_Christian_--Good-bye; I will call one month hence and hear your conclusion. DO WE NEED THE BIBLE? The only creed consistent with the rejection of the Gospel of Christ is an eternal tomb, with the heart-shivering inscription, "Death is an eternal sleep." Americans who reject the Scriptures are as uncertain about the future as the poor heathen of other lands. Some of our unbelievers have gathered the information from heathen oracles that the future consists in being a poor, empty, shivering, table-rapping spirit, flying to and fro over the country in response to the sigh of some silly waiting-girl, or at the bidding of some brazen-faced, unscrupulous "free lover." And this, "O, ye gods!" is all that ever shall be of the noblest spirits that ever left human flesh! Others, to gain rest from this horrible and unsatisfying fate, fly to the theory of everlasting silence, as a result of the idea that mind is simply brain action, and ceases to exist when the brain ceases to act. Their appropriate motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." It has been said that even this brute philosophy is reasonable compared with the dogma of a large portion of unbelievers, to wit., that blasphemers, thieves, profane swearers, murderers and adulterers, will all go straight to heaven when they die; that men with their hearts steeped in blood will sit down with Abraham and Isaac in the kingdom of God. But Spiritualists, Pantheists, Atheists, and Deists inform us that an external revelation is useless. Their common exposition of the sentiment is too well known to need comment. We hear them saying, "You need say nothing about the Bible to me; I know my duty well enough without it; and as for miracles, they will never prove anything to me. Can thunder, repeated daily through centuries, make God's laws and his wisdom and goodness more God-like? No! I am grown, perchance, to manhood, and do not need the thunder and terror. I am not to be scared. It is not _fear_, but _reverence_, that shall lead me! _Revelation!_ Inspiration! And thy own God-like spirit; is not that a revelation?" See Carlyle's "Past and Present," page 307. Now, if Mr. Carlyle was in no need of the fear of God, somebody else may be in a different mental and moral condition. There is nothing in which men differ more. If one man is above the weakness of fearing God (?) all men are not. Say what we may of fear, it is nevertheless true that we are greatly influenced by fear. We are greatly indebted to the fear of sickness for health, to the fear of poverty for wealth, and to the fear of death for life. Fear is to caution what knowledge is to a wise choice. Where there is no fear there is no caution. The love of life and bliss is natural, therefore we fear sickness, poverty and death. Why say with your lips, "I am above fear," while away down in your heart you know it to be a lie?