III. A strong positive faith is the source of power. And here we must distinguish between a faith worthy to be so called; that is, a deep conviction having a high object and a rational basis on the one hand, and a mere blind determination, a willful fixedness of purpose prompted by low aspirations, and founded on no true principle, it may be on positive wrong. There is not seldom seen such a willful purpose, and it has its transient power like the force of the bull or the bulldog, when the one shuts his eyes and dashes on, and the other shuts his teeth and clings till death. Yet the bulldog has but his day, and the bull in the arena is slain at last.

Similar is the fate of the willful and wrongful combination. Every "ring" breaks up at last. It fails to bind the right cause or cripple the right man. In the long run Cromwell and Washington, Lincoln and Gladstone are sure to win against their defamers and assailants. Truth and faith and courage walk through unhurt.

The nearest approach to the power of a worthy faith may be seen in the influence of the chief illusions of life and the controlling force of its higher enterprises. Wealth on the brain binds a man, as Rothschild said he would bind his son, "mind, soul, heart, and body," and wins it, if it can be won. So politics, fame, pleasure. Did the disillusioning process which comes at the end come at the beginning, what a collapse would the world show!

It is the strong conviction of the greatness and

worth of science that has wrought such results, sending its Pliny into the deadly fumes of Vesuvius and its Franklin to the fatal ice-cliffs of the north, keeping a Herschel and Darwin on perpetual watch upon the heavens or the earth, a Davy or a Pasteur in courses of lifelong experiment. Hence the long patient struggles of the inventor, often in poverty; hence the great achievements for the world's benefit amid discouragement, doubt, and ridicule. This spirit has dredged the ocean, tracked the glacier, climbed Chimborazo, pierced the dark continent, and weighed the far-off planet. How has a sense of the grandeur of his sphere moved the hand and fired the heart of the great artist as he has said to himself: "I paint for eternity." The greatness of his country has loomed up on the sight of the patriot till he would die on the battlefield or pine in the hospital; and America free and America freed is the double monument of that mighty conviction.

These things bear pondering. There are sermons in them theologies. They point us upward to the higher faith the highest. For if allegiance to truth and right in their subordinate forms, as loyalty to science and to country, can work such achievements, what should be the power of the supreme allegiance? Accordingly the world has seen that the difference between a heart vitalized with a great faith in God, and a heart empty of all faith in God or goodness, is the difference between the green valley of the Nile and the desert through which it lies. What one grand

achievement, what one great benefaction have all the blank doubt, skepticism, or agnosticism since the world began brought to the world? Which of the myriad charities have they organized and maintained? What nation have they lifted? What community have they purified? What vicious circle have they reformed? What one blasted character have they regenerated? What soul have they raised to the heights of godlike magnanimity? Yea, what enduring monument of highest genius have they erected? From nothing, nothing comes. Zero multiplied by millions is zero still. Darkness cannot give light. The vacuum of the heart is an exhausted receiver to the life. When Brutus could say at Philippi, "O virtue, I have followed thee through life and found thee at last but a shade," let him fall on his sword.

The best things of paganism have been found where it approached nearest the verities of true religion. The pyramids are perpetual monuments of a belief in immortality. The finest statuary, the noblest temples, the highest poetry sprang from the time when the heavens were real to men. The greatest oration of Demosthenes derives its chief momentum from the almost Christian grandeur of its moral attitude. In the dark ages of the Church those splendid cathedrals and noble paintings embody the deep religious sentiment. And in modern times if it be true, as one said, that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of some man, as the Reformation of Luther, Quakerism of Fox, Methodism of Wesley, Abolition of Wilberforce," it

is also true that the germ of the institution was the burning faith of the man. Wilberforce speaks for them, one and all, when he wrote in his journal, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners," and when he wrote to his sister, "Be the love of Christ our talisman."

Sometimes we can fix our eye on the time when the power of achievement for good entered the man with the inflow of vital religion to his soul. There was a time when an indifferent and formal young preacher at Kilmany suddenly waked to the real meaning of Christ's gospel, and the transformation was as complete as when some great magazine of combustibles. receives the torch. For the dry wooden mass kindled and blazed and glowed with a flame that sent its warmth through all Scotland and its light to India and the world. It was Thomas Chalmers regenerated, a true believer in Christ. The easygoing kirkmen said, "Chalmers is mad"; but it was with the same madness that had infected Paul before him, and the whole company that under Christ have been revolutionizing the world.

For the world itself, in its present attitude and outlook, with its missions and beneficences and mighty working forces for good, is but the Wren-like monument of such a faith. Men have believed, and therefore they spoke; believed with all their being and spoke with all their power with tongue and pen and life. Their cause was as resistless as their faith was bright.

They have labored while they lived, and conquered when they fell. For there was an invisible force which dungeons could not hold, sword and cannon could not kill, flames could not burn, nor waters drown. Borne on by such a faith as this a faith which Christ's gospel itself inspires and maintains the gospel has made its way. Despised and persecuted by the despised race from which it sprung, it rose to life as the nation fell. Emerging from its native home, it made for the great cities that hug the Mediterranean, the seats of power and centres of civilization. Without one mortal weapon of offense or defense it boldly grappled with every wrong. It stood meekly unresisting when the empire ten times in succession threw its huge weight upon it, and then rose from the crush unharmed. It in turn threw itself upon the empire, mounted its throne, spread through and beyond its territory; "it gathered all genius and learning unto itself, and made the literature of the world its own; it survived the inundation of the barbarian tribes, and conquered the world once more by converting the conquerors to the faith; it survived the restoration of letters"; survived the corruptions of the Church itself; “survived an age of free inquiry and skepticism, and has long stood its ground in the field of argument, commanding the intelligent assent of the greatest minds that ever were"; and outwardly controlling the great empires that now control the earth. And to-day it stands. girded with youthful strength, waving the banner of the cross for a forward movement all along the line