t of speculation, to attempt to steer by a compass when there is no
pole of truth?

In to-day's changing tides of thought, when the old faiths seem
slipping away, when we wonder why we have lost the simple faith of our
own youth or our father's, looking for some firm ground for our feet,
we do well to set them down on nothing but facts, to discriminate among
the sands of time and the alluvial deposits of tradition till we find
the rock of truth.

But facing the facts we find everywhere one writ large, over all one
great principle of unchanging law, one great purpose moving through all
nature and all history, and what we once only dared to hope and dream,
that back of all there throbs infinite love and there rules infinite
wisdom, now is attested by the impressive array of the witnesses of
science.

Truth always is safe. The holiest error must be born of hell. We can
make no mistake in refusing to go beyond truth, and we will find that
she leads to the ordering of life according to eternal laws, to the
doing of duties and finding of sweet joys as old as the hills and as
unchanging; she will lead in the paths of rightness.

Some day our race will know all the alphabet of nature and be able to
read the story of the unchanging goodness; some day we shall comprehend
the wavering handwriting of history; some day we shall catch the
harmony of love and law; we shall know the full truth that is religion;
shall know things as they are and be what we should be.

THE REAL FOUNDATION

A good many thousand sermons have been preached on the parable of the
houses built on sand and on rock, probably nearly all of them with the
intent to prove that the way to build the life on a rock foundation is
to pass through the experience known as conversion, obtain saving faith
and join the church. This is typical of a popular way of interpreting
the scriptures: First, determine what you wish them to mean and then
make them mean that. The purpose being to persuade people to join the
church, then by hook or crook that duty must be discovered in every
divine precept.

But this is simply to ignore the plain words of the great Teacher. It
would be impossible to clarify His statement: "If any man hears and
does the things I have been teaching he is like one who builds on a
rock." One thing marks the rock founded life, the doing of Christly
deeds. The course of conduct, the kind of character He has just
outlined in the sermon on the