ITS ROOT. And another wishes the Word of God put down, because he remembers its effects upon his soul in earlier years, when a godly parent tried to impress it on the conscience and the heart. He has now cast these instructions behind his back. He has learned to sin with a high hand; and as the sight or the sounds of the truth re-awaken his old concern, he is eager to drive it from his presence. The very sight is a sting to his conscience. A single clause may be like a death-knell, and that man hates it with a perfect hatred. That is the root of much of the infidelity which is now so rife--not the want of proof, but the evil heart of unbelief; not mere ignorance, but the preference of sin to holiness. Or a third among our fellow-workmen may be one who has known some signal hypocrite. That pretender sought, perhaps, to promote some sinister object by a religious profession. Perhaps he prayed; perhaps he was a reprover of other men's sins; perhaps he was an eager advocate for sound doctrine, and would endure no departure from it--yet, after all, he may be unmasked as a mere pretender. It may be discovered at length that he was all the while living in sin, concealed, but long continued, such as to indicate that his religion was a pretence, and his strictness that of a Pharisee. Now, having discovered the hollowness of that man's pretensions, some gladly rush to the conclusion that all religion is a pretence; they greedily grasp at the conviction, because it favours their own licentiousness, that "there is none righteous, no, not one." Religion in every form is therefore regarded as an offence, or discarded as an imposture. Or, in the workshop beside us, we may find some other man who affects to be scientific. He knows a little of Geology, and is able to overthrow Moses and the Bible. He is acquainted with the secrets of Chronology, and thinks that there are far older histories--older by many thousands of years--than the records of Scripture pretend to be. Or that man has heard a little of Ethnography, and because he is ignorant, he thinks it can be proved that all the dwellers on the earth did not spring from Adam and Eve. Or perhaps his learning takes the direction of tracing the Vestiges of Creation, and he concludes that man can create--generally, that creatures can make each other, and that God is therefore unnecessary. These, and similar pretensions of science, falsely so called, may have taken hold of some minds around us, and amid the multitude of such assailants, who are bold, as streams are brawling, in proportion to their shallowness, it may not be always easy to be steadfast and unmoveable.