the wheels of this earth, but a terribly agonising question, "How can we defend God and God's goodness when the world is so evil and so dark?" Ah, you want to prove what the Bible is by its own light, to show that it has a right to be spoken of as a revelation and as inspired! Do not go to all the trivial Mediæval theories and doctrines about it; go to the book itself, and go to the world. It can hold its own, without claiming anything outside to buttress it up. Set the heart-life in it against the heart-life of any other religion, and you will see that it has the blue of God's heaven in it—unsullied, splendid, perfect. Now, I am going to take this one Psalm—to take one glimpse into that long, painful chemistry of revelation, as God came into human hearts with pain and perplexity, with struggle, with triumph, with glory, and made those hearts know Him, not through explanations, but by His indwelling in them, His life, His love, His holiness, echoing and throbbing into their heart life. I am now tempted to break off here for a moment, and say to you what always strikes me when I look at that aspect of this revealed, inspired Bible—that it does seem just possible that the good Christian Church we belong to in our time is not in quite the right way of thinking about religious doubt. I am not talking about doubt of the head, the intellect, and the schools—intellectual fence, that sort of triviality; let it alone, it is not worth taking notice of. But the real doubt of any age, the doubt of any man's heart and head—what are we to think of that? Are we to stamp it as devilish? Are we to denounce it, and excommunicate it? Why, we might be fighting against God. If I read my Bible aright, real, genuine, patient struggle for faith means just the birth-throes of God's revelation of Himself in men's hearts. Now come to this point, and see what it reveals to you that is sacred, pathetic, instructive in the heart of a man dead hundreds of years ago. Look into his heart, and you may learn a great deal about your own heart. The problem that confronts him is the fact that has always been very evident in every age, that honesty is not by any means always the best policy, if by that you mean that it pays you best. I am putting it in homely language. It is a big question. Do the world's good things go predominantly to the good men? or do they go to the clever and unscrupulous men? In the professions is it your honest, truthful man, of modest merit, that succeeds best, or your humbug, impostor, flatterer, self-advertiser? In the State, in politics, is it your honest man, that speaks truths to the people, that is lauded and flattered? or is it your skilful adventurer? In the City does strict honour make a man's fortune? or are profits bigger in proportion as a man can wink at things? Anywhere on the large scale are the virtuous classes the most prosperous? Are the powers of this world raised up to their lofty