We need first of all to review our principles. These we regard as constituting the essentials of our faith. However right they may have been, we are very apt to lose sight of them, or gradually, perhaps almost unconsciously, allow others to creep into their place. The word of Christ to us now is as of old, "Believe." What do we believe? What to us is the greatest reality? Many things are true--what to us is the truth? Many words are important--what to us is _the_ word? Answer not in the language of decent custom or technical phrase, but from the heart. We have all said at some time more or less definitely, "We believe in God, the Creator of the world, in Jesus Christ his Son and express image, in the Holy Spirit, the witness within the soul." When we believe thus truly, then we have the true principles of living. We own the Divine government, acknowledge its representative, honor its form of life. But our belief becomes an empty word, unless with enlarged knowledge and experience, it is constantly renewed; and as we pass into new fields of thought, action, observation, we subdue this added territory to the rightful sovereignty, and interpret all things in the light of Divine truth. Have we done this--are we doing it? Or have we left our faith behind us, and in our world of business or pleasure, do we find ourselves either utterly without God, or with Him only in the most vague and distant idea? True faith is not overcome by the world, but overcomes the world. We learn a great many things as our years pass, and there is a knowledge--do we not know it? that increaseth sorrow. Such is all the knowledge that shuts out the light of God; and leads man away from a filial faith in the Eternal Parent and the heavenly home. Such stores indeed increase our nominal domain, but only as he would enlarge his estate who were to conquer Sahara and pitch his tent among desert sands where no living water is.