I. God. "My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God."-Ps. lxxxiv. 2. GOD, if there be a God." Thus, once on a time, a man began to pray. Whether or not his utterance was a real prayer depended on the meaning of his if. It might have been the cry of an earnest soul, groping in a darkness which it felt for a hand which it needed, uncertain and confused, but still panting for the living God. If so, it was a real prayer; more so than many a prayer which is without the if. What He wants to whom all hearts are open, is truth. If a doubt is honest-the doubt of a mind that wishes to see there is no frown on His face. We need never be afraid to express to Him the misgivings of a sincere and guileless spirit. But it might have been the impertinence of a shallow and irreverent nature, a nature that is without deep feeling or conviction, forward, froward, talkative. Do you never meet such an one? I sometimes do; and I find that his "ifs" are, as often as otherwise, mere wind-bags of conceit. Anyhow, we cannot feed on an if; least of all when the matter is urgent, is near to us, is of great importance. And what matter so near, so urgent, so important as, if there be a God. This question is not one which can be played with. It is not one to be discussed as if it were only an interesting speculation. It affects us in all relations of our life. It concerns us all round. The yes or the no returned by each person makes an incalculable difference. Which of the two is it? My readers, let us pause and ponder. Now, I do not suppose that any of those whom I address are prepared with a blunt, decisive no. Yet I cannot shut my eyes to facts. It is said that the old atheist, the atheist of the old school-the school of Thomas Paine-is almost an extinct species. That may be. But if the coarse ribaldry of that type of infidelity has gone, there are denials of God's being as distinct, and, because they are combined with words of benevolence, far more dangerous. It is curious, I think very sad, to observe the part taken by women in this more modern form of the old fool's cry, "There is no God." Miss Martineau dismissed every thought of Another the high and lofty One from her mind. lady, Miss Bevington, tells us that, in parting with the notion of God, she has got her feet on the rock of naked truth. The brilliant George Eliot, in her novels and poems, sets before us great ideals and earnest heroisms without God. And, besides this manner of speech, there are many who urge, "There may be a God,-we will not answer yea or nay,— but we cannot know that there is. Knowledge is of things which we see. Let us attend to what we do know, and leave what we do not in the lumberroom which is the only fit place for maybes." Have we not all heard pleadings such as these? Alas! many a time they appeal only too successfully to the evil heart of unbelief which is in us. But I venture on this statement: Our human nature, and the facts of the universe in which we live, are against people who think in this way. In the sentence which I have placed at the head of my paper, the Psalmist felt this. Both heart and flesh are described as crying for God. There are great central needs which are stronger than any intellectual processes. The dike which seems strong enough to keep back the sea is washed away in a storm. And there come storms, trial-hours in life, when the dikes which we build with care, and which seem amply buttressed by logic and reason, are overthrown, and |