ct words of the Bible, and the
conclusions of your own reason and moral sense; or whether you are merely
believing that cosmogony elaborated in the cloister, that theory of moral
retribution pardonable in the middle age, which Dante and Milton sang.

But this I do not hesitate to say--That if we of the clergy can find no
other answers to these doubts than those which were reasonable and
popular in an age when men racked women, burned heretics, and believed
that every Mussulman killed in a crusade went straight to Tartarus--then
very serious times are at hand, both for the Christian clergy and for
Christianity itself.

What, then, are we to believe and do? Shall we degenerate into a lazy
scepticism, which believes that everything is a little true, and
everything a little false--in plain words, believes nothing at all? Or
shall we degenerate into faithless fears, and unmanly wailings that the
flood of infidelity is irresistible, and that Christ has left His Church?

We shall do neither, if we believe the text. That tells us of a firm
standing-ground amid the wreck of fashions and opinions. Of a kingdom
which cannot be moved, though the heavens pass away like a scroll, and
the earth be burnt up with fervent heat.

And it tells us that the King of that kingdom is He, who is called Jesus
Christ--the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

An eternal and changeless kingdom, and an eternal and changeless King.
These the Epistle to the Hebrews preaches to all generations.

It does not say that we have an unchangeable cosmogony, an unchangeable
eschatology, an unchangeable theory of moral retribution, an unchangeable
dogmatic system: not to these does it point the Jews, while their own
nation and worship were in their very death-agony, and the world was
rocking and reeling round them, decay and birth going on side by side, in
a chaos such as man had never seen before. Not to these does the Epistle
point the Hebrews: but to the changeless kingdom and to the changeless
King.

My friends, do you really believe in that kingdom, and in that King? Do
you believe that you are now actually in a kingdom of heaven, which
cannot be moved; and that the living, acting, guiding, practical, real
King thereof is Christ who died on the Cross?

These are days in which a preacher is bound to ask his congregation--and
still more to ask himself--whether he really believes in that kingdom,
and in that King; and to bid himself and them, i