n
crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task begun?
When, how, are we to be different? Time cannot change men. Death
cannot change men. Christ can. Wherefore _put on Christ_.

DEALING WITH DOUBT.

There is a subject which I think workers amongst young men cannot
afford to keep out of sight--I mean the subject of "Doubt." We are
forced to face that subject. We have no choice. I would rather let it
alone; but every day of my life I meet men who doubt, and I am quite
sure that most Christian workers among men have innumerable interviews
every year with men who raise skeptical difficulties about religion.

Now it becomes a matter of great practical importance that we should
know how to deal wisely with these. Upon the whole, I think these are
the best men in the country. I speak of my own country. I speak of the
universities with which I am familiar, and I say that the men who are
perplexed,--the men who come to you with serious and honest
difficulties,--are the best men. They are men of intellectual honesty,
and cannot allow themselves to be put to rest by words, or phrases, or
traditions, or theologies, but who must get to the bottom of things
for themselves. And if I am not mistaken,

CHRIST WAS VERY FOND

of these men. The outsiders always interested Him, and touched Him.
The orthodox people--the Pharisees--He was much less interested in. He
went with publicans and sinners--with people who were in revolt
against the respectability, intellectual and religious, of the day.
And following Him, we are entitled to give sympathetic consideration
to those whom He loved and took trouble with.

First, let me speak for a moment or two about

THE ORIGIN OF DOUBT.

In the first place, _we are born questioners_. Look at the wonderment
of a little child in its eyes before it can speak. The child's great
word when it begins to speak is, "Why?" Every child is full of every
kind of question, about every kind of thing, that moves, and shines,
and changes, in the little world in which it lives.

That is the incipient doubt in the nature of man. Respect doubt for
its origin. It is an inevitable thing. It is not a thing to be
crushed. It is a part of man as God made him. Heresy is truth in the
making, and doubt is the prelude of knowledge.

Secondly: _The world is a Sphinx._ It is a vast riddle--an
unfathomable mystery; and on every side there is temptation to
questioning. In every l