in the infidelity of the eighteenth century, when it was championed in Great Britain by Hume and Gibbon, in France by Voltaire and Rousseau, and in America by Thomas Paine and his coterie of friends. Its chief advocate in Germany was Immanuel Kant, who called his philosophy "Transcendental Idealism." He began with a denial of the supernatural, which of course ruled out the entire teaching of Christ, including immortality and a personal God. The keynote was thus struck for Germany, which then became the world's center of infidelity and has so continued even to this day.

In the universities of that country there are approximately thirty thousand students, of whom three hundred or more are Americans. These students return in due time equipped with a supply of dream-spun theories "made in Germany," to be exploited and oftentimes approved over here after they have been decently interred on their native heath. The trouble is that we Americans take such speculations too seriously. In Utopia phantoms are facts and speculation is diversion; but in America we frivol away valuable time and energy in the vain endeavor to adjust air-castles to the uses of practical life.

In 1835 a "Life of Jesus" was published by David Strauss of the University of Tübingen in which he advanced what is known as "the mythical theory" of the gospel. He assumed that Jesus was probably a good man, but undertook to show

that the gospel records are a mere fabric of myths, composed by the infatuated friends of Jesus a century or more after his death. The book created a sensation, as a matter of course. The theory was easily exploded by demonstrated facts; but, alas, "the evil a man does lives after him."

The climax of German infidelity was reached when Professor Drews of the University of Berlin delivered a course of lectures to prove that "Jesus never lived." The late Mrs. Eddy never made a more grotesque draught on the possibilities of human credulity. It was no wonder that even the "Moderates" of Germany were moved to call a halt. An assembly was convened in Berlin to formulate a protest. Ten thousand people came together; the meeting was opened with Luther's hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," and all united in repeating the Confession of Faith. The Kaiser was not present, but he sent a salutation which began thus: "Tell the people that the words of Jesus prove his life. His teaching lives in our hearts to-day as in the hearts of the simple fishermen who heard it nineteen hundred years ago."

"The words of Jesus proves his life."-In that statement we have a proposition of far-reaching significance. For "words are things," as Carlyle was fond of saying; and in the logic of events the words of Jesus have been crystallized into institutions; and institutions are facts which cannot easily be disposed of.

Christ himself said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." So far from "passing away," they have furnished the mighty factors in the progress of the ages. Things do not stand alone. "Out of nothing nothing comes." Movements are not automatic; there is always something or somebody behind them. The man who believes in "perpetual motion" is either a dreamer or a simpleton.

If the story of Jesus is a conglomeration of myths, who invented them? If Christ himself is a myth, how did he ever come to be what he is in this world of ours? Theodore Parker was an avowed unbeliever, but he drew the line at this point, saying, "Jesus must be measured by the shadow he has cast upon the world; no, rather, by the light he has shed upon it. Shall we be told that such a man never lived? Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived; then who did their works and thought their thoughts? It would take a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus."

We deal with things as they are. Not theories but conditions confront us. The words of Jesus have, in the process of the centuries, developed into certain institutions which cannot be flippantly bowed out of court, but must be accounted for.

The proof of the Christian home.-This has crystallized around the word of Jesus which he addressed to the Seventy on their itinerary: "Into

whatsoever house ye enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house!'"

It is not affirmed that there were no households before the beginning of the Christian era; but it is affirmed that this word of Jesus makes a home of a house.

Let us enter a Christian home and look about us. The man, as head of the family, is no longer an arbitrary despot as he used to be. In a Roman household he had practically the power of life and death; here he is the "house-band," bound to his wife by the indissoluble tie of wedlock, as the Master said, "What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder."

And the woman-what of her? There has been a stupendous change in the status of womanhood since the beginning of the Christian era. A wife is no longer the abject slave of her husband or his fair-weather toy. She no longer counts and publishes her divorces by the rings on her fingers. If her rights are denied she can at least clamor for them. The crooked woman who appealed to Jesus in the Synagogue has at length been "loosed of her infirmities." The names "wife" and "mother" have been sanctified by the fact that "the God of all good Christians was of a woman born." And what about the children? The light of the gospel has fallen also upon them. The mind of the civilized world is enlisted to-day in behalf of the little people. We cannot forget that Christ took a child upon his knee and said, "To such belongeth

the kingdom of heaven," and "Verily I say unto you, except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."

The atmosphere of the home circle has been changed every way. How shall we account for it? Things when left to themselves do not move forward but backward. The law of society, like the law of nature, is "reversion to type"; that is, back to primitive barbarism. The evolution of the modern home, with all its happy and blessed associations, is accounted for when we lift our eyes and see Christ standing in the doorway and hear him saying, "Peace be to this house!"

The proof of the workshop.-Here is another of the institutional facts of our time which must be accounted for. It crystallizes around that epoch-making word of Jesus, "The laborer is worthy of his hire."

We do not say that there were no workers nineteen centuries ago; but we insist that there was no such toiler as the handicraftsman of these days.

In Rome there were three classes: the patricians, who monopolized all wealth with its concomitants; the plebeians, who lived on the congiaria or charity of the State; and the multitude of slaves, recruited from the conquered nations who passed under the yoke. These slaves were the workmen. A plebeian refused to work, because that was the business of bondmen. And the toiler received no