Arizona republican., 1909-02-27

friendship never turns a deaf ear 10 the need of it's needy brother He is a father and no father. unless insane or degenerate, is indifferent to the cry of his children. Unless God is inferior to a king. a judge, a friend. or an earthly father we may be as sured that He will hear and answer prayer.
 The evening service at the Baptist church brought out another large and interested audience. The subject of the sermon was What Unbelievers Must Believe" The text was John 3:1S-"He that believeth not is con demned already" He said in part:
 Salvation by faith is a sort of uni versal principle. Governments. banks, railroads, families depend upon the principle of faith for their endurance.
 "Unbelievers are really great be- lievers. The atheistic unbeliever must believe that there may be design with out a designer, law without a law maker, intelligent result without in telligent cause. The Bible in calling him a fool draws his picture accur- ately for he must violate the laws of his mind in order to say that there is no God. Savages in their rudest state do not say so. They infer great cause from the great results that they see about them. Their conceptions of God are crude and false, but they are not fools It remains for the modern atheist, be he scientist or philosopher, to turn himself into an intellectual fool by predicating of dead matter only what can be predicated of intelli- gent mind.
 The agnostic unbeliever must be- lieve a theory against facts which have been proved by competent wit nesses. His theory is that no man can know God. The facts are that Sir Isaac Newton, the mathematician. said: I know God Agassiz. the sci enlist, said: I know God Kepler. the astronomer, after the discovery of his great law, fell upon his knees and exclaimed: o God. I think Thy thoughts after Thee Havelock, the soldier. said: T know God and prayed to Him daily. Gladstone. the statesman, said: I know God Abra- ham Lincoln. the liberator, said: I kIlbW NTpbs anu SbClN iAASiAN' m prayer to Him. Thousands of lawyers, merchants. judges and physicians have declared that they know God. Agnos- ticism must believe that these com petent, trustworthy witnesses are de- ceivers or deceived. Agnosticism evil dently believes that ignorance has a right to speak and instruct knowl- edge When a man confesses that he knows nothing, and can know nothing on any subject. it becomes him to keep quiet on that subject. but agnos- ticism writes books and magazine ar ticles, parading its ignorance with in tellectual pride. A young man who was a member of a Greek class at college was an agnostic on the subject of Greek When the professor asked him a question he nearly always re- piled. I don't know The trouble with him was that he was too lazy to study He might have known. for in the text book which he held in his hand was the knowledge that he need ed But he preferred baseball and lounging to study. Now God has given us a text book called the Bible, in which He has revealed Himself so clearly that all who will may know Him. When the agnostic says I don't know he simply proclaims the fact that he prefers darkness to light; he turns away from the sun that he may grope in the dark cave of his own prejudice and ignorance.
 If he has looked through his tele- scope at the stars. and through his microscope al the flowers without seeing God, he has simply established the presumption that God will reveal Himself in some other way. When he opens the Bible the first words he reads are Tn the beginning God He ought now to be glad that God has revealed Himself in a book. but he is not glad. for his pet theory has been destroyed
 The anti-Bible unbeliever shows a credulity that is truly marvellous. He must admit that the Bible claims to be inspired. God said thus said the Lord rings through it's pages. He must admit also that the book was written by bad men or by good men
 If good men wrote it. it is of course inspired, for good men would not de- ceive us by making a false claim. If the Unbeliever asserts that bad men wrote it, then he must believe that the book which has produced the high est civilization on earth. and has de- velOped the nOblest characters in the world was written by liars who at the same time denounced themselves un- mercifully for their deception. And these liars, many of them, had every thing to lose and nothing to gain. They were martyred for their faith and faithfulness. To believe that the