_The Passing and Permanent_ _Facing the Facts_ _The Real Foundation_ _Things not right can never be religious._ _Bigotry puts blinders on the best of men._ _Submission is the first step to sovereignty._ _The principle of expediency expels all other principle._ _Quiet lives are often eloquent._ _The love of wealth steals wealth of love._ _It's the common virtues that make uncommon saints._ _Many a man is shouting his convictions to drown the voice of conscience._ _A little learning is dangerous if you are planning to get to heaven by degrees._ _When a man gets over anxious about the gnat it's time to hang on to the camel._ IX THE PASSING AND PERMANENT When the walls are being rebuilt it is easy to imagine that the foundations are being destroyed. Old creeds pass away, but truth remains; if they were true in their day they do but give place to the larger truth of the new day. We need to distinguish between the turmoil attendant to the process of building and the beauty of the new temple that arises. The old folks hear the new truths and ask, where are the foundations gone? The young hear the discussion between the old and the new and ask, is there anything settled, anything worth believing? What are the permanent elements in religion on which the life may build while the things that are but temporary are adjusting themselves? It would be the height of folly to assert that there is no change. Some say that we must believe precisely the same things as our fathers believed. To do so would be to be false to our fathers, for they refused to accept the traditions of their elders. The landmarks we leave behind once were far in front of the seekers after truth. Truth never changes but our vision is ever enlarging. The road remains, but the traveller moves on. With the living every day has some new light. Creeds are crystallized statements of truth; truth is vital and cannot be contained in unchanging forms. Credulity blindly accepts yesterday's picture of truth; faith, with open eyes, seeks to-day's truth itself. Skepticism is much less sinful than credulity. The sloth of the man who will not examine things, will not prove them, who prefers to buy his garments of truth ready made, results in what is worse than unbelief, and that is blind belief in the false. It is a religious duty to question every teaching, to prove all things. How may we find those things that are certain? How may we discover the truth for our day, the truth upon which we may build? Surely there are some things fixed and certain, there is somewhere pole star and compass. How may we find that truth which belongs to our day and in which we may have the confidence that our fathers had in their truth? The test of the vital truths is a practical one. Only those truths are vital which concern the present business of living in all its wide sweep.