The idea of good and the thought of God are not connected together merely by a similarity of sound; they have but one origin. Thus, if where goodness is, there God is, we must be able to find evidence, even where there may be no intellectual knowledge of God, of the recognition of a unique worth in the good apart from all attempted explanations of its value. And perhaps we cannot do better than take an example from the writings of a master sceptic, to show how in spite even of an apparent intention to make mock of the failure of the good and unselfish man, and of the utterly impracticable nature of his ideal, a kind of homage is yet paid to the ideal and to its votary, and through them to the source of their inspiration. Readers of Voltaire's "Candide" will recall the figure of the Anabaptist Jacques, the upright and unselfish man who perishes in spite of all his trust in overruling good. Voltaire in picturing his death would appear to be casting scorn upon [p. 15] a complacent view of a universe where such a thing might happen again and again, and as far as any practical teaching goes he would seem merely to point out that righteousness and faith may be not only unavailing to ward off calamity, but may actually bring it upon those who make such a standard their sole guide. And yet, even as you read, you feel how much nobler and better it is to perish like Jacques, with the unswerving faith of a good man, than to live on contentedly digging one's garden and enjoying its fruits in selfish peace. And however much we may be conscious that in the moment of trial, face to face with mortal peril, we ourselves might swerve aside, might hesitate and fail, we yet know that if we could make our choice in a cool hour, reviewing calmly what we ought to do, and what we would do if we could be true to the best that is in us, we should choose the honourable failure of the good man rather than the success of the bad. In itself we know it to be better, apart from all thought of consequence. And in practice we know how in the presence of the loveliness of an unselfish act all lower thoughts of pleasure and of profit fade away! Face to face with the enduring ideal that shines forth from. the good deed, lower ideals shrivel and sink into nothingness. Even truer is this of goodness made real to us in personality, and here it is that those of us who call ourselves Christians may find the keystone to the continual self-revelation of God to man, in that supreme revelation of the Divine [p.16] nature in the unique personality of Jesus, which for the Church is the centre of inspiration and the explanation of the light which shines in all other lives.