Does this startle you—this suggestion of an evil being—as being too old-fashioned for an educated Christian? Well then, put it aside for the time (though it is indeed Christ’s doctrine): and merely assume as a temporary hypothesis that the essence of Christ’s Gospel is a trust in the Fatherhood of God. Now, if this be so, and if this trust or faith is to be kept pure and strong, must it not be regarded with reverence and reserve as being (what indeed it is) a kind of private, domestic, and family relation? Is it to be made the subject for light, casual, frivolous discussions; epigrammatic displays; cut-and-thrust exhibitions of word-fence; logical or rhetorical symposia? What would you say of a young man who should allow his relations with his father and mother to be discussed with humour and epigram on every light occasion? Would he be likely long to retain the bloom of domestic affection unimpaired? I remember reading about some well-educated and enlightened free-thinker—I fancy it was Bolingbroke—on whose table a Greek Testament was regularly placed by the side of the port when the cloth was drawn, and whose favourite topic for discussion after dinner was the existence and attributes of the Deity. Does not your instinct teach you that from such discussions as these no good could possibly come, nothing but a hardening of the conscience, a fatal familiarity with sacred things regarded with a view to witticism—that kind of familiarity which too surely breeds contempt? What a terrible contrast it is—complacent Bolingbroke at his wine, analysing the attributes of God, and the all-pitying Father looking down from heaven and pleading, through Christ, not to be analysed but to be loved and trusted!