PREFACE. THIS is not meant to be a work for the conversion of persons who do not believe in a world to come, but rather it is intended to originate in the reader that atmosphere of thought in which faith can live. There are pious men who find their faith failing them in some strange way, which they cannot account for. They are serious persons; they live honorably and righteously; they keep all the commandments; their path is that of the just; and yet somehow to their eyes it shines less and less, and evermore it gets darker and darker, as though unto perfect night. There are Christians who worship out of the same book of prayers which their fathers used; who keep the same solemn seasons of humiliation and joy which they wondered at as children; and who repeat the same creeds which they learned in their youth. And yet, in the anguish of their souls, they say every Sabbath, more and more bitterly, "Lord, I believe more and more feebly; help thou mine unbelief." There are men who are now of little faith, and yet who once believed themselves to be in a state of grace. They sing the same hymns they used to, but not with their old fervor. Their seasons of religious joy are rarer and shorter than they used to be. And their belief in immortality is becoming only a fitful persuasion, a Sunday feeling, a transient mood. The world is another world than what these persons first learned to be pious in. There are men who cannot read a scientific work, or peruse history as it is commonly written, or acquaint themselves with modern literature in some of its more popular volumes, or feel what the spirit of the age is, without being conscious of a weakening of their faith. Certainly there are some few men as pure in heart as most saints have been, who long to see, and yet cannot see, in the world that now is, any signs of there being a world which is to come. They would be willing to sell all that they have and give to the poor, if they could be told of a way, by following which they could find themselves within hearing of Christ, and persuaded of there being treasure possible for them in heaven. This present age is an epoch in the Chris tian Church; - very important, and perhaps what may yet be very sad. The purpose of this book is to aid persons to discern the religiousness of life, and to suggest to them that Christian faith cannot only live, but strengthen, in the world as it now is, though it is becoming light with science, and is altered in many a domain of thought, and has sounding in it voices which ought to be religious, but which unfortunately are not. |