think for a moment. There was hardly
a single point connected with this world that they knew anything about.
How did it happen that the whole modern world should get on its knees
in their presence, as though they knew everything about the Infinite,
when they knew next to nothing about the finite? Is there any proof
that they knew anything about it? Not one single particle.

Think for a minute. We know to-day unspeakably more about the origin of
the Bible, how it grew, how it came into its present shape, than any
man from the first century until a hundred years ago could by any
possibility know. We know a good deal more than Paul, though he was one
of the writers, unspeakably more. He had no means of knowing. We have
sifted every particle of evidence, every source of knowledge that the
world has to show. We know unspeakably more about this universe than
any man of the olden time had any way of knowing. He had no way of
knowing anything.

I said something recently about the origin and nature of man. Very
little was known about this until within the present century. We know
something about how religions grow. We have traced them, studied them,
not only Christianity and Judaism, but all the religions of the world
back to their origin, and seen them coming into shape. We can judge
something about them to-day. You want the antiquity of the world?
People are bowing in the presence of what they suppose to be the
antiquity, that is, the hoary-headed wisdom, of the world. Why,
friends, as you go back, you are not going back to the old age of the
world: you are going back to its childhood. The world was never so old
as it is this morning. Humanity was never so old, never had such
accumulated experience, such accumulated knowledge, as it has this
morning.

If you want the results of the world's hoary-headed antiquity, its
wisdom, its accumulated experience, its knowledge, then get the very
latest results of the very finest modern investigations; for that is
where you will find them.

Then let us note in just a word some other reasons why we cannot hold
these old creeds. The statements that are made about God are horrible.
The statements that are made in regard to the method by which God is
going to deal with his creatures are horrible; and then what they tell
us in regard to the outcome of human history is pessimistic and
hopeless in the extreme.

Where do they claim to get the authority for these old beliefs? They
tell us t