which we are so foolish as to laud and pride
ourselves so much about? What did we have a Civil War for, wasting
billions of money and hundreds of thousands of lives? Are these great
human contests about nothing at all?

Friends, think one moment. Either man is a child of God or he is not.
Man fell at the beginning of his history, and came under the wrath and
curse of God, or he did not. God has sent angels, breaking into his
natural order of the world, or he has not. He has created an infallible
book or he has not. He has organized an infallible church that has
authority to guide and teach the world or he has not. He himself came
down to earth in the form of a man once and for all, and was crucified,
dead and buried and ascended into heaven, or he did not.

These are questions of historic fact. Does it make no difference what
we believe about them? If man is a fallen being, condemned to eternal
death, and God has provided only one way for his escape and salvation,
then it makes an infinite and eternal difference as to whether we know
it or believe it or act on it or not. If the majority of the human race
is doomed to eternal torture unless it escapes through certain
prescribed conditions, does it make any difference whether we know it
or not?

And, if he is not so doomed, does it make no difference to the heart
and hope, the life, the cheer, the courage and inspiration of man,
whether or not we lift from the brain and the heart this horrible
incubus of dread and fear?

Here are all these churches with their wealth, their intelligence,
their enthusiasm, their inspiration, ready to do something for
humanity. Does it make any difference whether they are doing the right
thing for it or not? We could revolutionize the world if we could be
guided by intelligence, and find out what man really needs, and devote
ourselves to the accomplishment of what that is. The waste, the waste,
the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration
poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards
things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need
to be done!

These are the questions involved in discussions as to what God is and
has done and is going to do with his world.

The one thing we need, then, almost more than all others just now, is
to be led by the truth, and have the truth make us free from the errors
and the burdens of the past, so that we may place ourselves truly at
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