Such, however, is not the method which the unbeliever pursues. He turns away from the Record as a source of instruction. It is hard to convince a man who begins by closing his ears with his own pride. To whatever study a man addresses himself, he will never advance in it in _spite_ of himself. His progress will be proportioned, among other things, to the amount of honest effort he makes to learn. That is, he must feel the fact and the disadvantage of his own ignorance. Who could study mathematics by beginning at the outset to dispute its axioms? Just so with Christian truth. Put aside prejudice and pride. Do not take it for granted that you have light enough in your mind, at starting, to pronounce upon the truth or the falsity, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness, of the doctrine of salvation through the cross of Christ. Listen attentively. Look for more light, and receive it when it comes. We do not say: "Believe before you have read;" but we do say: "Don't contradict before you have read." I have already said that we are not obliged to _explain_ the philosophy of the redemption which is taught in the Scriptures. Let me now say that that redemption is itself the best solution of the great difficulty which is felt by the believer and the unbeliever alike. It is this: Conscience tells us that God is just; the heart tells us that He is good;--how then can a God whose justice and goodness are equal, _i.e._, both of them infinite, escape from the position in which sinners have placed Him? I put the difficulty in this bold form in order that it may be the more distinctly apprehended. We have sinned, and a just God must punish. We sigh after happiness, and a good God--a God who is infinitely kind--may be expected to bestow happiness upon us. But how can God deal with us in both these ways at one and the same time? We know instinctively, of course, that there is no real dilemma to God Himself; but those who reject the atonement of Christ are bound to deal with what presents itself as an inevitable dilemma to _them_. The unbeliever says: "God is too good to punish." What then becomes of His justice, since conscience testifies that we are sinners, that sin deserves punishment, that vice and virtue are not one, that God cannot deal in the same way with both without encouraging the vice which needs to be suppressed, and discouraging the virtue which needs to be upheld? Take away the fear of punishment under the pretext that God is good, and you deprive conscience of its meaning and its power. Shall it be said, then, that God will punish every transgressor? Have the numberless generations which have been upon the earth gone to an inevitable doom? This conclusion is as hard to admit as the other. The instincts of the heart are against it.