Because he is stronger, and can reward or punish? If that is the reason, the freehearted man would defy Him. Might does not make right. If God were to command us to sin, it would not be right to obey Him. On the contrary, we should sympathize with Mill in his outburst: "Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go." [Footnote: An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. VI.] It is clear that God is to be obeyed only because He is good and his will right. Not the existence of a will, but its goodness makes it authoritative. But how do we know that it is good unless we have some deeper criterion to judge it by? How do we know that God is not an arbitrary tyrant? The answer must be that we judge the Christian teachings to be a revelation of God because we know on other grounds what we mean by "right" and "good," and see that these teachings fit that conception. If the teachings were coarse and low, no prodigies or miracles would suffice to attest them as God-given; it would be superstition to obey them. Experience alone can be judge; the experience of the beneficence of the Christian ideal. The Way of Life that Christ taught verifies itself when tried; that it is the supreme ideal for man is proved by the transfiguration of life it effects. Christ and the Bible deserve our allegiance because they are worthy of it; from them we can learn the secrets of man's true welfare. Morality is, indeed, older than religion. It develops to a certain point, and in some cases very highly, without the concept of God. It has an and needs no supernatural prop. Religion is not the root of morality, but its flower and consummation. The finest ideals, the loftiest heights of morality, merge into religion; but even these spiritual ideals have their ultimate root in the common soil of human welfare, and are rational ideals because they minister to human need.