The fact is that in practical life we are surrounded in all directions with things which we cannot explain, and problems which we cannot solve. We cannot escape from such difficulties; they meet us at every turn. But in daily life we never think of them. Our practical conduct is not affected by them. We see what we have to do, and we do it. We take our place in the train, we go on board the ship, we send our telegram, we eat our food, and we move our limbs, without ever endeavouring to solve the mysteries which underlie all that we are doing. Now all I ask is that men should act on the same principle with reference to the Gospel. There are, as I have said, difficulties, and if you never act until they are solved, a weary time you will have to wait. But there is also a plain, simple, clear word of invitation; there is a great salvation prepared, presented, and proclaimed. There is a way of life so clearly taught that he may run that readeth it. So the wise course is to say, “Difficulty or no difficulty, I accept the invitation,” and to act practically just as you do with your food or your medicine. Your physician gives you medicine, and, though you cannot explain how it will act, you take it in trust. So your God gives you His salvation, and your part is to accept His gift, and leave it to Him to solve the deep mysteries of His hidden will. But I cannot leave the subject there, for I am prepared to maintain that these difficulties should confirm the faith, and to claim them even as “witnesses to truth.” 1. They are _witnesses to the truth of the Scriptures_, for in them we are told that we are sure to meet with them. While, as I have already said, the way of life is presented so clearly that he may run that readeth it, there is at the same time the perfectly clear statement that we must expect to find difficulties in the revelation of God. Only look at St. Peter’s description of St. Paul’s Epistles in 2 Peter iii. 16. In that passage he associates those Epistles with the other Scriptures, and plainly declares that they contain some things “hard to be understood.” Are we then to be surprised if, in reading them, we meet with things “hard to be understood,” or if we meet with men who venture to cavil at them, and so wrest them to their own destruction? I am prepared to maintain that if in St. Paul’s Epistles, and the other Scriptures, there had been nothing “hard to be understood,” then St. Peter himself would not have spoken truth. The difficulties in the writings of St. Paul are necessary to the complete truth of the Epistle of St. Peter.